Having a handshake like a human is not a robotics party trick; it is a small robotic safety test to ensure that a machine will not injure a person that it will be placed with. Also at CES 2026, the ALLEX of WIRobotics attracted disproportionate attention to a gesture currently unfeasible to all robots, unless it happens unintentionally: seigneuring the loop on contact on the spot, by the hands and arms as well as the torso.
The name ALLEX, which means “ALL-EXperience,” lies in between guarded automation in industries and the setting where humans move in unpredictable ways. In a demonstration video, the robot perceives external force and will respond by actively changing grip, this gives the appearance of an intentional handshake instead of a programmed one. Such a difference is important as it is in physical interaction that both conventional autonomy and conventional practices of safety are prone to disintegrate.
The control mechanism beneath the spectacle is the force control that remains consistent throughout a large variety of conditions. ALLEX is said to sense forces as small as 100 gram-force as well as provide up to 40 newtons of fingertip force to ensure sure grasps. Even the hands are made with the hands-around-backdrivable actuators in place, i.e. an individual can push or manipulate the motion without struggling with a high-impedance drive train. Such a property of “move when moved” is a useful proxy of compliance: the robot is able to defer to surprising contact rather than increasing it. To be manipulated, the same design facilitates a rare pairing, strong fingertip pressure and stable grips, without having to use a rigid, force-blind clamp.
The figures of ALLEX also indicate the extent to which engineering is coming into smaller assemblies. The mass of the hand is approximately 700 grams, the mass of the shoulder-down assembly is approximately 5 kilograms and platform is stated to raise over 3 kilograms with one hand. WIRobotics also highlights the arm dynamics, which it claims have less than 10x the lower friction and rotational inertia than its collaborative robots, as well as a gravity compensation system between waist and upper body to minimize wasted energy and mechanical load during heavier load operations. Even a single demonstration may conceal the most difficult question: what happens to a robot when it is moving fast and the world is not cooperative.
CES floors now serve as a live list of the current safety measures, and not all of them are scaled. A safety-analysis of autonomous-systems undertaken of the show detailed two patterns of workability: separating people and larger robots as well as isolating them by slowing the robots down, however it was observed that there was a gap between the robots functioning at human speeds and in direct contact. This analysis continues to state that humanoids must have a safety case consistent with SOTIF (Safety of the Intended Function) including an operational design domain enforced and a scenario-based safety validation as well as responses to fault responses including limited safe-shutdown behaviors.
This transition already exists with a vocabulary of industrial collaborative robotics. In the work of ISO, the techniques of power-and-force limiting and speed-and-separation monitoring, formalized in ISO/TS 15066, were based on such data as human pain thresholds, to make sure incidental contact is not turned into injury. Not there, but in that regard the handshake of ALLEX looks more like the showmanship than a demonstration of power-and-force restriction in an accessible way, through strangely dexterous hardware.
The direction of travel is emphasized by WIRobotics itself. “ALLEX goes beyond merely replicating human movement it is the first robot that truly experiences and responds to the real world,” said Yong-Jae Kim, Co-CEO and CTO of WIRobotics. Assuming that humanoids will not be limited to theatrical demonstrations, but to healthcare, factory and home tasks, ALLEX proposes that the gating item is not perception or planning itself but rather the mechanical and control discipline necessary to turn contact into a normal working mode.