According to The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, Meta has partnered with Chinese robotics company Fourier to build a humanoid robot prototype named Max, weighing about 48 kg and standing about 1.5 meters tall. The two sides completed it in just 3 months and began developing Max 2 in September.
On the eve of the Wuzhen Internet Conference, nearby industrial parks host AI companies that are not competing on large models: Shangyuan Zhixing's unmanned-vehicle intelligent skateboard chassis shipments have led the country for three consecutive years; Freetech's Wuzhen base posted revenue of more than 2 billion yuan last year, with its production line rolling off one product every 13 seconds on average. Xinshengji makes commercial-grade cleaning robots for airports and shopping malls, while Sainade uses a tracked chassis plus a robotic arm to solve the last-20-meter loading and unloading challenge in logistics.
At the Shanghai Industrial Expo, ZeroErr previewed an upcoming joint module equipped with Harmonic Drive (HDS) strain wave reducers. The example model eRob110I uses a compact integrated design and offers EtherCAT or CANopen configurations, both of which support Modbus-RTU communication over an RS485 interface. During the show, senior Harmonic Drive executives visited its booth for discussions, and ZeroErr also communicated with customers in humanoid robotics, embodied intelligence, and the global robotics supply chain about selection and configuration evaluation.
Unitree Technology's Q3 2026 report shows revenue of 1.817 billion yuan for the first three quarters, up 55.71% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 387 million yuan, up 270.54% year on year; it is the company's first financial report since going public. In the same period, AgiBot released the Genie G2 Max, a safety-certified heavy-load embodied industrial robot, with a 20 kg payload per arm, 40 kg with both arms, and a 50 kg peak, aimed at depalletizing and palletizing, material transfer, and production-line feeding. Tsinghua University, Infinigence AI, and AgiBot jointly proposed a new paradigm called Collective Experience Learning (CEL) and completed large-scale validation on a cluster of 96 real robots.
3M has introduced a series of high-flex cable assemblies, IDC-terminated connectors, and fine-pitch board connectors for robotics interconnects; the CoaXPress-compatible assemblies passed 45 million bend cycles, the USB3 Vision-compatible assemblies reached 100 million cycles, and the flat ribbon cables cover roughly 1 million to 100 million bend cycles.
Xiaomi has unveiled a bionic hand with 21 degrees of freedom and 1,500 tactile points across the full palm. The palm weighs 324 grams and is driven by 26 motors, with tendon-driven actuation as the main approach plus 5 direct-drive degrees of freedom. The team selected 1,827 of the 2,579 standard work procedures across 16 work sections at the pilot center of Xiaomi Auto's intelligent manufacturing department, collected multi-angle video and motion-capture data to work backward to the joint configuration, and says that in simulation the average stable-grasp success rate in the 17-to-21 degree-of-freedom range was 15% to 38% higher than in the 6-to-15 range, with gains slowing markedly after 21.
Shandong-based flexible fabric tactile sensing company Juqiao Industries announced on October 29 that it completed a 100-million-yuan Series A funding round, led by Ant Group, with Lingyi Venture Capital, Weihai Gangrong, and Qingdao Hexin participating. The article states that it weaves functional fibers into sensing networks, and that in September 2025 its 1,000th set of humanoid robot fabric electronic skin rolled off the production line, with customers including Unitree, Songyan Power, and Lingcifang; however, its single-point accuracy is inferior to vision-based tactile solutions, making it better suited to large-area coverage scenarios such as the torso and soles of the feet.
The Cubic Doggo quadruped robot completed a Halloween-themed endurance test carrying a pumpkin payload of about 600 g, with roughly 110 minutes of battery life in walking mode. The tester said the ST3215's energy efficiency exceeded expectations; the test plan came from a suggestion by a Reddit user, and the project code is hosted on GitHub.
A developer built a small desktop robot called Little ESP32 deskbot using a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.46-inch OLED board paired with GH-S37 micro servos. They connected it to the free XiaoZhi AI service, flashed firmware using its sample code, and added their own scripts to implement facial expressions and servo movements.
The author completed Fetch, a robotics STEM project for beginner and intermediate learners costing about 300 USD. It uses a binary-classification object detection model trained with Edge Impulse and is the author's first autonomous robot.
Zhongke Semiconductor has mass-produced the CT1906H motion control chip, using a monolithic integrated GaN HEMT process to pack 6 GaN half-bridge power transistors and 3-channel gate drivers into a 5×5mm LGA package, targeting micro servo joints with outer diameters of 14–45mm.
XHEART (XinXin Hangtu) launched the automotive-grade SoC X7 Ultra on October 29, featuring 700 TOPS of large-model compute and achieving 98.7% compute utilization in real production autonomous-driving model tests.
XHEART has launched the X7 Ultra autonomous driving chip, with large-model compute reaching 700 TOPS, memory bandwidth consumption reduced by 80% versus industry flagship products, and energy efficiency improved by 100%. The chip follows a "large models define the chip" approach, working backward from model inference requirements to the architecture, with measured NPU compute utilization reaching 98.7%. As of October, its first-generation X7 series has been deployed in more than 10 vehicle models, with cumulative shipments exceeding 200,000 units, and another 40 vehicle models designated for future delivery.
KAIST and other institutions are developing biomimetic robotic animals such as robot beetles and robot ants to solve practical problems including rescue and detection. A cyborg cockroach at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore carries a microcomputer, gas sensors, and an infrared thermal camera, and is remote-controlled via electrode pulses; a single roach can survey about 100 square meters of rubble, but a full survey of a building would require about 500 roaches and 500 operators. A robot ant at Stanford University can carry a payload 2,000 times its own mass, grips using a gecko-inspired foot design, and requires wired power in industrial settings due to its high energy consumption.
XSTO Xiaoshentong Innovation is showcasing its X13 series embodied mobile robot, M9 series light off-road electric wheelchair, M4 series smart wheelchair, and EzGo3 carbon fiber electric wheelchair during Phase 3 of the 140th Canton Fair. The X13, which recently won a 2026 G-MARK Design Gold Award, highlights "AI + all-terrain" capabilities, integrating a dynamic self-balancing seat, multi-posture adjustment, and intelligent risk warning; the M4 has already received three major design awards: Germany's iF, Red Dot, and G-MARK. The exhibition runs until November 4 at booth 21.2 B51-58, and customers expressed cooperation intentions on the first day.
Simplexity Robotics exhibited its i7 Pro and iX robots along with in-house arm and joint modules and other core hardware at the Sino-German Automotive Technology, Parts and Services zone of IZB 2026, held October 27-29 in Wolfsburg, Germany. The company presented embodied intelligence technology achievements centered on robot motion control, teleoperation and body development. Liu Minqiang, Director-General of the Investment Promotion Agency of the Ministry of Commerce, visited the booth for a tour and exchange.
Xuanji Dynamics' Hypertron series quadruped robots won the "High-Rise Fire Rescue Track" championship and first prize in the "Load-Bearing Climbing and Material Transport" category at the 2026 Guangzhou Safety Emergency Rescue Robot Competition. The Hypertron-SW01 is equipped with a self-developed high-torque joint motor module and a multimodal fusion perception system, features IP67 protection, and continued stable motion control, perception, and communication during a 3-minute continuous bake test at 120°C–130°C.
ALVE is an upper-body humanoid robot project made from 3D-printed parts and an aluminum extrusion frame, comprising two multi-joint robotic arms, robotic hands, a movable head, and a supported torso, aimed at makers, robotics enthusiasts, and educators. The project is offered as a digital download; motors, electronics, aluminum extrusions, bearings, and fasteners must be purchased separately, and assembly and operation require mechanical assembly, wiring, and programming. The display images include a physical prototype and digital model views; the poses shown do not imply that autonomous task software is included.
Jungheinrich has formed a strategic partnership with Italian warehouse automation company Automha to jointly develop the UP-Carrier GTJ, a two-way pallet shuttle for high-density pallet storage. The solution can be integrated into existing warehouse environments, increasing storage density without major modifications; initially, pallet transport is still handled by industrial vehicles, with automation expandable step by step later. The shuttle took nine months from concept to market readiness and has been deployed in more than 200 projects in over 25 countries.
UK AI and robotics company Humanoid is expanding its collaboration with Nvidia to jointly develop a high-performance robotic edge runtime for its next-generation humanoid robots. Humanoid is integrating Nvidia Jetson Thor, Isaac OS, Holoscan Sensor Bridge, and the Holoscan SDK to run AI models on the robot body and coordinate perception, reasoning, and control in real time.
GenRobot.AI will debut two next-generation products on November 9–11, 2026, at CoRL 2026 (Booth #200): DAS Ego 2.0, a first-person multimodal data collection system with hand-tracking accuracy within 4 mm, and DAS Dex 2.0, a high-fidelity human dexterous data glove with electronic-skin tactile sensing. The two products cover data collection from full-body motion to tactile sensing, and the company says the two are fully synchronized.
A team from the University of Tartu in Estonia and the Italian Institute of Technology had a moth-inspired robot use an artificial circulatory system to deliver chemical raw materials such as pyrrole, synthesizing a polypyrrole UV sensor in situ where UV light struck, giving the robot a sensing capability it did not originally have.
D-Robotics and Unitree Robotics have formed a partnership to jointly build robot solutions for education scenarios, starting with the Sunrise S100 computing platform and later expanding to the full Sunrise S and X platform lines. The Sunrise S100 is a mid-range compute platform for embodied intelligence, offering 80-128 TOPS of on-device inference compute and supporting multi-camera input and local inference of multimodal large models. The first phase will create standardized training solutions for universities, vocational schools, science and innovation competitions, and youth AI education; after the education scenarios are validated and mature, the partners will expand to industrial scenarios.
HCFA Technology and Jiangxinchuang signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Hangzhou to deeply integrate Jiangxinchuang's RISC-V industrial-grade high-performance DSP real-time processor M7000 series chip platform with complete-machine scenarios such as HCFA servo drives and robot drive-control systems.
UBTech, the first humanoid robot company listed in Hong Kong, announced that its controlled subsidiary Fenglong has established a wholly owned subsidiary, New Fenglong, focused on key embodied intelligence hardware including joint modules, end effectors, and thermal management. New Fenglong plans three major product matrices covering bionic human facial servos, high-density servos, electronic skin, two-finger grippers, and dexterous hands. It has already achieved R&D and mass production of two-finger grippers and bionic human facial servos, and plans to mass-produce high-power-density servos, dexterous hands, and ultra-humanoid bionic dexterous arms in 2027.
Estun's revenue for the first three quarters was 3.699 billion yuan, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 171 million yuan, up 1984.24% year on year; its industrial robots ranked first in China market share for seven consecutive quarters. SIASUN Robotics' revenue was 2.437 billion yuan, up 9.87% year on year, but its net profit attributable to shareholders was a loss of 318 million yuan, with the loss widening 99.64% year on year; R&D expenses were 236 million yuan, up 58.15% year on year. Everwin Precision's embodied intelligence and emerging technology hardware business revenue was 419 million yuan, up 532.67% year on year; from January to August, deliveries of humanoid robot precision components exceeded 1.1 million units.
STIER uses the PolishX axial flexible force control device together with a flexible grinding robot to grind weld scars on battery boxes. The minimum actual output force can be controlled down to 1 N, with force control accuracy of ±0.8 N and response under 10 ms. A positioner enables autonomous grinding across multiple areas and autonomous tool changing. In testing, weld scars were removed cleanly and R corners and edges transitioned smoothly, with a cycle time of no more than 100 s per piece and a first-pass yield of no less than 90%. The solution targets welded box-type workpieces in the automotive and new energy industries and supports process validation with customer-supplied parts.
At the dexterous manipulation sub-forum of AgiBot Innovation Day, Critical Point released the OmniGlove Pro data-collection glove and began mass-production delivery. It focuses on "real-robot-ready" data that aligns human hands with real robots using high-precision EMF positioning and full-hand tactile collection.
Yuequan Bionic will showcase its core product, the YingShou Y-Hand M2 bionic dexterous hand, at Hong Kong FinTech Week on November 2-3, at booth 5BC-CA18 of the Zhongguancun International Delegation at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The event is part of Hong Kong FinTech Week x StartmeupHK 2026, and the company says the dexterous hand is the "last centimeter" for robots to complete the closed loop of interaction with the physical world.
Yuequan Bionic's Bowen W-Bot 2.0 wheeled humanoid robot has been deployed in live-line distribution network operations and maintenance at State Grid in Hefei, independently completing the full live-line cable stripping process; the case was reported by People's Daily New Media's "Unimaginable Chinese Economy" program. The solution uses vehicle-mounted deployment on an insulated bucket truck, is equipped with the X-Hand M1 dexterous hand and 7-DOF humanoid arms, has a dual-arm payload of 20 kg and a whole-hand lifting payload of 50 kg, covers working heights of 0–2.2 meters, and has a chassis footprint of 0.238 m².
D-Robotics and Unitree Robotics exhibited together for the first time at the Changsha Education Equipment Exhibition and announced a deep collaboration, launching an embodied intelligence education solution built on the Sunrise S100 compute box as the core compute foundation, combined with Unitree's Go2 quadruped robot and R1 humanoid robot. The solution covers hardware devices, a curriculum system, course-competition integrated practice projects, and teaching environment construction, targeting primary and secondary schools for embodied intelligence education. The two parties are taking education as their first implementation scenario, with plans to build a replicable regional robotics education demonstration model and expand into industrial and other scenarios.
Boyya Intelligence founder Liu Xin believes models may reach a capability inflection point earlier than hardware, at which point robots' bodies rather than their brains will limit their operation. Boyya's first dexterous hand, Gaoshan S1, has 22 degrees of freedom and uses a hybrid drive that is primarily tendon-driven, supplemented by direct gear drive and screw-rod linkages; the company says it is the world's first to use a tendon-driven plus screw-rod parallel wrist configuration. The team is also developing a "cerebellum" model with more than 30 built-in standard actions, which an upper-level model calls and adjusts execution details through real-time feedback.
Leiphone observed on site at IROS 2026 that dexterous-hand demonstrations have shifted from simple grasping to complex contact, long-horizon tasks, and deformable-object manipulation. Yang Sicheng, founder of Yuansheng Intelligence, proposed that deployment must clear three thresholds: balanced system capability, long-term stable operation, and acquisition of high-quality manipulation data.
At AgiBot Innovation Day on October 29, AgiBot proposed Worken (effective intelligent work hours), a measurement standard whose formula is number of active robots × autonomous working hours × output efficiency ratio, and released Lingqu OS 1.0, a native operating system for embodied intelligence.
Why it matters: At Innovation Day, AgiBot proposed the Worken work-hour metric and open-sourced Lingqu OS, giving readers a way to observe new paths for embodied intelligence commercialization and ecosystem openness.
At IROS 2026, Sharpa released three fully self-developed new products: the D01 humanoid robot with full-body electronic skin, the W02 dexterous hand with full-palm tactile sensing and 21 active degrees of freedom, and the AE01 exoskeleton data glove, which captures hand movements with 22 encoders and returns tactile feedback.
Xinyan Robotics has released the embodied family agent Bubbo 1, which builds a "Family Agent" on its self-developed Bubbo OS and can recognize each family member and pay attention to relationships among members. Bubbo carries 13 types and 26 sensors; its output side includes 6 degrees of freedom and two expression screens, and it has built-in camera-based heart rate detection and a partnership with the Cece smart ring for data sharing between devices.
Shao Lin, founder of RoboScience, spoke at the 2026 World Physical AI Conference and Unitree Partner Ecosystem Conference, presenting a cross-embodiment dexterous manipulation technology path from the ICRA 2025 Best Paper D(R,O) Grasp to the T(R,O) Grasp series and then to the FingerEye visuotactile framework.
Jiangsu Wanda Special Bearing Co., Ltd. will exhibit at CeMAT ASIA, held November 3-6, 2026, at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, at booth W5-H1-1. The company is highlighting four product categories: forklift bearings, combined roller bearings, full-complement cylindrical roller bearings, and precision slewing rings, supporting 0.5T to 46T forklift series and robotic automation machinery, with annual production of 5 million bearings of various types. During the exhibition, its technical and marketing teams will meet with visitors to discuss product applications, performance specifications, custom development, and project delivery.
AgiBot has officially released the safety-standard heavy-duty embodied robot Genie G2 Max, which has already been deployed in the inbound handling process at JD Logistics' Zhilang Warehouse. The robot has a single-arm payload of 20 kg and a dual-arm peak payload of 50 kg, arm repeat positioning accuracy of ≤±0.5 mm, and can depalletize 80 boxes and palletize 75 boxes per hour, with an overall operation success rate exceeding 99%. Zhilang Warehouse is a goods-to-person robot warehouse developed in-house by JD Logistics, and the G2 Max handles the tote placement task in its inbound process.
The author has released the open-source quadruped robot Cubic Doggo 07B Wouf, which uses 12 ST3215 smart servos, off-the-shelf parts, and 3D-printed components, is controlled by a Raspberry Pi running ROS2 Jazzy, can walk without a cable, and supports gamepad control. The robot can walk under a 1 kg payload, and its standing-posture battery life has reached 4 hours; all FreeCAD models are open for editing. The author says the turning gait has not yet been optimized, and plans to address read latency, add an IMU, and optimize the gait later.