NearLink Alliance Publishes Embodied AI Connectivity Blue Book With 30-Plus Contributors

The International SparkLink Alliance has published a blue book setting out short-range connectivity requirements for embodied AI, extending the NearLink ecosystem's focus into robot communications. The document went online on November 6, according to the alliance's announcement reported by IT Home.

More than 30 core members of the alliance's embodied-intelligence special interest group helped prepare the report. Contributors include China Mobile's research institute, Huawei, ZTE and TD Tech. The alliance says the work gathers practical technical requirements and proposes a full-stack technology and network architecture to guide joint development across the industry.

The blue book organizes those requirements around three scenarios: connections within a single robot, collaborative interactions among multiple devices, and coordinated scheduling across devices, edge systems and the cloud. That scope places the communication layer alongside the sensors, controllers and computing resources needed to operate embodied systems, rather than treating wireless links only as a connection to an external application.

Internal robot connectivity concerns links inside the machine itself. Multi-device collaboration expands the scope to robots and other equipment working together, while device-edge-cloud coordination addresses how local systems connect with computing and scheduling resources beyond an individual robot. These are the document's application categories, not an announcement that every existing NearLink product already supports the complete architecture.

The alliance pointed to demonstrations at its 2026 ecosystem innovation exhibition, including robot factories, unmanned retail, household service robots and teleoperation. It said those displays demonstrated engineering reliability in real-time control and multi-robot coordination. Those assessments are the alliance's claims; the news announcement did not provide independently verified field reliability measurements or a common benchmark against other wireless technologies.

The publication is a requirements and ecosystem-development document, rather than a robot launch or a disclosed commercial deployment contract. It identifies areas for suppliers and developers to work on together, but the announcement does not set out a deployment timetable or universal performance guarantees. The alliance directs readers to the industry-report section of its website to obtain the blue book.

SEE ALSO: