The robots at this year's WRC have started to "go to work"

From August 19 to 23, the 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC 2026) is held at Etrong International Exhibition & Convention Center, Yizhuang, Beijing.

Reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily observed on site that, compared with previous sessions, the robots on the exhibition booths this year are obviously much busier: some are making coffee, some are sorting parcels, some are doing welding and loading, some are climbing hollow stairs, and some are promoting vehicles at the Mercedes-Benz booth, each doing their own job. "Being capable of actual work" has replaced "being capable of performing" and become the core keyword of this conference.

The backdrop is that capital is re-pricing the sector. According to public data, the total financing amount of China's embodied intelligence track in the first half of 2026 reached 935 billion yuan, 6 times higher than the same period last year; on August 19, the opening day of the conference, Unitree Robotics was listed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board, with its share price surging by 460% on the first trading day. With capital pouring in, questions also emerge: can robots really do practical work, and in what scenarios? Our reporter conducted a field inventory of robots by scenario at the exhibition, and noticed that robots already have been put into actual posts in four tracks: logistics, production line, inspection, and commercial services, but large-scale deployment is still relatively rare.

Logistics and Warehousing: The First Scenario Where ROI Is Clearly Calculable

Logistics is the most frequently discussed landing scenario this year, for a simple reason: the return on investment is clearly calculable.

Starwise Era presented a full-stack embodied intelligence solution for the logistics industry at the conference. According to the company's introduction to reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, this is the industry's first embodied logistics landing solution that has completed PMF (Product-Market Fit) verification. It has cooperated with two benchmark logistics enterprises, SF Express and China Post, to realize normal operation in more than 10 logistics centers across the country, and has recently received praise and recommendation from the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.

The full-size bipedal humanoid robot Starwise L7 and the full-drive dexterous hand XHAND series are also exhibited simultaneously on site. XHAND 1 has 12 fully active degrees of freedom, with a maximum grip force of 80N per hand, which can lift a 25kg heavy object and complete more than 100 types of operations such as pinching the express waybill and tightening screws.

"Especially in the logistics scenario, more and more customers are willing to discuss practical solutions, and they will calculate their ROI," said Xi Yue, co-founder of Starwise Era, in an interview with Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily during the conference. He explained, The logistics scenario has clear requirements for working rhythm, accuracy and working hours. As long as these requirements are met and the ROI is calculable, manufacturers are willing to pay for the solutions.

According to his disclosure, the deployment time for its solution to migrate from one site to a new site has been reduced from about two months in the past to less than one week.

Also in the logistics section, Magic Atom moved the real scene of warehouse circulation operation into the exhibition booth: the wheeled humanoid robot D1 is responsible for loading and unloading materials on the production line and cross-area transfer; XG Z1 uses 3D vision and AI multi-modal fusion perception to grab and place the disorderly stacked materials one by one; the AGV sorting robot HyperBot completes the terminal sorting, and the official claims that the real-time sorting success rate of multiple SKUs reaches 99%. Its 6-second end effector quick-change system for XG Z1 aims to break the rigid barrier of "one robot for one single use" of traditional industrial robots.

At this conference, Forceling also demonstrated the latest capabilities of its embodied foundation model DM0.5, presenting the long-duration operation capability of the same model for multi-task and cross-scenario through four real scenarios: peeling cucumbers, cutting cucumbers, building the Great Wall with building blocks, and sorting on the conveyor belt.

Industrial Production Line: From "One Robot for One Post" to "One Robot with Multiple Capabilities"

The key word for industrial scenarios is flexibility.

Photon Tech demonstrated the industry's first autonomous cycle operation at two stations by a single embodied intelligent robot at the conference: in the continuous operation at two stations, Phi-Bot X1 first uses the right gripper to grab the workpiece on the rack of the welding and loading station, moves to the sliding table for double-hole alignment and placement, with alignment accuracy up to millimeter level and attitude accuracy controlled within 0.3°, completing the loading process; then cooperates with the sliding table, controls the sliding table to move, grabs the workpiece and places it on the rack to complete the unloading process.

After that, it autonomously switches to the mobile quality inspection station to complete the dynamic detection of the car body surface, and then returns to start the next round of operation. The two tasks are undertaken by the left and right arms respectively, and the task switching and station transfer are completed autonomously.

Previously, the robot has completed the single-station verification of zero-error welding and loading for 21.5 hours in 3 consecutive days at the ATC exhibition in June. According to the company's introduction to Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, the traditional automation scheme takes about half a year to complete the production line transformation for such stations, while Phi-Bot X1 can compress the deployment cycle to weekly or even daily level, and the quality inspection efficiency is increased by 51%. At present, it has reached commercial cooperation with many leading domestic and foreign automotive enterprises.

Zhang Tao, founder and CEO of Photon Tech, said: When a robot can autonomously switch between heterogeneous stations and operate continuously, it is no longer a simple execution unit, but a productivity node that can independently undertake a variety of process tasks.

Zhang Tao introduced to reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily that the first landing track chosen by Photon Tech is automobile manufacturing. We should focus on the demands of real scenarios, and let embodied intelligent robots give full play to greater value in scenarios. The automobile industry is currently the large-scale industrial sector with the largest scale, highest complexity and most standardized production.

Boyin Hechuang, in cooperation with FA Robotics, exhibited the industrial-grade embodied intelligent robot BW10-Lite: the maximum running speed is 1.5m/s, the maximum load of dual arms is 20kg, and the repeated positioning accuracy is ±0.05mm, covering industrial scenarios such as handling, loading and unloading, sorting, assembly, quality inspection and patrol inspection, serving industries including auto parts, new energy, 3C electronics and white household appliances.

Boyin Hechuang told reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily that the "brain" supporting the robot is its self-developed industrial vertical model "Bolt", which has zero-shot and few-shot task generalization capabilities. This model benefits from the support of the end-to-end VLA model and simulation data platform of its joint venture partner Galaxy General Intelligence, as well as the real industrial scenarios opened by Bosch Group.

Boyin Hechuang is a joint venture incubated jointly by B Capital under Bosch and Galaxy General Intelligence. It previously completed a Pre-A round of financing of nearly 300 million RMB.

Ren Jingwei, CEO of Boyin Hechuang, said that relying on China's complete manufacturing supply chain system, the company is continuously promoting the localized mass production process of industrial-grade embodied intelligent robots. With the continuous improvement of core components, manufacturing processes, and the coordination of upstream and downstream industrial chains, Boyin Hechuang is expected to form comprehensive advantages in cost, delivery time, inventory, quality and product iteration cycle.

Zhi Square demonstrated the industrial capability of its Aibao robot in grabbing PCB boards: facing trays with different models, sizes, colors, even transparent and reflective surfaces, the robot needs to complete a series of continuous actions including material taking from trays, loading and unloading, moving and transporting, and dual-arm cooperation. According to the company's statement to Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, it has achieved actual landing and repurchase in fields such as semiconductor display, automobile manufacturing and biotechnology.

Starwise Era is also making reserves for the manufacturing industry. Xi Yue revealed that the company is promoting POC projects in manufacturing scenarios such as automobiles and 3C, as well as retail scenarios, "but we have not achieved large-scale deployment, so we have not exposed too much related information in advance."

Patrol and Security: After Mass Production of Ten Thousand Units

The threshold of this track is mass production capacity and terrain adaptability.

Zhishen Tech participated in the exhibition with the positioning of "robots that can do real work". It announced a set of mass production data to reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily on site: As of June 2026, the cumulative mass production of embodied intelligent robots has exceeded 15,000 units, with a monthly production capacity of more than 5,000 units, making it the first enterprise in China whose annual production capacity of full-stack self-developed joint modules exceeds 1 million units.

In terms of landing, the official said that thousands of quadruped robots have been deployed on the front line of security, and its emergency products cover more than 100 fire brigades, detachments and battalions, with hundreds of power inspection projects delivered cumulatively.

The technical highlights of its exhibited products lie in the "brain" and "cerebellum": the brain end is the ZSD (Zhishen Drive) end-to-end intelligent driving large model, which the official calls the industry's first data-driven end-to-end intelligent driving large model. The goal is to let robots "recognize roads, walk smoothly, and go wherever they want to go", getting rid of the limitation of traditional SLAM solutions that "the map needs to be rebuilt once the scenario is changed".

The sense-control integrated model at the cerebellum end, as introduced, is the first in the world to realize the autonomous climbing of industrial hollow steel ladders by wheeled-legged quadruped robots. The supporting surface of hollow stairs is discontinuous, which wheeled-legged robots could not pass autonomously before, but such stairs are unavoidable channels in multi-layer industrial facilities such as electric power and chemical plants. In addition, its quadruped robot Windbreaker RX completed the 21km whole course without any fault in the 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon.

In the patrol and security section, Magic Atom exhibited the light industrial quadruped robot dog MagicDog T1 and the industrial quadruped robot dog MagicDog Y1, forming a load gradient with light and heavy matching. The weight of T1 starts from 18kg, supporting a 15kg-level load, and can crawl through narrow areas such as factory pipelines and the bottom of shelves.

Commercial Services: Robots Start to "Work on Their Posts"

The competition in commercial service scenarios focuses on the capability of normal operation.

The Aibao robot from Zhi Square made coffee, ice cream and cocktails at the conference site, and also acted as a "robot shop assistant" in the WRC official gift shop to undertake the sale of souvenirs, walking through the crowd to provide services.

According to the company's introduction to Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, its "Wisdom Cube" smart service space has been in normal operation in more than ten provinces and cities across the country — the "robot shop assistant" seen on the exhibition booth has been working day after day in the real commercial space outside the booth. On the technical side, Zhi Square launched and open sourced the brain-inspired architecture embodied model NeuroVLA this year, introducing the cooperative mechanism of human brain "cortex-cerebellum-spinal cord" into the robot control system.

Guo Yandong, founder and CEO of Zhi Square, mentioned in his speech during WRC that drawing on brain science, transforming the high-efficiency mechanism of human brain into the architectural innovation of embodied large model, realizing cooperative planning, online learning and safety reflection on the time scale, so as to make robots have intuitive reaction and scenario memory like human beings, and achieve more natural and safer intelligent interaction.

Unbounded Power teamed up with HOLLYS, a chain coffee brand under South Korea's KG Group, to create a "robot coffee space": the robot K15 equipped with the self-developed embodied general brain MWA™ latent space world model continuously completes services such as beverage delivery, desktop cleaning, garbage recycling and seat reset in the open customer area. The official said that MWA™ ranks first in the world in the RoboCasa GR1 TableTop list initiated by institutions such as Stanford University.

The site also demonstrated "three-robot collaborative operation" (three robots complete the autonomous division of labor of folding, classification and packaging based on the same model) and "beading with fingertips" (millimeter-level fine operation). According to the company's disclosure to reporters from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, its cumulative orders have reached about 700 million yuan, and the first batch of global deliveries have been launched.

Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center brought its partner Mercedes-Benz to the exhibition booth: Tiangong 3.0 acted as a "silicon-based recommendation officer", and completed the whole process of welcome reception, vehicle model explanation and consultation interaction without human intervention at the exhibition site with dense crowds. In the future, Tiangong 3.0 will enter Mercedes-Benz stores, auto shows, events, live broadcasts and car owner life scenarios, to undertake full-link services such as welcome and guidance, vehicle model promotion, interactive check-in and ceremony delivery.

In addition, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center reproduced the landing achievements of commercial tour guide, energy inspection, metering detection and logistics sorting on site: it assisted Jiangsu Institute of Metrology to complete the full-process automatic verification of infrared thermometers, with the efficiency increased by more than 6 times; integrated with the State Grid Guangming Large Model, the robot can autonomously complete operations such as operation ticket reading and electric control cabinet detection. It also cooperated with Xiaowu Intelligence to build an industrial logistics sorting solution, smoothly completing industrial logistics links such as picking and placing and handling of industrial material boxes, and material sorting and sorting on site.

In the commercial service section, there is also the Starwise Q5 from Starwise Era, which provides consultation guidance and material delivery services for scenarios such as retail, government affairs, exhibition halls and offices. The official said that 9 of the world's top 10 technology enterprises by market value have become its customers.

What Makes Robots Capable of Working, and What Is Still Lacking

Looking at the whole exhibition, the competition of "being capable of actual work" is essentially the competition of "brain". At this conference, a large number of embodied models were released intensively: Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center launched the unified representation embodied world model Pelican-Unify, and announced the commercial use of Pelican VL-2.0, the first embodied large model in China that has passed the record-filing of the Cyberspace Administration of China; Zhi Square open sourced the brain-inspired architecture NeuroVLA; Unbounded Power's MWA™ latent space world model, Zhishen Tech's ZSD intelligent driving large model, Photon Tech's physical native intelligence, and Boyin Hechuang's Bolt vertical model, each pointing to different solutions to the generalization capability. On August 21, the theme of the industrial forum held by Xinghaitu during the conference was simply called "From Model to Productivity".

However, rational judgment also exists at the scene. Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree