IEEE RAS is recruiting Science Communication Ambassadors from among speakers attending the Humanoids 2026 conference. Selected ambassadors will work with organizers and volunteers to develop a communication plan and publish reports before and after the conference in formats such as videos, interviews, podcasts, blogs, social media, or art.
Skyports Drone Services is providing fully automated beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone-in-a-box surveying services for the HumeLink West transmission line project in New South Wales, Australia. The project permanently deploys a DJI Dock 2 at the Maragle substation construction site, remotely operated from the Remote Operations Centre in Sydney, conducting automated surveys once every two weeks and covering up to five times the area of traditional methods in a single day, with mission flights of about 8-10 km.
The open-source robotics community will hold several events this week: a Gazebo community meeting on multi-robot simulation at 7 p.m. PT on October 21, and ROSCon UK from October 21 to 23 at the National Robotarium in Edinburgh.
Daimon Robotics is building a pipeline that connects tactile sensing, data collection, simulation, and AI models, positioning itself as an infrastructure provider rather than a foundation model developer, with a target of 30 Hz for tactile feedback control.
IEEE RAS interviewed Damion Shelton, co-founder of Agility Robotics and executive director of CMU's Swartz Center, who recounted how Digit chose its first commercial scenario: it once worked with Ford to explore last-mile delivery, but abandoned that because humanoid robots depend on autonomous driving, another deep-tech challenge, and instead focused on in-warehouse material handling in closed environments.
Kodama Systems announced it has closed a $7 million funding round to support commercial deployment, deepen OEM partnerships, and continue developing supervised autonomy capabilities for complex off-road environments. The round was co-led by Konvoy Ventures and Breakwater Ventures, bringing the company's total funding to $14 million.
Jazzyear talks with Zhang Dayu, founder and CEO of Weilan Deep Sea, about the path to deploying underwater embodied intelligence. The company chose to start with specific tasks such as structural inspection, cleaning, and patrol inspection, believing that underwater operations account for 20% to 25% of infrastructure value, and that a robot only needs to reliably perform one or two capabilities to change a customer's cost structure.
Hengkong Technology recently completed an angel round of financing, jointly invested by Shanghai Qingmiao Artificial Intelligence Industry Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership) and Wuhan Optics Valley Angel Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership). The company was founded in November 2025 and focuses on special fields such as emergency response, firefighting, water conservancy, and agriculture, using multi-band sensing technology to provide target recognition capability that penetrates dense fog and rain fog for rescue equipment such as drones and robot dogs.
At the 26th China International Industry Fair Robotics Show (RS2026), FAO demonstrated its embodied intelligence deployment capabilities through a full-scale live production line and reached ecosystem strategic cooperation agreements with five partners: Aitu Technology, Boyin Hechuang, Yingshen Intelligence, Xingyuanzhi, and Lingqiao Intelligence.
The "Independent Innovation Lecture Series," co-hosted by the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology and the Shenzhen Robotics Association, is coming to Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology. Registration is now open for the 2026 "Robot+" Application Promotion Series · Education Session, to be held on October 22, 2026, from 10:00 to 12:00 at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology. Five education-sector robotics companies—Maxvision Technology, Shenzhen Jiasiling Technology, Shenzhen Fanbote Robotics, Shenzhen Seeed Technology, and AgileX Robotics—will give presentations, followed by a free exchange session.
NEURA Robotics and NXAI announced a partnership to jointly develop memory components for cognitive robots, combining NEURA's Physical AI technology stack with NXAI's xLSTM recurrent architecture.
Congratulations to the inventors, including: @thinkwithmark @efficient_hq @moment_energy @sandbar @thinkwithmark @banditrunning
Force Machine's general-purpose robot Apex won the Gold Award in the Product Design · Robotics category at the 2026 MUSE Design Awards. Apex is positioned as native hardware for embodied intelligence, deeply integrating hardware with embodied large models rather than layering large models onto traditional robots. The MUSE Design Awards were founded in 2015 by the International Awards Associates (IAA) in the United States.
RoboBusiness 2026 opens tomorrow at the Santa Clara Convention Center for two days, expected to draw more than 1,600 attendees, with over 40 sessions across five tracks including AI, Field Robotics, and Humanoids.
ST Hengxin announced that on the evening of October 16 the company learned that former chairman Meng Nan has been subject to criminal coercive measures. He had previously been removed from his position as a non-independent director by the shareholders' meeting on June 30, but because the industrial and commercial registration change was revoked, he remains the legal representative on the company's business license and also serves as executive director, manager and legal representative of several major subsidiaries. The company said the matter has a significant impact on its major subsidiaries; as of now, all production and business activities are proceeding normally, and if the matter concerned relates to his tenure, the company will fully cooperate with public security and judicial authorities in the investigation and make every effort to recover the company's losses.
A TMTPost interview and analysis of Niuwa Robotics founder Yang Ruigang notes that after a decade of unmanned delivery development, China's logistics unmanned vehicle fleet exceeds 35,000 units and more than 200 cities have opened road rights, yet the last few hundred meters—entering residential compounds, boarding elevators, and delivering to the doorstep—remain unsolved. Most explorations at home and abroad, including JD.com, Cainiao, and Amazon Scout, have largely exited. The core reasons are ambiguous rules for private spaces, high deployment costs, and the need for human fallback for exceptions; no company has ever made this account profitable.
The Robot Group, the authorized UK distributor for X-Humanoid (Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center), is inviting expressions of interest from UK businesses and research institutions for the TianGong and Tianyi humanoid robots, offering local commercial contact to assess application scenarios and advance projects.
Led by the University of Bradford, the £3.67 million Yorkshire Robotics Adoption Hub has received £2.75 million in funding from Innovate UK for a 42-month project.
As the only Chinese automaker CEO invited to the Paris Automotive Summit, He Xiaopeng formally introduced XPENG's smart vehicle solutions business "XPENG AI ENGINEERING," opening three major areas to global partners: vehicle platforms, modular technologies, and toolchains. XPENG is also opening physical AI ecosystem technology cooperation covering humanoid robots, Robotaxi, flying cars, Turing AI chips, and physical-world foundation models.
ROSCon China 2026 closed on October 18 at Midea Innovation Park in Shanghai. The three-day event covered topics including ROS 2 technology evolution, embodied intelligence, the integration of AI large models with robotics, and the open-source ecosystem.
HKEX filings show that Shenzhen Chuangzhi Xinlian Technology Co., Ltd. has passed the HKEX listing hearing. The original article did not disclose the amount of funds raised, valuation, business details, or information about robotics-related products.
Damon Technology announced a plan to issue convertible corporate bonds to unspecified targets, with total proceeds not exceeding 702 million yuan. The proceeds will be used to expand a production and R&D project for core components of intelligent logistics equipment, build an R&D center project for intelligent logistics equipment and embodied intelligence systems, construct a production project for industrial intelligent data collection terminals, expand a project for energy-saving integrated permanent magnet motors (Phase I), and supplement working capital.
In the first half of 2026, Midea's robotics and automation segment generated revenue of 16.621 billion yuan, up 10.27% year on year, but its gross margin fell 1.86 percentage points year on year to 20.9% and accounted for only 6.39% of the group's total revenue, remaining in a stage of revenue growth without profit growth.
Houmo AI held an ecosystem partner conference in Beijing. Geek Park founder Zhang Peng moderated a roundtable with five guests—Yao Ling of Kylin Software, Huang Junshi of Liaogu Intelligence, Liu Xuepeng of Logre Data, Chen Zhanling of Yinpu Computing, and Chen Zhongming of Houmo AI—who discussed edge AI commercialization.
On the afternoon of October 19, 2026, the Healthcare World Model Session of the 2026 Physical AI and World Models Conference was held at the Nanjing International Expo Center, under the theme "Foreseeing Disease, Simulating Life — World Models Reshaping Medical AI," featuring eight keynote speeches and releases of results in six areas.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman reports that Apple is developing a high-end HomeView codenamed J595, featuring an approximately 9-inch screen and a motorized robotic arm. Using a microphone array and voiceprint recognition, it automatically turns toward the speaker. It is expected to launch as early as 2027 to 2028.
The Ministry of Commerce said it will expand service consumption through technology, promoting the use of AI, big data and other technologies to empower the development of service consumption. Meng Yue, director of the Ministry's Department of Market System Development, said the Ministry encourages housekeeping companies to cooperate with tech firms to build smart housekeeping service platforms and to make service ratings and service processes traceable online; it supports the building of smart elderly care institutions that use smart wearable devices and human-sensing monitoring technology to provide health monitoring, emergency rescue and other functions. The Ministry will also promote the use of technology to expand upgraded service supply in sports, education and other fields.
IIT Scientific Director Giorgio Metta will serve as scientific director of the fourth Orizzonti Digitali forum, held October 21 to 24 in Perugia under the theme "The Age of Co-Intelligence," featuring 50 panel sessions and talks with about 200 speakers.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr proposed a final rule on October 7 that would limit FCC-recognized testing labs to the United States and reciprocal economies. The rule was submitted to the full commission for a vote on October 29; if passed, all device authorization testing and certification would have to be completed in those regions starting December 1, 2028.
At the 2026 China Outdoor Sports Industry Conference, Yuequan Bionic is exhibiting its bionic dexterous hand, the Y-Hand M2, and its wheeled humanoid robot, the W-Bot 2.0, at Booth B3 of the Beijing Changping venue and at the "Shanshui Changping" viewing point, demonstrating outdoor human-robot interaction.
On October 19, Unitree Technology rose sharply during intraday trading and closed at 495.92 yuan per share, up 16.15%, with total market cap recovering to 200.582 billion yuan. This was its largest single-day gain since listing on the STAR Market on August 19, excluding its first trading day (a gain of 460.34%).
Yuehongyuan announced that it plans to acquire 100% equity of Shenzhen Jinwangda Electromechanical Co., Ltd. by cash and obtain control, with a transaction price of no more than 550 million yuan, a premium of about 286% over Jinwangda's net assets attributable to the parent company, and is expected to generate goodwill of about 400 million yuan.
Shenzhen Hongfuhan Technology plans to invest approximately 1.007 billion yuan to build a robotics precision metal components production base project in Wuzhong District, Suzhou, Jiangsu, with a construction period of 2 years. Of this, 220 million yuan comes from remaining IPO over-raised funds and 787 million yuan from its own and self-raised funds, to be used for producing CNC machined components, injection-molded components, and other products.
The 2026 Gaogong Humanoid Robot Annual Conference will be held in Shenzhen on November 3-4 under the theme "Reconstructing the Old Order, Breaking Through Boundaries." More than 100 companies have already registered, and the event is expected to bring together over 400 upstream and downstream companies and more than 1,000 industry leaders. The conference features five special sessions, including mass-production breakthroughs and the evolution of embodied brains and cerebellums, as well as six roundtable dialogues, and will debut GGII's "2026 Embodied Intelligence Progress Research Report." The 2026 Gaogong Golden Globe Awards will be announced on the evening of November 4, with the results forming the [2026 Gaogong Embodied Intelligence Annual Power List].
According to an incomplete tally by GGII Humanoid Robots, 23 new humanoid robot products were released in September, of which 12 came from abroad, accounting for more than 50%; it is the first time overseas launches have exceeded domestic ones. Faraday Future launched 9 new robot products in one go on September 20, driving up the overseas share.
Origin, a full-stack physical AI company focused on indoor construction, announced its emergence from stealth and the completion of $20 million in total funding co-led by Accel and Zacua Ventures. The funds will be used to deploy its flagship OG-1 robot, expand its fleet, and run large-scale pilots in the US and Europe.
Dianchetong tested Robotaxi services from WeRide, Pony.ai, and DiDi Autonomous Driving in Guangzhou after a two-year gap. All three have removed safety drivers, and their operating areas, driving efficiency, and ride experience have improved markedly compared with two years ago.
Zhejiang Sankai Electromechanical completed a Series B funding round of hundreds of millions of yuan, jointly led by the Industrial Machine Tool Industry Investment Fund and Wuchan Zhongda Investment, with Caitong Capital and Wenling Haihe Rongzhi participating. Sankai has spent 19 years making basic parts for machine tools and automated production lines; since 2022 it has launched harmonic reducers, and in 2024 it launched planetary joint reducers suited to humanoid robot joints, with output torque covering 17 to 100 Nm and backlash controlled within 1 arcminute, and it has become a core component strategic partner of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center's Tiangong robot.
Lihang Technology announced that it plans to transfer 750,000 yuan of registered capital in Hengsheng Lixun (5% of total share capital) to Ruihe Chengye, Hengsheng Lixun's employee shareholding platform, for a transfer price of 2.6925 million yuan; meanwhile, Hengsheng Lixun plans to add 3.75 million yuan of registered capital, to be subscribed by Ruihe Chengye for 10.7625 million yuan. The company's board of directors approved the relevant proposals on October 19, 2026, and the transfer and capital increase agreements have not yet been signed. After completion, Lihang Technology will hold 52% equity in Hengsheng Lixun, which will remain its controlled subsidiary.
Guoyu Xingchen recently completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A financing round, jointly invested by Yijing Capital, Fosun Chuangfu, and Luyao Capital. The funds will be used for space robot cluster development and commercial market expansion. The company's self-developed Xingjiyuan-1 was launched on May 21, 2025, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and has operated stably in orbit for over 15 months, completing key technical drills including combined-power orbital rendezvous maneuvers, non-cooperative target identification, and space situational awareness. Its order backlog totals 100 million yuan, and Xingjiyuan-2 is expected to complete its orbital insertion operation in early 2027.