The New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) has extended its partnership with Intuition Robotics to continue providing the ElliQ proactive AI companion device to older New Yorkers at risk of loneliness and social isolation. Since the program launched in 2022, hundreds of older adults have received ElliQ, and in 2025 alone more than 3,500 people applied.
On October 10, the Embodied Intelligent Robotics Industry College, jointly established by Leju Robotics and Shijiazhuang Engineering Vocational College, was unveiled in Shijiazhuang as Hebei's first embodied intelligence industry college. An industry mentor appointment ceremony was held at the same time. The industry college builds its curriculum around the main line of "body—cerebellum—brain—data—industrial application," is equipped with six major training spaces, and relies on China's first full-stack embodied intelligence textbook set to achieve "one course for one position," covering the entire embodied intelligence job chain.
IROS 2026 has come to a successful close! 🤖✨ Lumos NIX won over the audience with its engaging interactive performance, while Station Lite demonstrated advanced model capabilities operating in real-world scenarios—bringing embodied intelligence to life. We also showcased an integrated hardware and software system for real-world data collection and embodied AI development. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who visited our booth, shared forward-looking ideas, and connected with us at IROS. See you next time! 👋
Shangqi Capital released a weekly roundup of ecosystem company updates: on October 9, ESWIN Computing listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (stock code 01256.HK, issue price HK$1.55 per share), becoming Shangqi Capital's 40th listed company. LimX Dynamics and Kyland Technology on September 28 released the country's first humanoid robot equipped with a domestic electronic architecture, and Tsinghua University and Infinigence AI on September 24 open-sourced the embodied intelligence cloud-native management platform RLark.
Anno Robot's AI latte art coffee printing bar was invited to appear at the 2026 Asia-Pacific Media High-Level Forum (APMF), where it made latte art coffee on site for media guests from more than 40 countries and regions at the "Bay Eye" in Shenzhen. The device fully automates grinding, extraction, milk steaming, and latte art pouring in 90 seconds, is equipped with a high-precision robotic arm accurate to ±0.03 mm, supports 4–6 classic latte art patterns, and uses Alibaba's Qwen large model with Function Compute AIGC to generate patterns; guests can scan a code to order and upload an image to have it printed on the milk foam.
The Shenzhen Robotics Association and the Wafer Expo are co-hosting the "Bringing AI into the Physical World — Embodied Intelligence Application Technology Innovation Forum" on October 14 at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center (Futian). Registration is open to companies across complete robot bodies, core components, computing chips, real-time control, and the supply chain ecosystem. The Shenzhen Robotics Association (SRA) was founded in September 2009 by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It now has more than 900 members, whose combined output value exceeds 200 billion yuan.
STIER has recently won a bid for an intelligent grinding project for core engine components at a globally renowned automotive parts manufacturer. The company will build an AI-enabled flexible intelligent production line for rocker shaft machining that integrates robotic intelligent loading and unloading, automated ground-rail transport, and robotic precision grinding. The solution relies on the SeeV vision system, the NextBrain™ AI brain, and the PolishX flexible force control system to achieve dynamic perception, adaptive control, and closed-loop quality control, supporting automation upgrades and flexible production in the manufacturing of core components.
AVC monitoring shows that in August, online retail sales of companion robots reached 52.321 million yuan and retail volume reached 105,000 units, up 34.0% and 37.9% month-on-month respectively, with demand driven by the combined back-to-school season and Qixi Festival gift-giving.
Momenta listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 8 (stock code: 06880.HK), with mass-produced vehicles equipped with its systems surpassing 1 million units, ranking first in the urban NOA third-party supplier market with a 65% share. D-Robotics completed a $400 million Series C round, cumulative shipments of its Sunrise series chips surpassed 8 million units, and its embodied intelligence customer coverage exceeded 50%. In addition, 14 portfolio companies including Zhongke Haoxin, Yezhixin, Xinghuan Ju'neng, Songshu Dongli, Yingmu Technology, Wuxian Yuhang, Yuanzi Juzhen, and Zhudong Technology announced new funding.
The article reviews UBTech's 2026 commercialization transition: in the first half of the year, revenue from full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots surged 1445% year on year to 590 million yuan, giving it the top spot in the global humanoid robot market with a 24.8% revenue market share, but it posted a half-year loss of 340 million yuan, and its cash reserves fell from 4.888 billion yuan to 2.326 billion yuan. Orders for the U1 series exceed 13,361 units, while only 1,500 to 2,000 units can actually be delivered within the year; JPMorgan raised its 2030 global humanoid robot shipment forecast to 1.75 million units, but downgraded UBTech to Neutral and cut its target price from HK$118 to HK$74.
Nanjing Kuling Robotics has completed an angel round of tens of millions of yuan, led exclusively by the Nanjing Liuhe Economic Development Zone Industrial Investment Fund managed by Bailian Zhigao. Founded in 2025, the company's founder Yuan Yanjie is an associate professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The funds will go toward R&D on joint modules and joint thermal management systems for humanoid robots and robot dogs, as well as expanding production capacity.
Multiply Labs has closed a $75 million Series B round with participation from AstraZeneca and other industrial investors, bringing cumulative funding past $100 million. The company uses modular robot clusters compatible with pharmaceutical companies' existing equipment for automated biopharmaceutical production such as cell therapies, and claims it can cut manufacturing costs by 74% and raise output per unit area by up to 100 times, though most of its new directions remain at the project validation stage. The article also compares the differing business approaches of Cellular Origins and Cellares, and notes that Multiply Labs uses imitation learning and NVIDIA's digital twin platform to capture expert operating experience.
Guangdong Tusk Robots will exhibit at CeMAT ASIA 2026, booth B2-1 in Hall N1 of the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, from November 3 to 6. The company focuses on pallet automation and handling, offering pallet handling and picking robot products, and has developed robot system solutions for large-scale fleet scheduling, with applications covering electronics, automotive, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, chemicals, commerce and other sectors. The booth will also showcase multiple products and a new product yet to be unveiled.
The 26th China International Industry Fair Robot Show (RS 2026) will be held from October 12 to 16 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), under the theme "Embodied Industry, Leading the Future," gathering more than 400 exhibitors including ABB, FANUC, and KUKA.
The 2026 Suke Song recruitment has officially launched, under the theme "The Next Version of the World, Defined by Us." The body of the announcement presents the recruitment information only as images, with no details provided on who is eligible, the process, or the schedule.
Shaanxi Weilan Deep Sea completed a new funding round with investment from Shenzhen Capital Group, Oriza Seed, Guoce Capital and others, closing 5 consecutive rounds within 9 months and reaching the Angel++++ stage. The company's core product is the Super Frogman, an embodied-intelligence marine robot. Its general platform has a positioning error of no more than 1 meter and target recognition accuracy above 95%, carries dual 6-DOF robotic arms, and has delivered fully autonomous inspection services for subsea energy facilities to marine owner clients. The funds will be used to train underwater embodied-intelligence models and build a training center.
On October 8, the US Patent and Trademark Office published Tesla patent application US 2026/0310299 A1, covering a three-dimensional flexible tactile sensor array with multimodal sensing and scalable manufacturing methods. The patent presents two manufacturing paths: first printing conductive areas on TPU, PET, or polyimide film and then thermoforming, or first forming the curved surface and then printing directly; overlapping conductive areas form independent sensing pixels, covering both capacitive and resistive sensing modes, and it states that when there are enough pixels, object type can be detected by touch alone, with target applications extendable to the robot's whole body.
China's National Intellectual Property Administration published BYD's embodied intelligent robot design patent on October 9; the authorization announcement number is CN310247768S, granted on October 6 and filed on April 30.
TypeSafe AI's decision model Jev went viral within weeks of launch, and the company completed a funding round of about $870 million led by a16z at a $7.5 billion valuation with a team of only 20 people. Apple reached an acqui-hire agreement with Huxe, an AI audio startup founded by former Google NotebookLM team members, bringing in employees and obtaining a technology license without purchasing the company's business; the amount was not disclosed.
Intelligent mobile robot company Jiazhitech filed its prospectus with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again on August 31, taking the 18C specialist technology route, which requires a minimum offering market capitalization of no less than HKD 4 billion. The company had 2025 revenue of RMB 266 million and a loss of RMB 99.73 million, with growth in newly signed orders slowing sharply; as of June 30, 2026, redeemable financial liabilities reached RMB 1.074 billion while total assets were only RMB 771 million. The article compares Geek+ at a price-to-sales ratio of about 2.5x and considers a high-valuation offering difficult.
Topstar has announced that it will hold the TOPS DAY 2026 Global Open Day on November 7–8 in Dongguan, Guangdong, under the theme "Reaching What a Beautiful Topstar Can Touch," with a focus on deployment applications of industrial embodied intelligence. The Open Day will release AI+robotics industrial scenario solutions, humanoid robot five-axis machining solutions, and precision injection molding solutions, covering four main product lines: embodied intelligence, industrial robots, CNC machine tools, and injection molding machines. The second day of the event will feature "Robot Camp" and "Robot Carnival" experience sessions, and Chairman Wu Fengli will share the company's AI industry layout on site.
The Sixth "Aubo Cup" Embodied Intelligence Precision Assembly Competition National Finals was held at Jiaxing University from September 27 to 29, exclusively sponsored by Aubo (Beijing) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. A total of 1,109 teams participated in this edition; after selection through eight regional divisions, 294 teams advanced to the finals. The finals featured three parallel tracks: undergraduate and graduate, higher vocational and technical college, and international student, and comprised two stages: practical operation and innovative and creative topic defense. Ultimately, 75 first prizes, 84 second prizes, and 94 third prizes were awarded.
Keli Sensing has completed a strategic investment of tens of millions of yuan in embodied intelligence company Luming Robotics. The funds will be used for technical collaboration and industrial linkage between the two parties, to advance large-scale mass production of industrial-grade embodied intelligent robots and commercial deployment in real-world scenarios. Luming's self-developed Prime R0 model ranked first globally on the MolmoSpaces benchmark, a global zero-shot embodied intelligence evaluation benchmark, in June 2026; its MOS series heavy-duty embodied robots for industrial scenarios have already performed tasks such as bin handling, flexible quality inspection, and intelligent assembly in factories.
Ultra announced the completion of $62 million in funding, of which the $50 million Series A was led by @hiFramework; partner Physical Intelligence reposted congratulations. In the quote, Ultra argues that deployment is the bottleneck in the robotics industry: making robots perform well in controlled environments is relatively easy, but making them enter the open world, remain useful, and earn the trust of those around them is far harder, and this funding is meant to solve the distribution problem. Physical Intelligence added that combining general-purpose robot foundation models with real-world deployment is making such things possible.
The UK's Greater South West Robotics Adoption Hub has launched with total funding of £9.8 million. The National Composites Centre (NCC) leads a one-to-one robotics adoption advisory service for small businesses. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory leads the project through the University of Bristol, partnering with UWE Bristol and 23 other partners, with £7.2 million from Innovate UK and £2.6 million in partner co-funding. The hub is one of eight UK robotics adoption hubs and is planned to be fully operational in January 2027, covering sectors including maritime, energy, food and beverage, aerospace manufacturing, and healthcare.
Digit 5 is shortlisted for @MatHandling247's Readers' Choice Product of the Year in mobile robotics. Vote for Digit 5: https://www.materialhandling247.com/article/2026_readers_choice_robotics_mobile
Kingston University has been selected to lead the UK's first waste and recycling robotics adoption hub, NORAH, as part of the government's 40 million pound (approximately 53 million USD) robotics adoption program. The NORAH project is funded with 3.6 million pounds, of which Kingston University receives 1.5 million pounds, funded by Innovate UK.
On October 9, ESWIN Computing (01256.HK), a RISC-V chip company backed by Legend Capital, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Founded in 2019, ESWIN Computing operates a fabless model; its products include human-machine interaction and multimedia processing chips, as well as interconnect and computing chips, the latter mainly used in automotive, robotics, and industrial scenarios.
Lixing Technology and Yves Rocher recently held a cooperation exchange in La Gacilly, France, reviewing six years of collaboration. The new packaging for a high-end lipstick product jointly developed by the two parties has officially launched. The packaging uses a thin-wall all-PET middle core, achieving a single-material design for the middle core, and has been implemented from design and R&D through prototyping to mass production. The two parties will continue to explore directions including single materials, packaging reduction, recycled materials, and refillable packaging.
Stanford University and Elsevier recently released the 2026 Global Top 2% Scientists list. A total of 22 scholars from Fudan University's College of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing were selected, 10 of whom appear on both the career-long scientific impact and single-year scientific impact lists. Twelve are on the career-long list and 20 on the single-year list, covering fields including artificial intelligence and image processing, nanoscience, and mechanical engineering. The list is compiled based on indicators such as citation counts and H-index from the Scopus database.
Westwood Robotics presented a live, on-hardware autonomous demonstration of its humanoid robot THEMIS at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh, achieving a success rate of 90%+ in a completely unseen environment. Setup took only 10 minutes from assembly to showtime, with perception, thinking, and decision-making all performed onboard in real time as the robot autonomously completed grasping, carrying, and placing. THEMIS is powered by AOS (AI-augmented Humanoid OS) and BEAR Series actuators.
Groceryshop 2026 showed retail robots moving toward scale. Simbe's Tally robots have reached 3,000 units deployed worldwide, and Badger Technologies has shifted from a robotics company to a retail intelligence company.
Three mobile robot platforms from India's ANSCER Robotics have received conditional FCC approval, exempting them from trade restrictions related to the FCC Covered List and supporting their entry into the US market. The approval carries ongoing obligations including a validity period, quarterly reporting, and agreed progress on a US manufacturing plan. Founded in 2020, the company produces AMRs, AGVs, PSR pallet trucks, and the PSR Trail depalletizing system, and completed a $5.4 million Series A funding round in May this year.
Cevotec has appointed South Korean composites company KCompositeLab (KCLab) as its sales partner in South Korea to promote SAMBA robotic lamination equipment and provide local application engineering support.
On September 30, the review status of Hikrobot's ChiNext IPO was updated to suspended. The trigger was that its financial materials exceeded the statutory validity period and updated financial statements must be supplemented. Dozens of other companies on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange entered the same status in the same period, and review can restart once the materials are completed. The article recalls that its IPO application was accepted in March 2023 with a planned fundraising of 6 billion yuan, notes that regulatory inquiries focused on business independence and the fairness of related-party transactions given its parent company's 60% stake, and argues that the suspension reflects threefold significance for A-shares' review logic for spun-off sci-tech enterprises, industrial screening, and the development of domestic smart manufacturing.
In November, Multiway Robotics will appear at two major exhibitions, CeMAT ASIA 2026 and ROBOTWORLD 2026, showcasing unmanned forklifts and intelligent logistics systems for warehousing, handling, and in-plant logistics applications. CeMAT ASIA will be held from November 3 to 6, 2026 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, booth N2-A1; ROBOTWORLD will be held from November 4 to 7 at KINTEX in Korea, booth HALL 5·G01.
At its global manufacturing center in Pingshan, Shenzhen, Honor partnered with Hikrobot to build a smart logistics system for its finished-phone warehouse, achieving one phone off the line every 18.5 seconds. The system deploys STU robots, AMR latent robots, conveyor lines, articulated robots, and industrial cameras. Its core "Honor Magic Cube" smart warehousing system supports high-frequency inbound and outbound handling of 750 boxes per hour, minute-level inventory sorting, and STU goods-to-person picking, and works in coordination with iWMS, RCS, and a panoramic logistics digital twin system. AMRs can connect with elevators to enable cross-floor transport.
In October, NOBLELIFT will connect across multiple locations at home and abroad, showcasing intelligent logistics equipment and integrated solutions. Events include Platformers' Days in Germany on October 8-9 (Hall 1 Booth H323), the 140th Canton Fair on October 15-19 (outdoor booth 9.0C42-46, indoor booth 4.0H11-G12), and Noblefest (2026) in Atlanta, USA, on October 22. Customers are invited to visit and discuss cooperation on site.
Beijing ESWIN Computing Technology Co., Ltd. (01256.HK), backed by Shangqi Capital and SAIC Investment Holdings, listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 9, becoming the Hong Kong market's 'first RISC-V stock' and Shangqi Capital's 40th listed project.
AGIBOT opened a Hong Kong office at Times Square in Causeway Bay on October 9 to expand its local business and partnerships. The company plans a phased rollout, including establishing an international R&D headquarters, building joint laboratories with local universities, and investing tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars to support research collaboration; starting that day, it will hold campus recruitment presentations at universities including the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The office will also explore practical robotics applications in service scenarios such as retail and hospitality.