Robotics Special: Atlas bags top prize at CES 2026

Welcome back, Superhuman. CES 2026 felt more like a robotics runway than a tech expo, with companies showing off everything from stair-climbing robot vacuums to humanoids scooping ice cream. One robot, however, stood above the rest, clinching one of the industry’s first mass-production commitments for humanoid robots and bagging the top prize.

WHAT’S NEXT

The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week

1. Hyundai and Boston Dynamics unveil Atlas, win CES’s top humanoid robot award: The company’s Atlas humanoid stole the show at CES this week, bagging the Best Robot award. The robot impressed global media with human-like walking and near-industrial readiness, with Hyundai unveiling plans to manufacture about 30K units annually by 2028. This marks one of the US industry's first concrete mass-production commitments for humanoid robots. Watch Atlas in action here.

2. Chinese players dominate CES 2026: China dominated the humanoid robotics category at CES this week. 21 out of 38 exhibitors hailed from the country; the delegation included the likes of Unitree Robotics, AgiBot, and the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre. Chinese dominance extends beyond the CES stage: over the past five years, Chinese companies have filed over 7,700 humanoid-related patents compared to just 1,561 in the US, according to Morgan Stanley.

3. Nvidia unveils blueprint to become the 'Android of robotics': The chipmaker dropped a full-stack robotics ecosystem at CES this year, including new foundation models like Cosmos Reason 2 for vision and Isaac GR00T N1.6 for humanoid whole-body control. It also deepened its Hugging Face partnership to connect over 2M robotics developers with about 13M AI builders, with early traction showing robotics as the platform's fastest-growing category.

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ROBOTS IN ACTION

How robots are transforming the world around us

🚗 Drive Safe: A new study claims that autonomous vehicles could prevent over 1M road injuries across the US by 2035. Currently, crashes kill 120 Americans daily and cost over $470B in medical expenses, with most stemming from human error or substance use. If AVs deliver on their safety promise at scale, autonomous driving could potentially go from being a convenience feature to a major public health intervention.

🍃 Wind Works: Kawasaki Heavy Industries is using its unmanned helicopter to deliver repair robots to wind turbine blades, slashing the need for human technicians to work at extreme heights. The system tackles a critical bottleneck in the global wind power industry, where edge repairs are currently done manually by technicians working at dangerous heights. Watch it in action here.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Family Friend: Shenzhen-based OLLOBOT is taking a starkly different approach to robotics. At CES this week, the startup unveiled robots aimed at strengthening family connections. The robot reportedly perceives moods, activities, and environmental factors in real-time, speaks its own "pet language" to spark parent-child conversations, and reminds users to call relatives they haven't contacted in a while.

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Everything else you need to know this week

Here are the biggest developments in the robotics space that you should know about:

• Mobileye is set to acquire Mentee Robotics for $900M, signaling a major push beyond autonomous driving into humanoid robots and physical AI.

• Amazon has acquired Rightbot Technologies, integrating their robots into Amazon’s Robotics Delivery teams to speed up warehouse automation.

• FrontierX has unveiled Vex, a ball-shaped robot that trails your pet indoors, films video as it goes, and turns the clips into shareable AI-edited highlight reels.

• Roborock is finally entering the US with an all-wheel-drive robot mower that uses LiDAR and vision-based mapping to cut up to half an acre a day.

• Qualcomm has unveiled its new Dragonwing IQ10 Series robotics processor at CES 2026, aiming to advance industrial and humanoid robot capabilities.

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ROBOT OF THE WEEK

A robot that caught our eye this week

Your iPhone just got a desk job.

Instead of building another standalone robot, startup Loona has created a $300 charging hub that transforms your iPhone into a desk robot and AI assistant. The MagSafe-equipped stand packs three USB-C ports and one USB-A for desktop charging needs, plus Slack integration and meeting assistance. Set to launch via crowdsourcing in March.

You can check it out here.

ROBO REEL

Watch: Robots go for the knockout at top US tech event, pulls in big crowd

Unitree’s booth at CES 2026 became one of the event’s biggest crowd pullers as the Chinese robotics company staged a full boxing match with two G1 humanoid robots, complete with headgear, gloves, and a human referee, at the BattleBots Arena. The $13,500 robots traded kicks and punches with MMA-style rhythm, stumbling occasionally as crowds cheered.

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Zain and the Superhuman AI team