The University of Maryland's RoboScout team just demoed an AI-powered disaster response squad that pairs autonomous drones with Boston Dynamics robot dogs. Drones locate survivors, while a Spot robot uses an onboard LLM to talk to victims, check vitals, and beam triage data straight to medics' phones. It could be a lifesaver when patients drastically outnumber first responders.
Figure AI just introduced Figure 03, its third-generation humanoid robot engineered for the home and mass manufacturing. Built to power its proprietary Helix AI, the robot features tactile fingertips sensitive to three grams of pressure, washable fabric coverings, and 2 kW wireless inductive charging. Why it matters: It shifts humanoids from experimental lab hardware toward consumer-ready scale.
DoorDash just unveiled Dot, an in-house autonomous delivery robot designed for local commerce alongside an AI Autonomous Delivery Platform. At one-tenth the size of a car and capable of speeds up to 20 mph, Dot navigates roads, sidewalks, and bike lanes. The platform acts as an AI dispatcher across drivers, robots, and drones, starting trials in Arizona.
Nvidia just launched Newton, an open-source GPU-accelerated physics engine co-developed with Google DeepMind and Disney Research, alongside its new Isaac GR00T N1.6 humanoid foundation model. Newton simulates messy, complex physical interactions like walking on snow or handling fragile objects. It gives developers a unified stack to train physical AI in simulation and deploy it safely to real robots.
Google DeepMind just unveiled Gemini Robotics 1.5 and Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 to power physical AI agents. The ER model handles multi-step spatial reasoning and tool calling, while the 1.5 VLA model thinks before translating instructions into physical motor actions across different robot bodies. Developers can access the ER model today via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio.
Figure just announced Project Go-Big to build the world's largest pretraining dataset for humanoid robots. Since robotic physical data can't simply be scraped from the web, Figure is tapping partner Brookfield's network of over 100,000 residential units to gather real-world demonstrations at scale.
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have built an autonomous underwater robot capable of finding and hauling ocean debris. Powered by sonar and cameras, on-board AI turns seabed scans into 3D models so a four-fingered gripper can lift up to 250 kilograms without crushing fragile objects.
Levita Magnetics just performed the world's first gallbladder surgery using an AI-guided autonomous camera on its MARS robotics platform in Chile. The system automatically tracks surgical instruments to keep the field of view stable without a camera assistant. It is not yet cleared by the FDA or available for sale.
Amazon's Zoox just opened its purpose-built robotaxi rides to the general public along the Las Vegas Strip. The toaster-shaped vehicles have no steering wheel or pedals, top out at 45 mph, and are currently free between a few select resort stops while regulatory permits are pending.
Nvidia just made its Jetson Thor robotics computing platform generally available. It delivers 7.5x the AI compute and double the memory of the previous Orin chip, letting physical AI agents run generative reasoning models directly on edge devices. Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics are already putting it inside Atlas and Digit, with developer kits starting at $3,499.
Tensor, a rebranding of autonomous driving firm AutoX, just announced plans to launch the first mass-produced L4 autonomous vehicle designed for personal ownership. Dubbed the Tensor robocar, the vehicle is packed with an extensive sensor suite and is slated to roll out across the US, Europe, and the Middle East starting in 2026. While selling fully driverless cars directly to consumers is ambitious, crushing hardware costs and liability hurdles remain.
Apple is developing four AI-powered home devices, including a motorized desktop robot, a smart display, and security cameras aimed for 2026 to 2027, according to Bloomberg. Engineers are also rebuilding Siri from scratch with a new persona codenamed "Bubbles" to turn its AI fortunes around.
Figure just showed off its Figure 02 humanoid robot autonomously folding and stacking towels with zero teleoperation or pre-scripted code. Running on its Helix neural network, the robot's multi-fingered hands can trace edges, smooth wrinkles, and adapt to fabric slips. Why it matters: The same model that worked in BMW's plant made the jump from warehouse logistics to household chores with just 500 hours of human demo data.
Nvidia just launched a major robotics push headlined by Cosmos Reason, a 7-billion-parameter reasoning model built to serve as the physical brain for autonomous machines. Alongside new Omniverse neural rendering libraries and Blackwell servers, the system lets developers generate hyper-realistic synthetic training data and run complex simulations. Why it matters: By closing the sim-to-real gap in software, building next-generation robots no longer requires breaking expensive hardware in the physical world.
Unitree just launched the A2 quadruped robot, equipping it with front and rear industrial lidars for full 360-degree awareness. The 37 kg machine hits speeds up to 5 m/s, scales obstacles up to 1 meter high, and features hot-swappable dual batteries for non-stop industrial inspection and logistics tasks.
