From baking pizza to picking up packages, the robots that run around the venue are finally coming to your home | A comprehensive tour of WAIC 2026
What did the hottest WAIC in history bring to the table? This article covers all the highlights you need to know.
By DENG Yingyi, ZHOU Xinyu, WANG Xinyi, WEN Lihong
Edited by ZHANG Yuxin
If you want to feel the sheer hype of this year's biggest AI event, just head to Shanghai where temperatures are hovering near 40°C, and you'll immediately vibe with the scene.
It's not just hot — it's getting hotter by the minute.
On July 17, 2026, the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference officially opened at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center. For the first time, the exhibition area exceeded 100,000 square meters, with over 1,100 participating enterprises, more than 3,000 exhibits on display, and over 300 products making their global debut. In terms of exhibitor numbers, compared with 400 in 2023 and 800 in 2025, the figure has more than doubled in two years.
According to online rumors, tickets for this WAIC sold out even earlier than in previous years — the original 168-yuan single-day ticket has been scalped to nearly 10 times its original price, while the three-day pass is being sold for as high as 3,000 yuan.
The forum lineup is also more star-studded than ever. Nine Turing Award and Nobel Prize winners attended this WAIC, including Richard Sutton, the father of reinforcement learning, and Yoshua Bengio, one of the three giants of deep learning.
Following the frenzy of dozens of large models competing for attention in 2023, the explosion of applications in 2024, and the boom in embodied intelligence in 2025, the 2026 WAIC can truly be described as a full-scale bloom — the diversity of exhibits far surpasses previous years, with over 108 chips, 261 large models, and 208 embodied intelligent terminals showcased at the event.
If previous WAIC events were still asking "can models and embodied intelligence really deliver results?", the 2026 answer is crystal clear: no more questions, the real priority is to put AI into practical use.
From AI smartphones, to robots zipping around delivering parcels, making pizzas, and hand-brewed coffee, to countless Agents... Every AI company is answering the same core question: how can AI start doing real work? AI is no longer just a concept in PPTs — it's becoming your colleague, your assistant, and your daily life companion.
As per our tradition, the "Intelligent Emergence" editorial team wandered through the World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center to bring you this exclusive 2026 WAIC on-site exploration report. Here are our carefully selected highlights from the exhibition zones:
Embodied Intelligence: OMG, That's Surprising
DouFoot: See for Yourself...
The "DouFoot" robot
It's not an official exhibit, but it successfully attracted (and startled) audiences — none other than "DouFoot".
"DouFoot", as the name suggests, is a robot with the face of Doubao and nothing but feet below. This isn't the first time "DouFoot" has been a scene-stealer — it previously appeared at a Xiaohongshu hackathon with a "Hatsune Miku" style face (the first version was called "Leg Miku"), and also enthusiastically participated in the Yizhuang Robot Marathon this past April.
But this seemingly absurd product represents a clear trend: the threshold for embodied development is getting lower and lower. The developer of "DouFoot" is ZHANG Zihao, a student from Tongji University; the feet of "DouFoot" come from a PaiPi robot priced at just over 10,000 yuan; and the face and head shell of Doubao are 3D printed.
Unitree: Recreating the Spring Festival Gala Boxing Moves
Unitree, which always knows how to put on the most eye-catching shows at WAIC, brought the same robot performance from the 2026 Spring Festival Gala this time. Six models of humanoid robots demonstrated talents in boxing and group dancing.
Unitree robots
Apart from the "classic performances", new products also made a grand appearance. Whether at the entrance of the Expo Center or at its own booth, Unitree showcased the world's first manned transformable mecha GD01 — this 2.8-meter-tall "iron man" that looks strikingly similar to Mobile Suit Gundam can switch between bipedal and quadrupedal modes, and is officially positioned as a means of transportation.
Of course, the era of "one mecha per household" is still far away. The GD01 sets a new record for Unitree product pricing: starting at 3.9 million yuan.
Unitree GD01
Fast Evolution: The "Argentina" of the Humanoid Robot World
Unitree's stage is the Spring Festival Gala, while Fast Evolution's main arena is the World Cup.
At WAIC, Fast Evolution brought the Booster T series humanoid robot, which just won the championship at the 2026 RoboCup Robot World Cup, to its booth to show off its football skills.
Fast Evolution Booster T series humanoid robot
Compared with the T1 model used in RoboCup, the one brought by Fast Evolution is the newly released T2 flagship model. This robot is equipped with NVIDIA's Thor chip, which directly sets a new record for the computing power of bipedal humanoid robots, while improving its dynamic balance and long-term task planning capabilities.
Ultimately, the professional mission of this robot is not playing football, but for educational scientific innovation and industrial inspection.
Hengzhi Future: We Are Serious About Making "Puppy" Robots
Amidst many abstract-looking quadruped robots, Hengzhi Future is dedicated to making a truly lifelike "puppy".
"Most of the current quadruped robots don't look like real dogs. Our differentiation lies in making the dog as realistic as possible." According to the staff, this Hengbot robot dog "Xiao Tian" focuses on pet companionship, and is currently the world's smallest bionic dog.
Hengzhi Future Hengbot robot dog "Xiao Tian"
At the same time, "Xiao Tian" also opens up secondary development interfaces. Users can modify the robot dog's algorithm according to different usage scenarios and personal needs to achieve various customized functions.
Amid the Hype of the Doubao Smartphone, Nubia Launches an AI Pet
The Doubao Phone 2.0 — Nubia NaviX Ultra, which has been promoted for more than ten days, was sealed in a display cabinet at the event.
It comes in four color options: Blue Horizon (blue-purple), Dreamland (pink), black and white. The rear camera is arranged horizontally, and there is a separate orange button on the side to call the AI and activate the Doubao AI agent.
Nubia NaviX Ultra
The previously officially announced Nubia AI pet robot iMoochi happened to go on sale on the first day of WAIC.
The iMoochi focuses on emotional companionship. Rather than being a super-intelligent device, it's more like a pet with its own unique personality and language system. The staff told us that different series of iMoochi products have different constellations and MBTI personalities, and will respond to humans using their unique "iMoochi language".
For example, the white iMoochi we encountered was an Aries, and it loved having its nose stroked.
Nubia AI pet robot iMoochi
AI Family Members Are Here: Helping You with Every Chore
A major change in the 2026 embodied exhibition zone is that there are far more, and more capable, AI life companions designed to help you with household chores.
So many manufacturers have entered the home scenario — there are cute little robots that fit in the palm of your hand, blinking their big eyes and begging to be petted;
Fourier Intelligence desktop robot GR Nano
There are also practical, hardworking models that are flexible enough to help care for the elderly and children;
NOE Intelligent foldable dual-arm embodied robot KNOWIN-X1
Happy Tech miniature humanoid robot M1, which can autonomously mount a pulley base and move around in home scenarios
AI home companions that previously could only bring you coffee have now upgraded to make hand-brewed coffee and even bake pizzas;
Urichi nanny robot, capable of making hand-brewed coffee, drawing sugar paintings, and baking pizzas
In one city's exhibition zone, robots have already started working diligently to help take out the trash;
Urban environmental sanitation robot
There are also robots that solve the most annoying household chores: picking up parcels, taking out dirty laundry, playing with children, and tidying up their toys — would you be interested in renting such a multi-functional home assistant for 3,000 yuan a month?
Future Near home robot, taking out washed clothes
