Taiwan funds humanoid robotics R&D

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs has approved new research subsidies for humanoid robotics and materials innovation, according to a May 19 DIGITIMES report. The package includes NT$100 million, about $3.16 million, for Solomon to develop vision-language-action technology for humanoid robots. The move adds government money to a field that Taiwan’s manufacturers and robotics suppliers have been pushing more visibly over the past year. The DIGITIMES report said the ministry backed three research and development projects. It identified Solomon’s award as the clearest humanoid allocation, with the funding directed at improving how robots perceive scenes, interpret language-linked instructions and coordinate physical actions. The ministry’s English-language site separately shows it announced the creation of a smart robotics R&D center on May 19, though the site excerpt available through search did not list the subsidy amounts. ### Why is Solomon at the center of this package? Solomon is one of Taiwan’s better-known industrial vision and automation companies, and it has been publicly linking its robotics work to humanoid systems. In an August 20, 2025 release, Solomon said it had integrated NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor with the Isaac GR00T N1.5 vision-language-action model and Isaac Sim to build a semantic-driven humanoid robot simulation system powered by natural language. (digitimes.com) A separate Solomon release on its “Super Vision” humanoid robot said the company was using AI vision and NVIDIA Jetson hardware for inspection, precision tasks and automation applications. Another company statement from the iREX 2025 show in Tokyo said its humanoid demo handled remote vision, semantic understanding and autonomous action in industrial tasks. Those descriptions line up closely with the focus DIGITIMES gave for the new subsidy. (solomon-3d.com) ### What exactly is “vision-language-action” research here? The NT$100 million allocation is tied to the software and perception layer that lets a robot connect camera input, language prompts and motor decisions. DIGITIMES described Solomon’s project as vision-language-action work for humanoids, a category that has become a standard way to describe systems that map what a robot sees and what it is told into physical behavior. Solomon’s 2025 Taipei release offered a concrete example of that approach. (solomon-3d.com) The company said its system used semantic understanding and natural-language inputs inside simulation before deployment, suggesting the subsidy is aimed less at a standalone robot body than at the model, perception and task-coordination stack behind it. ### Is Taiwan treating humanoids as industrial policy now? (digitimes.com) Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs has supported robotics and smart-manufacturing projects for years, but the new package places humanoid work inside a named subsidy program rather than leaving it to trade-show demonstrations or lab announcements. DIGITIMES said the ministry approved support for humanoid robotics alongside materials research, pairing embodied AI with manufacturing-oriented technology development. (solomon-3d.com) The ministry’s own website also points to a broader institutional push. Search results from the Chinese-language MOEA site show a May 19 announcement that the ministry had established a smart robotics research and development center focused on applications including medical and other use cases, indicating robotics has become a more formal part of its current program mix. ### What should readers watch next? May 19 is the key date for the subsidy approval, but the next useful marker will be whether Taiwan’s ministry or Solomon publishes a fuller project outline, milestones or participating research partners. (digitimes.com) DIGITIMES identified three approved projects, while the ministry’s public pages show a same-day robotics center announcement that could provide the administrative home for follow-on disclosures. Solomon’s recent public roadmap also gives clues about where that money may go. (mnscdn.moea.gov.tw) The company has already tied its humanoid work to NVIDIA Jetson Thor, Isaac GR00T and Isaac Sim in Taipei and Tokyo demonstrations, so future updates will likely show whether the subsidized work moves from simulation and demos into named factory tasks or commercial pilot deployments. (solomon-3d.com) (digitimes.com)