Shenzhen-based AI2 Robotics used the World Robot Conference 2026 opening on August 19 in Beijing to give its wheeled humanoid AlphaBot its widest public exposure yet, with the robot serving ice cream to visitors under the control of the company's own Alpha Brain foundation model.
A Wheeled Humanoid Built For Real Rooms
AlphaBot pairs a humanoid torso and five-fingered hands with a wheeled base and a custom waist-leg lifting mechanism, giving it 34+ degrees of freedom without the cost, safety and regulatory burden that come with a bipedal chassis. The design targets structured environments — logistics, manufacturing, biotech, public services and retail — where a wheeled platform can outrun a bipedal peer, is mechanically simpler and faces lower barriers to public deployment. Founder and CEO Dr. Yangdong Eric Guo has said the company would rather ship into paying industrial scenarios than chase a consumer robot future.
Alpha Brain Runs The Show
Every AlphaBot on the WRC floor is driven by Alpha Brain, AI2 Robotics' proprietary Global & Omni-body Vision-Language-Action (GOVLA) model. The system handles real-time 3D spatial reasoning, whole-body coordinated control and multi-step task planning end-to-end. AI2 Robotics released the open-source variant FiS-VLA in June 2025, which the company said outperformed the π0 benchmark by 30% and drew endorsement from Turing Award winner Yann LeCun. The ice-cream scoop demo may be theatrical, but it exercises the same perception, grasp planning and dexterity loop the AlphaBot needs on a factory line.
WRC 2026 As A Chinese Physical-AI Showcase
Chinese firms shipped roughly 90% of the world's humanoid robots in 2025, and WRC 2026 — running August 19 to 23 at Beiren Etrong International Exhibition and Convention Center — is the sector's biggest annual showcase. AI2 Robotics' Release Day appearance follows its $735M raise at a $2.8B valuation in July, and shares the floor with Xiaomi's own humanoid public debut and Unitree's Superman-preceded IPO. Together they signal how quickly China's physical-AI supply chain is moving from demo to deployment.
Reporting based on coverage from Nikkei Asia, The Robot Report, Gizmochina and AI2 Robotics.