Abu Dhabi AI-Robotics Conference: Dialogue  on Humanoids

The Robotics Department of MBZUAI welcomes you to AIRoC:

Humanoid robotics is rapidly advancing from laboratory prototypes to real-world systems capable of perceiving, reasoning, and acting in both human-centered environments and hazardous scenarios. The second Abu Dhabi AI-Robotics Conference convenes researchers, clinicians, industry leaders, and policymakers to chart this transition with a clear focus on real deployments and measurable impact. We will examine advances in whole-body control, dexterous manipulation, and locomotion; the integration of foundation models and multimodal perception into robust visuomotor policies; and the formal methods, safety engineering, and evaluation protocols required for trustworthy operation around people. Case studies from manufacturing, logistics, and critical infrastructure will be paired with service and healthcare demonstrations—covering assistive care, rehabilitation, and hospital operations—to surface what truly generalizes, what fails in practice, and what standards, data, and hardware are still missing. By bringing together technical depth and application reality, the conference aims to accelerate a new generation of humanoids that are safe, certifiable, and economically viable, while reflecting regional priorities and global needs.

Core themes

• Embodied AI for humanoids: perception, planning, and policy learning at scale

• Whole-body compliance, force control, and dexterous manipulation in cluttered spaces

• Safety, verification, and regulation for human-centered environments 

• Benchmarking, datasets, and reproducible evaluation across tasks and platforms

• Deployment playbooks: reliability, maintenance, cost models, and workforce integration

• Ethics, accessibility, and human-robot teaming for equitable impact

• Digital Twins, Simulation, and Predictive Maintenance for Industrial Humanoids

• Robots in Hospitality and Retail: Service, Adaptation, and Human Experience