#1
★ Gold
HD Hyundai affiliates (Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, HD Hyundai Robotics) and US-based Persona AI signed a joint development agreement on March 23 to develop and commercialize AI-powered humanoid welding robots for shipyard operations. The prototype has demonstrated technological feasibility, with Persona AI contributing NASA-derived dexterous hand technology and a modular humanoid platform. HD Hyundai plans gradual deployment across its global shipbuilding sites, targeting a working prototype by late 2026 and commercial deployment in 2027. The partnership aims to address severe labor shortages in heavy industry welding.
#6
★ Gold
McDonald's is piloting humanoid service robots developed by Keenon Robotics at a Shanghai location. The robots greet customers, deliver food to tables, and collect used trays—marking one of the first deployments of humanoid robots in a consumer-facing restaurant environment. The pilot is evaluating operational reliability, customer acceptance, and cost-effectiveness in one of the world's most demanding service environments: fast food during peak hours.
#15
★ Silver
RealSense, LimX Dynamics, and NVIDIA demonstrated fully autonomous humanoid navigation at NVIDIA GTC 2026 using dense 3D depth perception, Visual SLAM, and cuVSLAM. The system enables real-time robot localization, mapping, collision avoidance, and stable locomotion on complex terrain (stairs, curbs, uneven surfaces) without any teleoperation input. The humanoid was trained using NVIDIA Isaac Lab simulation before real-world deployment, validating the sim-to-real transfer pipeline.
#19
★ Silver
Chengdu, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, has established itself as a major embodied AI development hub with 100+ robot enterprises and 60+ products from 35 companies deployed across 16 real-world venues including traffic management, shopping, healthcare, and cultural settings. The city's 2025 robotics output reached 150 billion yuan with 35%+ growth rate, and authorities are planning 70+ benchmark application scenarios for 2026. The 'Tongtianxiao' traffic safety robot is among the most visible public deployments.