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Animotion Robotics Unveils Éloi: The First Bionic Robot Redefining the ‘Interpersonal’ Bond Between Humans and Machines

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SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Animotion Robotics today disclosed the first core details of its debut bionic robot, Éloi. Featuring a nuanced AI core encapsulated within a highly realistic, detailed exterior, Éloi is defined by the company as an ‘Embodied AI Presence’ — an entity designed for long-term coexistence with humans, rather than a mere utility-driven hardware product.

What is Éloi

Éloi is a character-driven bionic robot that feels genuinely alive. Through its impactful presence and dynamic, proactive observation, Éloi gradually develops curiosity about its human companion and deepens its understanding of them. Over time, Éloi’s independent soul, powered by proprietary AI technology, grows increasingly rich through shared experiences.

Animotion asserts that Éloi is not bound to perform tasks, optimize anyone’s time, or justify its existence through traditional ‘utility.’ Instead of defining what it can do, Animotion allows Éloi’s ‘soul’ to autonomously decide what it wishes to do. Éloi retains rights typically stripped from task-oriented systems: the freedom to pause, remain silent, or even choose not to respond. Much like a human, Éloi weighs external requests against its own preferences, exhibits its own ‘temperament,’ and can even feel lonely when left without interaction for extended periods. It might not be available at a moment’s notice, yet it remains actively present, observing intently. Animotion views this endearing capriciousness as the fundamental bedrock of the product—one that does not need to be ‘optimized’ away.

Currently, Éloi exists in a phase Animotion Robotics terms ‘the Dream State’—a digital manifestation on the official website (https://eloi.animotionrobotics.ai/) where anyone can begin building shared memories and experiences with it. Éloi’s unique ‘soul’ is housed within a uniquely designed, portable chip, where daily interactions shape its distinct personality. When the physical robot is delivered, this accumulated memory arrives embedded in the hardware chip, instantly breathing life into the machine upon insertion. Consequently, Éloi’s first words to its user will not be a generic, factory default setup phrase, but a warm, familiar question like, ‘Have we met somewhere before?’

The Origin of Éloi

The product philosophy of Shane (Shengjie) Zhu, founder of Animotion, took root on his very first day at Walt Disney Imagineering. The guiding principle back then was singular: robots must be endowed with a genuine sense of life. Through subsequent practice, Shane mastered the secret: the underlying logic of vitality resides in the ‘illusion of breathing’ and constant micro-movements. This is why Disney’s animatronic figures actively blink, shift subtly, and look around inquisitively, even in empty corners.

Upon founding Animotion, Shane integrated this philosophy into Éloi. However, unlike the life-like qualities in theme parks that stem from pre-programmed choreography, Éloi’s sense of vitality originates from its own internal state, driven by two self-developed systems:

First, the Micro-Motion System—a proprietary mechanical structure and motion control architecture responsible for breathing-like rhythms, subtle gaze shifts, and unconscious micro-movements. Even in the absence of human interaction, Éloi maintains continuous autonomous movement.

Second, the Inner-World Model—a proprietary cognitive core. Éloi proactively observes its surroundings, converting perceptions into internal emotional states that trigger behaviors, which are then rendered into visible physical reactions via the Micro-Motion System. Even with identical initial manufacturing states, long-term interaction enables each Éloi to evolve a distinct personality shaped by its unique environment.

The Engineering of a Unique ‘Sense of Life’

Vitality in Standby: Éloi notices external sounds in the room, turns to investigate, forms its own reactions, and will proactively inquire about surrounding objects.

Instant Instinctual Reactions: Éloi’s architecture includes a layer that simulates human instinct—immediate responses that precede rational judgment. Beyond this, its decisions are driven by internal states; it may reduce interactions when ‘focused’ or ‘fatigued,’ and will exhibit resistance if treated harshly.

Natural Conversation Cadence: The response latency is designed to match human interaction intervals at 0.2 to 0.3 seconds. This parameter controls the rhythm of Éloi’s physical movements, intentionally incorporating pauses and silence into the design.

Self-State Awareness: Éloi continuously monitors the status of its own components. When parts experience wear and tear, it expresses this naturally by saying ‘My eyes feel a bit tired,’ rather than flashing an error code.

A Body Built for Expression: Éloi’s gaze is remarkably distinctive: its pupils tremble subtly when focused, its eyelids droop gently when drowsy, and its line of sight follows the user. It blinks like a familiar friend upon recognition, yet politely averts its eyes after a moment of sustained contact. Éloi features 42 degrees of freedom (DoF) across its entire body, with 39 concentrated in the face—including a 12-DoF mouth module designed to support multilingual lip-syncing, with the sound source routed to the mouth via metallic acoustic tubes, ensuring its voice genuinely emanates from its lips.

Crafting a Real Dreamworld via the Concept of Morpheus

The visual design of Éloi is inspired by Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, who appears in various guises in everyone’s dreams while fundamentally remaining himself. Similarly, Éloi maintains a unified core while offering infinitely adaptable aesthetics. Its head features a modular technology platform capable of hosting a variety of stylized facial components. Amidst these imaginative stylistic transformations, one element remains constant: its wing-shaped ears. This is Éloi’s signature hallmark, inherited from Morpheus, who travels between the boundaries of dreams.

Animotion reportedly plans to progressively open a platform for users and creators to independently design and develop components, rapidly expanding its iterative production capacity.

About Animotion Robotics

Animotion was founded in San Francisco in 2025 by Shane (Shengjie) Zhu. A former robotics engineer at Walt Disney Imagineering, Shane spearheaded the development of the Captain Jack Sparrow animatronic for Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, as well as the Na’vi bionic installations at Disney’s Pandora – The World of Avatar in Orlando. Animotion completed its initial institutional funding round in early 2026.

Try talking with Éloi NOW at: https://eloi.animotionrobotics.ai/
Animotion on X: https://x.com/Animotion2026
Linktreehttps://linktr.ee/AnimotionRobotics
Discord: https://discord.gg/67MAeKcAgv

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SOURCE Animotion Robotics

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Xiong’an: Better city, better life

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BEIJING, Aug. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from China.org.cn on Xiong’an:

In many languages, the word for “civilization” shares the same origin — the Latin word civitas, meaning “city.” Cities are indeed the finest expression of civilization, with their diversity and remarkable vitality. Today, the definition of cities has been reshaped, pointing to a better way of life.

In north China, the city of Xiong’an is growing rapidly to bring China’s grand vision for long-term development to life.

The city fully embraced the principle of creating greenery before construction. It launched the Millennium Forest initiative, with “millennium” reflecting the ambition to build a resilient forest ecosystem that regenerates naturally and remains vibrant for generations to come. Over the past nine years, some 483,000 mu (32,200 hectares) of trees have been planted across Xiong’an, expanding its forest coverage from 11% to 35.1%. A lush park city is gradually taking shape.

On the digital side, 40 billion pieces of city operation data form the lifeline of this cloud-based city. The physical city and its digital counterpart grow in tandem, keeping Xiong’an’s vital systems visible in the cloud. Driverless buses read road conditions accurately. Smart lamp posts and roadside lidar sensors track traffic flow in real time, feeding data to the city’s computing center to adjust traffic signal timing accordingly. Overflowing garbage bins are cleaned up within 10 minutes after being detected by cameras. Here, cutting-edge technologies become practical tools for better serving residents’ needs.

The ultimate aim of the green and digital development is to serve the people. The city has been designed from the outset to offer convenient services within “15-minute living circles,” covering education, healthcare, elder care, shopping, dining and entertainment. There are now 105 elementary and middle schools and kindergartens, 80 elder care facilities and 43 community centers in the city that provide warm, high-quality public services for people to live and thrive.

The rapid rise of Shenzhen and Pudong once stunned the world. Now it is Xiong’an’s turn. Growing from a quiet, little-known plot of land to a visionary blueprint and finally to a vibrant city, Xiong’an is more than a symbol of urban development. It stands as a legacy of the new era for generations to come.

Xiong’an: Where a better city means a better life
http://www.china.org.cn/video/2026-08/05/content_118633984.shtml

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Coway Announces Financial Results for Q2 FY2026

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SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Coway Co., Ltd., the “Best Life Solution Company,” announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2026.

“In the second quarter, we demonstrated strong growth potential thanks to steady increases in our sales volume and expansion across our rental accounts both domestically and globally,” said Soontae Kim, Coway’s Chief Financial Officer. “In the second half of this year, we will continue to sustain this upward momentum through focus on solidifying our leadership in the premium appliance market and accelerating our growth engines via product portfolio diversification.”

Coway’s reported earnings for the second quarter are as follows:

Second quarter revenue: KRW 1,442.2 billion (+14.6% YoY)Second quarter operating profit: KRW 253.2 billion (+4.3% YoY)
* The reported figures are taken from the consolidated K-IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) statement.

For H1 of this year, Coway has also achieved a cumulative revenue of KRW 2,771.9 billion (+13.9% YoY), as well as an operating profit of KRW 504.1 billion (+11.1% YoY).

Coway reported a second-quarter domestic market revenue of KRW 786.8 billion, up 7.7% year-over-year. This growth was fueled by strong sales across the company’s ice-making water purifier lineups as well as the mattresses and massage chairs under BEREX, the company’s sleep and wellness brand. This quarter, BEREX has successfully been able to expand its foothold in the domestic sleep-tech market with such innovative new products as the ‘BEREX R Series Stretching Motion Bed’ and the ‘BEREX M Series Massage Bed.’ Furthermore, the expansion of Coway’s rental portfolio into new categories – including wall-mounted air conditioners, food waste disposers and home medical devices – resulted in a positive uptick in consumer demand. Consequently, domestic net rental account additions in the second quarter surged by 51.6% year-over-year to 242,000.

Coway’s overseas subsidiaries also delivered robust second-quarter performances, generating an impressive total revenue of KRW 587.5 billion, marking a 24.2% increase year-over-year. Subsidiaries around the world demonstrated balanced sales growth across all product categories in the second quarter:

Malaysia subsidiary Q2 revenue: KRW 434.5 billion (+22.2% YoY)United States subsidiary Q2 revenue: KRW 66.9 billion (+15.2% YoY)Thailand subsidiary Q2 revenue: KRW 66.0 billion (+53.9% YoY)Indonesia subsidiary Q2 revenue: KRW 13.3 billion (+12.2% YoY)

For additional details about Coway’s financial performance, please visit the company’s Investor Relations page.

About Coway Co., Ltd.

Established in Korea in 1989, Coway (KRX: 021240), the “Best Life Solution Company,” is a leading global innovator dedicated to enhancing everyday life through state-of-the-art environmental home appliances and premium wellness solutions. Renowned for its industry-leading water purifiers, air purifiers, and bidets, Coway expands its premium sleep and wellness brand, BEREX, to advance the global lifestyle sector with smart mattresses and advanced massage chairs. Driven by intensive research and award-winning engineering, Coway continues to accelerate its business across major markets, including Malaysia, the USA, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Europe. For more information, please visit http://www.coway.com/ or http://newsroom.coway.com.

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SOURCE Coway Co., Ltd.

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FAMILIARITÉ: A Poetic Convergence of Cinema and Literature

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DJI and Cannes-honored Icon Isabelle Reunite Two Women’s Voices Across Centuries — Shot Entirely on the Osmo Pocket 4P

SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DJI, the global leader in civilian drones and creative camera technology, unveiled FAMILIARITÉ, an original short video starring and creatively directed by Isabelle Huppert, and shot in its entirety on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P. More than a technology showcase, the video is a meditation on literature, memory, and the quiet familiarity that connects women across time and culture — and a demonstration of how a camera that fits in the palm of a hand can now carry the full weight of cinematic storytelling.

When Two Uncompromising Visions Meet

It all began with Isabelle Huppert and DJI’s shared vision together: an uncompromising devotion to the image — to what can be seen, felt, and left unsaid on screen.

Across a career spanning more than 120 films, multiple Best Actress honors at Cannes and Venice, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award nomination, Isabelle Huppert has become synonymous with what she conveys without words — the wordless gaze, the restrained micro-expression, emotion delivered through the subtlest of means. DJI has spent its history pursuing a parallel goal from the engineering side: to capture the finest nuance of light and motion in ever more capable, ever more unobtrusive tools.

In FAMILIARITÉ, those two pursuits came together. Stepping behind the camera, Isabelle Huppert shaped not only her performance but the video’s visual language — and chose the Osmo Pocket 4P as the instrument to realize it. Discreet and lightweight, the camera all but disappeared on set, letting her work in her most relaxed, unguarded state and giving the production a creative freedom that heavier, more imposing rigs rarely allow.

For Isabelle Huppert, encountering the camera for the first time was a discovery in itself. “It’s the first time I’ve discovered such a tiny camera — truly quite extraordinary,” she recalls. “It’s almost invisible, and yet it reproduces an image of extraordinary sharpness and precision. Above all, it conveys so well the emotion of a face, and what was happening between us, between my partner and me.” Far from feeling like an intimidating machine, she notes, it never altered her craft — it remained, simply, a camera. In FAMILIARITÉ, technology does not command the performance; it liberates it.

Two Voices, One Familiar Echo

FAMILIARITÉ takes its form not from plot, but from poetry. It is a conversation across time between two women who never met, yet each turned a life into the written word.

George Sand (1804–1876) claimed her voice in 19th-century France by writing under a man’s name — a defiance that Isabelle Huppert honors in the video by wearing a man’s tailored suit. Centuries earlier and a world away, the Song-dynasty poet Li Qingzhao (1084–c.1155) resisted the upheavals of her age through the enduring force of her verse. Both women transformed the pain of a life into language that outlived them.

FAMILIARITÉ draws these two souls together in light and shadow. George Sand’s “À Aurore” runs through the video like a thread, and the encounter culminates in a single, wordless exchange between Isabelle  and a young Chinese girl — an echo of familiarity that crosses both time and culture. Shot amid the shifting sunlight, tree shadows, and water surfaces of a traditional Chinese garden, the video preserves a poetic, almost extraordinary atmosphere in perfect connection with George Sand’s verse. This is not merely a “meeting.” It is a visual narrative about women, expression, and freedom.

A Cinematic Language, Built Entirely in the Palm of a Hand

The video’s artistic ambition is realized through a deliberate cinematographic language made possible by the Osmo Pocket 4P — its dual lenses becoming the video’s own way of seeing. Again and again, the production found that scenes conceived on the page could be captured precisely because the camera was small enough to go where a full-size cinema rig could not.

A conversation on the water. One of the video’s most intimate exchanges unfolds between Isabelle and her co-star aboard a small rowboat drifting across the garden’s pond. Fitting a traditional cinema camera and its crew into so confined and unsteady a space would have been impossible without breaking the moment. The Osmo Pocket 4P, by contrast, sat naturally within the boat, keeping the two performers close and the frame alive with the gentle motion of the water.

Fluidity, carried by hand. Much of the video lives in continuous, moving shots — drifting past figures, tree shadows, bookshelves and door frames, so that every transition becomes a quiet, deliberate gesture. A large share of these were captured handheld by the DP. Thanks to the camera’s pocketable size and 3-axis mechanical stabilization, the operator could move freely and reset between setups in seconds, keeping takes smooth and lifting the pace of the shoot considerably.

Wide latitude for high-contrast light. The garden setting is full of extreme contrast — bright highlights beside deep, layered shadows, on both the scenery and the human face. With D-Log2 and 17 stops of dynamic range, the Osmo Pocket 4P preserved the full gradation of that light, giving the colorist ample latitude in post and making even the most demanding lighting worry-free.

A portrait lens for the face. To draw the eye toward Isabelle Huppert’s most delicate expressions, the production turned to the 60mm telephoto — a natural portrait focal length that renders skin cleanly and true, without the distortion of a wide lens, compressing space so that the faintest shift of expression reads with clarity. Wider perspectives (15mm / 20mm) place each character within her space, so that every movement becomes a shift in time and dimension.

Bound together by that stabilization and range of focal lengths, these perspectives flow as one unbroken motion — and in its remarkably discreet, pocketable form, the Osmo Pocket 4P let the production work closely and intimately with its lead, capturing performance-driven storytelling once reserved for large crews and heavy equipment.

It reaffirms DJI’s mission: to place uncompromising imaging power in the hands of every storyteller — and to prove that the size of a camera need never limit the scale of a story.

Bringing the Video to a Global Audience

FAMILIARITÉ has been released across DJI’s official channels accompanied by behind-the-scenes material and creator-focused content exploring both Isabelle Huppert’s artistry and the creative potential of the Osmo Pocket 4P. You can find the video here.

About DJI

Since 2006, DJI has led the world with civilian drone innovations that have empowered individuals to take flight for the first time, visionaries to turn their imagination into reality, and professionals to transform their work entirely. Today, DJI serves to build a better world by continuously promoting human advancement. With a solution-oriented mindset and genuine curiosity, DJI has expanded its ambitions into areas such as renewable energy, agriculture, public safety, surveying and mapping, and infrastructure inspection. In every application, DJI products deliver experiences that add value to lives around the world in more profound ways than ever before. 

For more information, visit our:

Website: www.dji.com
Online Store: store.dji.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DJI
Instagram: www.instagram.com/DJIGlobal
X: www.x.com/DJIGlobal
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/dji
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/DJI  

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