Pudu Robotics has opened its European headquarters in Neuss, Germany, to support its continued business expansion in the region. The new headquarters brings together sales, product demonstrations, training, warehousing and after-sales services, strengthening local infrastructure and customer support capabilities to scale robot deployments in the European market.
Shao Lin, founder of RoboScience, spoke at the 2026 World Physical AI Conference and Unitree Partner Ecosystem Conference, presenting a cross-embodiment dexterous manipulation technology path from the ICRA 2025 Best Paper D(R,O) Grasp to the T(R,O) Grasp series and then to the FingerEye visuotactile framework.
GXO announced on October 26 that Agility's Digit will handle e-commerce fulfillment at warehouses in Statesville, North Carolina, and Lebanon, Tennessee, starting in early 2027, beginning with Digit 4 before moving to Digit 5; at a Georgia site, Digit has already moved more than 100,000 totes.
KION Group's revenue for the first nine months of fiscal year 2026 rose 3.9% to €8.522 billion, while adjusted EBIT increased 9.9% to €632.5 million, driven mainly by the smart automation solutions business, whose revenue grew 16.9% to €2.519 billion and whose adjusted EBIT jumped 36.6% to €172.2 million. Order intake for the industrial trucks and services business fell short of expectations, bringing total group order intake down to €8.445 billion, and the company therefore lowered its fiscal year 2026 outlook.
Three industry standards—JB/T 15163-2025 "Three-Way Stacking Forklift," JB/T 15162-2025 "Two-Way and Multi-Way Traveling Forklift," and JB/T 15091-2025 "Forklift Attachments—Three-Way Attachments"—developed with Zowell Intelligent Forklift as one of the drafting units, have been released and are being implemented successively between 2025 and March 2026. Zowell ranks fourth among the drafting units for the two complete-vehicle standards, and states that it is the first company in China to raise the lifting height of man-up three-way forklifts to over 18 meters.
On October 23, 2026, CCTV Finance's Economic Information Broadcast reported that Heli's connected-vehicle intelligent scheduling system was selected as an advanced manufacturing observation case. A fertilizer company in Xinxiang, Henan, uses the system to schedule more than 150 Heli forklifts spread across 15 warehouse areas, reducing forklift idle rates by 30% and improving scheduling efficiency by 40%. The system is based on Heli's self-developed FICS industrial internet platform, linking individual forklifts into a coordinated smart fleet.
Jiangsu Wanda Special Bearing Co., Ltd. will exhibit at CeMAT ASIA, held November 3-6, 2026, at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, at booth W5-H1-1. The company is highlighting four product categories: forklift bearings, combined roller bearings, full-complement cylindrical roller bearings, and precision slewing rings, supporting 0.5T to 46T forklift series and robotic automation machinery, with annual production of 5 million bearings of various types. During the exhibition, its technical and marketing teams will meet with visitors to discuss product applications, performance specifications, custom development, and project delivery.
DALA Motion will exhibit at CeMAT ASIA 2026 from November 3 to 6 at Booth W5 B1-5, Shanghai New International Expo Centre, showcasing a range of electronic control, motor, instrument, and electrical solutions. Its four application solutions cover engineering machinery such as aerial work platforms, walk-behind stackers and pallet trucks, counterbalance forklifts and wheel loaders/excavators, as well as AGV transport platforms, floor scrubbers, and cleaning robots.
AgiBot has officially released the safety-standard heavy-duty embodied robot Genie G2 Max, which has already been deployed in the inbound handling process at JD Logistics' Zhilang Warehouse. The robot has a single-arm payload of 20 kg and a dual-arm peak payload of 50 kg, arm repeat positioning accuracy of ≤±0.5 mm, and can depalletize 80 boxes and palletize 75 boxes per hour, with an overall operation success rate exceeding 99%. Zhilang Warehouse is a goods-to-person robot warehouse developed in-house by JD Logistics, and the G2 Max handles the tote placement task in its inbound process.
Unitree Technology's revenue for the first three quarters of 2026 was 1.817 billion yuan, up 55.71% year-on-year, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 387 million yuan, up 270.54% year-on-year, though third-quarter net profit fell 17.37% year-on-year. R&D investment for the first three quarters rose 191.48% year-on-year to 263 million yuan, including 127 million yuan in the third quarter, up 249.58% year-on-year; the company said it continues to increase R&D and computing power investment in embodied large models.
Unitree disclosed on October 28 its first quarterly report since listing on the STAR Market. In the first three quarters of 2026, revenue was 1.817 billion yuan, up 55.71% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders was 387 million yuan, up 270.54% year on year. R&D expenses rose 191.48% year on year over the same period, with third-quarter growth of 249.58%, mainly directed to embodied intelligence model research, computing power procurement, and expansion of the R&D team.
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange announced that Yunji (Old) has been removed from the Stock Connect eligible securities list, effective October 30. Following this adjustment, the security is no longer within the scope of Stock Connect eligible securities.
Zhao Yue, founder, chairman and CEO of SEER Robotics (0610.HK), was named to the "Value Creators" category of Forbes China's 2026 List of 100 Most Influential Chinese. SEER Robotics builds an open robotics platform centered on its "robot brain" (a three-in-one combination of model, cerebellum and nervous system). From 2023 to 2025, its intelligent robot controller sales ranked first worldwide for three consecutive years, and by the end of 2025 more than 50,000 robots equipped with this brain had been deployed cumulatively. The company listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 24, 2026.
Digital China launches its "APEC Month" series of events, with its Shenzhen headquarters showroom open for global reservations from November 1 to 30, featuring a dedicated APEC display area. Visitors can get up close with the bionic robot "Xialan" series, the general-purpose humanoid robot "Xiaqi" series, and the IP series "Xingxingxia," experiencing service handling, guided tours and explanations, and multilingual conversations in simulated business scenarios such as finance, health care, and retail, all powered by the self-developed "Juhao®" embodied intelligent interaction engine and the "RoboEase™" scenario platform.
Pagoda brought its self-developed "Hongjun" wheeled humanoid robot and three Bat-series parallel robots with different arm spans to Cibus Tec 2026 in Parma, Italy; this is the first time "Hongjun" has been exhibited at an overseas trade show. The Bat800 carbon-fiber version uses carbon-fiber material for both its upper arm and moving platform, targeting the confectionery industry, including chocolate, in pursuit of extreme speed; the three parallel robots cover 99% of parallel-robot demand scenarios. Pagoda coordinates the market through Italian first-tier agent Deri Srl, with two second-tier agents covering regional customers; this is the third time the three parties have exhibited together.
U.S. President Trump issued a proclamation stating that the Secretary of Commerce, in a Section 232 investigation, determined that imported robots, industrial machinery and their parts threaten U.S. national security, and directed the Secretary of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate with trading partners to adjust the relevant imports.
On October 28, Trump issued a presidential proclamation determining that imports of foreign-made factory robots constitute a national security threat, ordering new negotiations with trading partners while keeping open the possibility of future tariffs on such robot imports. The proclamation states that industrial robots are critical to producing U.S. military weapons systems, and cites the findings of an investigation led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that these imports pose a risk to the U.S. industrial base. U.S. companies that rely on such robots, including General Motors, Ford, Tesla, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, could be affected.
Jungheinrich and Italian warehouse automation company Automha, a Comau subsidiary, announced a strategic partnership to jointly develop the UP-Carrier GTJ two-way pallet shuttle for high-density pallet storage.
At its October 29, 2026 Innovation Day in Shanghai, Agibot unveiled its third-generation humanoid hardware architecture AHA3, the embodied foundation model GO-3 Preview, the omni-modal interaction model WITA-Omni 1.0, the industrial robot G2 Max, and Link-U OS 1.0, and proposed the Worken framework for measuring robots' actual productive output.
Bedrock Robotics announced the close of a $600 million Series C round at a post-money valuation of $4.1 billion, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, bringing the company's total funding to nearly $1 billion.
The Arrow Electronics Technology Solutions Show 2026 will be held on November 4 at the Shanghai Baohua Marriott Hotel. In the tech conference session, onsemi, YAGEO, and NXP will respectively present on smart power and sensing, passive components, and a full-stack robotics semiconductor solution covering high-performance computing, real-time control, motor control, security, and connectivity.
WeRide disclosed that its subsidiary JingShuo Technology has completed a 70 million yuan pre-A funding round, with participation from Jiayu Capital, HKSTP (Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks), Sirius Capital and others; the investors together hold approximately 3.38%. JingShuo Technology has self-developed the integrated data-model platform WorldEngine, the world model GENESIS-Robotics and the data asset engine SkillForge, and has accumulated 500,000 hours of high-precision data, 50 million structured task segments and 200+ scenario skill packages.
Shandong-based flexible fabric tactile sensing company Juqiao Industries announced the completion of a hundred-million-yuan Series A funding round, led by Ant Group, with Lingyi Venture Capital, Weihai Gangrong, and Qingdao Hexin participating. The funds will be used for large-scale mass production and delivery of fabric electronic skin and for R&D in tactile and multimodal sensing technologies.
SWANCOR Advanced Materials has released its third-quarter report, with revenue of RMB 1.209 billion for the first three quarters and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 63.5181 million, up 4.91% year on year. R&D investment in its consumer-grade embodied intelligent robotics business reached RMB 360 million. As of the end of the reporting period, the robotics R&D team had 295 people and had filed 135 patent applications in total, but the consumer-grade embodied intelligent robotics business recognized no revenue during the reporting period. The company also announced executive changes: Zhao Gang as President and COO, Gao Quanzhong and Liu Dongfang as Co-Presidents, and Dong Hao as Chief Scientist and President of the Embodied Research Center.
Tesla plans to use the Optimus humanoid robot to plug and unplug charging cables for Robotaxi as an interim solution before wireless charging is deployed. Currently, Robotaxis at the Austin Supercharger station are still charged manually by staff, and the Cybercab supports only Supercharging and has a hidden NACS port.
Gu Jie, Vice President of XPeng Group, said at the SAECCE annual conference that the solid-state battery for the XPeng IRON robot has rolled off the line in small-batch production, and the robot is currently in the pre-SOP stage. The battery uses a high-energy-density design and, with a design to prevent thermal runaway propagation, has withstood impact and nail-penetration tests. XPeng plans to achieve mass production of humanoid robots by the end of 2026, begin deliveries in the first half of 2027, and first deploy them in commercial scenarios such as stores and shopping malls.
Ministry of Commerce commerce big data shows that in the first three quarters, sales of exoskeleton assistive devices on key platforms rose 46.4% year on year, sales of embodied intelligent robots rose 22.6% year on year, and smart glasses grew 1.1-fold. These growth rates reflect only year-on-year changes in sales of the relevant goods on key platforms and do not equal nationwide all-channel growth rates or industry size. Exoskeleton assistive devices are wearable mechanical assistive devices that can be used for rehabilitation training, mobility assistance, industrial work, and load-bearing walking; embodied intelligent robots cover some humanoid robots, service robots, and other systems with environmental perception and autonomous operation capabilities.
The Chongqing University "BOBOCUP" team won the national championship in the agricultural robot—harvesting robot category at the 2026 China Robot Competition and RoboCup China Open, which concluded on October 18. This is the university's first championship at the event since it began participating in 2013. The harvesting category requires robots to complete autonomous navigation, intelligent obstacle avoidance, target recognition, fruit and vegetable grasping and harvesting, and collection at a designated location. Another team from the university placed third in the five-finger dexterous manipulation artistic skills challenge, which assesses abilities such as multi-finger fine manipulation, force control, and hand-eye coordination.
Peng Zhihui, co-founder, president, and CTO of Zhiyuan Robotics, disclosed at the 2026 Zhiyuan Innovation Day that in the first half of 2026 Zhiyuan shipped 9,700 humanoid robots, accounting for more than 43% of the global humanoid robot market, with revenue for the period approaching 2 billion yuan; as of September, cumulative output of general-purpose embodied robots surpassed 20,000 units.
Why it matters: Zhiyuan disclosed first-half shipments of 9,700 units and revenue near 2 billion yuan, and introduced a new metric measuring commercialization by effective intelligent work hours, offering a way to track the pace at which humanoid robots move from demonstrations to delivery.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Tesla's Musk, and Unitree's Wang Xingxing have recently made aligned public judgments: physical AI is on the eve of an explosion, and humanoid robots are its most important deployment vehicle. Huang said that, relying on the Cosmos world model and the Isaac simulation platform, AI factory deployment cycles have been compressed to 14 days; Musk plans for Optimus to be supplied externally by the end of 2027 after resolving issues such as electromechanical reliability, and says early production has already begun at the Fremont factory.
At the October 29, 2026 AgiBot Innovation Day, AgiBot proposed for the first time the Worken (effective intelligent work hours) metric for measuring a robot's effective workload, and released its third-generation hardware architecture AHA3, the heavy-duty embodied robot Genie G2 Max, and the embodied intelligence operating system Lingqu OS 1.0.
According to an incomplete tally by the CMR Industry Alliance and the New Strategy Mobile Robot Industry Research Institute, more than 20 companies' wheeled humanoid robots have entered factories for application deployment, testing and validation, and scenario cooperation. In the first three quarters of 2026, 178 new AGV/AMR products were launched globally, with composite products leading at 91, of which more than 80% are wheeled humanoid robots. The article notes that factory testing, scenario validation, routine deployment, and bulk procurement are different stages; tasks have expanded from handling and sorting to quality inspection, press-fitting, and screw assembly, but a threshold remains between short-term testing and long-term production.
At its 2026 Innovation Day, AGIBOT proposed the Worken framework, which measures a robot's effective intelligent working hours in real environments by multiplying three factors: the number of active robots, autonomous working hours, and output efficiency ratio.
Google offered $10 million to buy the internal records of bankrupt airline Spirit Airlines, including about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, to improve AI models. AI data company micro1 announced it will spend $1 billion over the next 12 months to buy or license operational data from enterprises and build reinforcement learning environments. Mathematicians are paid about $5,000 per question to supply AI with high-difficulty benchmark questions, and about 91% of Mercor's $614 million in first-half revenue came from foundation model companies.
Several industry figures told HardKr that the turning point for embodied AI funding came in September this year, and NE Times statistics show that funding in the sector fell 40% in September compared with August. Three leading institutions have tightened investment, one FA said the embodied projects it received recently have halved, and some founders are facing fundraising obstacles. The article also reviews the fundraising model of assembly-style startups that drives up valuations, and mentions that Unitree's share price has fallen more than 60% from its peak after listing, and that progress in foundation models such as GPT-6 Astra is eroding the technical moats of embodied-brain companies.
On October 8, a business registration change took place at Shanghai Daxiao Infinite Robotics, adding new shareholders including Muxi Digital Intelligence under Muxi and Geely Chuangxiang No. 20, a Geely Capital-affiliated entity; registered capital increased to 182 million yuan. Daxiao Robotics centers on the Kairos world model, and has already piloted a wheeled-arm lift robot at a Kunlun Haoke convenience store, completing product recognition, picking, transport, and packing. The article's analysis says Muxi values validation of domestic GPU software stack compatibility with world models, while Geely uses the investment to fill gaps in world models and robot manipulation capabilities, but taking a stake does not mean purchase orders or an exclusive partnership have been formed.
Ma Chen, associate professor at City University of Hong Kong, has joined Yingjie Technology to lead pre-research on the data direction. The company has completed two consecutive seed funding rounds over the past few months, totaling tens of millions of yuan. Yingjie is building a data pipeline spanning multimodal collection, spatiotemporal alignment, spatial structuring, and dynamic tracking and prediction validation, while advancing spatial intelligence benchmarks and post-training environments, feeding model failure modes back into data collection and training. Ma Chen proposes comparing different supervision methods under the same foundation model and the same budget, focusing on performance in unseen scenarios and task success rates.
At NEPCON ASIA 2026, Elite Robots is showcasing solutions including phone gluing and tightening, flexible screw fastening, memory module insertion and removal inspection, visual inspection, and large-model grasping, turning its booth into a miniature electronics production line. The phone gluing and tightening robot uses ±0.02mm repeat positioning accuracy and millisecond-level force control response to keep gluing accuracy within <±0.1mm and a single-station cycle time of <10 seconds; the memory module insertion and removal inspection robot combines ±0.03mm repeat positioning accuracy with flexible force control and is suited to Class 5 cleanrooms.
The RV-135, the first model in Nabtesco's RV series of precision reducers for industrial robots developed in 1985, has been selected by the National Museum of Nature and Science of Japan as a 2026 "Important Historical Materials for Science and Technology (Future Technology Heritage)" and has completed registration. The model uses a unique structure combining a cycloidal mechanism with a planetary gear mechanism, achieving low vibration, a high reduction ratio, compact size and light weight, high rigidity, and high precision, contributing to improvements in industrial robot performance at the time.
In 2026, ABB, AUBO, Huayan Robotics, JAKA, Yaskawa Electric, Delta, Kawasaki Robotics and others successively launched new collaborative robots with payloads above 30 kg, as heavy-payload collaborative robots shifted from attempts by a few vendors to concentrated layouts across multiple brands.