Sharpa North prepares a cocktail. It may not look that impressive at first... But a few details really stand out: ✶ Consistent whole-body retargeting   ✶ Almost no noticeable latency   ✶ Glove transfers force info clearly   ✶ Delicate objects handled safely Anyone who has teleoperated a humanoid will know how difficult this is.

Atlas' four-finger hand surprised many. But different end-effectors are common. 🇺🇸 Sunday Robotics | Unique gripper 🔶 Built for home chores. 🔶 Easy to simulate and collect data with. 🔶 Still capable of fine manipulation. 🇨🇳 Sharpa | Five-finger hand 🔶  A more human-like approach. 🔶  Built for precise and dexterous tasks. 🇺🇸 Boston Dynamics | Four-finger hand 🔶  Optimized for factory manipulation. 🔶  Less human-like, highly task-focused. Different jobs create different hands.

Four wheeled robots for work place. 🇰🇷 Rainbow RB-Y1 | 13 DoF total 🇨🇳 Galaxea R1 | 0-2 m vertical workspace 🇨🇳 Galbot G1 | retail picking & restocking 🇨🇳 AGIBOT G2 | industrial assembly Which platform would you build on?

Sony joined IROS 2026 with a robot dog. When you think of robot dogs, designs like Spot probably come to mind. But this one actually looks like a dog. It’s called Aibo. Cute design.

Galbot ET1’s dance performance. The company is mainly known for its wheeled robots. ET1 is its first bipedal model. This robot is seriously good at dancing.

Agility Robotics showcased Digit’s skills. Built for factory work from day one. At IROS 2026, it moved products between workstations. Impressive dexterous manipulation for a previous-gen model.

Chinese humanoid manufacturing goes global. ✸ 🇷🇸 Serbia | AGIBOT | Production live ✸ 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan | AGIBOT | Building ✸ 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan | UBTECH | Building ✸ 🇦🇪 UAE | UBTECH | Planned factory ✸ 🇰🇷 South Korea | AGIBOT | Deal  Why build outside mainland China? The logic is simple. Like EVs, local production brings Chinese companies closer to new markets.

Boston Dynamics Atlas, 12 years evolving ✶ 2013 | First Steps ✶ 2015 | DARPA Challenge ✶ 2016 | Next Generation ✶ 2017 | First Backflip ✶ 2025 | Fully electric Atlas From a DARPA research robot to a humanoid built to move, manipulate and work in the real world.

T800's design was inspired by Iron Man and Terminator. The name T800 refers to the robot portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger on Terminator. T800 is built to match an adult male; 173cm and 75kg. EngineAI HQ has great views; HK on one side of the skyline, Shenzhen on the other. You can see the design lineage clearly the helmeted, armored silhouettes read like a direct nod to Iron Man, with some rougher, more skeletal frames pulling from Terminator.

EngineAI is famous for its T800 boxing robot and URKL robot fight league Founder Zhao Tongyang previously founded & exited a quadruped company to Chinese car producer XPeng He then built XPeng's humanoid robotics program from scratch (XPeng Robotics announced a $900m raise last month) He quit XPeng and built EngineAI in 2023 focusing on bipedal humanoids, raised ~$400m since inception Series B in Apr 26 valued EngineAI at $1.4bn. Steep discount compared to Unitree ($31bn) and Ubtech ($5bn). The viral T800 robot model was launched only 10 months ago in Dec 25 EngineAI's URKL robot league was launched in Feb this year and takes place every month (took place last week in Shanghai) Thank you EngineAI team for hosting me at your HQ in Shenzhen!

Robot production factory managed autonomously by other robots 🤖 Ubtech set up a factory that builds a humanoid robot every 10 min and the assembly is done by their own robots Ubtech's stock is trading at ~$5bn mcap and raised a cumulative $1.3bn in 14 yrs Generated $88m revenue from humanoid sales in H1 26 Flagship robot Walker S2 already deployed on assembly lines of BYD, Geely and Airbus Wheeled robot Cruzr S2 deployed in Ubtech's own assembly lines Uworld U1 is the viral bionic robot series that already had >13k pre-orders Tien Kung came #2 in Robot Games this year and is a  JV product by Ubtech team Ubtech is widely considered among the top 3 Chinese robotics firms alongside Unitree and AgiBot Thank you Ubtech team for hosting me at your HQ in Shenzhen!

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Ubtech unveiled its bionic robots in June >13k units pre-ordered already Full body model costs $145k Use cases; home companionship, elderly care, retail receptionist and entertainment I had the chance to see these robots live both at WRC Beijing and at Ubtech's Shenzhen HQ

We will have multiple personalities embodied in robots. Told you the future is weird.

AgiBot is among the top 3 Chinese robotics firms alongside Unitree & Ubtech They have 44% of humanoid robot market share as of H1 26 with 8.4k shipped units Founder Peng Zhihui is an ex-Huawei gigabrain engineer and a KOL with 2.5m followers on Chinese YouTube AgiBot dominated Robot Games this year with most medals among all firms AgiBot's Mar 26 valuation was ~$2bn and they plan to do an IPO this year They're backed by top Asian firms such as Tencent, BYD, JD, LG, Baidu and Sequioa Xi Jinping visited AgiBot HQ last year Thank you AgiBot team for hosting me at your HQ!

Robots replacing founders?

How is robot training data generated? 🦾 Teleoperation: a human controls a real robot arm. Most accurate. Least scalable. 😎 Ego video: a human wears a headset & does tasks. Most scalable. Least accurate. 🤳 Headset + gripper/wrist cams: the middle ground. More accurate than pure video, more scalable than teleoperation. No expensive, dedicated robot needed, but you still get direct grip and position data. I tested out AgiBot's MEgo grippers at their HQ.

Imagine an app-store-style marketplace where you swap AI personas onto the same robot body. Playful one day. A therapist persona another day. A business partner the next day. AgiBot is building super realistic bionic humanoids similar to Ubtech and Noetix. What got my attention is the app marketplace they're building to allow users to swap AI personas within the same robot body.

I played tic-tac-toe with Fourier's GR3

Fourier's walking-rehab treadmill simulation is super fun! There are four scenarios in this demo: a subway car, a mountain ridge, a lakeside park, a misty forest path. Patients train their balance and gait against real-world environments with no fall risk. Obviously this is a relatively more premium product as you can probably achieve the same training without the curved screen as or simulation software as well.