On September 22, the embodied tennis robot TENNIIX ULTRA MAX, jointly developed by LimX Dynamics and Inhans Power, appeared at the Billie Jean King Cup Shenzhen Finals, where it engaged in live, real-time rallies with tennis star Wang Qiang and completed multiple rounds of human-versus-machine play.
In the first installment of its "Why" series, ROBROS explains why Whole Body Control (WBC) is key to keeping humanoid robots balanced: movements such as extending an arm, changing posture, or taking a step all shift the body's center of mass, requiring a coordinated whole-body response.
Zhijian Dynamics will present its full-scenario embodied intelligent robot i7 Pro and full-scenario service robot iX at IROS 2026 (Booth 228). The i7 Pro will demonstrate carton sealing and packing operations on site, while the iX will showcase teleoperation and WBC whole-body control capabilities. During the conference, there will also be a poster presentation on sub-millimeter-precision CNC lathe operation research and a Tech Talk titled "From Lab to Factory: Analyzing the Challenges of Real CNC Operations for Existing Robot Learning Pipelines."
The embodied tennis robot TENNIIX ULTRA MAX, jointly developed by LimX Dynamics and Inxee Power, debuted at the Billie Jean King Cup Shenzhen Finals, where it rallied live with tennis star Wang Qiang, completing serves, returns, and shot variations including topspin and moonballs. The robot uses the TENNIIX PRO AI tennis training system plus the TRON 2 wheeled-legged chassis, and can move at high speed and stop abruptly while carrying a load of 8 to 15 kg, varying its ball-launch height from 1.2 to 1.6 meters through squatting and rising. Both parties say this moves China's embodied intelligence from technology demonstrations toward mass sports consumer scenarios.
The Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the first video of Tiangong robots sharing the frame with Zhang Guowei, showcasing the Tiangong family's capabilities: Tiangong Omni's "shy run" went viral across the internet, Tiangong Ultra set a 3.4-meter standing high jump record, and Tiangong 3.0 won the world's first humanoid robot tug-of-war championship. The content also showcases the "Huisi Kaiwu" dual-brain platform and announces a special championship gift package in thanks to netizens who imitated the robots.
Flexiv announced it is exhibiting at IROS 2026, demonstrating four force-control technologies at Booth 922, with CTO Xiyang Yeh delivering a talk titled "Mastering Contact in Real-World Applications."
Four XMAN-L1 humanoid robots from KEENON Robotics joined dancers on September 10 to complete the Cyber Stage opening performance at the CCTV Finance event during the 2026 Bund Conference in Shanghai, demonstrating motion control and multi-robot synchronization capabilities. The performance combined the Shanghai Conservatory of Music's "Yin Chao" AI music generation model with BIRENTECH's Bili™ 166L computing platform. In a dialogue, CEO Li Tong said embodied intelligence needs patient capital and emphasized safety compliance and commercialization.
STIAL has launched an AI flexible grinding solution for grinding weld scars, weld seams, and burrs on welded enclosures, covering sheet metal scenarios such as energy storage enclosures, computing power cabinets, and electrical enclosures.
Under the guidance of teachers Zhang Wenqiang and Zhao Qing, a Fudan University student team of Wang Jianan, Li Jinghui, and Jiang Kaixun won a team first prize in the business plan special track at the national finals of the 21st China Graduate Electronics Design Contest (held in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Zhejiang) for their project "Fangwei Dudian: the world's first industrial-grade embodied intelligent advanced power operation and maintenance equipment."
ROBROS unveiled Real-Time FBT, a real-time full-body teleoperation technology for its IGRIS-C humanoid robot that maps the operator's movements onto the robot's full-body motion in real time. The demo includes basic full-body movements such as squatting, kicking, turning, and bowing, as well as box handling, sandbag punching, and ball kicking. The technology extends teleoperation from the previous upper-limb-focused control to the whole body, allowing the operator to coordinate locomotion, posture changes, and manipulation in real time as one continuous behavior.
Rokae Robotics has launched a full-stack embodied intelligence development platform for developers and industry partners. The hardware includes the Xuanji HSA series integrated force-controlled joints, the Taibai AR series humanoid force-controlled arms, and the Xuanhe iNex embodied intelligence control system. The AR series offers 7 degrees of freedom, a 3 kg–20 kg payload, and a whole-machine force-control bandwidth of >30 Hz.
The RDK X5 robot duck project completed full assembly and a short-distance real-machine walking demo on September 29, and open-sourced complete engineering materials covering everything from printing and assembly to real-machine integration and debugging (GitHub repository rdk-x5-microduck).
Unitree Robotics announced that the G1+ has completed 6 major upgrades across three dimensions: motion performance, perception and interaction, and intelligent experience. The upgrades cover these three areas; the original text did not provide specific parameters or real-machine verification results.
AgiBot has released AGILE 2.0, a second-generation perception-driven locomotion and whole-body control framework that brings visual perception into the motion control loop and introduces a unified whole-body motion representation, supporting manipulation while moving, real-time replanning, and cross-robot coordination. In the demo video Acrobat BOT, the AGIBOT X2 completes tasks such as ball balancing, three-robot jump rope, and collaborative carrying; the framework also supports risk perception and autonomous recovery from disturbances in human-robot shared environments.
On September 11, the Qianxing Future P30 series industry-grade quadruped robots were demonstrated in live operation at the 16th Smart City and Smart Economy Expo (Smart City Expo) at the Ningbo International Convention and Exhibition Center. The P30 offers both quadruped and wheeled-leg configurations, reserves mounting, power, and communication interfaces, and supports scenario adaptation and secondary development. Qianxing Future is exploring possible applications of the P30 in target scenarios such as power grid inspection, campus security, and petrochemicals, and is using the expo to establish connections with industry partners in Hangzhou and Ningbo.
Wanxun Technology has released NOVA2.0, its second-generation flexible embodied brain, built on a touch-native multimodal hierarchical architecture based on the concept of "body intelligence." It supports native one-brain-multiple-forms, 1B+ dynamic parameter combinations, and 20ms ultra-fast trajectory generation. The architecture has completed over 10 million extreme-condition operations across 40+ real industry scenarios, including real estate and construction, power and energy, and transportation. It can adapt to flexible single-arm, dual-arm, dexterous hand/bionic human and other body configurations, and can generalize to new scenarios with as little as 1% of the startup data volume required by conventional approaches.
SmoothRL: efficient online reinforcement learning with asynchronous execution. Continuous learning. The robot keeps moving and the model keeps inferring; SmoothRL learns precisely from the actions executed on the real robot. Uncut footage and technical report: https://www.astribot.com/research/SmoothRL #Astribot #SmoothRL #RL #physicalAI #robot
Stial has built a full-stack physical AI technology system spanning flexible force control, AI process decision-making, motion control, and robotic execution, focused on complex grinding, polishing, and deburring scenarios. Its PolishX flexible force control system can achieve contact force control accuracy of up to ±0.5% FS within the specified range and test conditions, and NextBrain™ AI Mushroom Cloud provides robot modeling, task planning, simulation, digital twin, and AI process decision-making capabilities. The related solutions have been applied in computing infrastructure, shipbuilding, auto parts, 3C electronics, and other fields, and have entered overseas markets such as Southeast Asia.
Stial has released an AI flexible wet grinding solution for repairing scratches and pits in titanium alloy plates. The process includes the SeeV AI perception system to identify defects, the NextBrain™ AI brain to plan grinding paths and process parameters online, and PolishX flexible force control to stabilize contact force, with wet cooling simultaneously carrying away grinding heat. Under the specified range and test conditions, the system's contact force control accuracy can reach ±0.5% FS. The solution transforms experience-driven grinding into a controllable process driven by data and algorithms, and the related technology has been applied in multiple high-end manufacturing fields such as shipbuilding, automotive parts, and 3C electronics.
Elite Robots has launched a cerebellum platform built around a 500Hz real-time motion stream, natively coordinated with the Yuanqi Primo embodied large model to translate the dynamic intent of higher-level intelligence into continuous, stable, constrained robot motion. Real-robot test parameters are a 2 ms target cycle, 30 ms lookahead time, and a tracking gain of 2000; every frame's target undergoes constraint validation, with motion planning and safety monitoring brought into the same chain.
Elite Robots has launched a robot cerebellum platform that uses a real-time motion stream of up to 500Hz to take in intents from the Yuanqi Primo embodied large model and from external intelligence that complies with interface constraints, and converts them into continuous, constrained motions. Real-machine tests used a 2ms target period, 30ms lookahead time, and a tracking gain of 2000; each frame's target undergoes constraint validation, and when the link breaks, the system follows isolation, convergence, or controlled-exit paths. The SDK brings interface calls, parameter tuning, and exception handling into a unified workflow, and general integration does not require a dedicated RT kernel.
Li Tianlong's team at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) developed an engineered microrobot system based on CD5+ dendritic cells that can achieve precise intravascular navigation through external magnetic field control and activate immune cells in situ; the results were published in Science Advances. Under a conical magnetic field, the system self-assembles into a ribbon-like swarm that migrates downstream; under a rotating magnetic field, it assembles into a chain-like swarm that moves upstream against blood flow; combined with tumor chemotaxis, it achieves targeted enrichment and deep infiltration. In an orthotopic mouse colorectal cancer model, a single injection combined with magnetic navigation reduced the tumor bioluminescence signal by more than 90%. HIT is the first affiliation of the paper.
Why it matters: The HIT team presents the construction strategy and magnetic navigation results of the CD5+ dendritic cell microrobot, giving readers a look at the specific approach of this therapeutic path of in situ immune activation.
At the second World Humanoid Robot Games, EngineAI's mass-produced small humanoid robot Mini Pi plus competed in nearly ten events, including the 100-meter race, 100-meter obstacle course, high jump, long jump, cheerleading, tai chi, martial arts forms, and street dance, using the same model with no special modifications.
At the first Global Unicorn Summit in Hong Kong, Kepler Robotics was awarded "2026 Humanoid Robot Category Benchmark Enterprise" and became a member unit of the China Robot Industry Development Alliance. Its K3 Bumblebee humanoid robot can run for 8 consecutive hours on a 1-hour charge, has a maximum dual-arm payload of 30 kg, and adds a waist degree of freedom; the K2 achieved an overall task success rate of over 98% during the Spring Festival at the Chumibao Technology factory. The company has achieved in-house research and manufacturing of 80% of key components, holds over 47 million yuan in valid industrial orders for 2026, and has entered stable mass production.
The Second World Humanoid Robot Games were held in Beijing from August 22 to 26. Humanoid robots surpassed human world records in the 100-meter sprint and standing high jump, but multiple robots were unable to slow down and stop after crossing the finish line; one robot's waist broke apart mid-run, emitting sparks and even catching fire.
Unitree says its new humanoid robot Superman reaches a running speed of 12.66 meters per second, exceeding Bolt's fastest record, and can jump about 6 feet 7 inches from a standing start. The record has not been externally verified; the sprint speed is a peak reading over a shorter distance rather than a full 100 meters. The robot was developed in just over three months and has legs 2 feet 9 inches long.
World record! The Galbot robot completed more than 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies with zero errors! 🎾 Fully autonomous. 📷 Livestreamed. A new milestone for humanoid robot tennis! #AstraTennis #EmbodiedAI #HumanoidRobots #WHRG #Galbot
On the evening of August 22, at the opening ceremony of the second World Humanoid Robot Games, 80 Accelerated Evolution Booster T2 robots coordinated autonomously without marker lines or remote control, spelling out the word BEIJING on the field. Each T2 carries 2070 TFLOPS of on-device compute (NVIDIA Thor chip), for a total of about 170,000 TFLOPS across the 80 robots, with each making independent decisions and no central command.
From AlphaGo to AstraTennis. In 2016, AlphaGo showed that AI could master the digital world. Ten years later, AI has entered the physical world. Today, at the World Humanoid Robot Games, the Galbot robot completed the world's first live autonomous humanoid robot tennis match, competing alongside human athletes. 🎾🤖 The Galbot robot performs vision, perception, movement, and competition in real time! This is the AstraTennis moment. #WorldHumanoidRobotGames #WHRG #Galbot #Humanoid #Robot
On August 19, 2026, at the World Robot Conference (WRC), EngineAI unveiled EngineAI Awaken, a human-brain-inspired embodied intelligence engine. It is a five-layer architecture comprising the S1 instinctive reflex layer, the S2 motion planning and generation layer, the S3 cognitive reasoning layer, and the S4+S5 self-growth layer (an emotional large model).
People's Daily ran a feature on page 11 covering a shooting test of the Booster T2 during a preview of the second World Humanoid Robot Games, in which the ball reached a speed of 130 km/h. The report mentions that the T2 Professional Edition's on-device compute is 10 times that of the previous generation and that system latency has been cut from 10 milliseconds to 4 milliseconds, and that the "Haoye Team" from High School Affiliated to Minzu University of China chose the Booster K1 to prepare for the final.
On August 19, Professor Zhao Mingguo's team in Tsinghua University's Department of Automation published the paper "Learning Vision-Driven Reactive Soccer Skills for Humanoid Robots" in Science Robotics, selected for the August 2026 humanoid robotics special issue; the robot platform used was a humanoid robot independently developed by Booster.
Why it matters: The paper breaks down three failure points of the traditional perception-planning-control pipeline and presents a reproducible sim-to-real transfer method.
Hongxing Technology has launched the Dazhuang Z6 industrial humanoid robot, which uses a native integrated VLA architecture to connect perception, cognition, and decision execution, targeting smart factories, unmanned warehousing, precision assembly, and dynamic flexible production line scenarios. The Dazhuang Z6 adopts a dual-layer architecture of an intelligent brain plus a motion cerebellum, with large-model decisions directly driving millisecond-level motion control; it can read natural-language task instructions and acquire new skills by observing demonstrations, without complex programming or deployment. The company says that based on reinforcement learning plus imitation learning, it learns while working and supports minute-level line-change debugging on dynamic production lines.
PKU EPIC Lab proposed the HumanTracker benchmark for evaluating humanoid motion tracking, accepted to ECCV 2026. The benchmark contains approximately 153 hours of optical motion trajectories from multiple professional performers, organized into four motion families with text labels; the accompanying HumanScore metric is trained on 12K motion pairs containing 24K motions, aligns with human preferences, and can reveal contact and stability failures that kinematic metrics often miss, such as foot skating and mistimed landings.
Why it matters: The original work proposes a benchmark and metric that align humanoid motion tracking evaluation with human perception, and points out that existing kinematic errors miss contact issues such as foot skating.
Arkshel Robotics was established on July 17, 2026, and on August 12 released real-machine test footage of its first multi-form humanoid robot, the Arkshel MX01. As of August 14, the footage had accumulated nearly 10 million views on Douyin and WeChat Channels, including 7.75 million on Douyin. The MX01 uses a humanoid form as its base form and can switch among humanoid, quadruped, and flight forms; the company also plans to launch a wheeled form. The company has completed a seed funding round with investors including Oriental Fortune Capital and Hengqin Shenhe Industrial Investment, with the funds to be used for core technology R&D and product engineering.
Kinetix AI released a video showing two humanoid robots playing a ping-pong match in fully autonomous mode, using the SMASH 2.0 system. SMASH 2.0 is described as the Pioneer serve-and-return system, which can continuously self-evolve through gameplay. The original text did not provide measured metrics such as success rate or degrees of freedom; it is only a demonstration clip.
Stial has built a full-stack physical AI technology system spanning flexible force control, AI process decision-making, motion control, and robotic execution, serving complex grinding scenarios. Its PolishX flexible force control system can achieve contact force control accuracy of up to ±0.5% FS within the specified range and test conditions, and NextBrain™ AI Mushroom Cloud supports robot modeling, task planning, simulation, digital twins, and AI process decision-making. Related solutions have been applied in computing infrastructure, shipbuilding and composite material manufacturing, automotive parts, 3C electronics, and other fields, and have entered overseas markets such as Southeast Asia.
PaXini has released PX-FOOTRIX, a multidimensional plantar tactile sensor. Built on 6D Hall-array tactile sensing technology, it enables full-sole three-dimensional array force sensing and six-axis force/torque perception, helping bipedal robots perceive ground characteristics and optimize gait. The product offers IP67/68 custom protection and 1000% impact overload capacity, supports SPI, UART, RS485, USB, I2C, CAN FD and other communication protocols, is plug-and-play, and will be showcased at WRC 2026, Hall B, Booth B203.
STIER has launched PolishX axial flexible force control, achieving stable force output as low as 4N for surface treatment processes such as weld seam grinding, curved surface polishing, and weld slag removal. The product uses a floating drive architecture and a self-developed force-position control algorithm, provides multi-orientation gravity compensation and floating stroke compensation, and can adapt to a variety of mainstream industrial robots, reducing over-grinding, indentation, and rework.
ROBROS released a full record of IGRIS-C's first outing: it took the elevator downstairs and walked the streets of Seongsu on its own two feet. Along the way it interacted with passersby and performed moves including backflips and windmills; previously, IGRIS-C had mostly appeared alongside hoisting and support equipment. The original text says the outing had no elaborate plan or choreography and was simply an honest record of stepping out of its familiar test environment.