Uber and Waymo just launched autonomous rides in Austin, Texas, giving Uber riders a chance to get picked up by an all-electric Jaguar I-PACE with no human driver behind the wheel. The ride comes at no extra cost, and passengers can easily opt in or out. It plants robotaxis right in Tesla's home territory ahead of its own planned rollout.
A fully driverless Maserati MC20 Coupe just hit 197.7 mph (318 km/h) at the Kennedy Space Center, shattering the autonomous land speed record. Powered by algorithms from Politecnico di Milano and Indy Autonomous Challenge, the team pushed the AI software to its absolute limit to stress-test systems and eventually improve high-speed highway safety.
Figure just moved up its home robotics roadmap by two years, with plans to begin alpha testing its Figure 02 humanoid in living rooms later in 2025. CEO Brett Adcock credited Helix, the startup’s new generalist VLA model, for the rapid shift. Why it matters: While rivals stick to factory floors, Figure is taking on the messy real world surprisingly early.
DJI just unveiled the Dock 3, a rugged drone-in-a-box system that lets drones launch directly from moving vehicles with an optional gimbal mount. Built for the Matrice 4D and 4TD, it packs an IP56 rating, handles extreme temperatures from -30 to 50 degrees Celsius, and starts at $21,059. Why it matters: Mobile launches allow inspection and emergency teams to deploy aerial scans without ever having to stop the truck.
Apptronik just inked a pilot deal with manufacturing giant Jabil to deploy its Apollo humanoid robots on factory floors for sorting and transport tasks. If all goes smoothly, Jabil will eventually mass-produce Apollo in its own facilities—meaning the robots will literally help build themselves, with commercial manufacturing targeted for 2026.
Figure just introduced Helix, a vision-language-action model that drives full upper-body control for humanoid robots. By decoupling slow scene comprehension from a 200Hz reactive action policy, it lets robots pick up unfamiliar household items and even coordinate across two units entirely on onboard, low-power GPUs.
Clone Robotics just introduced Protoclone, billed as the world's first bipedal musculoskeletal android. Powered entirely by water and electricity, it replaces rigid electric motors with proprietary artificial muscles called Myofibers that contract faster than human tissue. It is a wildly biomimetic step toward soft-bodied, sci-fi-style humanoids.
The NBA just revealed a trio of AI-powered robots currently testing with the Golden State Warriors. Steph Curry uses one named A.B.E. as a non-stop rebounder, while other bots mimic real-time defensive pressure and boost team morale in the locker room. Why it matters: professional sports training is finding real utility in specialized autonomous hardware.
Meta is making a major bet on humanoid robots, setting up a dedicated team inside Reality Labs led by former Cruise CEO Marc Whitten. Instead of rushing to sell its own branded bot, Meta wants to build the underlying AI, sensor, and software platform using Llama to power third-party hardware, with talks already underway with Figure AI and Unitree.
Iran’s Ministry of Defense just published footage showing what it claims is the first submarine-launched autonomous suicide drone, dubbed Hadid 110. The loitering munition relies on onboard AI image recognition to identify and strike targets without radio links or manual guidance, making underwater launches harder to detect and jam.
Lyft is teaming up with Intel's Mobileye and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni to launch a robotaxi fleet in Dallas as soon as 2026. The ridehail platform is sticking to an asset-light playbook, letting Marubeni own and manage the cars while Mobileye supplies the self-driving tech, all in a bid to keep pace with Uber.
Apple engineers just built an expressive robotic desk lamp straight out of a Pixar film. Equipped with cameras, microphones, and tiny motors, the prototype responds to hand gestures, grooves to music, and even peeks out the window before answering weather questions.
Researchers just introduced ASAP, a two-stage framework that bridges the sim-to-real physics gap for humanoid robots. By pairing simulated pre-training with a real-world residual action model, the team demonstrated agile whole-body skills on a Unitree G1 robot with significantly reduced tracking errors. Why it matters: It offers a practical path to dynamic robot agility without manual parameter tuning.
OpenAI is officially getting into physical hardware. Robotics hardware lead Caitlin Kalinowski just posted openings for the company’s first hardware-focused roles, recruiting senior sensing engineers, mechanical designers, and a TPM manager to set up a new training lab. OpenAI isn't content with just supplying the AI brains; it wants to build the bodies too.
Nvidia just unveiled Mega at CES, an Omniverse blueprint designed to test and optimize physical AI and industrial robot fleets in digital twins before real-world deployment. It combines Isaac robotics and Omniverse sensor simulation, allowing operators like KION Group to simulate infinite warehouse scenarios. Why it matters: Bringing software-defined simulation to physical factories finally lets logistics scale without trial-and-error downtime.
NVIDIA just opened early access for its Omniverse Sensor RTX APIs, targeting AV and robotics developers. The tool simulates physically accurate data for cameras, radar, and lidar, letting teams safely generate rare edge cases without risking real-world hardware. Partners like Accenture, Foretellix, and Nuro are already plugging it into their testing pipelines.
NVIDIA just unveiled its Isaac GR00T Blueprint for synthetic motion generation alongside the new Cosmos world foundation models at CES. Developers can capture human demos via Apple Vision Pro and multiply them into massive synthetic datasets in Omniverse. Robotics giants Boston Dynamics and Figure are already onboard.
Samsung just confirmed that its rolling AI companion robot Ballie will actually ship to consumers in 2025. Equipped with a built-in projector, onboard speakers, and visual AI, Ballie can cast screens onto walls or floors and manage smart home devices. Why it matters: After five years of CES demos, Samsung is finally putting its adorable concept bot to the real-world test.
Halliday just debuted a pair of retro-style smart glasses at CES 2025 that skip traditional waveguide lenses entirely. Using a tiny optical module called DigiWindow, the device projects a discreet 3.5-inch virtual screen directly into your field of vision without a camera, paired with a proactive AI agent that assists during conversations.
