Examining how robots are moving from demonstrations to daily use.
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:22 PM
An industrial robotic arm capable of autonomous welding. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
CES 2026 did not frame robotics as a distant future or a technological spectacle. Instead, it highlighted machines designed for the slow, practical work of fitting into human systems. Across the show floor, robots were no longer performing for attention but being shaped by real-world constraints—space, safety, fatigue and repetition.
They appeared in factories, homes, emergency settings and industrial sites, each responding to a specific kind of human limitation. Together, these four robots reveal how robotics is being redefined: not as a replacement for people, but as infrastructure that quietly takes on work humans are least meant to carry alone.
Hyundai Motor unveiled its electric humanoid robot, Atlas, during a media day on January 5, 2026, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas as part of CES 2026. Developed with Boston Dynamics, Hyundai’s U.S.-based robotics subsidiary, Atlas was presented in two forms: a research prototype and a commercial model designed for real factory environments.
Shown under the theme “AI Robotics, Beyond the Lab to Life: Partnering Human Progress,” Atlas is designed to work alongside humans rather than replace them. The premise is straightforward—robots take on physically demanding and repetitive tasks such as sorting and assembly, while people focus on work requiring judgment, creativity and decision-making.
Built for industrial use, the commercial version of Atlas is designed to adapt quickly, with Hyundai stating it can learn new tasks within a day. Its adult-sized humanoid form features 56 degrees of freedom, enabling flexible, human-like movement. Tactile sensors in its hands and a 360-degree vision system support spatial awareness and precise operation.
Atlas is also engineered for demanding conditions. It can lift up to 50 kilograms, operate in temperatures ranging from –20°C to 40°C and is waterproof, making it suitable for challenging factory settings.
Looking ahead, Hyundai expects Atlas to begin with parts sorting and sequencing by 2028, move into assembly by 2030 and later take on precision tasks that require sustained physical effort and focus.
Widemount’s Smart Firefighting Robot is designed to operate in environments that are difficult and dangerous for humans to enter. Developed by Widemount Dynamics, a spinout from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the robot is built to support emergency teams during fires, particularly in enclosed and smoke-filled spaces.
The robot can move through buildings and industrial facilities even when visibility is near zero. Rather than relying on cameras or GPS, it uses radar-based mapping to understand its surroundings and determine a safe path forward. This allows it to continue operating when smoke, heat or debris would normally restrict access.
As it approaches a fire, the robot analyses the burning object. Its onboard AI helps identify the material involved and selects an appropriate extinguishing method. Sensors simultaneously assess flame intensity and send real-time updates to command centres, giving responders clearer situational awareness.
When actively fighting a fire, the robot can aim directly at the source and deploy extinguishing agents autonomously. The system continuously adjusts its actions based on incoming sensor data, reducing the need for constant human intervention during high-risk situations.
At CES 2026, LG Electronics offered a glimpse into how household work could gradually shift from people to machines. The company introduced LG CLOiD, an AI-powered home robot designed to manage everyday chores by working directly with connected appliances within LG’s ThinQ ecosystem.
Designed for indoor living spaces, CLOiD features a compact upper body with two articulated arms, a head unit and a wheeled base that enables steady movement across floors. Its torso can tilt to adjust height, allowing it to reach items placed low or on kitchen counters. The arms and hands are built for careful handling, enabling the robot to grip common household objects rather than heavy tools. The head also functions as a mobile control unit, housing cameras, sensors, a display and voice interaction capabilities for communication and monitoring.
In practice, CLOiD acts as a task coordinator. It can retrieve items from appliances, operate ovens and washing machines and manage laundry cycles from start to finish, including folding and stacking clothes. By connecting multiple devices through the ThinQ system, the robot turns separate appliances into a single, coordinated workflow.
These capabilities are supported by LG’s Physical AI system. CLOiD uses vision to recognise objects and interpret its surroundings, language processing to understand instructions and action control to execute tasks step by step. Together, these systems allow the robot to follow routines, respond to user input and adjust task execution over time.
Doosan Robotics introduced Scan & Go at CES 2026, an AI-driven robotic system designed to automate large-scale surface repair and inspection. The solution targets environments with complex, irregular surfaces that are difficult to pre-program, such as aircraft structures, wind turbine blades and large industrial installations.
Scan & Go operates by scanning surfaces on site and building an understanding of their shape in real time. Instead of relying on detailed digital models or manual coding, the system plans its movements based on live data. This enables it to adapt to variations in size, curvature and surface condition without extensive setup.
The underlying technology combines 3D sensing with AI-based motion planning. The system interprets surface data, generates tool paths and refines its actions as work progresses. In practical terms, this reduces manual intervention while maintaining consistency across large work areas.
By handling surface preparation and inspection tasks that are time-consuming and physically demanding, Scan & Go is positioned as a support tool for industrial teams operating at scale.
Taken together, these robots signal a clear shift in how machines are being designed and deployed. Across factories, homes, emergency sites and industrial infrastructure, robotics is moving beyond demonstrations and into practical roles that support human work.
The unifying theme is not replacement, but relief—robots taking on tasks that are repetitive, hazardous or physically demanding. CES 2026 suggests that robotics is evolving from spectacle to utility, with a growing focus on systems that adapt to real environments, respond to genuine constraints and integrate into everyday workflows.
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Can SPhotonix’s optical memory technology protect data better than today’s storage?
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:32 PM
SPhotonix's 5D Memory Crystals™. PHOTO: SPHOTONIX
SPhotonix, a young deep-tech startup, is working on something unexpected for the data storage world: tiny, glass-like crystals that can hold enormous amounts of information for extremely long periods of time. The company works where light and data meet, using photonics—the science of shaping and guiding light—to build optical components and explore a new form of memory called “5D optical storage”.
It’s based on research that began more than twenty years ago, when Professor Peter Kazansky showed that a small crystal could preserve data—from the human genome to the entire Wikipedia—essentially forever.
Their new US$4.5 million pre-seed round, led by Creator Fund and XTX Ventures, is meant to turn that science into real products. And the timing aligns with a growing problem: the world is generating far more digital data than current storage systems can handle. Most of it isn’t needed every day, but it can’t be thrown away either. This long-term, rarely accessed cold data is piling up faster than existing storage infrastructure can manage and maintaining giant warehouses of servers just to keep it all alive is becoming expensive and environmentally unsustainable.
This is the problem SPhotonix is stepping in to solve. They want to store huge amounts of information in a stable format that doesn’t degrade, doesn’t need electricity to preserve data and doesn’t require constant swapping of hardware. Instead of racks of spinning drives, the idea is a durable optical crystal storage system that could last for generations.
The company’s underlying technology—called FemtoEtch™—uses ultrafast lasers to engrave microscopic patterns inside fused silica. These precisely etched structures can function as high-performance optical components for fields like aerospace, microscopy and semiconductor manufacturing. But the same ultra-controlled process can also encode information in five dimensions within the crystal, transforming the material into a compact, long-lasting archive capable of holding massive amounts of information in a very small footprint.
The new funding allows SPhotonix to expand its engineering team, grow its R&D facility in Switzerland and prepare the technology for real-world deployment. Investors say the opportunity is significant: global data generation has more than doubled in recent years and traditional storage systems—drives, disks, tapes—weren’t designed for the scale or longevity modern data demands.
While the company has been gaining attention in research circles (and even made an appearance in the latest Mission Impossible film), its next step is all about practical adoption. If the technology reaches commercial viability, it could offer an alternative to the energy-hungry, short-lived storage hardware that underpins much of today’s digital infrastructure.
As digital information continues to multiply, preserving it safely and sustainably is becoming one of the biggest challenges in modern computing. SPhotonix’s work points toward a future where long-lasting, low-maintenance optical data storage becomes a practical alternative to today’s fragile systems. It offers a more resilient way to preserve knowledge for the decades ahead.