The State of Humanoid Robotics in 2026: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

Agility Robotics reported in late 2025 that its Digit robot moved more than 100,000 totes at a GXO fulfillment facility under a multiyear robots-as-a-service agreement. This year, Agility has also announced commercial relationships with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and Mercado Libre. Unlike a demonstration or nonbinding partnership, those arrangements create a clearer path toward repeat deployments and measurable customer economics. Nvidia is taking a different role with Hyundai Motor Group. The companies are developing a Robot Reference Platform that combines their physical AI technologies into a standardized hardware and software environment for universities, research institutes and startups. The effort is part of a broader collaboration around AI infrastructure, digital twins and robotics, with Hyundai contributing manufacturing, robotics and operational data. That relationship is separate from Boston Dynamics’ partnership with Google DeepMind, which is focused more directly on bringing Gemini Robotics models to the Atlas humanoid.

Siemens and Humanoid Bring Physical AI to the Factory Floor: Deploying Humanoids in Industrial Operations with Nvidia (Credit: Siemens) “Physical AI has arrived — every industrial company will become a robotics company,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said at Nvidia GTC 2026.

One of the broadest came in June, when Nvidia and LG Group announced a physical AI partnership covering humanoid, logistics and industrial robots. The companies plan to combine LG’s manufacturing expertise and operational data with Nvidia’s Isaac robotics platform, Omniverse simulation technology and Cosmos world models. LG is also developing a physical AI data factory that will use synthetic data to train robotics and industrial AI systems, addressing the difficulty and expense of collecting enough real-world robot data.