Daimon Robotics Showcases Tactile Intelligence for Physical AI at IROS 2026

Daimon Robotics, a Chinese physical AI company focused on tactile intelligence, is presenting its full-stack robotic manipulation capabilities at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh. The demonstration marks the first in-person public showing of the company's Daimon Tactile World Model (Daimon-TWM) since its launch in August.

The key technology is a world model that enables robots to anticipate the consequences of each action and adapt based on the physical state of a task — essentially giving machines a sense of touch that informs their next move. At the conference, Daimon is running two live autonomous manipulation tasks to demonstrate the approach.

One demonstration involves canvas tote heat-transfer printing: the robot autonomously handles sticker placement, film removal, hot stamping, curing and final placement. The task requires precise placement, delicate peeling, changing contact conditions and force-sensitive operations across multiple sequential steps — the kind of long-horizon, dexterous work that remains challenging for robots operating with vision alone.

Tactile sensing has been a persistent gap in robotics. Most current systems rely heavily on cameras and depth sensors but lack the nuanced force feedback that humans use constantly for manipulation. Daimon's approach of building a world model around touch data represents an emerging research direction that could prove important as robots move from structured factory tasks to the messier realities of real-world environments.