The paper proposes a framework that interactively searches for language sequences that improve closed-loop VLA task performance, distills them into a test-time language feedback policy (LFP), and trains an improvement head to predict when language steering will be effective, then applies conformal calibration to the improvement head to prevent harmful interventions.
As of October 19, OpenAI had posted 19 robotics-related job openings on its official website, covering areas such as robot control systems, electrical engineering, actuators, motor design, manufacturing, and data systems. OpenAI said the team aims to develop general-purpose robots capable of working in dynamic real-world environments and to explore multiple robot forms; it is currently advancing both software and hardware R&D while building a real-world robot data collection and training system. Its field engineer job posting reveals that multiple robot workstations are already operating in its data collection environment. (The Paper)
The URKL Global Humanoid Robot Freestyle Combat League, initiated by EngineAI Robotics, has a total prize pool of 14 million yuan. The first city tour stop at Shanghai Baoshan Gymnasium on September 19 sold out all 5,000 tickets, priced from 68 yuan to 198 yuan. The article argues this proves humanoid robots can move from being displayed tech products to entertainment content consumers are willing to pay for, reaching a similar conclusion to the overseas REK event (nearly 3,400 tickets sold for its first San Francisco event in September 2025).
PNP Robotics has completed real-world validation of a dexterous hand control system driven by surface electromyography (EMG) signals on the Franka collaborative robotic arm platform, achieving synchronized control of a 7-DOF robotic arm and a multi-joint dexterous hand. The system decodes EMG intent in real time, capturing neuromuscular activation before movement occurs, enabling adaptive grasping and fine in-hand manipulation. Compared with traditional control that relies on preprogrammed trajectories and joystick teleoperation, EMG intent control requires no rigid programming and is suited to unstructured, dynamic manipulation scenarios.
Smart China reported on October 18 that Dongyi Technology arranged human-versus-robot badminton and table tennis matches, boxing demonstrations, and bilingual Chinese-English guided tours at the 140th Canton Fair, and showcased heavy-load transport, special inspection, and dexterous manipulation solutions at its booth, with services planned to continue until November 4.
The article argues that humanoid robots in nursing homes remain mostly exhibition demonstrations, while the equipment actually deployed in disability care areas is incontinence care, transfer, bathing, and turning-bed equipment, whose value criteria are fewer errors, reusability, and willingness of caregivers to use them.
A team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology developed the embodied robotic arm EmArm, embedding a soft optical tactile skin into a rigid skeleton to achieve whole-arm tactile sensing and adaptive manipulation, with tactile sensing fidelity reaching 97.9% under five environmental disturbances. Its tactile skin covers over 71,000 square millimeters with a spatial resolution of 0.085 millimeters, can recognize five touch behaviors and provide emotional feedback, with recognition accuracy up to 99.8%. The research was published in Nature Sensors.
A Reddit user added a Halloween Trick or Treat skill to AgenticROS for their personal robot Bob. Bob is equipped with RealSense, NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin, and AVerMedia SenseEdge, and can remind visitors by voice to "take only one candy at a time" when they take candy too quickly. This is a real-machine demo of a personal project, with no quantitative metrics provided.
A child enters the treatment room with a robot by their side • Our CTO Firas told @nvidia: at @ICM_Montpellier, 20 children underwent 300 radiotherapy sessions in one year. See you in Berlin next week! @NVIDIAGTC 🗓️ October 20–22 #GTCBerlin #PhysicalAI #Robotics
A collaboration case between Agibot and Ant Afu has been deployed at Peking University People's Hospital, where the half-size humanoid robot Lingxi X2 serves at a patient guidance desk, providing on-site inquiries for patients. Lingxi X2 connects to the AI medical assistant in the Ant Afu app, is based on Ant's medical large model, and is linked to the hospital's private knowledge base; it can provide services such as department guidance, consultation on medical visit procedures, answers to medical insurance policy questions, and in-hospital location navigation. According to the hospital's operational data, as of September 30, Lingxi X2 had worked 66 working days at the outpatient navigation desk, completing a cumulative 46,686 interactions, averaging about 707 per day, with a single-day maximum of 1,420 interactions.
At the 2026 China International Industry Fair, Elite Robots showcased wheeled humanoid, compound, dual-arm, and collaborative robots sharing the "Yuanqi Primo" brain, demonstrating on-site at its booth processes including optical module insertion and removal, loading and unloading, adhesive dispensing, tightening, and welding, forming a micro production line that was actively producing. During the exhibition, the company presented full-chain solutions such as intelligent handling, flexible boxing, intelligent inspection, and optical module insertion and removal to high-end manufacturing customers in optical communications, semiconductors, and aerospace. Elite Robots also jointly announced a industry-education integration strategy with Aifan Robotics and signed agreements with multiple universities and ecosystem partners.
AgiBot Lingxi X2 has been integrated with the AI medical assistant in the Ant Afu app and serves as a patient guidance robot at the outpatient navigation desk of Peking University People's Hospital, providing department directions, consultation on the medical visit process, answers on medical insurance policies, and in-hospital location navigation, while delivering standardized medical responses based on the hospital's private knowledge base. As of September 30, it had worked 66 working days and completed 46,686 interactions, averaging 707 per day, with a single-day peak of 1,420 receptions. AgiBot said it will gradually expand deployment and build a replicable model for smart hospital services.
The HKU-KAI SMASH team appeared in the second part of RTHK's Vibrant Hong Kong program, sharing the cutting-edge AI technologies and R&D journey behind its AI table tennis robot. The content is mainly an introduction to the program interview; the original text did not disclose the robot's model, performance metrics, or experimental data.
The HKU-KAI SMASH Team appeared on RTHK's Vibrant Hong Kong (Part 1), sharing the cutting-edge AI technologies and R&D journey behind its AI table tennis robot. The segment mainly introduces the team and does not give the robot's specific model, performance metrics, or experimental data.
AI² Robotics is one of the first seven technology partners, and its general-purpose intelligent robot AlphaBot 2 has joined Hong Kong's first Embodied AI International Application Training Ground, established by FLAIR under the Hong Kong Productivity Council, to take part in training, validation, and optimization of embodied AI technology in real application scenarios. The same batch of partners includes Unitree Robotics and AgiBot, among others.
At the invitation of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Digital Huaxia showcased its new-generation bionic robot Xialan R03 and Xingxingxia P2 at the RoboPark zone of the 2026 Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition). During the same event, the "2026 Future Industry Sci-Tech Pioneer Top 100 Release" was held, and Xialan R03 received the "Top 100 Products" honor for its bionic intelligent technology and scenario value. Xingxingxia P2 took the RoboPark Stage for a dance performance and interacted with visitors for photos in the photo check-in area.
The Reachy Mini tool Homebody has released version 0.5.15, focused on a Marketplace-first onboarding setup foundation, supporting a resumable, owner-protected installation process, and offering English/Dutch selection, privacy checks, and silent connection verification.
Strutt ev¹ software 1.3.6.3 adds Follow Mode, which can automatically follow a person walking directly ahead and adjust the distance, and when the person stops, the vehicle comes to a controlled stop at about 30 cm.
At its 2026 11.11 launch event, JD.com disclosed that its AI capabilities now cover more than 3,000 scenarios across retail, logistics, health, industrial, food delivery, and housekeeping. JD APP 16.0 upgrades the AI shopping assistant "Dongdong," and the JoyAI App introduces the first AI digital human capable of real-time video shopping.
Wanhua Chemical President Kou Guangwu and a delegation visited Boshi Co. for an exchange. Wanhua Chemical presented Boshi Co. with an "Excellent Supplier" award. As a core equipment supplier for Wanhua Chemical's complete packaging and automated loading equipment, Boshi's related equipment has been put into production and application at multiple Wanhua domestic bases, supporting the automation and intelligent upgrading of the solid material post-processing stage. The two sides will carry out joint research, relying on the collaboration between Boshi Co. and Bolong Technology to advance the intelligent optimization and upgrading of equipment.
An automation control and robotics engineering student built a pair of animatronic eyes using two servos (left-right and up-down), a 3D-printed frame, and an Arduino UNO. He developed a web app offering Spanish Scratch-style block programming, a simulator to preview movements before connecting, and direct USB program upload through the browser (Chrome or Edge); each block also shows its corresponding C++ code and can be downloaded as an .ino file.
Odigo is drawing attention at Pacific Mall in Jaipur! 15 AI-driven #Odigo advertising robots have been deployed, allowing brands to attract more shoppers through dynamic advertising, interactive engagement, and smart wayfinding.
Tang Duyu, former chief AI expert at Huawei and former head of the Xiaoyi large model, has founded Guanxing Shuzhi to build proactive AI systems for the physical world, enabling robots to decide on their own whether and how to intervene when there are no human instructions.
How two robots coordinate when household tasks conflict: one is cleaning the kitchen while the other needs to go in to cook, and someone or some system must decide the priority. The author prefers a disembodied local home "brain" that manages each device according to the owner's settings, and hopes it supports different brands and allows cameras and alarm systems to remain independent and remotely accessible. The article ends with an open question: is it more feasible to let robots negotiate with each other, or to coordinate them centrally?
Richtech Robotics' robot Adam served Golden Hour drinks from Foley Family Wines to fans at the VGK Paramount+ Plaza during the Vegas Golden Knights' 10th season opening game, including on-site pouring and interaction. This was a fan-facing brand and experience showcase; the original text provides no technical specifications, performance metrics, or commercial deployment data.
The author built the TAKTO ONE tendon-driven hand exoskeleton for a master's thesis, with one magnetic encoder for each of 12 finger joints and two IMUs driving a digital twin in a headset, without relying on camera tracking, so occluded fingers can still be measured. The CAD, PCB, firmware, and build guide are all open source, and a browser demo that requires no hardware is available at https://takto.one and https://github.com/molanocortes/takto-one.
Xin Ye, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information, and Professor Lionel Robert published a study in the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. In an experiment with 100 participants involving a parking lot security robot, they found that interactional fairness and distributive fairness significantly increased people's trust in the authority of security robots.
The latest list of apps that refuse operation, published by Doubao Phone Assistant, shows that more than 150 apps under Kuaishou, Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent, and others explicitly refuse to be operated by the Doubao phone, involving two products: Nubia M153 and Nubia NaviX Ultra.
Huanwang Technology and Pyromind have co-built an AITV intelligent solution, performing scenario post-training on Qwen3-VL-4B. Focus recognition accuracy rose from 45% to 99.6%, the success rate of "see it, say it" reached 99%, and the success rate of "search and play" exceeded 90%. It has been deployed in "Xiaoyou Casting - Movie Search" and covers TV apps including Cloud Video Aurora, Kiwi, Mango, Youku, and Bilibili.
The New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) has renewed a three-year, $2.1 million agreement with Intuition Robotics to continue providing the ElliQ AI companion robot to older New Yorkers at risk of loneliness and social isolation.
KAIST, together with Caltech and Nanyang Technological University, developed BeetleBot, a beetle-inspired soft robot that users can remotely control to walk, turn, and grasp by bending and extending a finger. The robot is driven by 3D-printed liquid crystal elastomer artificial muscles, and an onboard camera and capacitive pressure sensors relay visual and tactile information, enabling bidirectional feedback. The research was published in Science Advances; the artificial muscles' speed, energy efficiency, and power supply still need improvement, and performance still needs to be tested in real work environments.
On October 10, Zhuoyide's fully bionic robot Moya entered Shanghai Songjiang Jiahua Kindergarten, serving as a preschool teacher in the classroom, leading the children in Q&A, singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" together, and taking group photos. Powered by the DroidSoul robot intelligence system, it performs multimodal perception, large-model empathetic decision-making, and full-body coordinated expression. The body uses tendon-cable actuation and weighs about 30 kg, far below the 55 to 75 kg of comparable rigid designs, and works with more than 60 micro-expressions to enable near-human safe interaction.
Jiangsu ZhuJing Intelligent Technology has announced that it will officially launch its lightweight embodied humanoid robot H1 Mini (Xiao Xiao Zhu) in November 2026, positioned as a small humanoid robot. Its full body uses a 21-degree-of-freedom humanoid motion system that can perform human-like movements, and it carries an autonomous large-model intelligence engine for quickly learning new postures. For interaction, it features an agile interactive face that supports facial perception and voice dialogue, as well as a dynamic programmable lighting interaction system; the original article did not disclose payload, battery life, or price.
NetEase Cloud Music and Unitree Technology have reached a deep partnership, launching an industry-first robot natural-language song request experience. The feature already covers models including the Unitree Go2 robot dog and the G1 and R1 general-purpose humanoid robots, allowing users to request songs on the robots via natural language.
JAKA Robotics has launched three new features for collaborative welding: real-time parameter adjustment, process parameter recommendations, and a quick-access button box. Built on its welding process package as the foundation, it has distilled four standardized solutions: JAKA EWT, JAKA PWT, JAKA TWC, and JAKA GWV. In four bridge steel structure and shipbuilding/marine engineering cases, gantry inverted welding reduced weld seam point adjustment to within 40 seconds, allowed a single operator to manage 2-3 devices, and increased capacity by more than 40%; the portable Zu3 solution, with a 12 kg body, works with a magnetic base and laser line scanning inside ship compartments.
Researchers at Chemnitz University of Technology tested pedestrian reactions to an autonomous, manual, and teleoperated campus shuttle in three modes and at different approach speeds. Preliminary results show little difference in experience between modes, while faster approach speeds slightly reduce perceived safety and comfort. A separate experiment found that braking curves and stopping distance significantly affect how pedestrians perceive the interaction. The findings are preliminary and need to cover more vehicles and traffic scenarios.
On October 11, 2026, UBTech and Xiamen C&D signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Xiamen. The two parties will jointly establish a joint venture and build the Fujian headquarters of the UBTech Ecosystem Technology Center, with plans to jointly achieve a sales target of no fewer than 10,000 UBTech humanoid robots by 2030.
UBTECH and FAW-Volkswagen are expanding their partnership to test humanoid robots for material handling and logistics applications in automotive manufacturing. Their collaboration has extended from vehicle inspection to factory logistics, advancing the evaluation of humanoid robots in real industrial environments. The next milestone is not another factory demonstration, but proving that these robots can perform useful work continuously and economically.
The Sim XR team has opened a cloud-based teleoperation demo in which users can remotely control a robot's dual arms in a browser using the two controllers of a Quest 3 or 3S. The task is to pick up a jam jar and place it on a breakfast tray in a scanned French castle scene.
The robotics exhibition (RS) at the 2026 CIIF covers nearly 56,000 square meters and brings together more than 400 domestic and international robotics companies, with over 300 new products unveiled in a concentrated showcase. The industry's focus is shifting from competition over standalone machine performance to software-hardware integration and ecosystem co-building.