Robot Grand Stage, Show Up If You Have the Goods! WRC Exclusive Preview: Complete Machine Manufacturers Flex Their Muscles While Component Suppliers Make Money Quietly

The recently concluded WAIC 2026 in Shanghai has made the robot sector the absolute focus of attention. If you still feel unfulfilled after the visit, you must not miss the upcoming World Robot Conference.

From August 19 to 23, the 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC) will be hosted in Beijing, with the theme of "Human-Robot Symbiosis, Industry and Demand Integration". According to official announcements, this edition will gather over 300 exhibitors, 36% more than last year, featuring more than 2000 exhibits and over 150 debut new products. At the same time, more than 10,000 contestants from over 20 countries will also participate in the finals of the robot competition.

Source: Previous WRC archive

It has been less than two weeks since WAIC wrapped up in Shanghai, and most enterprises have already showcased their new products once. It is unrealistic to launch brand new offerings in such a short period, but WRC has a different focus from WAIC. Roughly speaking, WAIC leans more towards demonstrating technical prowess, while WRC prioritizes practical implementation.

WAIC presents robots from the AI perspective, focusing more on relatively underlying technologies such as large models and algorithms, while WRC pays more attention to mass production and real-world scenarios, and is more committed to solving the core problem of "who the products are sold to".

Perhaps we can get the answer to this question on site at WRC. Lei Technology (ID: leitech) will also send a reporting team to the front line of the event to bring you first-hand in-depth analysis.

The First Year of Mass Production: Full Machine Makers Showcase Their Strength Collectively

This edition of the conference sets up four major pavilions: Innovation Pavilion, Cooperation Pavilion, Intelligent Manufacturing Pavilion, and Fun Exploration Pavilion.

Among them, the Innovation Pavilion mainly displays complete robots and humanoid robots, the Cooperation Pavilion takes cooperation as the theme and focuses on exchanges between domestic and overseas enterprises, the Intelligent Manufacturing Pavilion exhibits core components, and the Fun Exploration Pavilion houses innovative products and interesting performances.

The Innovation Pavilion is a newly completed venue this year, covering an area of 20,000 square meters, which counts as the biggest hardware upgrade of the conference. A batch of full machine enterprises including Fourier Intelligence, Deep Robotics, Unitree, Galbot, etc. will display their latest products here, and the central enterprise exhibition area is also located in the Innovation Pavilion.

However, specific details have not been announced yet, and what each enterprise will bring remains unknown. Combining recent moves of various enterprises, Lei Technology predicts what new moves several leading players will show at WRC.

Unitree: Robot Brain Becomes New Highlight, GD01 Manned Mech Is Highly Likely to Make a Return Appearance

Unitree is very likely to become the biggest traffic attractor in the Innovation Pavilion of this WRC. The most eye-catching one is definitely the GD01 manned transformable mech, which can switch between humanoid biped and quadruped forms. It became a viral hit after its debut at WAIC, and will most likely return at WRC. But it does not rule out the possibility that Unitree will bring more advanced new products. After all, the WRC official has stated that more than 150 new products will make their debut, and Unitree, known as the model worker in the industry, is unlikely to only bring old products.

At last year's WRC, Unitree held the global debut of two heavyweight new products, including the quadruped robot A2 and the humanoid robot R1. At WAIC two weeks ago, it even built a dedicated fighting arena to demonstrate movements such as punch-kick combinations, dodging and blocking of the robot. Unitree has always been very creative in its exhibitions, and the competition at this year's WRC is more intense than last year, so Unitree is expected to bring more surprising highlights.

Source: Shot by Lei Technology

Another noteworthy product is Unitree's self-developed industrial embodied large model UnifoLM-X1-0. Currently, this system has completed pilot deployment in Unitree's own factory, and can independently complete the precision assembly of joint motors. It seems that after gaining a firm foothold with hardware, Unitree is ready to increase investment in the robot brain sector.

Galbot: Featured in News Broadcast, More Industrial Cases to Be Presented at WRC

Recently, the valuation of Galbot has exceeded 20 billion yuan. Different from other robot manufacturers, Galbot takes a practical, work-oriented route with specific target scenarios. For example, its Galbot G1 is a wheeled dual-arm robot designed for flat-ground environments such as retail stores, pharmacies, warehouses and factory workshops. The wheeled structure is more stable than bipedal structure, consumes less power, and does not need to allocate computing power and electricity for balance control.

At the just-concluded WAIC, G1 demonstrated the long-horizon breakfast making task of toasting bread and pouring drinks under continuous disturbances. It could still complete the task even when the bread and kettle were moved away, and was even featured in the News Broadcast. This capability is supported by the self-developed "Galaxy Star Brain" end-to-end embodied large model, which is claimed to be the world's first full-body full-hand end-to-end large model that integrates brain-cerebellum-neural control into a single architecture.

At WRC, Galbot is very likely to continue the full-scene demonstration strategy from WAIC, but the focus will no longer be limited to "making breakfast", and will shift to more industrial implementation cases.

Source: Galbot

Fast Motion: Won All Gold Medals at RoboCup, T2 Flagship Platform Opens to the Public

The positioning of Fast Motion is different from other full machine manufacturers. It does not pursue a general-purpose humanoid robot that can do everything, and positions itself as a "platform company". In simple terms, it provides the robot body and development tools, allowing developers to create applications on top of them.

At WRC, Fast Motion has booths in both the Innovation Pavilion and the Fun Exploration Pavilion. It is expected to bring the real T2 prototype demonstration and on-site experience of Booster Studio. The booth in the Fun Exploration Pavilion may also set up interactive links such as robot football. For audiences who focus on embodied intelligence development platforms, the booth of Fast Motion is more worth visiting than manufacturers that only produce complete robots.

Another off-site update: At the just-concluded 2026 RoboCup World Cup, 38 teams used Fast Motion's robots as competition carriers. Three teams including Tsinghua University Vulcan Team, B-Human Team and Wuhan University Team won all gold medals in all groups of the biped humanoid category. Traditional strong international teams such as Germany's HTWK Team and the US UT Austin Team all chose Fast Motion's robots, which fully proves its strong technical strength.

Deep Robotics: Dominant Market Share in Quadruped Robot Sector, All-Weather Humanoid DR02 Launches Commercial Operation

The leading position of Deep Robotics in the quadruped robot sector can be illustrated by a set of data: its market share exceeds 85% in domestic power inspection scenarios, over 90% in fire emergency scenarios, more than 600 industry projects have been deployed globally, serving leading clients such as State Grid, China Southern Power Grid and Baosteel, with products exported to 45 countries around the world.

At WAIC, Deep Robotics presented the "One Person, One Cat, One Dog" product matrix covering three forms: quadruped, wheeled-legged and humanoid. The most noteworthy one is DR02, the world's first industry-grade all-weather humanoid robot, which is 175cm tall, weighs 75kg, has 31 degrees of freedom, IP66 protection level, can operate stably in environments from -20℃ to 55℃, with a standard walking speed of 1.5m/s, and can independently climb 25cm steps and 20° slopes. At present, DR02 has completed the field test of precise operation in substations, and is expected to officially launch commercial operation soon.

At WRC, Deep Robotics is very likely to bring the updated version of DR02 or new scenario verification data. In addition, the Wildcat S10 wheeled-legged robot and six industry standardized solutions are also highly likely to make their appearance. After all, Deep Robotics has just completed a C-round financing of over 500 million yuan, and has sufficient capital support to hold a large-scale exhibition at WRC.

UBTech: Bionic Emotional Companion Robot Focuses on "Growth Companion" Positioning

UBTech has recently taken the "bionic emotional companion" route. It launched the UBtech U1 series at the Shenzhen press conference on June 30. The product is built in 1:1 real human proportion, has autonomous movement capability and stronger computing power, equipped with a self-developed "growth-oriented" emotional large model, with an emotion recognition accuracy rate of over 90%. Pre-orders opened on June 2, and the total orders across all channels exceeded 13,361 units by the day of the press conference, with delivery starting on September 16.

Source: UBTech

But Zhou Jian, the founder, also admitted that the manufacturing process of bionic robots is still in the exploration stage, and the overall mass production and technical difficulty are extremely high, which he described as "extremely rare in history". The U1 series is positioned for the family emotional companion scenario, does not undertake housework such as cleaning and cooking, and is only sold to adult users. To put it plainly, it is a "cyber chat buddy" priced from hundreds of thousands to nearly a million yuan.

The U1 series or other modified versions will most likely appear on site at WRC. But according to current market feedback, battery life is the biggest problem of UBTech U1 at present, which is only 2 to 4 hours, far from supporting all-weather companionship. It remains to be seen if there will be a battery-life enhanced version at WRC, which is well worth looking forward to.

RoboBody: Achieved 10,000 Units Mass Production, Completed Humanoid Marathon with Zero Faults

RoboBody just saw its 10,000th industry-grade embodied intelligent robot roll off the production line in June. It took only 10 months to achieve 10,000 units mass production, which ranks at the top level in the industry. Its core products include bionic quadruped robots, humanoid robots and high power density joint modules. In the 2026 Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Marathon, RoboBody's humanoid robot "WindBreaker RX" finished the race with the result of "zero fault, zero fall, zero replacement". After that, it launched the new model "RoboBody Silver Wing NE01".

Meanwhile, RoboBody released MATRiX 2.0, the world's first open-world high-fidelity simulation platform, which solves the Sim-to-Real Gap problem, allowing robots to complete massive training in the virtual environment before being migrated to the real world. WRC will very likely showcase the full product matrix as well as the MATRiX 2.0 simulation platform.

In short, although full machine manufacturers have different development strategies, they all realize that simply performing somersaults and dancing is far from enough. They have to present practically implementable products. Whether the products can be successfully implemented is another matter, but at least we can make a judgment: if a manufacturer still takes performing somersaults and dancing as its core scenario at WRC, it must have fallen behind the overall industry rhythm.

Supply Chain Players Stand on Equal Footing with Full Machine Makers, "Shovel Sellers" Make Quiet Profits

Compared with the Innovation Pavilion, the Intelligent Manufacturing Pavilion gathers a group of core component enterprises. The officially announced exhibitors include: GreenHarmony, Wolong Electric, Tongchuan, Xinjian, Wuzhou Xinchun, Mingzhi Electric, Leadshine, Xiangming Intelligence, Weichuang Power, Nanfang Precision.

In addition, the total exhibitor list from the third-party exhibition platform (Juzhan) also lists enterprises such as Shuanghuan Transmission, Zhongda Lide, Sanhua Intelligent Control, but they are not mentioned in the official introduction of the Intelligent Manufacturing Pavilion. It remains to be confirmed whether we can see them at WRC on site.

These enterprises are not as well-known as full machine manufacturers, but they are the group that make steady profits quietly in this industry. Gold diggers may not make money, but shovel sellers definitely do. This rule also applies to the current humanoid robot sector. The common feature of these enterprises is that they rarely hold press conferences, but their order backlogs have been scheduled to the year after next.

According to the report of National Business Daily, GreenHarmony is the absolute leading domestic harmonic reducer manufacturer, with its domestic market ranking first and global market ranking second. It is currently the only domestic harmonic reducer enterprise that has entered Tesla's supply chain, and its orders have been scheduled to 2027.

The core products of Shuanghuan Transmission are RV reducers and planetary roller screws. Its 2026 robot business order target exceeds 1.5 billion yuan, with a production capacity plan of up to 500,000 units. Sanhua Intelligent Control is the exclusive supplier of the rotary joint for Tesla Optimus, with a value of about 28,000 to 30,000 yuan per unit. These enterprises that we rarely hear of in daily life have very impressive business data.

There are also a group of enterprises focusing on dexterous hands and tactile technology in the Cooperation Pavilion, which have similar development status.

Lingxin Qiaoshou specializes in dexterous hands, with a global market share of over 80% in high-degree-of-freedom dexterous hands, and the self-development rate of its core components reaches 93%. Its full Linker Hand product series covers 11 to 42 degrees of freedom, and it is the only enterprise in the industry that can realize mass production of all drive schemes including direct drive, connecting rod and tendon rope. It is worth mentioning that the valuation of Lingxin Qiaoshou is about 24 billion yuan. The valuation of a dexterous hand component company has reached this level, and the reason is no other than its core competitiveness in key components.

Source: Lingxin Qiaoshou

In addition, 2026 is known as the "first year of tactile technology" in the industry. In the past two years,