Skip to content
XR & Robotics News | September 2026
September 29, 2026

XR & Robotics News | September 2026

September 2026 newsletter, 5 minute read

XR & Robotics News

Hello dear friends,

Welcome back to our monthly roundup.

September was the month humanoids started showing up for real work, and smart glasses quietly took over the XR growth story. If your headset is feeling a little heavy lately, you're not imagining the trend.

Closer to home, our LA office got a lot more interesting. There's now an Xsens humanoid suit in the room, and MANUS gloves are driving Tesollo hands on our lab bench (come try it 🤖).

Here's what's new, what the numbers say, and where to be next.

Knoxlabs Team

//

September 2026 XR & Robotics Stats

200%+projected growth in manufacturing humanoid deployments

Humanoid robots are moving from pilots to real deployment

  • Manufacturing deployments are on pace to grow more than 200% in 2026.
  • Over 80% of users plan to deploy robots for tasks like palletizing, picking, and machine tending within three years.
  • Robot-as-a-Service adoption has doubled year over year.

Source

14.3%display glasses share, up from 11%

Smart glasses are splitting into two clear categories

  • Audio-only glasses (like Ray-Ban Meta) hold 70.3% of shipments.
  • Display glasses, the ones built for hands-free overlays, hold 14.3% share, up from 11% last year.
  • IDC expects both training and design use cases to keep driving enterprise pilots.

Consumers want audio. Enterprises will want displays. Different products for different buyers.

Source

-42.8%VR and MR headset shipments

VR headset shipments are shrinking as smart glasses take the growth

  • VR and MR headset shipments fell 42.8% in 2025.
  • The rest of the XR category, mostly smart glasses, grew 211.2% in the same period.
  • Meta still holds 69.2% share across the full XR category.

Source

//

What's new @ Knoxlabs?

Knox Team is now Xsens humanoid-trained 🦾

This month the Xsens team came in to train us on two things: the new Xsens Link next-generation full system and the Xsens Humanoid Software. In short, it's the setup for operating and training humanoid robots using full-body human motion.

The suit and the humanoid license now live in our office, and our team knows how to run them. So if you're exploring humanoid teleoperation or motion data capture, you don't have to start from a spec sheet. We can walk you through it on real hardware.

Tesollo x MANUS, tested in the Knoxlabs Lab

We've been putting MANUS gloves and Tesollo dexterous hands through their paces in our lab, connected with our own integration software. Your hand moves, the robot hand follows.

Want to see it for yourself? Come by our LA office and try it hands-on (literally).

Book a visit
HTC VIVE enterprise headsets and trackers

Knoxlabs is now an authorized HTC VIVE Business Partner and direct distributor in the U.S.

Our VIVE offering includes headsets, trackers, software, and accessories for enterprise, education, training, simulation, and professional XR applications.

We also support the full deployment process, from selecting and configuring devices to provisioning, setup, and integration.

Explore the VIVE collection
//

New tech updates

Meta VR Glasses announced at Connect 2026

Meta introduces VR Glasses and camera-free smart glasses at Connect 2026

Meta announced four new hardware devices at its September Connect keynote. The headline product is Meta VR Glasses, a roughly 100-gram headset with a 5K Dolby Vision display, powered by a tethered puck running Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite chipset.

It's priced at $1,299 and ships spring 2027. Meta also launched Ray-Ban Meta Audio, a $349 camera-free smart glasses model built for all-day wear, plus a refreshed Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 with a 12-megapixel camera and a six-mic array Meta says cuts background noise by over 90%.

Image: Meta. Source

VITURE Vonder display-free AI glasses

VITURE launches Vonder, a display-free AI glasses brand

VITURE has expanded beyond its display-based lineup with Vonder, a new sub-brand of smart glasses with no camera and no display. At around 30 grams, Vonder uses bone-conduction mics and voice AI to build a "personal memory graph," letting wearers take notes and make hands-free calls, and it works with a choice of AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Image: Wired. Source

//

Robotics news

Agility Robotics Digit 5 humanoid

Agility Robotics introduces Digit 5

Agility Robotics has introduced Digit 5, its latest humanoid built for industrial work. It is designed to repeatedly lift 22.7 kg, run for 90 minutes, and recharge in nine minutes, with swappable grippers that expand the range of jobs it can handle.

The bigger change is safety. A new safety architecture detects nearby people and uses an independent controller to trigger avoidance, stopping, or sitting responses.

Image: agilityrobotics.com. Source

OpenAI humanoid robotics

OpenAI confirms plans to build humanoid robots

Sam Altman confirmed on the Sources podcast that OpenAI plans to build humanoids and robots with other body designs, with infrastructure and manufacturing coming first and home robots as a longer-term goal.

Forbes reported 19 robotics openings on OpenAI's careers page, covering actuators, firmware, and prototyping, though no launch date, unit target, or manufacturing partner has been announced.

The biggest name in AI is now moving into physical hardware. Expect more AI labs to follow.

Source

AGIBOT robots at Chimelong Spaceship Park

AGIBOT doubles production to 20,000 robots

AGIBOT has now built 20,000 robots, twice its total from March. The company is also putting them to work at scale, bringing more than 300 robots to Chimelong Theme Park.

Doubling output in six months shows humanoid manufacturing is scaling faster than most forecasts expected.

Image: robotico.market. Source

//

Partner news

Tesollo DG-5F-M hands playing piano at Stanford

Tesollo's robotic hands adopted at Stanford for bimanual research

Tesollo's DG-5F-M hands are now being used in Stanford research projects including HandelBot (a system performing piano pieces using two DG-5F-M hands on Franka arms) and DexDrummer (validating in-hand manipulation through robotic drumming). Tesollo also joined Daesung Hi-Tech for mass-production scaling and began its IPO process.

Academic adoption is a leading indicator. It validates that Tesollo's hands work in real, unscripted tasks.

Image: tesollo.com. Source

SenseGlove R1 and Tesollo DG-5F-M teleoperation bundle
Available at Knoxlabs

SenseGlove R1 + Tesollo DG-5F-M teleoperation bundle

For teams building teleoperation systems: a full SenseGlove R1 pair with your choice of single or dual-hand Tesollo DG-5F-M setup. Integrate it yourself with the included ROS 2 and Python APIs, or add the R1X-TESOLLO licence for ready-made retargeting and control mapping.

See the bundle
//

Upcoming events

20-21Oct 2026

RoboBusiness 2026

Santa Clara, CA

Celebrating 20 years, this is the go-to event for commercial robotics developers, with 150+ exhibitors and speakers spanning humanoids, foundation models, and manipulation.

Confirmed speakers include Rodney Brooks (Robust AI), Jonathan Hurst (Agility), and reps from Apptronik, Amazon Robotics, and AGIBOT. More business and deployment focused than ROSCon's developer-first angle, good for tracking where commercial robotics investment and partnerships are headed next.

Registration
7-9Dec 2026

IEEE-RAS Humanoids Conference

Santa Clara, CA

The 25th edition of the field's longest-running academic conference on humanoid robots, running since 2000.

It's research-first, not commercial: mechatronics, control, perception, learning, human-robot interaction, and neuroscience as they apply to humanoids. If ROSCon is for developers and RoboBusiness is for buyers, this is where the underlying science gets published and debated.

More information

Building in XR or robotics?

Whether you're building in XR or robotics, or just figuring out where to start, our team's here to help.

Talk to our team
Filed in: News
Next article Meta VR Glasses Announced: It’s Not Quest 4—Here’s What’s Coming

Find VR Headsets, Accessories and Advanced Devices

View All

Blog posts

See more