From August 2 to 5, 2026, the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2026) was held in Changchun, China. Sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, hosted by Jilin University, and co-organized by Harbin Engineering University, Southern University of Science and Technology, and Beijing Institute of Technology, the conference attracted over 400 experts and scholars from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Japan, and South Korea.

The program featured three plenary sessions, two keynote speeches, poster sessions, multiple parallel technical sessions, a women in engineering forum, an industry-academia-research collaboration forum, and an international frontier workshop on mechatronics and robotics. Topics covered intelligent industrial robots, medical robotics, automotive mechatronic control, bionic equipment, AI, and complex system control. Keynote speakers included Prof. Darwin G. Caldwell (FREng), Prof. Henrik Christensen (Director of the Contextual Robotics Institute, UC San Diego), and Prof. Fumihito Arai (University of Tokyo), who presented cutting-edge research and industrial applications in human-robot collaboration, smart healthcare robotics, industrial health monitoring, and micro-precision mechatronic systems.

A total of 552 papers were submitted from 28 countries and regions; after two rounds of rigorous peer review, 356 were accepted. Four best paper awards were presented: Best Student Paper Award, Toshio Fukuda Best Paper Award in Mechatronics, Best Paper Award in Automation, and Best Conference Paper Award.