From AI robot baristas to military drones: The weird and wonderful tech at Computex 2026
Published on 04/06/2026 - 12:06 GMT+2•Updated 12:08 With advances in robotics, artificial intelligence,...
Published on 04/06/2026 - 12:06 GMT+2•Updated 12:08
With advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, an array of laptops and drones, the Computex technology conference in Taiwan went far beyond Nvidia's headline-making announcements to showcase the technologies that could have a wide-ranging impact our daily lives.
Euronews Next attended the conference and scoured the show floors to find the weird and wonderful as well as useful technological advancements being presented.
1) Robot barista
While robots making coffee or pouring beer are nothing new at tech shows, Intel demonstrated some cutting-edge technology.
The robot barista called Ella makes the coffee, but under the hood of the machine, an Intel Series 3 processor is powering what the company says is the first multi-agent physical AI store.
Three AI agents handle customer conversation, system operations and store-level intelligence, all on one Intel system-on-chip.
Intel, as well as many other companies at the show, have made AI agents and robotics central to their strategies.
Taiwanese giant Foxconn also showed off its robots that work in health care.
Robots have been limited to pushing buttons, but Foxconn showed how its robot could drill with one hand and load and unload objects with the other. The company is using them in its own factory.
Meanwhile, for healthcare, another robot called Scrub Nurse works with a surgeon in the operating room to hand the surgeon tools. It can understand the surgeon's voice commands and is reimagining human-robot collaboration, the company says.
2) Defence technology
Taiwan, which is roughly 180 km from China, functions as an independent democracy with its own constitution and elected government.
But China maintains that the island is a renegade province destined for reunification with the mainland, through military means if necessary.
It therefore comes as no surprise that drones and surveillance technology also featured on the show floor.
Unmanned surface vehicles (SUV) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) by the Taiwan-based company Rayvatek that feature Nvidia chips and AI technology were on display.
Taiwan's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) also showed off three AI-enabled military robot dogs this week. They can do autonomous patrols and produce remote-controlled firepower.
3) The AI translator
The Chinese and Taiwanese company Transbuds have made translation earbuds that link your translation app to a coding app.
The result is live translations that can also mimic voice in another language. For the moment, it is not available in Europe or the United States due to regulatory issues.
The company said it is also working to get the technology up to scratch so it can make AI agents call people without human assistance and perform tasks such as restaurant bookings.
4) The creative computer cases
Every year, designers get fancy and sometimes impractical in the designs for computer cases.
From large moving sharks to steam-blowing spaceships, there was no shortage of creativity.
5) Moving chess
The Hong Kong-based company Chessnut offers an electronic chess set in which the pieces move on their own.
An AI application tracks the moves and lets users play against the computer, making the game much more interactive.
The technology was also used on dartboards to make them fully digital.
