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Robotics

Humanoid robots from Figure, Unitree, Tesla Optimus and others, plus robot arms, embodied AI and self-driving cars.

4 stories in the last 7 days

  1. Reach 39

    NVIDIA's MotionBricks runs 15,000 FPS animations for games and humanoids

    NVIDIA just unveiled MotionBricks, a unified motion generation framework that hits 15,000 FPS with just 2ms latency on a single neural backbone. It handles over 350,000 motion skills, animating Unreal Engine 5 characters and directly controlling physical Unitree G1 humanoid robots without task retraining. Why it matters: It bridges the long-standing gap between game animation and real-world robotics with one shared brain, and early preview code is already on GitHub.

  2. Reach 39

    Sony's table tennis bot is already crushing ranked pros

    Sony just showed off Ace, an autonomous table tennis robot that consistently defeats ranked human professionals under official competition rules. Mounted on a heavy-duty electric rail, the bot tracks incoming ball spin within milliseconds and aggressively adjusts its own returns to force human errors. Two-time Olympic medalist Miu Hirano noted it rarely makes rally mistakes and could already compete at a top-10 women's level.

  3. Reach 52

    NVIDIA's Cosmos 3 teaches physical AI to think before acting

    NVIDIA just unveiled Cosmos 3 at GTC Taipei, an open-world foundation model built to give robots and autonomous vehicles physical common sense. Using a mixture-of-transformers setup, it combines visual reasoning with native action prediction, spitting out joint angles and trajectory points directly. It is now open-sourced on Hugging Face to help embodied AI predict before it moves.

  4. Reach 31

    OpenAI is hiring heavily to build real-world robots

    OpenAI is scaling up its robotics ambitions, with CEO Sam Altman announcing hiring across full-stack hardware, systems, ops, and ML. Its world simulation program has evolved into OpenAI Robotics over the past year. The near-term goal is helping skilled workers with infrastructure, aiming long-term at personal robots for everyone.

  5. Reach 35

    NVIDIA brings Foxconn and Uber into its Hyperion robotaxi tent

    NVIDIA just expanded its Hyperion autonomous driving ecosystem to accelerate Level 4 robotaxi deployments across the globe. Foxconn plans to launch commercial fleets in Taiwan by 2028, while Uber and Autobrains are prepping a Munich rollout later this year. Why it matters: NVIDIA wants to become the indispensable turnkey computing and safety stack powering commercial robotaxi fleets worldwide.

  6. Reach 36

    NVIDIA's open-source humanoid blueprint packs Jetson Thor brain

    NVIDIA just unveiled the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot at GTC Taipei, an open blueprint that pairs a Unitree H2 Plus chassis and Sharpa tactile hands with its new Jetson Thor AI computer. It covers the full stack from simulation to real-world deployment, aiming to save researchers from cobbling together fragmented hardware and software. Stanford, ETH Zurich, and Ai2 are already on board, with hardware shipping late 2026.

  7. Reach 32

    Figure just inked a deal to put humanoid robots in retail warehouses

    Figure just signed a commercial agreement with Catalyst Brands, the retail operator behind JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers, to deploy humanoid robots at scale. The rollout kicks off with an initial deployment in Reno, Nevada. Humanoid automation is officially pushing past auto plants into retail and logistics operations.

  8. Reach 39

    Waymo hits the brakes on freeways and pauses two cities

    Waymo just suspended freeway driving across all its US markets over construction zone safety concerns, while also pausing service in Atlanta and San Antonio following flooded-road issues. The pullback comes right after a fleet-wide software recall for speeding through flooded streets in Texas. Local road service continues, but highway trips are offline indefinitely.

  9. Reach 39

    Horizon Robotics open-sources HoloMotion-1 for full-body robot control

    Horizon Robotics just open-sourced HoloMotion-1, a 400M-parameter motion control model running at 300 FPS on edge devices. Using an MoE-Transformer architecture, it enables humanoid robots like the Unitree G1 to mimic complex dancing and martial arts kicks without extra training.

  10. Reach 31

    Boston Dynamics' Atlas just moved an entire fridge

    Boston Dynamics just showed off its humanoid robot Atlas lifting and carrying a mini-fridge. Powered by AI-driven behaviors, the robot coordinates its entire body to balance heavy objects and manage complex multi-point contact under load. It is a big step from delicate pick-and-place demos toward heavy, real-world utility.

  11. Reach 48

    Figure streams 8 hours of autonomous robot work

    Figure just live-streamed eight consecutive hours of fully autonomous, unsupervised humanoid robot operation with zero human intervention. Following the milestone, founder Brett Adcock announced the company is pushing further with an upcoming continuous 24/7 livestream to showcase around-the-clock autonomous labor.

  12. Reach 47

    Unitree unveils a $650,000 manned mecha that transforms

    Unitree just unveiled the GD01, a transformable manned mecha starting at $650,000. Billed as the world's first production-ready manned mecha, the civilian vehicle weighs roughly 500 kilograms with an operator inside and is capable of transforming. Unitree urged future pilots to operate the machine in a "friendly and safe manner."

  13. Reach 32

    Figure's robots clean a room and make a bed in under 2 minutes

    Figure just showed off two F.03 humanoid robots autonomously tidying a room and making a bed together in under two minutes with zero human intervention. The robots coordinated across domestic chores in an unstructured home setup, taking another real step toward everyday household utility.

  14. Reach 39

    Genesis AI gives robots human-level hand dexterity

    Genesis AI just unveiled GENE-26.5, a robotics foundation model paired with a human-scale hand that masters delicate physical tasks. Trained on movements captured with tactile gloves, it can crack an egg one-handed, pipette in a lab, solve a Rubik's cube, and play the piano. Why it matters: True adaptability takes robots out of rigid factories and into messy real-world tasks.

  15. Reach 39

    Boston Dynamics' Atlas pulls off an inverted handstand

    Boston Dynamics just dropped new footage of its all-electric Atlas pulling off moves that defy human biology, including an inverted handstand and a 180-degree torso rotation. Powered by a simulation-trained reinforcement learning control stack, it proves humanoids don't have to copy human joint limits to balance efficiently.

  16. Reach 37

    Meta buys humanoid robotics startup ARI

    Meta just acquired humanoid robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) for an undisclosed sum. ARI's team will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs to build foundation models that help robots handle physical chores and learn whole-body control. Why it matters: Big tech increasingly sees physical-world interaction as the missing link to AGI, and Meta wants its AI learning hands-on.

  17. Reach 39

    Neuralink readies surgical robots for automated brain implants

    Neuralink just revealed a custom five-axis surgical robot designed to automate brain-computer interface implants. Armed with eight cameras and real-time OCT scanners, the machine threads hair-thin electrodes directly through the dura mater without cutting it away. It paves the way for high-precision, scaled operations, though human surgeons still handle the initial craniectomy.

  18. Reach 52

    Sony's new robot can beat pro ping-pong players

    Sony AI just unveiled Ace, an autonomous table-tennis robot featured on the cover of Nature that defeated elite and professional human players on a full-size court under official ITTF rules. Equipped with 12 high-speed sensors yielding a 10.2 ms perception latency, Ace trained entirely in simulation to read intense spin and swing in real time. It marks a massive leap for physical AI handling split-second, high-speed physical interaction.

  19. Reach 52

    Honor's humanoid robot just smoked the human half-marathon record

    Honor's autonomous humanoid robot "Lightning" just won a Beijing half-marathon with a 50:26 finish, beating 12,000 human runners and topping the human world record of 57:20. Developed in a single year, the bot borrows smartphone liquid cooling and 90-95 cm legs modeled after elite sprinters. Autonomous Lightning models swept the podium, showing how fast bipedal robotics is catching up to human athletics.

  20. Reach 38

    DeepMind teaches robots how to read gauges with Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6

    Google DeepMind just launched Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, upgrading its embodied reasoning model with sharper spatial awareness and multi-view task verification. Partnering with Boston Dynamics, DeepMind enabled robots like Spot to accurately inspect analog dials and liquid sight glasses using agentic vision. It gives industrial bots the brains to actually understand physical environments, not just blindly follow scripts.