Humanoid Robotics: The technology frontier in 2026: Global Automation

Research evidence excerpt

Humanoid Robotics: The technology frontier in 2026: Global Automation

20 July 2026

Global Automation

Humanoid Robotics: The technology frontier in 2026

Humanoid robotics is entering a phase of accelerated development and at the threshold of Jay Huang, Ph.D.

+852 2123 2631 large-scale commercial adoption. This note explains the current frontier of the industry and

jay.huang@bernsteinsg.com provides benchmarks for investors to assess progress and the numerous claims made by

industry players.

Weibin Liang, Ph.D.

+852 2123 2666 We highlight the frontier and future directions in five dimensions (Exhibit 1), along which, weibin.liang@bernsteinsg.com

examples of progresses from notable players are shown in Exhibit 2. In locomotion, stable

walking on flat surface, which was impressive two years ago, has progressed to motions Dien Wang, Ph.D.

+852 2123 2622 that require high dynamic full-body control and adaptive interaction with environment.

dien.wang@bernsteinsg.com Manipulation tasks have advanced from single-step pick-and-place to increasing

dexterity, longer task sequence, and industrial level reliability, although in all these areas,

development remains in the early stage. In the level of autonomy, remote control is largely

abandoned, and autonomous short-horizon tasks and pre-defined long-horizon tasks

are currently the most common. Long-horizon autonomous planning, skill transfer, and

task generalization are just emerging and the focus of future development. The robotic

brain paradigm has evolved from LLM/VLM to vision-language-action (VLA) models

(2024-2025), which are enhanced by World Action Models (WAM) from 2026 onward. Data

modality has greatly diversified, and the general trend is to move away from teleoperation