At CeMAT ASIA 2026, Hefei Banyitong (MiMA) unveiled the MCC16 double-deep man-up tridirectional stacker forklift and the MKV50 four-wheel counterbalance forklift AGV chassis. The former offers a non-standard maximum lift height of up to 18.5 meters and a 1.2-ton capacity, while the latter supports modification for multiple navigation methods.
At CeMAT ASIA 2026, Aipula New Energy exhibited four product lines: AGV smart chargers, lithium-battery smart chargers, OBC onboard chargers, and integrated heavy-truck DC charging piles, offering full-scenario charging solutions for AGV/AMR and new-energy industrial vehicles. The AGV smart chargers support brush-plate ground charging, side charging, tail-plug, and wireless multi-structure configurations, cover voltage levels from 24V to 300V, and achieve conversion efficiency above 95%. Its charging terminals have cumulatively been deployed more than 500,000 units worldwide and are operating at customer sites including Heli, BYD, LiuGong, XCMG, Sany, and Hangcha Intelligent.
The WeChat Pay smart operations robot made its in-store debut at Guangdong 7-ELEVEN's 2,000th store (at Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters campus), handling greeting, shopping guidance, and ordering; customers scan to pay themselves after choosing. The robot is built on Tencent Hunyuan, using the model's multi-turn dialogue and Agent capabilities to assist with daily store sales, payment collection, and operations, and features Tencent Tianlai inside audio to hear users clearly in noisy environments.
The first CMG World Robot Mount Tai Climbing Competition opened in Tai'an, Shandong, with nearly 90 teams competing on a real mountain course from Hongmen to Zhongtianmen featuring 3,100 steps and a 600-meter elevation gain. In the main humanoid robot race, the Zhishen Lingyue team won in 27 min 26 sec, and the same team also took the "Brave the Peak Award" in the challenge segment with 55 min 34 sec. The legged robot race champion was the Beijing Lingyi Technology team (43 min 41 sec), and the legged robot load-bearing race champion was the Lingsi Intelligence Lingshi team (400 points, 1 hr 51 min 29 sec).
NASA announced a series of Moon Base contracts and mission updates, covering commercial robotic cargo delivery, the nuclear-powered rover PROMISE, launch and orbital transfer services, and lunar surface infrastructure.
Jungheinrich has established a strategic partnership with Automha, a Comau subsidiary, to jointly develop the UP-Carrier GTJ two-way pallet shuttle for high-density pallet storage. The solution can be integrated into existing warehouse environments to increase storage density without major modifications; initially, pallet transport is still handled by industrial vehicles, with the option to gradually upgrade to fully automated material flow. The product has been deployed in more than 200 projects in over 25 countries and can be expanded as needed with automation technologies such as Jungheinrich mobile robots.
Unitree Technology shipped over 5,500 pure bipedal humanoid robots in 2025, with humanoid robot revenue of 868 million yuan. After listing on the STAR Market in August 2026, its market value has retraced more than 55% from its peak. Daily rental rates for humanoid robots fell from about 20,000 yuan in early 2025 to the thousand-yuan level in 2026. In the first half of 2026, global shipments exceeded 22,000 units, but only about 4,000 entered factories; entertainment and commercial performances plus science education and data collection together accounted for over 60%.
By 2026, daily rental for humanoid robots has fallen to the thousand-yuan range, down more than 70% from early 2025; daily rental for robot dogs has dropped below 500 yuan, and more than 90% of rental stalls in Huaqiangbei have withdrawn. The article argues that the root cause of falling rents is not only increased supply, but also that rental and sales share the same demand pool, dominated by entertainment performances and educational displays, with low repurchase rates. Manufacturer-controlled rental platforms absorb production capacity and inventory through subsidies, but the buffer layer is limited, and the industry is being forced to push robots into scenarios with sustained repurchases, such as industrial manufacturing and warehousing logistics.
At CeMAT ASIA 2026 in Shanghai, under the theme "Components as the Foundation, Connecting the World through Chains," Heli and 12 units under its umbrella are showcasing more than 80 core components, including precision castings, high-efficiency cylinders, torque converters, axle housings, forks, attachments, battery packs, and drive axles, covering the transmission, power supply, and work execution stages. Customers can complete routine spare parts replacement, complete machine matching, and customized development within the same system, and receive full-cycle service support.
At CeMAT ASIA 2026, Zhuoyi Intelligent Forklift exhibited at Booth B2-1 in Hall W5, displaying five manually operated narrow-aisle models: the VUE man-up turret forklift, RSEW omnidirectional forklift, WSHM multi-directional forklift, RRE double-deep reach truck, and JSH articulated forklift, as well as a man-down turret AGV forklift.
At CeMAT ASIA 2026, Hai Robotics is exhibiting the FlashPick system's double-deep solution and the K1200 heavy-duty latent lifting robot. Global signed cooperation for the FlashPick system has exceeded 20,000 units, with the largest single project surpassing 5,000 units. The double-deep solution can store 45,000 totes within 1,000 m² of space, with throughput of 4,000 totes per hour; the K1200 can collaborate with ACRs and supports unified scheduling of up to 6,000 robots on the same site.
Kinco's 2026 third-quarter report shows robotics industry sales revenue of 424 million yuan, up 65.29% year on year, accounting for 56.55% of revenue; revenue for the first nine months was 750 million yuan, up 47.48% year on year.
Zhongqing Robotics reviewed its three-year journey, stating that it has moved from demo prototypes to industrial mass production and adheres to full-stack in-house development. The T800 appeared in real-time full-body mapping combat at CyberHero in Riyadh, the URKL city tour in Shanghai, and ARC Night in Singapore; at the latter, professional fighters including Muay Thai champion Sham Raaj fought via teleoperation. The PM01 completed commercial reception tasks such as welcome and guidance at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Wanshang Conference, and the T800 also exhibited at IFA2026, IROS, the China International Industry Fair, and the China-ASEAN Expo.
RoboCT signed an authorized distribution agreement with Bulgarian automation engineering company PLACAD. PLACAD becomes its authorized distributor in four countries—Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and North Macedonia—responsible for sales and service of the Bat series parallel robots, Python series SCARA robots, and related products.
Yifei Technology, together with Korean distributor Jookang Robotech, showcased a complete palletizing solution comprising the Elephant collaborative palletizing all-in-one machine and Camel series AGVs at Robot World 2026, with a live demonstration of the full cycle of end-of-line carton palletizing and pallet and material transfer.
Leju Robotics, as the first completing unit, won the Silver Award at the 2026 11th Good Design Award for its "Industrial Dexterous Manipulation Humanoid Robot" project, becoming the only humanoid robot company selected for the award. The project's first completer is its expert advisor Professor Sun Lining. The award was established by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society and filed with the National Office for Science and Technology Awards, focusing on design empowering industrial transformation and recognizing pioneering, significant, and disruptive design achievements.
AutoStore announced an agreement to acquire Dutch pallet automation logistics equipment company Logiqs, with consideration of up to €30 million, expected to close in Q4 2026, to strengthen its pallet robotics and automated warehousing capabilities. Walmart and Symbotic are expanding their partnership, with an initial new spending commitment of approximately $6 billion for procuring automation systems over the coming years and supporting R&D, including $125 million in R&D funding for next-generation shelf technology.
China's foreign investment security review working mechanism office has prohibited SoftBank's acquisition of ABB's robotics business in China, a transaction with an enterprise value of $5.375 billion; SoftBank says it is still proceeding with approval procedures. Pool cleaning robot company Wangyuan Technology has received a filing notice from the CSRC for overseas issuance and listing, and is seeking a Hong Kong IPO. This week also saw Agility Robotics list on Nasdaq under the ticker AGLT, with its humanoid robot Digit having accumulated more than 65,000 hours of operation.
Chengdu embodied brain company Qilinbo recently completed an angel funding round in the tens of millions of RMB. Investors include Chengdu Fangcun Engine Technology Co., Ltd. and angel investors. The funds will be used for core technology R&D, team building, and market expansion. The company develops embodied intelligence software on an OpenHarmony base. Its self-developed Lingyan Engine handles single-robot task understanding and autonomous execution, while the Yanzhen System handles multi-robot task allocation and collaborative scheduling. It has already delivered desktop tracked robots and desktop robot dogs in education and research scenarios, and is advancing adaptation for industrial-grade quadruped robot dogs and robotic arms.
Ubot's "Xingzhe Taishan" humanoid robot completed the official course as the only fully autonomous entrant in the first CMG World Robot Mount Tai Climbing Competition, taking second place. The entire climb was free of remote-control intervention, with the "brain" recognizing terrain and planning routes in real time and the "cerebellum" dynamically adjusting gait to handle uneven steps and slippery surfaces. Ubot says its commercial quadruped robot for inspection scenarios has carried out regular autonomous inspection in limited scenarios across multiple pilot projects in power and mining.
American humanoid robotics company Agility Robotics officially listed on Nasdaq on November 5, 2026, under the ticker AGLT, going public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI. The transaction and related financing are expected to bring in about $465 million in raised funds, including a PIPE financing of about $201 million led by Foxconn.
Why it matters: Agility's listing makes its orders, deployment duration, and financing structure public, allowing comparison against the real progress of humanoid robot commercialization.
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MeckaAI announced the completion of a $60 million Series B funding round, bringing its cumulative funding to over $120 million. The company positions itself as the data and deployment layer for physical AI.
ABB Robotics confirmed to The Robot Report that China's Office for Security Review of Foreign Investment has blocked SoftBank Group's acquisition of ABB Robotics, with regulators concerned that data used to train AI models could be transferred overseas. ABB and SoftBank said the two sides are maintaining communication and advancing the deal constructively. The article also mentions that the U.S. FCC has restricted some new models of connected robots, that the U.S. Commerce Department has determined that imports of robots and industrial machinery threaten national security, and that a EU antitrust review led to the termination of Amazon's acquisition of iRobot.
Carnegie Mellon University's Team Chiron is competing in the DARPA Triage Challenge finals, using drones and ground robots to locate and assess casualties from a distance. The finals are being held November 5 to 13 at Disaster City in Texas and require the system to operate under complex conditions including darkness, smoke, flames and rubble.
At UP.Summit 2026, Wing announced an investment of up to $125 million over the next two years to support engineering capabilities in California, the communities it operates in, and a new 15,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Fort Worth, Texas. The plant can produce tens of thousands of aircraft per year, supporting Wing's nationwide delivery expansion. Wing says it currently operates at more than 70 sites in the U.S. and plans to cover nearly 20 markets and more than 40 million Americans by 2027.
Changan Automobile announced that its first painting visual AI adhesive robot has officially gone live at the Liangjiang plant, with risk detection rate and reporting accuracy both exceeding 99.5%. The robot uses a large-model detection system built on a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to lock in optimal adhesive application points and standardized operating trajectories, with single-inference response at the millisecond level. After clearing the PVC area bottleneck, line JPH increased by about 8%.
According to an October 31 report by The Information, Meta and Chinese robotics company Fourier jointly built the humanoid robot prototype Max in about three months, and in September of this year began development of a second-generation prototype, Max 2. Max is about 1.5 meters tall and weighs about 48 kilograms, is equipped with an NVIDIA Jetson Thor chip, and features a display that can simulate facial expressions, built-in speakers, and five-fingered dexterous hands for grasping small objects. A Meta spokesperson said the collaboration focused on internal research and experimentation, and there are no plans to sell these robots.
ABB stated on November 5 that SoftBank has informed it that China's Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review has prohibited SoftBank from acquiring ABB's robotics business in China, but the two sides have not yet announced termination of the overall transaction. The deal was reached in October 2025 with an enterprise value of $5.375 billion and was originally planned to close in mid-to-late 2026; ABB's robotics business has about 7,000 employees and 2024 sales revenue of $2.3 billion, ranking second in the global industrial robotics market.
One year after NVIDIA open sourced its Aerial wireless software, global developer adoption of its AI Aerial and Sionna software has grown 10x, downloads of its open source 5G/6G tools have surpassed 1 million, and more than 8,000 research and academic institutions are using them.
At CeMAT ASIA 2026, Jingsong Intelligent held a global debut of its magnetic levitation stacker crane and introduced its flying-wing loading/unloading vehicle solution for the first time. The magnetic levitation stacker crane replaces wheel-rail transmission with magnetic levitation and linear drive, achieving a maximum travel speed of 240 m/min and a lifting speed of 60 m/min; with laser ranging and magnetic-control full closed-loop positioning, it reaches ±2 mm storage and retrieval accuracy, and its dual-station design can carry 2 sets of 50 kg bins per cycle. The flying-wing loading/unloading vehicle solution relies on FMR robot cluster deployment and near-field visual scanning, and targets bidirectional synchronized loading and unloading for flying-wing carriages of multiple sizes.
On November 5, Toyota officially announced the establishment of a new independent robotics division, headed by Chief Production Officer Takefumi Shiga. The division integrates previously dispersed R&D teams and targets three robot categories—industrial, humanoid, and caregiving service—balancing factory automation upgrades with external commercialization. Toyota says it has nearly 50 years of robotics technology accumulation, and this is the first time it has elevated its robotics business to a strategic segment on par with its electrification and software businesses.
The 2026 Wuzhen Summit set up an OPC special competition for the first time, with nearly 700 projects competing for 22 places, an admission rate of about 3%. Although OPC projects such as Quwan Sports, Infinite Dream Painting, and Younian Intelligence used AI to quickly build products, they generally got stuck on growth, scenario implementation, and compliant delivery. Industry players such as Jihao and Yuntu Zhixing connected with OPC through training and order dispatch and localized operations, but a low-friction ecosystem-level interface is still missing.
On November 5, the 'Triple T' Zhangjiang Summit technical salon, co-hosted by an ecosystem company of Zhangjiang AI Innovation Town and Synced, was held under the theme 'The Next Data War in Embodied Intelligence,' featuring a two-person technical debate, three Open Mic sessions, and one industry panel. Huang Yongtao of Ant Lingbo Technology argued that at this stage priority should be given to accumulating real-robot data and incorporating touch as early as possible, while Liu Miao of Tsinghua University held that data selection depends on application positioning and the training stage. Ma Daolin of Qianjue Robotics demonstrated the performance of a VTLA model integrating vision, touch, language, and action in real-robot tasks such as automatic shoelace threading and carton forming.
During Double 11, the Cainiao Zengcheng Tmall Supermarket warehouse in Guangzhou deployed 135 ZeeBot climbing robots to complete 28 hours of peak order fulfillment in a storage area with 9-meter-high, 20-tier racks and 42,000 bins, achieving a 99.99% on-time rate for wave outbound orders. The robots accumulated over 140 km of vertical travel, with a peak of 11 km in a single hour and a vertical climbing speed of 1.2 m/s; they attach to racks with dual grippers and require no dedicated tracks. Overall warehouse storage efficiency is about 3 times the original, labor efficiency has risen to about 2.5 times, and output per workstation equals 2 to 3 picking employees.
Dream Labs, spun out of NVIDIA's GR00T team, has completed a $90 million seed round and launched Dream API, a publicly registrable, explicitly priced robot foundation model API service.
Why it matters: Dream Labs prices robot brains by the hour, giving readers a clear view of how embodied intelligence is shifting from project-based pricing to an on-demand cost structure.
Since 2026, drones have continued to be deployed in funeral scenarios: in mountainous areas of Guizhou, industrial drones are used to lift and carry coffins, easing the difficulty of carrying them; in Panjin, Liaoning, drone-assisted sea burials have become routine, and in the 30th collective public welfare sea burial in June, 138 urns of ashes were carried by drones to designated sea areas for scattering, with a single sortie able to carry 8 urns of ashes.
AgiBot launched a 24-hour convenience store work challenge in which 6 Genie G2 robots took on roles including reception, pickup and delivery, drink preparation, inspection and restocking, and cleaning, completing 1,730 tasks in total; in the end, 4 passed probation and 2 did not. The robots run on the embodied Agent framework Genie Master, which uses Physical RSI to turn success and failure experience from execution into long-term memory and iteratively refine action strategies; capabilities such as judgment for restocking and cleaning come from this prior self-review.
Zhejiang Wanliyang Robotics Technology Co., Ltd.'s first joint module production line has achieved mass production, with an annual capacity of 100,000 units. It is a flexible assembly line integrating motors, drivers, reducers, and module assembly. The line applies segmented continuous flat winding technology from the automotive sector to robot motor manufacturing and, for the first time in the robot components field, applies FFT-based noise and vibration evaluation technology. The company's products cover planetary and harmonic modules as well as motor controllers, brushless DC motors, and reducers, with outer diameters from 30 mm to 150 mm, torque from 0.5 N·m to 450 N·m, and absolute accuracy up to 0.1 degrees.
The Information reports that Apple's prototype codenamed J595 is a 9-inch screen plus a robotic arm; the arm moves the screen to face whoever is speaking in the room, the unit stays on the desktop, and the target price is around $1,000. Apple has neither announced nor confirmed that the machine exists. Most of the hardware was ready about two years ago, but software has held up its launch; the team has kept cutting features over the past year, narrowing the first-generation concept to FaceTime calls and turning on lights. People familiar with the matter say Apple has about 10 people who truly understand robot R&D, and the software team has about 300 people.