# industrial automation
Latest news and articles about industrial automation
Total: 5 articles found
Robots on the Spring Gala: China’s Industrial AI Pays a Price for Publicity
China’s Spring Festival Gala has become a major stage for robotics firms chasing public attention, but the industry still faces fundamental commercial challenges. High-profile performances generate emotional value without addressing core needs such as repeatable deployments, cash-flow sustainability, and industrial reliability.
From Gala Acts to Factory Floors: China’s Humanoid Robots Move from Spectacle to Service
During the 2026 Lunar New Year China’s leading robotics firms expanded humanoid robot roles from Spring Festival Gala performances to real‑world service and industrial deployments. Advances in motion, autonomy and multi‑agent coordination pair with early commercial rollouts in retail and manufacturing, signalling a shift from spectacle to practical utility while raising questions about mass production, costs and technological bottlenecks.
Xiaomi’s Robotics Team Unveils TacRefineNet — Millimetre-Scale Tactile Pose Refinement Without Vision
Xiaomi’s robotics team unveiled TacRefineNet, a tactile‑only pose refinement model that can reduce grasping errors to millimetre precision without cameras or 3D object models. Demonstrated in both simulation and real‑world tests on automotive parts, the open publication of technical details could accelerate industrial adoption—provided hardware durability and generalisation challenges are addressed.
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 Humanoid-Robot Boom Enters a Darwinian Phase as ‘Brains’ Hold Back Mass Adoption
China’s humanoid-robot sector is undergoing rapid consolidation as a few companies capture orders and funding while many others struggle to commercialise. Analysts identify the AI "brain" — specialised large models and embodied datasets — as the critical bottleneck that will determine whether robots reach mass-market utility or remain niche industrial tools.