Humanoid robots take centre stage at CES 2026

• Boston Dynamics unveils Atlas humanoid robot at CES
• Nvidia’s Huang touts robot revolution for manufacturing and logistics
• Key robot deals involving LG, Google and Hyundai also announced in Vegas

The halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center are packed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but not just with humans, as robotics have taken centre stage.

Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot (which looks like a dog) has been a familiar sight at tech conferences in recent years, but this year the Hyundai-owned engineering firm unveiled its humanoid robot Atlas at the show.

According to Boston Dynamics, Atlas aims to reduce repetitive human physical tasks, such as carrying objects, laying the “groundwork for robot commercialisation and [a] collaborative human-robot environment”. Hyundai aims to deploy a version of Atlas to help assemble cars at its electric vehicle factory near Georgia, US, by 2028.

Another robotics initiative on show at CES is LG’s Cloid dual-arm home assistant humanoid, which has been built with housework tasks in mind, such as folding clothes or loading laundry into a washing machine. LG did not reveal if or when Cloid might be made available for purchase.

Robotics is seen as a key developing vertical for enterprises looking to automate their manufacturing or warehouse operations, and for telcos, such technologies could become a vital revenue stream, as operators have an opportunity to play a key role in providing the connectivity needed to manage multiple robots.

Key to this will be the artificial intelligence tools designed to control robots (humanoid and other). During his CES keynote on Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that several robotics firms, including the aforementioned LG and Boston Dynamics, alongside Caterpillar and Neura Robotics, are leveraging the chipmaker’s technologies to develop their bots. (See this press release for more.)

Huang said physical AI could help revolutionise the $50tn manufacturing and logistics industries, with Nvidia aiming to position itself right at the forefront after unveiling a number of new AI models aimed at training robots.

Nvidia isn’t the only major tech firm hitching itself to the robotic future, however, with Qualcomm also showcasing what it described as a comprehensive full-stack architecture, covering hardware, software and compound AI systems for next-generation robotics.

The Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ10 Series is the firm’s latest addition to premium-tier robotics processors for humanoids and advanced autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

Nakul Duggal, EVP and group GM of automotive, industrial and embedded IoT and robotics at Qualcomm, said: “By building on our strong foundational low-latency, safety-grade, high-performance technologies, ranging from sensing [and] perception to planning and action, we’re redefining what’s possible with physical AI by moving intelligent machines out of the labs and into real-world environments.”

Google also announced a partnership with Hyundai that will see the firms focus on integrating Google’s Gemini AI models into Boston Dynamics’ bots.

Google AI CEO Demis Hassabis also revealed that former Boston Dynamics CTO Aaron Saunders is joining Google DeepMind as VP of hardware engineering, as “we also continue to rapidly grow our world-class robotics team here at DeepMind”, he tweeted.

However, we could still be some way away from seeing regular humanoid robots in our homes or factories, stated experts from CCS Insight. A blog about the analyst firm’s expectations for CES 2026 picked robotics as a key trend, but added the caveat that robots are far from being a commercial reality.

“To be successful, general-purpose humanoid robots need significant progress in general-purpose AI models that can learn from and interact with the world,” the experts wrote.

- James Pearce, Editor, TelecomTV