As AI technology continues to develop and evolve, one of the key use cases is set to be robotics, as humans employ some extra assistance across work and home lives.
Nvidia has been one of the biggest proponents of next-gen robotics, with CEO Jensen Huang outlining at its GTC 2026 event how every major company is working with Nvidia in some way.
But what is it actually like to engage with these robots? I got the chance to see the future up close and personal at Nvidia GTC 2026 – here’s how I got on…
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Hands-on with the Humanoid
Retail and customer service has been one of the most commonly-mooted use cases for the future of robotics, and on Nvidia’s stand at GTC 2026 was a demo from Humanoid showing just that.
The company’s (slightly terrifying-looking) robots, currently available in wheeled and bidpedal editions have become one of the pace-setters in the industry, with customers already including the likes of Siemens and Schaeffler.
We were confronted with two of the wheeled models, which we saw in action swapping out different products by picking up separate boxes, but their size means you would need a fairly sizeable space for them to operate effectively.
We were told to speak into a microphone to pick our order, choosing from a handful of products. The robot server told us it had received the order (a bottle of water and a packet of dried mango fruit), and asked us to confirm, again via the microphone.
We were then asked to stand in front of the robot and extend our hand, so it knew where to place the item – we had picked items from two different boxes, so one robot delivered the water, and the other the dried mango.
Overall the order was largely successful – in fact, a little too successful, as the second robot gifted us an extra portion of the dried mango (winner!). The first robot did seem to struggle picking up the water bottle, but once it got its grip, it was delivered successfully.
Start-to-finish, the entire process took around 45 seconds – not too bad, but certainly slower than a human worker would have taken. The technology is clearly still at an early stage, but if this initial demo is anything to go by, we may soon start seeing humanoid robots in a store near you sooner than you might expect.
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