At ERF 2026 in Stavanger, we caught up with Azmat Hossain of London-based Extend Robotics, a company building the software stack that lets humans supervise robots in dangerous places from the comfort of a VR headset.
Just a year ago, Hossain says, the industry reaction to humanoid robots was cautious at best. “People were sort of hesitant — are humanoids really going to work? Will we see humanoids in real environments?” That mood has shifted sharply. At ERF 2026, the questions coming to the Extend Robotics booth are no longer about whether humanoids will arrive, but how soon and how practically they can be put to work.
The company’s pitch is straightforward: humanoids fit into existing workflows without the need for costly process redesign. Because they share the same form factor as the humans they replace, nothing on the factory floor or in the field needs to change , only the physical presence of a person in harm’s way is removed. “We don’t have the humans to physically have to be there. The humans can be in a safe location, so the robots can be deployed.”
The software is the product
Extend Robotics positions itself primarily as a software company. Its platform enables full VR-based remote supervision and teleoperation of humanoid robots over standard internet connections, no specialist infrastructure required. A human operator puts on a headset and can take over for dexterous, high-variability tasks that autonomous systems still struggle with.
Hossain is clear about why teleoperation matters: “This is not possible with any other system currently.” But teleoperation is only the front end of a deeper stack. The same platform captures operator data during each session, stores it, and feeds it into embodied AI training — closing the loop between human demonstration and machine learning. “It’s an end-to-end stack,” he says.
Target sectors: anywhere humans shouldn’t be
Extend Robotics is targeting industries where human presence carries genuine risk: nuclear and hazardous materials handling, maritime operations, agriculture, and manufacturing. “Almost every industry has some aspect of hazard where humans are currently working,” Hossain notes, “and those are exactly the areas we are focusing on.”
The degree of autonomy is matched to the task. Simpler pick-and-place operations can be automated relatively quickly. training can be completed in a matter of hours. More complex tasks require longer human-in-the-loop sessions before the AI model reaches the required confidence level. Either way, the company handles the process end-to-end, from initial task analysis to deployment and ongoing support.
Designed for non-technical users
One of the recurring questions at the booth is ease of use, a concern Hossain says they have spent years addressing. “We have a high focus on user experience,” he says. “We make sure we have features which are easily manageable for technical and non-technical users alike.”
For research institutions, the offering is a plug-and-play training and control package that removes the need to build custom infrastructure from scratch. For industrial customers, Extend Robotics can supply a fully configured robot alongside its software, or customise an existing platform to meet specific operational requirements. “We provide almost everything in plug and play — and after that we provide all the services required to have everything in place.”
