Arms, cobots and automation on the factory floor.
ABB debuted five IRB 1700 variants at CIIF Shanghai, including an IRB 1700ID with internal cabling, aimed at welding, machine tending, deburring and even AI server rack assembly.
Shanghai Chaifu Robotics showed a robot rated for 5,000.36 kg that lifted a whole car, topping FANUC's 2,300 kg record. Its value depends on reliability in heavy industry.
While humanoids grab headlines, Kore, Didin and Kalman are shipping task-specific machines into construction sites, shipyards and nuclear plants — with Oct 2026 deployments already lined up.
Toronto's Promise Robotics will use its Factory-as-a-Service microfactories, running KUKA arms and domain-specific AI, to produce home components for America's largest homebuilder.
Universal Robots' parent and Chinese cobot maker Elite Robots ended their German copyright case with undisclosed terms and no admission of liability. A separate patent suit against JAKA is ongoing.
On Oct 5, 2026 Teradyne announced a strategic investment and collaboration with Bright Machines to combine UR cobots, board test and software-defined microfactories for AI data-center hardware.
The Japanese giants will validate Physical AI inside Hitachi factories — picking, shape-varying parts, changeovers — then sell jointly from fiscal 2027, as industrial vendors race to productize the buzzword.