Final week, I attended NVIDIA’s 2026 GTC occasion in San Jose, Calif. This 12 months, the corporate anticipated over 30,000 attendees throughout the 4 days of the present. To host everybody, NVIDIA held occasions throughout a number of completely different venues, together with the San Jose Conference Heart, the San Jose Heart for Performing Arts, The Tech Interactive, and the SAP Heart.
GTC kicked off with a keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. In the course of the keynote, he highlighted NVIDIA’s partnerships with main robotics corporations, like ABB Robotics, FANUC, Agility Robotics, Determine AI, Boston Dynamics, and extra. On the finish of the keynote, Disney Imagineering’s Olaf robotic joined Huang onstage for a quick dialog.
“The list of issues with today’s robots is quite large, but they’re just engineering problems,” Huang said during a press Q&A at the show. “The fact [is] that you could see them walking around, and they’re already starting to do things. Once you see existence, proof of a technology, the refinement takes less than five years.”
All through this 12 months’s GPU Know-how Convention, I had the possibility to work together with and even management robots, see new methods for the primary time, and communicate with trade specialists. Listed below are three takeaways from the present.
1. Robots are rising extra succesful and are being taken extra significantly
At a present like GTC, which focuses on a variety of technical industries, the robots can typically really feel extra like science initiatives than business merchandise. This wasn’t the sensation at GTC 2026, nevertheless. The robotic demonstrations there centered on displaying actual duties and particular ability units.
“Multiple years ago, it was very research-oriented,” said Leo Ma, the co-founder and CEO of RoboForce. “Now, you’re looking at getting much closer to what the robot does. What value is it providing?”
For instance, on the Vention sales space, the corporate showcased its new Speedy Operator AI system with a deep bin-picking demo. Within the NVIDIA sales space, Workr confirmed one in every of its business deployments with Fireclay Tile, automating repetitive noticed work on the California-based ceramics producer.
Equally, the humanoids on the present have been principally working or doing actual demos, whereas a number of have been nonetheless standing nonetheless on the sidelines. Humanoid, a U.Ok.-based developer, confirmed the wheeled model of its robotic listening to attendees and selecting the objects they requested for.
2. With AI, robots are simpler to deploy than ever
Unsurprisingly, synthetic intelligence was one of many largest subjects of dialog at GTC. With regards to robotics, latest advances in AI are making deployments swifter and simpler than ever earlier than.
On the Teradyne sales space, Common Robots (UR) collaborated with Generalist, an organization that creates AI basis fashions for robotics. The businesses confirmed a fine-precision cellphone packing demo, which got here collectively in just some days earlier than the convention.
“We only had a few days in our office to prepare a live demo with a robot we had never touched before, and then we ran it live for four days,” Pete Florence, the co-founder and CEO of Generalist, informed The Robotic Report. “This speed of being able to put together a new robot demo, on brand new hardware, speaks to the strength of the generalization of GEN-0 and wouldn’t have been possible a few months ago.”
UR additionally debuted and demonstrated the UR AI Coach, a system it created in collaboration with Scale AI. The AI Coach permits a human operator to information UR robots by way of duties. At GTC, I obtained to information two UR3e “leader” robots to regulate two UR7e “follower” robots. The system was intuitive, straightforward to make use of, and supplied pressure suggestions when the robots touched one thing.
Even on the {hardware} aspect, many builders are specializing in making it simpler to create robots. Nexcom, for instance, launched its humanoid robotic improvement equipment.
3. Simulation performs a job in each a part of the robotic lifecycle
As robots make their method into more and more sophisticated environments, simulation coaching turns into increasingly more necessary.
Jenny Shern, the final supervisor of NexCOBOT, stated simulation is vital for tackling messy, out of doors environments. “I see a lot of users starting to bridge the gap between sim-to-real and real-to-sim,” she stated.
ABB launched its RoboStudio HyperReality, which integrates NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to shut the lengthy‑standing sim‑to‑actual hole in industrial robotics.
“For our end users, OEMs, we can really cut engineering times for new products, because we’ll be able to do concurrent engineering around the product and the factory at the same time,” said Marc Segura, the president of ABB Robotics. “We’re going to get the drawings of the product, but with all the characteristics of physics and so on, we can already plan for the factory, for the robotic line.”
Additionally on the convention, many corporations, resembling Texas Devices (TI), emphasised the significance of utilizing simulation at every stage of robotic improvement.
“In terms of technology, one thing that has been highlighted continuously at GTC is the importance of simulations,” said Giovanni Campanella, the industrial automation and robotics general manager at TI. “We talk a lot about hardware, and basically simulating the hardware before you even build it. Before you even build the device, you can simulate how the radar is performing in an environment where the robot is going to be.”
Sharpa, an organization that develops robotic palms with tactile sensors, additionally highlighted the significance of simulation.
“GTC is a great place to understand the progress in the Physical AI space this past year, from greater model training efficiency to hardware improvements,” stated Alicia Veneziani, Sharpa’s world vice chairman of GTM and president of Europe. “Sharpa has been riding this wave too. We demonstrated how our human-like hands improved tool manipulation using tactile AI, and we are solving the data drought with high-fidelity simulation and human video data in collaboration with Nvidia.”
GTC is changing into an AI and robotics present
Entrance Desk Info Concierge assisted GTC26 guests with navigation and occasion data. | Credit score: The Robotic Report
Usually, it felt like robots have been changing into a bigger a part of GTC.
“I think overall at the conference it was great to see the ecosystem continue to develop,” stated Generalist’s Florence. “There were several new robots on display, and the form factors continue to evolve. All of these robots will need brains, and it’s a very exciting time.”
All through the present, NVIDIA had built-in a variety of robots into the attendee expertise. Intbot‘s humanoid robotic greeted folks on the reception desk, whereas Serve Robots have been zipping alongside inside and outdoors of the conference middle.
“We’re thousands and thousands of truck drivers quick. We’re tens of thousands and thousands of producing employees quick,” Huang stated. “Employment is very high, and yet, many companies don’t have enough labor, so robots will fill in that gap.”
“No. 1, as a result of filling that gap, all of our country’s economy will grow, and when the economy grows, most companies tend to hire more people,” he added. “They’ll rent extra folks to handle extra robots.”
The publish 3 robotics developments from NVIDIA GTC 2026 appeared first on The Robotic Report.
