It's been 24 years since CNET first published an article with the headline "The robots are coming." It's a phrase I've repeated in my own writing over the years -- mostly in jest. But now in 2026, for the first time, I feel confident in declaring that the robots have finally arrived.
I kicked off this year, as I often do, wandering the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and its hotel-based outposts on the lookout for the technology set to define the next 12 months. CES has always been a hotbed of activity for robots, but more often than not, a robot that makes a flashy Vegas debut doesn't go on to have a rich, meaningful career in the wider world.
In fact, as cute as they often are and as fun as they can be to interact with on the show floor, most robots I've seen at CES over the years amount to little more than gimmicks. They either come back year after year with no notable improvements or are never seen or heard from again.
In more than a decade of covering the show, I've been waiting for a shift to occur. In 2026, I finally witnessed it. From Hyundai unveiling the final product version of the Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoid robot in its press conference to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's focus on "physical AI" during his keynote, a sea change was evident this year in how people were talking about robots.
Watch this: Atlas Has Left the Lab! In-Person Demo of Boston Dynamics Humanoid 04:00
"We've had this dream of having robots everywhere for decades and decades," Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia's vice president of Omniverse and simulation, told me on the sidelines of the chipmaker's vast exhibition at the glamorous Fontainebleau Hotel. "It's been in sci-fi as long as we can remember."
Throughout the show, I felt like I was watching that sci-fi vision come to life. Everywhere I went, I was stumbling upon robot demos (some of which will be entering the market this year) drawing crowds, like the people lining up outside Hyundai's booth to see the new Atlas in action.
So what's changed? Until now, "we didn't have the technology to create the brain of a robot," Lebaredian said.
AI has unlocked our ability to apply algorithms to language, and it's being applied to the physical world, changing everything for robots and those who make them.
The physical AI revolution
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