Overview
- The World Robotics Conference, which opened on Aug. 19 in Beijing, is serving as the main stage for multiple product debuts and live demos from Chinese robotics firms.
- Counterpoint Research reported roughly 22,000 humanoid robot shipments in the first half of 2026, up about 300% year‑over‑year, with the top five vendors all based in China and accounting for about 86% of shipments.
- Companies unveiled a range of offerings: Xiaomi posted an interactive humanoid demo driven by large models, 极佳视界 released the Maker L01 biped with 31 joint motors and a top speed of 4 m/s, and a 4‑meter liquid‑electric hybrid humanoid was shown for heavy industrial and hazardous tasks.
- Black Sesame displayed its SesameX embodied‑intelligence compute stack with three module tiers—Kalos (48 TOPS) for service robots, Aura (70 TOPS) for complex multi‑task machines, and Liora (up to 700 TOPS) for high‑end humanoid use—aiming to move car‑grade AI reliability into robots.
- Market signals are mixed: 宇树科技’s Sci‑Tech Board IPO opened with extreme gains on Aug. 19 before a sharp pullback, and executives warn robots still trail human efficiency and need advances in generalization and world models before broad consumer or industrial scale deployment.