FIX 2026 awards nine winners in robotics, AI, and mobility

Humanoid robotics and dexterity

The FIX 2026 awards highlighted significant leaps in how robots interact with the physical world. One standout was Tesollo, a South Korean company that received an award for its DG-5F-M robotic hand. This device features five fingers and 20 degrees of freedom, which is the number of independent movements a joint can make.

The goal for these designs is to replicate human-like manipulation, which remains a major hurdle for robotics. Tesollo also showcased a more compact version called the DG-5F-S that weighs only 880 grams. By using proprietary actuator technology, the company aims to provide robots with the gripping strength and precision needed for complex tasks.

Another major advancement came from AeiROBOT with its Alice 5 bipedal humanoid robot. Unlike previous wheeled models, Alice 5 stands 170 cm tall and can navigate stairs and obstacles designed for humans. It uses a hybrid actuation system to balance the strength required for walking with the responsiveness needed for upper-body tasks.

Next-generation mobility tech

The awards also recognized software and hardware improvements for the future of transportation. Perseus won an award for Pegasus, a hypervisor technology for software-defined vehicles. A hypervisor is software that allows multiple operating systems to run on a single chip while remaining isolated from one another.

This technology allows automakers to consolidate various functions, such as the digital cockpit and vehicle control, onto shared hardware. By isolating these environments, manufacturers can simplify the development and updating of vehicle software. This move away from separate electronic control units helps reduce the overall complexity of modern car electronics.

In the realm of autonomous driving, SWM introduced its AP-700 platform to power urban robotaxis. This platform provides 2,000 TOPS of computing performance to process sensor data for flexible passenger pickups. While widespread driverless deployment is still difficult, SWM has already begun paid commercial operations in Seoul with a safety driver present.

AI infrastructure and cooling

As AI models grow more powerful, the heat they generate creates a significant infrastructure challenge. CENS addressed this with its CENS-D130 precision spray cooling technology. Instead of immersing an entire server in liquid, this system sprays an electrically nonconductive fluid directly onto the heat-generating parts.

The system uses AI-based controls to adjust the amount of cooling based on real-time thermal demand. This targeted approach is intended to reduce the amount of cooling fluid needed compared to full immersion systems. By doing so, it could lower the weight of equipment and decrease the costs associated with maintenance and operations.

Other infrastructure winners focused on factory intelligence and security. WACE presented VEXPLOR, an operating system that connects AI decisions directly to programmable logic controllers. This allows AI to provide instructions to industrial machines while a safety layer blocks any commands that are deemed unsafe.

Cybersecurity and radar

Security and sensing were also key themes among the nine award winners. PotatoNet developed a platform called OLPEMI to identify malicious URLs and hidden threats on the deep web. The technology is designed to find phishing infrastructure and malicious links that standard databases might miss too slowly.

This proactive approach helps protect users from web-server attacks and dangerous destinations on mobile devices. By identifying these threats before a user clicks a link, the platform aims to prevent compromises before they happen. It focuses on identifying threats across the broader internet rather than just reacting to known issues.

Finally, HJWave was recognized for its 3D waveguide antennas used in automotive radar. These antennas use a specialized structure to reduce signal loss and improve the resolution of the radar. Better radar performance helps autonomous vehicles detect pedestrians and obstacles more reliably, especially in conditions where cameras might have poor visibility.