For over half a century, the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) has served visitors an exquisitely balanced cocktail of pragmatism and prophecy. The missing component, all of a sudden, is politics.

The biennial trade show, held since 1974 in perennially robot-fixated Japan, is first and foremost a showcase of industrial automation — the no-nonsense factory and farm machines that have steadily proliferated. Globally, according to the International Federation of Robotics, companies installed well over half a million of these in 2024; 54 per cent in China, which has, non-coincidentally, spent over a decade as the world’s biggest producer of industrial robots.

But the tone and pizzazz of IREX has always been provided by the humanoids. It’s a somehow thrilling spectacle to see robots that look a bit like us, sort of doing things we can do, with the half plea, half promise that they will do so much more — and better — in the indefinite future.