The “Robotics, Autonomous Machines & Physical AI” forum at COMPUTEX 2026 featured NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ABB Robotics, NXP — and a full-sized, walking humanoid robot
Robots are “the single largest opportunity in front of humanity,” Deepu Talla, Vice President of Robotics and Edge AI at NVIDIA, said in his opening remarks at Tuesday’s forum on Robotics, Autonomous Machines and Physical AI.
The first forum of COMPUTEX 2026 showcased humanoid robots and the latest developments from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ABB Robotics and NXP.
At last year’s forum, Talla described how “the future was coming to the present,” and this year, the future is here.
The latest developments in physical and agentic AI are now bringing embodied AI into our stores, factories and, soon, our homes.
AI-powered robotics are being deployed across Taiwan, “the land of manufacturing,” led by industry leaders from Foxconn to TSMC, Talla said.
The robotics industry is now poised for rapid expansion. With fewer than one million robots in use today, the future could see billions, or even tens of billions, across every sector, Talla said.
Talla was even willing to bet that, in the next one or two years, every person in attendance would work with robotics in some capacity.
But NVIDIA doesn’t build robots — it powers them through platforms and workflows for robot training, programming, and simulation at an industrial scale.
With their latest model, the NVIDIA Isaac GROOT Robotics Development Platform, “what would take nine months to a year would now take less than a day,” Talla said.
Nakul Duggal of Qualcomm, up next, brought a full-sized humanoid robot on stage, demonstrating real-world potential, and more importantly, to present on a silver tray the latest Qualcomm release: the Dragonwing IQ10 Robotics Reference Design (RRD).
The system integrates hardware, software and AI tools into a single deployment-ready robotics platform.
Echoing Talla’s robo-optimism, Duggal said, “We have never lived in a world that has this incredible amount of change in front of us.”
In the next presentation, Craig McDonnell of ABB Robotics introduced the company’s latest developments, following five decades of innovation.
Since ABB pioneered the world’s first commercial all-electric microprocessor-controlled robot back in 1974, today it makes more than 1,000 robot varieties.
The company is now developing intelligent eyes, hands and brains to power more autonomous and versatile robots, he said.
ABB Robotics partnered with NVIDIA in March to bring physical AI capabilities to the factory floor. By generating hyperrealistic synthetic data, manufacturers can close the “sim-to-real” gap and achieve up to 99 percent accuracy between virtual and real-world environments, helping robots adapt more effectively to changing conditions.
The market is seeing “exploding complexity perhaps not anywhere near the same level as just five years ago,” McDonnell said, as technologies require faster development and manufacturing expands beyond China into Vietnam, India and, hopefully, North America.
Lastly, Ajith Mekkoth of NXP introduced how edge AI can be applied across thousands of real-use cases, from neonatal monitoring machines in hospitals to at-home assistive robot arms.
NXP focuses on scalable, sustainable robotics systems with manageable compute costs and upgradeable designs, he said.
“We are at the precipice of ubiquitous AI,” he said, as robotics moves from experimentation to real-world deployment at scale.
