One of Tesla's Chinese rivals has a unique strategy for building its humanoid robot: make it huggable

A Chinese Tesla rival is betting on huggability to take on Elon Musk's Optimus robot. EV startup Xpeng unveiled the latest version of its humanoid robot, called Iron, earlier this month, and CEO He Xiaopeng said the company wanted its bipedal bots to be "highly human-like."In an earnings call on Monday, he told analysts that Xpeng had found adding fake muscles and "bionic skin" to Iron made people more comfortable touching and even hugging the robot. "This is very exciting because traditional robots reall ...