On August 12, 2026, ZEALS brought its compact humanoid D1 to CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UC Berkeley for a presentation and live demonstration. The team transported the robot to campus and ran the session in the CITRIS Robotics Lab at Sutardja Dai Hall.

The visit was hosted by Julie Shapiro, Director of Corporate Relations at CITRIS. Professor S. Shankar Sastry of UC Berkeley EECS, a former Director of CITRIS, joined the session, as did Jolie Lam, CITRIS Program Director for Surgical Robotics and Health Data Science & AI for Medicine, and Dan Chapman, curator of the CITRIS Tech Museum, along with CITRIS staff and students.

ZEALS opened by introducing Omakase Robotics and D1, and described the work D1 already handles in healthcare settings in Japan. A live demonstration followed, and the two sides exchanged views on the robotics research underway at CITRIS.

D1 also met BRETT, the Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks, a robot long associated with Berkeley's work on robot learning.

Both teams found a good deal of overlap in their respective work, discussed where an R&D collaboration could make sense, and agreed to continue the conversation.

ZEALS will keep working with research institutions in the United States and Japan to advance the real-world deployment of humanoid robots that understand their surroundings and take on the right roles alongside people.