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Humanoid Assembles an IKEA Table: Debut Competitions at IROS 2026

Compiled by Sergey KostenchukPublished 2026-09-29Updated 2026-09-29

2026-09-29 Research

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Hero image: Unitree G1 humanoid assembling the IKEA UTTER table — The Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge — IROS 2026 Source

🤖 Humanoid Assembles an IKEA Table: Debut Competitions at IROS 2026

In Pittsburgh (USA), from September 27 to October 1, 2026, IROS 2026 is taking place — one of the two main global robotics conferences alongside ICRA. For the first time, the Unitree G1 humanoid fully autonomously, without teleoperation, assembles an IKEA UTTER children's table, and Sharpa Hands fold a paper airplane in exactly six folds in 10 minutes.

🌍 The main trend is the transition of humanoids from demos to reproducible tasks: one robot, one set of parts, one scene, and an open dataset of 500+ episodes, with remote evaluation on real robots in Singapore and Shenzhen.

👤 Furniture assembly and paper folding are classic "difficult for robots" fine motor tasks: a rare chance to see humanoids in fair conditions, and the datasets and simulation environments are already open.

Source 1: https://2026.ieee-iros.org/ Source 2: https://humanoid-ikea-assembly-challenge.github.io/

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In Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA), from September 27 to October 1, 2026, the IROS 2026 conference is being held, where the Humanoid IKEA Assembly Challenge — fully autonomous assembly of an IKEA UTTER children's table by the Unitree G1 humanoid — and the Robotic Origami Challenge, where Sharpa Hands fold a paper airplane in exactly six folds in 10 minutes, are being held for the first time. IROS, together with ICRA, sets the agenda for robotics, and the main trends this year are embodied/physical AI and the transition of humanoids from demos to reproducible tasks.