Technology News
Latest technology news and updates
Total: 510
Swiss ‘Dexterous Hand’ Leaps Forward: A Robotic Hand That Grasps, Flips and Crawls Its Way to Real-World Tasks
EPFL researchers have developed a modular robotic hand that replicates 33 human grasp types and adds dual‑sided grasping plus autonomous crawling, enabling it to handle oversized objects and reposition itself to process multiple targets. Published in Nature Communications, the device bridges a gap between laboratory dexterity demonstrations and practical applications in industry, service robotics and field exploration, though challenges in sensing, energy and integration remain.
China’s Low‑Orbit Internet Accelerates: From Drone Firefighting to Phone‑to‑Satellite Ambitions
Chinese commercial space firms are moving fast from tests to scaled deployments of low‑Earth‑orbit internet constellations. Trials combining satellites with drones, cars and experimental phone‑direct links demonstrate practical applications for disaster response, logistics and ubiquitous connectivity, while mass manufacture and falling component costs point to broader commercialisation by 2030.
China’s 6G Pitch: How Integrated Communication-and-Sensing Could Rewrite Industry Connectivity
Professor Wang Jiangzhou urged that 6G should be built around integrated communication and sensing, arguing 5G cannot meet the latency, reliability and situational awareness needs of industrial and safety‑critical applications. He stressed multi‑station cooperative sensing, shared hardware and unified waveforms as central technical directions, and positioned China’s policy moves alongside global efforts to capture leadership in 6G.
Fu Sheng: AI Will Make Machines Orbit People — Robots, Agents and the Case for ‘Start with the End’
Fu Sheng, founder of Cheetah Mobile and OrionStar, argues the AI era will flip human–machine roles and calls for rebuilding apps as AI‑native products. He stresses a scenario‑first approach for robots and devices to secure commercial returns, while warning that foundational models still need improvement for decision‑critical tasks.
China Forces Electric Cars to Slim Down: New Efficiency Rules Target the 'Battery-Bloated' NEV Boom
China has introduced a mandatory energy‑consumption standard that ties electric‑vehicle electricity use to curb weight, forcing manufacturers to curb the recent trend of heavier battery‑bulked models. The rule will accelerate lightweighting, higher‑density batteries and systems integration while reducing resource pressure from oversized pack production.
Chinese Commercial Launcher Tests Deep‑Throttle, Reusable LOX‑Kerosene Engine Built with 3D‑Printed Stainless Steel
Zhongke Yuhang has completed acceptance tests of its Liqing‑1 30‑ton LOX‑kerosene engine, demonstrating deep throttle (100%–50%) and 1% thrust precision, using a needle‑and‑pin injector and stainless‑steel 3D‑printed components. The company plans to use three Liqing‑1 engines on its LiHong‑2 reusable vehicle and is preparing larger Liqing‑2 tests, marking a material advance for China’s commercial reusable‑rocket ambitions.
Beijing’s “Rocket Street” Opens as a New Hub for China’s Commercial Space Drive
Beijing has opened the Rocket Street complex in E‑Town, a 145,000 sqm commercial space hub that consolidates R&D, testing, manufacturing and operations under one roof. The project underpins Beijing’s strategic push to scale China’s commercial space industry, accelerate reusable‑rocket capability and foster hundreds of high‑tech firms and unicorns by 2028.
Small, Open and Multimodal: Chinese Startup Releases 10‑Billion‑Parameter Vision‑Language Model Claiming SOTA Performance
Chinese start‑up Jieyue Xingchen open‑sourced Step3‑VL‑10B, a 10‑billion‑parameter multimodal model that the team says matches same‑scale state‑of‑the‑art performance on vision, reasoning, math and dialogue. The release highlights a push for efficient, deployable multimodal models and will prompt independent verification and community adoption.
CES 2026: The Year Physical AI Left the Screen — China’s Hardware Push and the End of Demo Theatre
CES 2026 moved the narrative from flashy demos to physical, embodied AI and underscored China’s shift from exporter to global supplier of AI hardware. Investors returned with cautious optimism: the technology is making measurable progress, but crowded categories and deployment challenges demand clearer paths to revenue and regulatory compliance.
China Moves to Certify Homegrown Testing Instruments as Strategy to Break Foreign Dominance
China's State Administration for Market Regulation will roll out a nationwide validation and evaluation system in 2026 to speed the adoption of domestically produced testing instruments. The programme focuses on standards, overcoming core technological bottlenecks, and promoting nationally competitive brands, with an "AI + testing" push to modernise equipment. The effort is part of a broader drive for technological self-reliance that could reduce dependence on foreign suppliers but will need internationally credible accreditation to win global acceptance.
China’s Xinghe Power Clears Major Engine Test for Reusable 'Zhishenxing-2' Rocket, Signalling Private Sector Maturation
Xinghe Power Aerospace has successfully completed a full-system hot-fire test of the CQ-90 main engine for its Zhishenxing-2 reusable rocket, advancing a private-sector effort to field medium- and heavy-lift reusable launchers. The milestone reduces technical risk ahead of integrated and flight testing and underscores the growing maturity of China’s commercial space industry.
OpenAI's Next Growth Engine: Could Conversation Ads Carve into Google’s Crown by 2030?
An Evercore analyst forecasts OpenAI could earn about $25 billion annually from advertising by 2030 if tests of in‑chat ads scale successfully. The move would leverage ChatGPT’s large user base and rich intent signals, but OpenAI faces entrenched competition from Google, privacy and regulatory hurdles, and the challenge of translating scale into profit.