The annual CES event in Vegas has grown far beyond consumer-only tech, and 2026 is no exception. Many companies are demonstrating the value of sophisticated (and much smaller) sensors for a world that combines compute power with AI in wearables and physical AI in robots and vehicles for both consumers and commercial uses.
Bosch Sensortec always focuses directly on sensors, announcing the BMI5 platform of three new inertial sensors and software for multiple device categories: XR headsets and glasses; robotics and XR controllers; and wearables and hearables. The platform provides built-in edge AI for on-sensor context analysis. The product line is expected to enter high volume production in third quarter.
Also, Bosch Sensortec announced it is sampling an IMU, the BMI423, for fast motion in wearables and robotics with low power consumption, at 25µA, for always-on acceleration-based applications in compact devices. It doubles the measurement range of the prior generation to reach plus or minus 32 g for the accelerometer and plus or minus 4000 degrees per second for the gyro.
Digid, a 30-worker company based in Germany, announced its temperature and force sensors as small as 1 micrometer are qualified for volume production. That makes them ideal for use in physical AI and humanoids, especially for use in robot hands for use in surgeries. Better yet: the company is forecasting future production of sensors just 10 nanometers long.
Full-scale robots packed with sensors were also on display at CES, including the Atlas humanoid from Hyundai , the Hytron commercial restroom cleaning robot from Primech AI
and the SharpaWave robotic hand from Sharpa. Earlier, LG announced the CLOiD robot for chores around the house.
The future of robotics is hot, as autonomous vehicle tech company Mobileye, an Intel spinoff, announced on Tuesday the $900 million acquisition of Mentee Robotics, a humanoid robotics company. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and many others see autonomous vehicles as the most immediate physical AI manifestation, to be followed by humanoids and other robots.
Humanoids and autonomous driving share the same fundamentals around operating safely and effectively in worlds built by and for humans, Mobileye noted in press materials. Advances in AVs directly accelerate humanoid robotics capabilities, to put it another way.
Mobileye said its two decades of expertise in advanced tech and partner relationships will accelerate deployment of Mentee’s humanoids in factories, warehouses and industrial settings. “We have an opportunity to lead the evolution of physical AI across robotics and autonomous vehicles on a global scale,” Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua said in a statement.
Mobileye had earlier selected Innoviz for its lidars for use in the Mobileye Drive platform, again showing the significance of lidar technology in autonomous machines.
The history of lidar in machines and vehicles was recently outlined by veteran reporter Junko Yoshida in a profile of new MicroVision CEO Glen De Vos who remarked, “The technology evolution of AVs has been disappointingly slow.” Lidars need to see mass adoption by all markets, including industrial and defense applications, he said.
For its part, Nvidia expects its AV innovations to instruct robotics in the physical AI world following the deployment of AVs. Huang delivered a 90-minute livestreamed pre-CES keynote on Monday, announcing the 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA is now in production with Nvidia’s complete autonomous driving stack, including the new Alpamayo AI model for urban point-to-point navigation.
Huang spent more time describing the coming Vera Rubin chip, designed to fulfill AI requests faster and cheaper than predecessors.