When NVIDIA unveiled its Isaac GR00T reference humanoid at GTC Taipei during ICRA 2026, the industry noted the obvious choices: a Unitree H2 Plus body, Jetson Thor onboard compute, and the open-source Isaac GR00T model as the brain. But the component that drew the sharpest questions was the one few had heard of: the hands. … Read more
A bionic robot developed by a Shanghai startup has ignited a fierce debate on overseas social media — not because it failed, but because it looked too human. At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on July 17, Shouxing Tech unveiled OriginF1: a desktop-scale bionic android with 26 degrees of freedom across … Read more
Figure Robotics’ F02 humanoid robot featuring a high-degree-of-freedom dexterous hand.Illustration: humanoid robot dexterous-hand durability concerns. (Source: Sohu IT) China’s humanoid robots are being tested by reality, and reality is winning. A manager at one robotics firm, whom we will call Wang Hao, told Chinese business outlet Yicai that the dexterous hand his company sources from … Read more
In the midst of a global humanoid robot boom, a sobering reminder of how hard the robotics business actually is: Vicarious Surgical, a US surgical robot startup that raised $300 million from investors including Bill Gates and Jerry Yang, has filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 2014 by two MIT graduates, Vicarious set out to build … Read more
Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, has achieved what no Chinese entrepreneur has done in eight years: appear on the cover of TIME Magazine. The cover, published July 23, features Wang alongside Unitree’s mech product GD01 under the headline “The Robot Age Is Here.” The last time a Chinese business leader appeared on … Read more
Humanoid robots can dance, backflip, and run marathons. What they cannot do, it turns out, is find enough paying customers. A growing number of analysts are asking an uncomfortable question about the humanoid robot boom: who is actually buying these machines? The answer, according to a detailed analysis published on Chinese tech media Sohu IT, … Read more
When Japanese technicians cracked open a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, they found a reason to give up. Nikkei xTECH, a Japanese technology media outlet, published a teardown video of Unitree’s G1 on July 23. The verdict, as reported by CCTV News, was blunt: China’s humanoid robot technology has clearly moved beyond the “show-and-tell” stage, and … Read more
Trump, the Nation Builder: How an Accidental Architect Built the Nation of Engineers As Air Force One touches down in a self-assured Beijing this May 14th, 2026, a curious moniker echoes across the Chinese internet: Chuan Jianguo (川建国)—or “Trump, the Nation Builder”. It is a title born of exquisite geopolitical irony. To the Chinese public, … Read more
The Robot Belt Weekly: China’s Top 10 Tech Stories May 3–10, 2026 | The Intelligence Briefing from Shenzhen #1 DeepSeek’s \$45B Gambit: China’s AI Crown Jewel Finally Opens Its Doors Source: TechCrunch | TechNode | The Silicon Review DeepSeek is reportedly shifting from its “maverick” roots to a mainstream powerhouse, eyeing a staggering $45 billion … Read more
The AI Dove of East Asia Make love(AI), not war. 🕊️ Did you know that in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, the pronunciation of the word for “love” is “ai”? It is a poetic coincidence that this shared linguistic heritage perfectly mirrors the acronym for Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps this is a sign that AI could be … Read more