The 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC) opened in Beijing on August 19, and the biggest change on this year's show floor was not the larger number of humanoid robots — it was that robots started working on site. From coffee making and retail service to printed circuit board (PCB) handling, logistics sorting, auto parts loading and unloading, and even home organizing, laundry, and table clearing, robot makers are no longer just showing robots walking, dancing, and boxing.
As chip processes move to 2nm and advanced packaging accelerates heterogeneous integration, semiconductor materials are shifting from a supporting role in the supply chain to a critical factor in technological breakthroughs. SEMI has announced the formation of the "SEMI Semiconductor Materials Alliance," bringing together 35 materials, equipment, wafer fabrication, packaging, and testing companies, as well as industry, government, academia, and research organizations, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), ASE, and Micron Technology, to speed material validation for emerging technologies such as co-packaged optics (CPO) and panel-level packaging (PLP), with the goal of accelerating mass production.
Humanoid robots have entered a clear new phase since agentic AI emerged in 2025, with DIGITIMES analyst Zouhao Shen saying the category is now moving toward a three-tier hardware architecture of the brain, cerebellum, and peripheral nerves. He said the shift is reshaping the market and setting the stage for rapid growth through 2030.
