LG Electronics’ home robot ‘CLOi’ organizes towels at the LG Electronics booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) where CES 2026 is being held on January 5 (local time). (Photo provided by LG Electronics)
At CES 2026, humanoid robots in human form and household robots that efficiently handle domestic tasks have emerged, intensifying the technological competition among physical artificial intelligence (AI)-based robots.
When the humanoid robot Atlas, standing as tall as an adult male, walked across the stage performing various motions, the audience erupted in applause. LG Electronics’ home robot ‘LG CLOi’ opening refrigerator doors and delicately folding laundry with its five fingers left officials at the scene speechless.
What heated up CES 2026 Press Day held in Las Vegas on Jan. 5 (local time) was physical AI. Robots like Atlas and CLOi that assist humans in performing tasks were unveiled for the first time, and Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), took the stage with two robots to lead the physical AI discourse.
CEO Huang emphasized that “the next stage of AI is robotics,” stating that AI must interact with humans in physical reality, not just through text or video.
NVIDIA unveiled Cosmos Reason 2, an open reasoning vision-language model for physical AI that understands and reasons about the physical world, at CES 2026. The company also presented a model that generates physics-based synthetic data to solve the data problem in robot learning.
Hyundai Motor Group’s robotics specialist Boston Dynamics revealed the ‘Next-Generation Electric Atlas’ at the press conference held that day. Atlas is equipped with 56 degrees of freedom (DoF), allowing most joints to rotate completely, and features tactile sensors in human-sized hands. It can recognize all directions through 360-degree cameras. It has the strength to lift up to 50kg and can reach heights of up to 2.3m.
Hyundai Motor Group plans to lead robot innovation and expand the physical AI industry by securing advanced technologies related to physical AI through cooperation with global leading companies such as Google DeepMind and NVIDIA.
LG Electronics presented CLOi, a home robot that works inside houses.
CLOi consists of a torso with a head and two arms, and a lower body equipped with wheel-based autonomous driving technology. The two arms move at the same level as human arms, and the five jointed fingers move individually.
In demonstrations conducted at the LG Electronics booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center, CLOi perfectly performed tasks such as opening refrigerator doors according to the presenter’s orders, picking up and bringing juice before placing it on a table, or putting food items in the oven, drawing admiration from the audience.
While LG Electronics garnered significant attention by unveiling the AI home robot ‘CLOi’ that day, Samsung Electronics focused on developing industrial robots. Roh Tae-moon, Vice Chairman and Head of Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics, said, “The area where robots can be most effective and enhance capabilities is manufacturing sites,” adding, “Since Samsung Electronics has a wide variety of manufacturing sites, we can develop robots’ hardware, software, and AI capabilities through various data directly generated from these sites.”
He continued, “Our top priority is promoting robot business for manufacturing automation, and based on the technology and capabilities accumulated there, we aim to proceed with B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) goals,” revealing, “Various preparatory work and pilot programs for deploying (robots) to our manufacturing lines are underway.”
Additionally, Chinese companies are also showcasing various robots at this CES. ‘Unitree,’ known as China’s Boston Dynamics, is expected to present the low-cost humanoid ‘G1’ that won the world’s first robot fighting competition. ‘Booster Robotics,’ which gained attention for winning China’s robot soccer competition, is also participating.
