WRC 2026 pivots to real work: UBTech humanoids clock in 9-to-5 on the show floor
智东西 · wechat · 2026-08-20
At the World Robot Conference 2026, real-work demos replaced dancing performances as the highlight. UBTech showed a "working team": Walker C1 hosted the booth, while 10+ Cruzr Y1/S2 units handled sheet-metal loading, parts handling, palletizing and e-commerce sorting on a replicated factory line, working autonomously 9-to-5; the home-facing hyper-realistic humanoid U1 made its debut, marking UBTech's first systematic showcase across industrial, commercial and home scenarios.
Technically, UBTech pursues a full-stack approach: harmonic reducers and NVIDIA Thor chips, plus a three-layer stack of base model, world model and action model. Its open-sourced Thinker 1.0 took 9 first places among sub-10B embodied-brain benchmarks; Thinker-WM tops Libero; Thinker-VLA spans 1B–100B with pure on-device deployment, lifting industrial inference efficiency 176% while cutting storage 60%.
VP Jiao Jichao argues the second half of embodied AI is a contest of real-scene deployment, commercialization and order conversion. UBTech also formed a chip JV with MetaX and builds dexterous hands and servos via a subsidiary, constructing an ecosystem moat across compute, components and scene partners.
More from Companies & People
- Future roadmap for AI apps: Vertical utility and full-stack control — annbordetsky · 2026-08-20
- Ex-OpenAI exec: Transformer architecture is the new learning bottleneck — _arohan_ · 2026-08-20
- Risk of open work: labeled 'educator' undervalues the art — PurzBeats · 2026-08-20
- One-man startup uses GPT-5.6 for cross-project agent collaboration — every · 2026-08-20
- Horace Dediu: EU tech policy plays chess looking one move ahead — asymco · 2026-08-20
- ThursdAI Aug 20: OpenRouter, Computer History, and HyperFrames — WolframRvnwlf · 2026-08-20