ROBROS IGRIS-C Wows CES 2026 with Tendon Hands

CES Spotlight Stealer

ROBROS turned heads at CES 2026 in Las Vegas by unveiling the IGRIS-C, a compact humanoid platform that redefines developer-friendly robotics with its breakthrough tendon-driven hands. Showcased under the Humanoid M.AX Alliance Pavilion, this 154 cm tall robot captivated crowds through demos of fluid bipedal walking and precise manipulation, positioning ROBROS as a key player in Korea's surging robotics scene. Attendees watched it navigate indoor spaces under a safety harness, hinting at imminent real-world testing in labs and factories. The debut underscores a shift toward affordable, full-body platforms for embodied AI research, blending in-house hardware mastery with adaptive intelligence.

Dexterity Redefined

What sets IGRIS-C apart lies in its ultra-light 300 g tendon-driven hands, each boasting 11 degrees of freedom across five fingers for human-like grasping without cumbersome joints. Cables route through the structure to couple motions smoothly, enabling independent finger control ideal for picking delicate objects like cafe cups or lab tools. This design prioritizes intuitive collaboration, allowing the robot to mimic teleoperated demos via imitation learning. Meanwhile, an expressive LED head interface adds visual cues, fostering trust in shared human-robot workspaces and elevating everyday interactions beyond rigid automation.

Engineering Mastery Unveiled

ROBROS engineers crafted IGRIS-C with low-reduction actuators throughout its 43 total degrees of freedom, delivering natural, energy-efficient motion from 7 DOF arms to a 3 DOF waist and 2 DOF neck. Reinforcement learning powers agile feats like walking at 3.6 km/h or even running modes up to 7 km/h, while torque control hits 150 Nm for stability in tight quarters. Onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Intel Core i7 handle vision-based tasks, paired with a master hand for data-rich training sessions. This full-stack integration from mechanics to AI marks a leap in scalable humanoid development.

Transforming Daily Operations

Imagine IGRIS-C deploying in bustling cafes, handing off coffee orders with gentle precision, or streamlining warehouse picks in narrow aisles designed for people. Its skills shine in laboratory research, manipulating precision instruments autonomously, and embodied AI training where it collects vast interaction data. Service hospitality scenarios benefit from voice AI and microphone arrays for seamless guest chats, while industrial manufacturing gains from safe payload handling of tools and packages. These applications bridge research silos, accelerating humanoid adoption in human-centric environments like retail and logistics hubs.

Interaction Skills Breakdown

Tendon hands and stereo depth cameras plus Intel RealSense enable dexterous object recognition and gentle human touches, perfect for collaborative handoffs. IMU and microphone arrays drive balanced, responsive conversations during extended sessions, supported by a 17000mAh battery for multi-hour interactions. LiDAR-ready vision SLAM with bipedal planning lets it weave through crowds intuitively, carrying tools or packages without fatigue. ROS 2 on Ubuntu with Python SDK empowers developers to script natural gestures, turning specs into skills for hospitality chats or lab assists over 3-5 year lifespans.

Rivals Face-Off