iREX 2025: From programmed to perceptive - The Robot Report
Physical AI will require a lot of real-world data. A growing share of the hardware used to collect that data – especially low-cost sensing and humanoids – is coming from China.
Key takeaways
The most recent headlines show a surge in both commercial deployment and ambitious scaling of humanoid robots. In late December 2025, Chinese battery giant CATL reported that its “Moz” humanoid robots are now operating on mass‑production EV battery lines, achieving a 99 % insertion success rate by using an end‑to‑end vision model that continuously adapts posture to material‑position variations and precisely gauges force to avoid damaging thin wires. At the same time, U.S. startup Galbot announced a $300 million financing round that lifted its valuation to $3 billion; the company is rolling out its humanoid assistants in hospitals to help with patient‑room tasks, pharmacy work and way‑finding, highlighting a shift toward service‑sector applications. Meanwhile, the venture‑backed startup Foundation disclosed an aggressive production roadmap that aims to ship 40 robots in 2025, 10,000 in 2026 and a total of 50,000 humanoids by the end of 2027, targeting both industrial and military markets. In parallel, industry debate intensified after Figure AI’s Figure 02 model was alleged in a lawsuit to be strong enough to fracture a human skull, prompting calls for clearer safety standards around robot strength. Finally, Forbes featured the $40,500 T800 model, marketed as a retail “cyber staff” robot and touted as potentially the strongest humanoid on the planet, underscoring the growing commercialization of high‑performance humanoids across sectors.
Physical AI will require a lot of real-world data. A growing share of the hardware used to collect that data – especially low-cost sensing and humanoids – is coming from China. PaXini showed its PMEC Hyper Collection System, consisting of a camera and gloves with multidimensional tactile sensors.
AgiBot, one of China’s leading humanoid robot makers, used iREX to announce its entry into the Japanese market and showed its vision-language-action (VLA) model ViLLA. For example, Yaskawa showed the MOTOMAN NEXT-NHC 10DE, an autonomous dual-arm robot that packs items into a box with human-like delicacy.
According to Yaskawa, the robot’s motions were learned by imitation of a human demonstration. Engineers first had a person wear motion-capture markers on their hands and recorded the person carefully packing a box on camera. Using this captured data, the NEXT-NHC 10DE replicated the human’s packing motions. ## 5. iREX 2025 gives a glimpse into the future
One of my favorite exhibits at iREX came from SOLOMON, a machine vision specialist from Taiwan.
It tuned a Unitree G1 humanoid with enhanced, more capable hands and an onboard NVIDIA Jetson AGX computer. Using NVIDIA’s GR00T platform, the robot was trained to see up to 5 m (16.4 ft.), understand orders in natural language, and plan the physical steps to pick from a defined set of objects.
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