Robotics and physical AI news
Stories 121 to 180 of 194, from 21 September 2026 to 5 October 2026, newest first. The latest are on the first page →
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California orders REK to stop human vs. robot fights
REK, a robotics startup, received a cease-and-desist order from the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) after hosting a human versus robot cage match in San Francisco on September 18, 2026. The event featured…
2 sourcesThe Rundown AITom's Hardware -
Teradyne invests in Bright Machines to automate AI infrastructure manufacturing
Teradyne Inc. announced a strategic investment in Bright Machines Inc., a company that builds AI and data center infrastructure. The two firms are launching a collaboration to integrate Teradyne’s robotics and test…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Applied Intuition teams with Nissan on AI-defined vehicle software
Applied Intuition announced on October 5, 2026, that it will deploy its Vehicle OS software to support Nissan’s development of AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs). The partnership, which began in 2020, now extends to Nissan’s…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
FCC robot restrictions could accelerate shift to local AI
The FCC added foreign-made advanced robots to its list of restricted technologies in July, blocking imports and sales in the US. The move follows concerns over national security risks, including potential surveillance…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
MIT team builds AI-powered wearable to move fingers via voice commands
A six-person team at MIT’s Hard Mode 2026 hackathon created Human Operator, a wearable prototype that uses voice commands and AI to trigger electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) in the arm or wrist. The system combines a…
1 sourcegadgetreview.com -
Volvo and Waabi start autonomous freight runs for Warp in Texas
Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi began customer operations on October 5, 2026, moving freight for Warp along the Dallas–Houston corridor. The Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Waabi Driver, runs with an observer…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
Safeworld raises $12M seed to test gen AI robot safety
Safeworld has emerged from stealth with a seed round of more than $12 million, led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun. The company, founded by Dr. Ding Zhao of Carnegie Mellon University, Kyle Wong, and Simo Rachidi,…
1 sourceTechCrunch AI -
Coco Robotics and Deliveroo launch UK sidewalk robot deliveries
Coco Robotics and Deliveroo announced an exclusive strategic partnership on October 5, 2026, to scale sidewalk robot deliveries across the UK. This marks Coco’s entry into the country and Deliveroo’s first use of…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
RobCo sells $40M of shares at a $1B valuation
Munich-based robotics startup RobCo has sold $40 million worth of shares at a valuation of $1 billion. This marks a significant increase from its previous valuation of approximately $500 million, which was established…
2 sourcesUnite.AIwsj.com -
CoreWeave launches Physical AI Field Engineering service
CoreWeave has launched Physical AI Field Engineering, a service that deploys engineers with automotive, aerospace, and mechanical backgrounds to build models using customer-owned data. The initiative leverages…
1 sourceread.getsuperintel.com -
NeuroXess BCI lets paralyzed designer create figurines via AI
Xiao Jia, a quadriplegic designer in China, used a fully implanted, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) from Shanghai-based NeuroXess to create a physical figurine. Since receiving the implant in April, he has…
1 sourcevcbeathealth.com -
F.02 Decommission
The company faced a logistical challenge: disassembling the robots to protect proprietary hardware would have consumed too much technical staff time. After consulting with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who suggested melting…
2 sources HN 42Tom's Hardwarefigure.ai -
Foxlink presents robot dog for physical security at GTC Taipei 2025
At GTC Taipei 2025, robotics company Foxlink presented its 'robot dog' as a next-generation physical security asset designed to protect crucial assets. The quadruped robot uses integrated smart sensors and physical AI…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Open-source tool uses AI to generate LEGO builds with 2,175 pieces
An open-source project called LDraw Nova lets AI models like GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 design LEGO builds by writing Python programs that output CAD files. Developer Carlos Antelo demonstrated a 2,175-piece…
1 sourceTom's Hardware -
Chinese Academy of Sciences' Maxwell model tops Meta-World benchmark with 91.9
Maxwell, an embodied AI model from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industries, achieved a record 91.9 score on the Meta‑World benchmark, which tests robots on 50 everyday…
1 sourcescmp.com -
Clone Robotics shows teleoperated hand, targets November launch for Torso 4
On October 1, Clone Robotics posted a video labeled “Teleoperation of the Hand of Torso 3.” The clip shows a human remotely controlling a robotic hand that was built in April 2026 and is the last of the company’s…
1 sourceinterestingengineering.com -
Omron discusses next-generation LD mobile robots on Robot Report podcast
Miguel Garcés Moreno, product marketing manager for EMEA at Omron Industrial Automation Europe, was interviewed on The Robot Report podcast. He oversees strategy for autonomous mobile robots, industrial automation and…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Eli Lilly and Purdue share HRI insights at RoboBusiness 2026
At RoboBusiness 2026, Faraz Yousuf of Eli Lilly and Dr. Anastasia Kouvaras Ostrowski of Purdue University will present on bridging human-robot interaction (HRI) research between academia and industry. Their session,…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
GMEX Robotics’ Hartzband outlines US expansion and social AI focus
Brian Hartzband, president of U.S. operations at GMEX Robotics, discusses the company’s strategy to expand in the U.S. and develop social intelligence for its physical AI platforms. Hartzband, who previously led…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
Anthropic reportedly eyes 100K sq ft industrial space for R&D in Mission District
Anthropic is exploring a lease for the 100,000-square-foot 2000 Folsom St. building in San Francisco’s Mission District, according to real estate insiders. The property, currently vacant after a robotics tenant, is…
1 sourcefinance.yahoo.com -
Singapore University of Technology and Design unveils albatross hybrid aerial‑marine robot
The IEEE Spectrum Robotics Video Friday roundup showcases ALBATROSS, a hybrid aerial‑marine robot created by the Singapore University of Technology and Design. The platform can be dropped from the sky, autorotate into…
1 sourceIEEE Spectrum Robotics -
Robotics Startup Radar 2026 submissions close soon
The Robotics Startup Radar is accepting applications for its 2026 edition. The initiative highlights promising robotics startups and connects them with industry opportunities. Submissions are open now and will close…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Tavus’ Griffin-Lite model fools 48% of testers in video calls as human
Tavus previewed Griffin-Lite, a ‘Human Interaction Model’ that mimics human behavior in live video calls. In tests, 48% of participants believed they were speaking to a real person, up from 2.4% with earlier models.…
2 sourcesThe Rundown AIThe Decoder -
DoorDash unveils six-rotor drone for 5-minute restaurant-to-doorstep deliveries
DoorDash revealed its in-house drone for DoorDash Air, a six-rotor aircraft with a winch for order pickup, unveiled alongside kitchen handoff and packaging software. The company estimates 80% of typical restaurant…
1 sourceThe Rundown AI -
Unitree Robotics stock plummets 40% in September, wiping $20B
Unitree Robotics, a Chinese humanoid robot maker, saw its shares drop nearly 40% in September 2026 from their first-day closing price on August 19. This decline erased roughly $20 billion in market value from that…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Anthropic study finds robots cover 34% of US work hours but face cost barriers
A new study from Anthropic estimates robots can perform about 34% of all working hours in the US, covering roughly three-quarters of physical job tasks. However, the report highlights significant barriers to widespread…
1 sourceaol.com -
Boston Dynamics unveils Atlas hand with 13 degrees of freedom for mass production
Boston Dynamics announced a redesigned hand for its Atlas robot on October 1, prioritizing scalability over human-like appearance. The new hand features 13 degrees of freedom—double the previous version’s 7—and…
2 sourcesThe Robot ReportIEEE Spectrum Robotics -
XPeng launches G9L SUV globally at Paris Motor Show
XPeng will unveil its G9L, a next-generation AI-powered SUV, at the 2026 Paris Motor Show on October 12. The event marks the vehicle’s global debut after its China launch in September, with European orders and pricing…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
Agility and FORT partner to expand Digit 5’s off-robot safety system
Agility Robotics and FORT Robotics signed a memorandum of understanding on October 1, 2026, to develop an off-robot safety interface for Digit 5, Agility’s next-generation humanoid robot. The Offboard Safety Bridge…
1 sourceUnite.AI -
VicOne LAB R7 finds manipulated inputs can bypass robot safety systems
VicOne LAB R7 tested how false or crafted inputs—like text on a poster or inaudible audio—can alter robot behavior despite safety protocols. In one test, a robot-dog treated a poster’s text as an instruction, changing…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Maven Robotics plans to run fleets 24/7 by year-end and scale to thousands by 2028
Maven Robotics, founded in 2024, has raised $100 million and deployed robots running 16 hours a day, five days a week with up to 99% uptime, according to CEO Hamza Derbas. The company recently closed a Series A funding…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Destro raises $8M seed to link robots and humans in logistics
Destro, a stealthy robotics startup, emerged on Tuesday with an $8 million seed round to address a gap in warehouse automation: coordinating robots and human workers. The company’s approach focuses on an AI…
1 sourceTechCrunch AI -
Amazon targets 5,000 smart-glass drivers by 2026 for AI mapping
Amazon plans to equip 5,000 delivery drivers with smart glasses by 2026, scaling to 20,000+ by 2027 to feed static images into its AI mapping platform. The glasses capture visual data to improve navigation and…
1 sourcebloomberg.com -
Innodata opens motion-capture lab for humanoid robot training data
Innodata Inc. announced the launch of a motion-capture lab in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, designed to generate high-quality training data for humanoid robots and other physical AI systems. The facility uses Vicon’s…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
ASI and SoftBank launch joint venture to commercialize autonomous heavy equipment
Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI) and SoftBank Group Corp. announced a joint venture aimed at commercializing brand‑agnostic autonomous heavy equipment for large‑scale infrastructure projects. ASI’s Mobius industrial…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Google's Intrinsic open-sources robot control stack as NVIDIA buys Hugging Face
Google subsidiary Intrinsic released Intrinsic Core under Apache 2.0 at ROSCon 2026 in Toronto on September 22. The stack includes real-time control, motion and grasp planning, pose estimation via NVIDIA…
1 sourcenote.com -
ForceN teaches force and torque sensing for humanoids at RoboBusiness
ForceN will host a session titled A Crash Course in Force & Torque Sensing for Humanoids at RoboBusiness 2026 on October 20–21 in Santa Clara, California. Robert Brooks, the company’s CEO and founder, will speak at…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Nebius and NVIDIA launch 2026 Physical AI Awards with $150K compute prizes
Nebius and NVIDIA announced the 2026 Physical AI Awards, a global competition offering five $150,000 compute credit prizes across five categories. Applications are open until October 25, 2026, with winners announced in…
2 sourcesMarkTechPost -
Flourish launches $3,555 home robot for parents, ships before Christmas
Flourish, a startup based in San Francisco and Paris, is opening sales for Flourish One, a $3,555 humanoid-style home robot designed for busy parents. The robot, built on a six-wheeled base with two arms (each handling…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Manufacturing Robot orders rise 6.6% year over year, Report says
The Robot Report examines how robotics in manufacturing have shifted from rigid automation to flexible, collaborative systems. Advances in perception, autonomy, and safety—including cobots, mobile robots, and…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Charlie Kemp builds assistive robots at Hello Robot
Charlie Kemp, cofounder and CTO of Hello Robot, designs mobile manipulators to aid people in homes and workplaces. His work focuses on assistive robots for older adults and those with disabilities, inspired by his…
1 sourceIEEE Spectrum Robotics -
AI Robotics Alliance debates robot economic autonomy and crypto wallets for humanoids
Analysts at the AI Robotics Alliance of America (AIRA) Summit in June proposed that capital could govern robots by granting them autonomy, reducing transaction costs. However, translating this theory into practice…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Raise Robotics shares leadership framework for scaling field robots at RoboBusiness
Raise Robotics will present a leadership framework for scaling autonomous robots in construction at RoboBusiness 2026. Kenrick Tjandra, who leads robotics deployment at the San Francisco-based company, will discuss how…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
NASA tests generative AI for spacecraft autonomy on Mars rover and ISS
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used Anthropic's Claude models in December to help plan two Mars drives for the Perseverance rover, with human planners reviewing routes before upload. In May, NASA and IBM deployed a…
1 sourceIEEE Spectrum AI -
Global industrial robot stock hits 5 million in 2025, IFR says
The International Federation of Robotics reported that the global operational stock of industrial robots grew 9% in 2025, reaching a record 5 million units. This increase followed an 11% rise in annual installations,…
2 sourcesThe Robot Reportifr.org -
Fedorov proposes private robot army to replace human soldiers in Ukraine
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former defense minister, announced plans to create a private-sector robot army at IT Arena 2026 in Lviv. He cited drones, which now account for over 95% of target engagements, as proof of…
1 sourceThe Decoder -
OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra drives Toyota Corolla through parking lot course
A new benchmark called DrivingBench tested whether frontier language models could control a real Toyota Corolla in a parking lot. Only OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra succeeded, completing a roughly 130-meter course on its second…
1 sourceofficechai.com -
Niantic Spatial and Singapore Land Authority explore first national visual positioning system map
Niantic Spatial and the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) signed a memorandum of understanding to assess whether Singapore’s high-resolution geospatial data can power a Visual Positioning System (VPS) for the entire…
1 sourcenianticspatial.com -
Tesla ramps up Optimus robot production to several hundred units per week
Tesla has increased output of its Optimus humanoid robot to several hundred units each week, a rise of roughly tenfold compared with earlier months. The company says the higher rate reflects progress in its…
2 sources HN 10Ars Technica AItheinformation.com -
Amazon invests $100M in Indiana robotics facility for fulfillment and AI-powered systems
Amazon announced a $100 million investment in a new 585,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Greenwood, Indiana. The facility will create 300 skilled jobs and produce components for its fulfillment and robotics…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Unitree deploys 19 humanoid robots in AI-driven WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 performance
Unitree showcased its largest-scale humanoid robot performance at the WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 opening ceremony on September 22. Nineteen of its humanoid robots performed alongside 120 dancers before an audience of…
1 sourceIEEE Spectrum Robotics -
Agility Robotics CEO says company is exploring wheeled robots
Agility Robotics, the maker of the Digit humanoid, is actively exploring wheeled robot designs alongside its existing legged robots. CEO Jonathan Hurst confirmed to The Robot Report that the company is testing various…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
CNH Industrial highlights robotics to address farming labor and efficiency challenges
Farmers in the U.S. face rising costs, volatile crop prices, and labor shortages, according to The Robot Report. CNH Industrial, a global agricultural equipment manufacturer, says robotics and AI-driven automation can…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Black Forest Labs releases FLUX 3 Action, an open robotics model
Black Forest Labs has launched FLUX 3 Action, an open AI model specifically designed for robotics applications. Building on the multimodal FLUX 3 foundation, which was trained on video, image, and audio data, this new…
2 sourcesMarkTechPostThe Decoder -
Mexican team builds portable robotics-AI lab for schools
A team from ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, developed RoboMeshA, a portable educational platform combining robotics and AI for classrooms lacking advanced labs. The project, part of IEEE’s EPICS in IEEE…
1 sourceIEEE Spectrum Robotics -
Epson launches AX6 cobot with 6 kg payload and no-code programming
Epson Robots has introduced the AX6, a new six-axis collaborative robot designed for compact spaces and human-robot collaboration. The company, based in Suwa, Japan, stated that the AX6 features power- and…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Shield AI, Waabi, and GM discuss deploying AI where failure isn’t an option
Shield AI, Waabi, and General Motors will discuss critical questions about deploying AI in high-stakes environments at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on October 13–15. The panel, titled Building AI Systems When Failure Is Not…
1 sourceTechCrunch AI -
State of Humanoids keynote features Agility, Apptronik, Persona AI, Psyonic at RoboBusiness
RoboBusiness 2026 will open its second day on Oct. 21 with a “State of Humanoids” keynote that examines how humanoid robots are moving from high‑profile demos toward real‑world use. The session is positioned as a…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
Qualcomm to acquire PickNik Robotics and keep MoveIt open-source
Qualcomm Technologies Inc. announced it will acquire PickNik Inc., the creator of the MoveIt open-source manipulation framework. The deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, aims to streamline MoveIt integration…
1 sourceThe Robot Report -
RoboBusiness 2026 to host panel on building reliable outdoor robots
Robots are moving from controlled indoor settings into outdoor environments such as farms, construction sites, mines, ports, and critical infrastructure. The harsher conditions—weather, dust, moisture, vibration,…
1 sourceThe Robot Report
