Geek+ Robot Arm Picking Station won the 2026 RBR50 Innovation Award for its successful deployment at Schneider Electric's Shanghai warehouse. RBR50 is presented by The Robot Report at the Robotics Summit & Expo and annually recognizes the 50 most innovative companies in global robotics. This is Geek+'s fifth time winning the award, placing it alongside ABB, Amazon, Boston Dynamics, and Nvidia.
Everyone at Red Bull Mirage brought a DJ. We brought a robot. The robot worked out of the box, with no additional training needed on site. 8 hours. 700+ cans of Red Bull sold. 99%+ success rate. No human assistance, no breaks, no resets. Desert lighting kept changing. Cans were handed out from all angles. Thousands of people walked around the robot. The robot kept selling cans continuously. 🤖🥫
Wang Letian, VP of Product at Robot Era, explains the "software-defined hardware" design logic of its XHand dexterous hand: the fully direct-drive architecture serves reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and mass-production consistency; backdrivability supports teleoperation data collection and Sim2Real transfer; and it has been used as a foundational platform in more than 20 top-conference papers worldwide. The hand has cumulative sales of over 1,000 units and weighs 880 grams; last year it reached annual production on the scale of a thousand units, a single logistics order reached 50 million, and it secured its latest funding round led by SF Express.
Figure AI demonstrated two humanoid robots equipped with Helix-02 collaborating to tidy a bedroom within two minutes, completing tasks such as opening a door, hanging clothes, putting away headphones, closing a book, taking out trash, pushing a chair under a desk, and making a bed together. The two robots run the same learned vision-language-action (VLA) policy, with no shared planner, message passing, or central coordinator; each infers the other's intent from its actions via its own cameras. The company says that to its knowledge this is the first demonstration of multi-humanoid collaborative mobile manipulation completed by a single learned neural network directly from pixels to actions.
Why it matters: The official demonstration shows two humanoid robots driven by the same VLA system collaborating to tidy a bedroom, giving readers insight into an approach to multi-robot collaboration without a shared planner.
Genesis AI has released GENE-26.5, calling it the first "robot brain" on the path toward human-level capability. It is a full-stack approach combining a robot-native foundation model, a 1:1 humanoid robotic hand, non-invasive data-collection gloves that capture motion, force, and touch, and a simulator. The model is trained jointly on language, vision, proprioception, touch, and action, and was tested on a set of self-designed tasks; the demonstration was fully autonomous, at 1x speed, using a single model with the same weights.
Genesis AI's robotic foundation model GENE-26.5 autonomously completed a continuous one-handed fine manipulation sequence: unwrapping a straw, flipping the straw with one hand, dropping it into a cup, and then handing the drink to a person. The entire sequence was executed autonomously and filmed at 1x speed, not teleoperated. The demo showcases fluid one-handed dexterous manipulation across multiple small, precise actions.
Genesis AI's robotic foundation model GENE-26.5 autonomously arranges and bundles wires at 1x speed. Wire harness assembly is regarded as one of the hardest tasks in electronics and electrical engineering, and this demonstration shows the precise, coordinated hand control required to achieve human-level dexterity.
Genesis AI demonstrated a robot autonomously making a smoothie end to end at 1x real speed, including handling ingredients, pouring, blending, and two-hand coordinated mid-air serving. GENE-26.5 is Genesis AI's foundation model for human-level physical manipulation.
Genesis AI demonstrated a robot powered by GENE-26.5 autonomously solving a Rubik's Cube at 1x speed. GENE-26.5 is its robotic foundation model for human-level physical manipulation; the robot uses continuous in-air manipulation to achieve high-speed reasoning and precise wrist control.
Genesis AI's robot performs lab pipetting, liquid transfer, and mid-air manipulation of delicate instruments in autonomous mode at 1x speed, using its robotic foundation model GENE-26.5. The demo targets fine motor control, a highly demanding test scenario, and showcases the model's manipulation capabilities in high-precision laboratory work.
SoftBank Robotics announced that its autonomous cooking robots STEAMA and FLAMA will make their US debut at the National Restaurant Association Show 2026 in Chicago (May 16 to 19).
Youibot will participate in SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026, held May 5–7, 2026, at MITEC in Kuala Lumpur, at booth 2449. Live demonstrations will feature the new-generation wafer-handling robot OW12 (supporting multi-station material transfer for 12-inch wafers) and the ATS6 wafer transport robot for cross-cleanroom and cross-area transport. The company will also showcase end-to-end semiconductor automation solutions covering front-end wafer manufacturing, back-end packaging and testing, and cross-area in-factory logistics.
On April 10, Lingchu Intelligence released Psi-R2, pretrained on human data, and the Action-Conditioned World Model Psi-W0, and open-sourced the first 1,000 hours of a full-modality human hand manipulation dataset, with total data reserves reaching 100,000 hours.
Why it matters: The original text provides the division of labor between the two new models and the open-source data entry point, so readers can assess the feasibility of using human data for robot training.
Lingchu Intelligence has officially released its self-developed complete robot ψ-SynRobot and simultaneously started large-scale mass production. The model targets logistics, retail, and industrial scenarios and uses an integrated "operation execution + data collection" architecture; each completed task simultaneously accumulates visual, tactile, and motion-trajectory data. It can run continuously 24/7 and suits scenarios such as warehouse sorting, retail guidance, and industrial assembly. The release gives Lingchu Intelligence a complete product matrix from an "embodied intelligence brain" to a complete-machine execution platform, covering forms such as wheeled robots and exoskeleton gloves.
The ProUniverse Dabai robot performed a dual-arm collaborative lacquer fan craft demonstration at the opening event of JD MALL (Wuhan Wangjiawan store), producing a customized lacquer fan within 1 minute. Its AI multimodal 3D vision and 2D industrial-grade positioning support sub-millimeter precision operation, and distributed learning enables rapid transfer of new scene skills. The event also introduced the "Craftsmanship Universe" plan, which, relying on the self-developed SDPAA parallelized data collection architecture and the InduThread-VLA large model, transforms traditional artisan skills into storable and replicable digital assets, with future expansion from crafts such as lacquer and sugar painting to precision assembly and high-end manufacturing fields.
RobCo announced an expansion of its industrial robot lineup with Autonomous Alfie, designed for varied real-world environments and targeting Level 4 autonomy. The system combines dual-arm manipulation with integrated sensing, actuation, software, and hardware, and can handle precision assembly, sensitive material handling, and logistics tasks such as picking, kitting, and palletizing. It is currently in final development, with first customer deployments planned for later this year, delivered through a RaaS model; RobCo will show an early preview at Hannover Messe (Hall 26, Booth E35).
Siemens and Humanoid announced that Humanoid's HMND 01 wheeled Alpha humanoid robot has completed testing in logistics operations at Siemens' electronics factory in Erlangen, Germany, autonomously performing tasks to grasp, move, and place bins for operators.
Why it matters: Specific capacity and success-rate metrics were disclosed, allowing readers to gauge the maturity of humanoid robots in real factory logistics operations.
At MODEX 2026, Damon Technology unveiled its AI-driven unmanned secondary sorting solution for North America for the first time. Embodied-intelligence humanoid robots work in coordination with the new-generation Flying Shuttle intelligent sorting robot to enable fully automated parcel feeding and secondary sorting; the Flash Shuttle series intelligent pallet four-way shuttle system, combined with AMRs, increases goods storage capacity by 3 times. Damon has delivered multiple turnkey projects in American markets including the United States and Brazil, serving brands such as Amazon, Shopee, and Shein, with a repurchase rate of over 80% among top key accounts.
Physical Intelligence has released the general-purpose robot model π0.7, which it says can perform a variety of dexterous manipulations with speed and robustness comparable to fine-tuned specialized models, and shows preliminary signs of compositional generalization on tasks not seen in its training data.
Why it matters: The article uses two specific experiments, an air fryer and folding clothes with a UR5e, to show the actual performance of compositional generalization and cross-embodiment transfer, making it easier to judge the gap between general-purpose and specialized models.
Truck → Boston Dynamics Stretch → Conveyor → Reflex → Pallet It's cool to see robots collaborating! MODEX26
Dexterity announced the launch of Instinct, a tactile intelligence system that reads force at 500–2000 Hz and responds in 0.5–2 ms to perform force-guided bin packing on production lines, with a median placement time of 4.55 seconds and an overall team success rate of 81% (95% CI 75%–86%, sampled from 854 placements). Placements that cannot be completed are quickly identified and handed back to the Foresight world model to retry with a different angle or position; the same skill delivers consistent performance across different robotic arm hardware and generalizes to objects of different materials.
Why it matters: The official release provides measured production-environment data and details of the force-guided manipulation architecture, which readers can use to understand how tactile skills coordinate with the Foresight world model for recovery.
Damon Technology and UBTech signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shanghai to jointly develop humanoid robots for scenarios including warehouse sorting, material handling, and production line collaboration, and plan to establish a joint venture. UBTech's Walker S2 industrial humanoid robot began mass production in 2025 and completed its first batch of large-scale deliveries; its full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robot business recorded 820 million yuan in sales revenue and 1,079 units sold for the full year 2025. The cooperation also covers core component development and embodied data collection coordination.
Lingchu Intelligence released two models, Psi-R2 and Psi-W0, which it calls the industry's first embodied intelligence models pretrained on human data at the 100,000-hour scale.
Why it matters: The original article, written by the team itself, breaks down the dual-model architecture and data governance conclusions, offering a reusable path for human data utilization along with experimental evidence.
Sanctuary AI demonstrated zero-shot in-hand manipulation in the real world with its proprietary hydraulic hand: a policy trained entirely in simulation continuously reoriented a lettered cube to a target pose ten times in a row without dropping it. The operation relied solely on the fingertips with no palm support, requiring simultaneous stable grasping and approach to the pose target. The original text states that the hand has a relatively high number of active degrees of freedom enabling finger abduction, and that hydraulic actuation and compact hydraulic valves offer a path toward industrial-grade humanoid dexterous manipulation.
Plyff and Rainbow Robotics announced they are jointly advancing development of the V2 manufacturing-specific AI dual-arm robot. V2 combines Rainbow Robotics' precision robot hardware with Plyff's AI specialized for assembly and fastening, and features improved robot arm and waist axis designs to adapt to changes in processes and environments. The two companies previously co-developed an automotive headlamp assembly automation solution and verified its feasibility for production line application. Based on this model, the two plan to expand applications to manufacturing sectors including automotive and electronics.
UK robotics company Humanoid, together with SAP and Martur Fompak, completed a proof of concept for the HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled robot in a real production logistics environment.
Senad showcased its autonomous loading and unloading robot iLoabot-M at the LogiMAT international logistics trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany, from March 24 to 26, 2026, with live on-site demonstrations of fully unmanned autonomous loading and unloading capabilities. iLoabot-M features AI intelligent algorithms and autonomous motion path planning technology, targeting the needs of Europe's high logistics labor costs and labor shortages. Senad says its products have been exported to regions including Europe, the US, Japan, and South Korea, and that it achieves large-scale mass production through China's domestic intelligent manufacturing system.
RealMan, together with Pinpinxiang, presented a "robot tea master" tea-brewing service at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum. An operator remotely teleoperated it from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Data Training Center, and a RealBOT wheeled humanoid robot replicated in real time on site the Fuding white tea steps of warming the cup, adding tea leaves, pouring water, and decanting the brew. The service relies on RealMan's Global Labor Network (GLN) to turn human expert operating skills into services that can be scheduled across time and space; it is a remote teleoperation demonstration, not autonomous tea brewing by the robot.
Teams including Berkeley AUTOLAB propose CaP-X, an open framework for systematically studying Code-as-Policy agents in robot manipulation, centered on the interactive environment CaP-Gym and CaP-Bench, which evaluates 12 frontier models.
Why it matters: The original text presents a systematic evaluation framework for Code-as-Policy agents and the finding that test-time scaling can mitigate abstraction dependence, offering reference value for research on coding-agent manipulation control.
A research team at New York University has open-sourced YOR (Your Own Robot), a mobile dual-arm manipulation robot, with a bill of materials cost below $10,000. The project homepage is www.yourownrobot.ai, and the paper is at arxiv.org/abs/2602.11150.
Why it matters: An open-source dual-arm mobile platform under $10,000 offers a reproducible hardware path and measured data, making it suitable for evaluating the cost and capability trade-offs of building a mobile manipulation system in-house.
At NVIDIA GTC 2026, Sharpa demonstrated its dexterous hand Wave in a real-world demo; its skills were trained on the NVIDIA Isaac Lab simulation platform and stably transferred to the real system, enabling fine manipulation such as in-hand operation.
Dexterity published an article introducing system evaluation and production measurement for the Foresight packing agent. On the planning side, it was tested on four real warehouse box-type distributions, with density of 0.65–0.77 and stability of 99.7–100%, and distribution-free order statistics were used to give 95% confidence intervals; the article also found that randomly shuffling the box sequence causes local variance to collapse by about 1.4 times, making evaluation overly optimistic.
Why it matters: The original article fully discloses the evaluation method for the packing agent, including distribution-free confidence intervals and the evaluation bias caused by random shuffling; the method can be transferred to similar systems.
Physical Intelligence proposes a new method called RL tokens (RLT), in which a vision-language-action model (VLA) outputs a special token to interface with a lightweight online reinforcement learning policy, improving the speed and success rate of fine manipulation phases with only a small amount of real data.
Why it matters: The original clearly explains the interface design between the VLA and lightweight online reinforcement learning and provides speedup data on four tasks, so readers can assess whether this type of method applies to their own fine manipulation tasks.
Skild AI announced partnerships with ABB Robotics and Teradyne-owned Universal Robots and MiR to integrate its general-purpose model Skild Brain into industrial robots, eliminating task-by-task programming and using post-training fine-tuning with a small amount of task data.
Why it matters: Skild AI describes its own partnership deployment approach with ABB, UR, and NVIDIA and assembly task details, letting readers understand how its general-purpose model enters production lines.
Pro-Robotics brought its embodied-intelligence Dabai robot to AWE 2026 for a live intangible cultural heritage sugar-painting show, exhibiting at Booth W1-1C31 of the Shanghai New International Expo Centre under the theme "Smart New Journey, Embodied Intelligent Manufacturing." Using AI algorithms, the Dabai robot went from outlining contours to pouring sugar into a finished painting, reproducing smooth, flowing sugar-painting brushstrokes and drawing crowds of onlookers as well as inquiries from several industry clients. The exhibition runs until March 15, and the booth offers an interactive experience.
Figure AI released a new Helix 02 demo in which a single neural network system completes an end-to-end living room tidying task with full-body control, continuously manipulating objects, tools, and containers while walking. In the demo, Helix 02 uses no new algorithms or special engineering; with only added data, it learned to wipe and clean with a spray bottle and towel, collect blocks into a box carried with both hands, toss a pillow back onto the sofa, turn around while holding a remote and then press a button to turn off the TV, and sidestep through the narrow gap between the coffee table and the sofa.
Dexterity has unveiled its world model Foresight, an intelligence layer that enables robots to reason about the physical world, predict changes, and execute operations; it was trained on real experience from more than 100 million autonomous actions in enterprise logistics production environments.
Physical Intelligence proposed a method called Multi-scale Embodied Memory (MEM) that provides vision-language-action models (VLAs) with both short-term and long-term memory, enabling the model to complete tasks lasting up to 15 minutes, such as cleaning an entire kitchen or making a grilled cheese sandwich from scratch.
Why it matters: The article identifies memory mechanisms as the bottleneck for long-horizon tasks and presents a dual-scale design that stores video for the short term and language for the long term, an approach that can be transferred to other work.
In a blog post, Physical Intelligence argues that robots need a reusable physical intelligence layer, and it published real-world deployment data from partners Weave and Ultra using π 0.6.
Why it matters: The two deployers provided comparative data on autonomy rates, missed grasps, and throughput, making it easier to judge the practical gains that foundation model iterations bring in real-world settings.
At the Beijing TV Spring Festival Gala, RealMan's RealBOT wheeled folding robot used remote teleoperation to open a refrigerator, take out soy sauce, pour soy sauce, and stir dumpling filling; it was the only company among the participating recording enterprises to complete on-site work via remote teleoperation. Its integrated joint module has an MTBF of 50,000 hours, opening the refrigerator door requires an instantaneous torque of about 14 kilograms, pouring soy sauce relies on visual guidance and high-frequency posture correction to achieve zero spills, and mixing the filling is controlled by a remote "isomorphic arm" that records data to feed back into training models for the remote operation network (GLN).