If previously robberies in human form belonged to fiction or to isolated laboratories at IREX 2026, they appeared en masse and with everyday tasks, Kawasaki exhibited its humanoid Caloline cleaning a garden, sweeping leaves like a tireless janitor, a scene as mundane as it is extraordinary.

In another moment, another humanoid robot danced for the public, showing remarkable balance and coordination. In addition to the Japanese, foreign startups brought their androids. The German Neurorobotics showed a model interacting in an almost social way, while the Chinese Unitree presented its advanced prototype that even dared with some dance steps.

Finding these almost humans performing our daily tasks, from cleaning to entertaining, was both charming and disturbing, charming to see the dream of stolen personal assistants materialize. disturbing by looking into the electronic eyes of those creatures and facing an uncomfortable question, we will be seeing our future co-workers, caregivers, even competitors.

The naturalness with which these humanoids moved among other humans at the fair suggests that man-machine coexistence can stop being a choice and become routine before we notice it, perhaps the most surprising fact comes from what was not seen directly, but was announced behind the scenes.

Humanoid robots rolling off the assembly line by the thousands, Chinese companies revealed impressive figures, Unitree Robotics, for example, manufactured more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025 alone, surpassing by an order of magnitude the efforts of Western giants such as Tesla and Agility Robotics that remained in the scale of hundreds.

Its Chinese competitor AgiBot also surpassed the mark of 5,000 units in the year, these factory androids are no longer fiction, they are being mass produced for industrial use, such an advance breaks a paradigm where previously a humanoid robot was a very expensive experimental project, now they are products built in series intended to scale automated work in warehouses, factories and even services.

The prospect of a planet with robots walking side by side with humans everywhere is no longer a Cyberpunk delusion, but a palpable and deeply transformative possibility.