Arrowfly announced that RoboBusiness, a robotics industry conference held for 20 years, is being renamed Robotics Summit & Expo West, focusing on the design, deployment, and scaling of commercial robots. The first event under the new name will take place in October 2027 in Santa Clara, California.
Warehouse robotics company Exotec announced the completion of two Skypod system deployments in Japan, with partners food distributor Mitsubishi Shokuhin and industrial goods distributor Trusco Nakayama; the projects were implemented in partnership with IHI Logistics Industrial Systems.
From May to September, Benmo Technology, an incubated company at the XbotPark robotics base, listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 29, becoming the third Hong Kong-listed company within the base's ecosystem; its revenue in the first half of 2026 was approximately 200 million yuan, up 39.7% year on year. During the period, CiDi and SwitchBot released their first interim results after listing, while Laimu Technology, Okai Smart Boat, LISSOME, and PANDAG completed new funding rounds. The base also organized nearly 30 companies to exhibit collectively for the first time at IFA Berlin and held an embodied intelligence seminar and a summer hard tech entrepreneurship camp.
Eka Robotics has completed a $150 million Series A funding round. Pieter Abbeel reposted the news and congratulated the team. The quoted post states that the company pursues both manipulation performance and generality with its Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, arguing that force is the language of manipulation, reinforcement learning is the path to scaling dexterous manipulation, and fast, reliable physical execution is the bottleneck to be solved; it also plans to use the funding to scale up its models and accelerate customer deployment.
The Robot Report has opened nominations for the 2027 TRR50 Robotics Innovation Awards. The submission deadline is Friday, January 5, 2027, and winners will be announced at an awards gala during the Robotics Summit & Expo, held June 2-3, 2027, in Boston. Some winners will showcase their robots at the event's TRR50 Pavilion.
Rodney Brooks, Jonathan Hurst, and Ken Goldberg will share the stage to open RoboBusiness 2026, kicking off the "Next 20 Years" keynote. 1,600 attendees, 40+ sessions across 5 tracks, covering humanoid and field robotics, with speakers from Agility, Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Amazon Robotics, ABB, and others. The closing keynote on day one, "Beyond Demos: Robot AI in Production," is worth watching—moving from controlled demos to reproducible production deployment is the real challenge today. Ken Goldberg commented: Looking forward to this conversation!
The Residence Autonomie in Sospel was officially inaugurated, and Mirokaï took part in the day's events. This is one step in the APREH project: the plan is to deploy 11 robots across different sites, serving older adults, adults with disabilities, and children. The robots support teams there and bring energy to the sites.
Unitree Technology issued a stock trading abnormal fluctuation announcement on the evening of October 20, warning that the cumulative deviation of its stock price over three consecutive trading days exceeded 30%. On October 20, the stock closed at 526.03 yuan per share, with a market value of 212.8 billion yuan and a rolling price-to-earnings ratio of 388.25 times, higher than the industry average of 39.51 times. The company stated that there is no major undisclosed information that should be disclosed and that its operations are normal. The announcement warned that the humanoid robot industry is still in the early commercialization stage, and if large-scale commercialization falls short of expectations, there is an investment risk of valuation regression.
The "space-air-ground integrated desert planting robot" project from Fudan University's Qi Lizhe team won the innovation gold award in the university exhibition area at the 26th China International Industry Fair. The robot integrates autonomous perception, precise navigation, and integrated planting functions, combining BeiDou, inertial navigation, LiDAR, and stereo vision positioning, and has completed field operation verification in the desert of Dalad Banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia. The team has filed 7 core invention patents, and the single-vehicle platform will later integrate four planting mechanisms, with operating efficiency reaching more than 10 times that of traditional manual work.
The "facility tomato harvesting robot application scenario" led by AUBO Robotics and the "dwarf rootstock dense planting apple harvesting robot application scenario" in which it participates were both selected for the list of typical application scenarios for robots in agriculture jointly announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
At the 2026 Global Innovation Conference, Chery unveiled its CheryMind vertical foundation model technology base and showcased products including a native front-installed Robotaxi, two eVTOL aircraft, the Wantu embodied agricultural machinery and the Mojia robot. Chery said its Robotaxi goal is to deploy 100,000 units by 2030, and that the pilot line for its Rhino S solid-state battery will be put into use in 2027.
Tomorrow at our San Francisco office: Physical AI Demo Day, co-hosted with @keerthinalabotu. Open to any developer in the field who wants to demo or watch.
NASA released a video update on the Moon Base, covering progress on the commercial Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) and robotic lunar rovers. VIPER will travel to the lunar south polar region before 2027, covering more than 18 miles (30 kilometers) to prospect for resources such as water; it has completed final assembly and is undergoing final testing at Johnson Space Center.
Bao Lixin, Deputy General Manager of Technology at Galaxis Technology, will give a keynote talk, "Reflections on Embodied Intelligence Front-End Deployment Engineering (FDE)," at the 2026 Embodied Picking and Loading/Unloading Robotics Industry Forum. The forum will be held on November 04, 13:30-17:00, in the N3 Hall meeting room at CeMAT, Shanghai New International Expo Centre, alongside CeMAT ASIA 2026. It will feature two tracks, picking and loading/unloading, and will host the global premiere of the 2026 Embodied Loading/Unloading Robotics Market Insights and Industry Trends Report, with Inge Intelligent as a co-authoring unit.
Avenda Health has launched Surgery Mode for its Unfold AI prostate cancer 3D mapping platform, extending preoperative decision support into the operating room and enabling intraoperative visualization in both robotic and non-robotic surgery. New features include magnified 3D views, cancer estimation maps adjusted to the surgical console camera angle, intraoperative viewing of MRI slices, and capsule risk scores. The original text states that Unfold AI predicts cancer spread to adjacent anatomical structures with 92% accuracy, compared with 52% for MRI alone.
In a Pulse 2.0 interview, MassRobotics co-founder and COO Joyce Sidopoulos discussed the origins and operating model of the nonprofit robotics innovation hub.
At the 2026 Industrial Fair, ADI showcased 11 humanoid robot-related chips and solutions, covering ADCs and op amps for six-axis force sensors, the ADIS16607 IMU, a tactile board with 1,000 sensing points, the TMC6460 dexterous hand driver chip, the ADMT4000 magnetic sensor, twisted-pair communication, and the LTC7000 electronic fuse (3.5 to 135 V, 150 V absolute maximum rating).
A Locus Robotics survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers found that 61% of Gen Z apparel shoppers buy multiple sizes or styles at once and keep only one, compared with just 15% of baby boomers, leading to higher return volumes.
The business delegation to the South Korea SEDEX semiconductor expo organized by the Shenzhen Robotics Association concluded on October 16. It was led by Zhou Jun, director of the association's office, and included member companies such as Zhidong Weilai and Jingzhi Gaoke. The delegation visited the booths of Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, 4lynx and other companies, and held one-on-one supply-demand matchmaking with member companies of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA), covering supply chain resources such as edge AI chips for humanoid and industrial robots, low-power SoCs, MEMS and torque sensor chips, and HBM memory solutions.
RoboBusiness 2026 opens at the Santa Clara Convention Center, with Day 1 beginning with the opening keynote "The Next 20 Years of Robotics," featuring Rodney Brooks, Jonathan Hurst, and Ken Goldberg.
At the 2026 CIIF, robot companies formed two paths around embodied brains: one centered on the robot body and open toolchains, such as ABB introducing MCP into RobotStudio and Inovance opening the SDK interfaces of InoBot W1.
Realbotix announced that it will exhibit at CES 2027. The original text only provides an entry point for subscribing to news updates and the contact email contact@realbotix.com, and does not disclose the robot models, specifications, or demonstration content to be shown.
Gecko Robotics announced this week that its contract with the US Navy and the US General Services Administration (GSA) has been increased by $300 million, raising the contract ceiling to four times the previous $71 million initial IDIQ contract. Central to the expansion is the Komodo system, which can scan beneath deck non-skid coatings without removing them, generating a heat map of corrosion and material thickness across an entire deck so maintenance teams can locate damage before ships enter dry dock.
Shenmou announced that its self-developed intelligent arm-equipped quadruped robot "Fumo" has won State Grid Electric Power's "Quadruped Robots for Complex Environments" project. Previously, Shenmou's live-line working humanoid robot "Fu'an" had won State Grid Electric Power's intelligent live-line working humanoid robot project.
Nvidia announced plans at the German Investment Summit in Berlin to support four German startups: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo, and Reflex Aerospace. The plan is part of Nvidia's previously committed European investment program totaling nearly 10 billion USD, aimed at companies, universities, and research institutions across Europe; the specific investment amount was not disclosed.
On October 19, a delegation attending ICBE 2026, led by Professor Thomas Speck of the University of Freiburg, Germany, visited the International Society of Bionic Engineering (ISBE) Beijing Exhibition Hall and observed live debugging and dynamic demonstrations of the Y-Hand M2 bionic dexterous hand and a humanoid robot in the testing room. The exhibition hall, led by the ISBE Science Popularization Committee and funded by Yuequan Bionic, covers about 500 square meters and features five sections: Materials and Structures, Perception and Cognition, Actuation and Movement, Information and Intelligence, and Bionic Applications. It officially opened on July 26, 2025.
GelSight's Modulus surface measurement system was named to TIME's Best Inventions of 2026 list and, on October 6, was recognized in the robotics and automation category of Fast Company's 2026 Next Big Things in Tech list.
Unitree Robotics announced that its stock price rose by a cumulative deviation of more than 30% over three consecutive trading days, constituting an abnormal stock trading fluctuation. The company noted that the humanoid robot industry is still in the early commercialization stage, with uncertainty in technology maturity, downstream market demand cultivation, and supply chain support capabilities. If the progress of large-scale commercialization falls short of expectations, revenue expansion and performance realization may be adversely affected, and there is an investment risk of valuation regression.
Lumos MOS 2 is moving beyond the factory floor. At China Post, MOS 2 assists in handling fresh crab packages on the packing line, supporting logistics operations. From the factory floor to logistics operations, MOS 2 is applying its material-handling capabilities in real-world scenarios. Robot skills in action. Real tasks, real-world impact. #LumosRobotics #MOS2
At the Shanghai Industrial Fair, Nidec exhibited for the first time under a unified "One Nidec" banner, packaging motors, reducers, sensors, and other components into joint-level system solutions for humanoid robots. Its self-made actuators have already been deployed at about 10,000 axes in its own factories, with cumulative validation exceeding 40,000 hours, and the company began bringing them to market this year. The torque sensors on display are as thin as the 10 mm class, and the six-axis force sensors can withstand high torque loads of up to 10:1. The article also analyzes its idea of exchanging product data with robot makers using data from its own production lines, noting the scarcity value of real production-line data in embodied intelligence iteration.
Tage Zhixing, a domestic autonomous driving transport company for open-pit mines, recently completed a new funding round of nearly 300 million yuan. On May 20 this year, Tage Zhixing submitted an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the first time. Given the Hong Kong listing cycle, this round may be its last funding round before going public.
In the October 20 dragon-tiger list, the top three stocks by net institutional buying were Espressif Systems, Unitree Robotics, and Haitian Ruisheng, with net buying of 347 million yuan, 159 million yuan, and 154 million yuan, respectively. The top three stocks by net institutional selling that day were Sieyuan Electric, Chaozhou Three-Circle, and Veken Lithium Core, with net selling of 287 million yuan, 283 million yuan, and 207 million yuan, respectively. Institutions appeared in a total of 42 individual stocks, with 25 seeing net buying and 17 seeing net selling.
Fulin Precision announced that the company and its subsidiary Sichuan Banqiao Intelligent Robot Co., Ltd. signed an investment agreement with the People's Government of Fucheng District, Mianyang City, to invest in and build a robot intelligent electric joint project, with a planned total investment of 500 million yuan, implemented in two phases. Phase I involves an investment of 250 million yuan to build production lines for intelligent electric joints and core components, with an expected annual capacity of 2 million sets.
The article analyzes how Chinese AI companies are shifting from competing on API call volume to competing on real revenue. OpenRouter data shows that in the week of October 5 to 11, the top five models worldwide by call volume were all from Chinese companies, and Chinese models consumed 86.74 trillion tokens in one week, 4.5 times that of the United States.
In an October 18 reply on X discussing the Roadster, Musk said the Optimus humanoid robot and Cybercab will make up the "vast majority" of Tesla's value, and listed superintelligence (AI), robotics, solar power, and space transportation as directions that can scale economically.
The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Fondazione Luzzati-Teatro della Tosse have partnered to organize three events for the Science Festival, centered on the IIT-coordinated "Corpi augmentati" project, exploring user-centered robotic prosthesis design.
Dong'an Power issued a stock trading risk warning announcement, confirming that its flying car business had not generated revenue from January to September 2026, and that there has been no major change in the company's fundamentals. The company's stock closed at the daily limit-up price on 3 trading days cumulatively from October 16 to October 20, after media previously listed the company as a flying car concept stock.
Jihua Qujie Technology (Foshan) Co., Ltd.'s production line for 100,000 high-dynamic intelligent integrated joint modules per year has recently officially gone into operation. The line covers nine major processes with full-process traceability, has a designed cycle time of 90 seconds per unit, and targets a first-pass yield of over 96%. Its high-dynamic integrated joint modules cover a peak torque range of 6.5 Nm to 390 Nm, feature a 6 kHz current-loop bandwidth and an MTBF of more than 10,000 hours, and are paired with high-power-density micro servo drives ranging from 100 W to 6,000 W; all have completed design finalization and entered mass production. The company completed a tens-of-millions-of-yuan angel round in May this year, led by Yueke Group.
Recently, Guoyu Xingchen completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A financing round, jointly invested by Yijing Capital, Fosun Chuangfu and Luyao Capital. The raised funds will be invested in the construction of a space robot cluster and commercial market expansion. Prior to this round, the company had received investment from Shangqi Capital, Houxue Capital and Yuanhe Yuandian, and its cumulative order contracts on hand reached 100 million yuan. In May 2025, its self-developed Xingjiyuan-1 was launched in Jiuquan, becoming China's first space robot spacecraft to complete on-orbit mission verification, and has been operating stably in orbit for over 15 months; Xingjiyuan-2 is expected to complete its orbital insertion operation in early 2027.
Shenmou announced that its intelligent quadruped robot with an arm for operational tasks, "Fumo," has won the State Grid Electric Power "Quadruped Robots for Complex Environments" project. The materials state that the robot is aimed at working conditions such as old cable tunnels with no power or network and narrow, damp spaces, and that it features an integrated design with a robotic arm and dexterous hand, traversal of complex terrain, multi-source information fusion perception and positioning, defect recognition and dynamic visual servoing algorithms, and the ability to detect harmful gases such as O₂, CO, CO₂, CH₄, and H₂S using surface acoustic wave single-chip multi-channel wireless passive sensors.