Japan Pioneered Humanoid Robots—Can It Now Catch China?

Source: IEEE Spectrum Robotics·2026-07-04 19:00Publish time unverified

“In the future, the relationship between humans and robots will deepen, and the distinction between them will probably disappear.” This prediction, from one of the attendees at the recent Humanoids Summit in Tokyo, might have been unremarkable had it not come directly from an android that was first introduced to the world 20 years ago. Geminoid HI-6 is the sixth-generation of a robot originally designed in 2006.