Meta just started rolling out its Meta AI assistant to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in France, Italy, and Spain, adding support for French, Italian, and Spanish. But European users won't get the multimodal camera-based features available in the US due to strict EU AI and GDPR compliance hurdles.
Amazon-owned Zoox is preparing to roll out its purpose-built, steering-wheel-free robotaxi commercially in the coming months, starting in Las Vegas. The symmetrical, bidirectional EV ditches the driver's seat entirely in favor of an inward-facing carriage cabin. Early employee tests are already underway in San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Waymo just scrapped its waitlist in Los Angeles, opening up 24/7 driverless rides to anyone with the Waymo One app. The service spans nearly 80 square miles across Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Downtown LA. It marks Waymo's second fully public metro rollout after San Francisco, pulling ahead while rivals like Cruise and Zoox play catch-up.
Baidu just debuted its own pair of AI-powered smart glasses running on ERNIE at its annual World Conference in Shanghai. Equipped with cameras and voice interaction, the device answers visual questions, snaps photos, and tracks calories. It ships next year as China's answer to Meta's Ray-Bans.
Apple is developing a six-inch wall-mounted smart display powered by Siri and Apple Intelligence, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The iPad-like hub acts as a command center for HomeKit devices and video calls, with sensors that adapt UI based on your distance, and could launch as early as March 2025.
Sotheby's just sold "A.I. God", a portrait of Alan Turing painted by humanoid robot Ai-Da Robot, for $1,084,800. The digital art sale drew 27 bids, crushing its original estimate of $120,000 to $180,000. Why it matters: It marks the first time an artwork by a humanoid robot has sold at auction, setting a new benchmark for robot artists.
NVIDIA just released a major suite of robotics development tools at CoRL, headlined by the open-source launch of Isaac Lab 1.2 and six new Project GR00T workflows for humanoids. The company also open-sourced its Cosmos visual tokenizer, running up to 12x faster to accelerate world model training. Why it matters: NVIDIA is actively trying to cement its compute and software stack as the unavoidable operating backbone for the next generation of physical AI.
Meta's former augmented reality hardware lead Caitlin Kalinowski just joined OpenAI to oversee its robotics and consumer hardware teams. Kalinowski previously led the development of Meta's Orion glasses prototype and designed MacBooks at Apple. Why it matters: OpenAI is officially reviving its robotics ambitions to bridge multimodal models into physical devices.
Physical Intelligence just unveiled π0, a generalist foundation model designed to power diverse robotic hardware. Built on a 3B-parameter vision-language backbone augmented with flow matching, it outputs continuous motor controls at 50Hz. Why it matters: instead of programming narrow industrial steps, a single model can now fold crumpled laundry and bus messy tables across different robots.
Meta FAIR just released a suite of open robotics tools aimed at human-level touch, including the Sparsh tactile model and the Digit 360 sensor fingertip. Teaming up with GelSight and Wonik Robotics to manufacture the hardware next year, Meta wants to give embodied AI the dexterity and contact physics that cameras alone cannot provide.
Boston Dynamics just showed off its Atlas humanoid robot autonomously moving engine covers between supplier bins and a mobile sequencing dolly. The robot uses machine learning to detect and localize its environment on the fly, with zero prescribed trajectories or teleoperation.
Meta is rolling out a firmware and app update for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, bringing hands-free visual AI features announced at Connect. Users can now simply ask about objects in front of them to trigger photos, scan QR codes, dial phone numbers spotted by the camera, and set parking reminders. Live translation and video AI aren't live yet, but the glasses are taking another step toward always-on visual assistance.
Two Harvard students just demonstrated how easily smart glasses can become surveillance tools by linking Ray-Ban Meta glasses with public facial recognition engines and LLMs. The project, dubbed I-XRAY, pulls strangers' names, phone numbers, and home addresses in seconds. They aren't releasing the code, framing the demo as an urgent wake-up call.
ETH Zurich just taught its four-legged ANYMal robot how to climb industrial ladders using custom hooked feet and reinforcement learning. The system tackles 70- to 90-degree ladder angles with a 90% success rate, clocking in at 232 times faster than previous approaches. Best of all, it dynamically corrects its footing in real time if it misses a rung, cracking one of the biggest mobility hurdles in industrial inspection.
Rabbit just rolled out LAM playground, a cross-platform agent system for its R1 pocket companion. Users can now teach the multi-modal agent to navigate websites via the Rabbithole cloud portal, performing tasks like searching Google and adding items to Amazon carts. It still takes around 45 seconds and trips over CAPTCHAs, but it finally delivers on Rabbit's original core pitch.
Raspberry Pi and Sony just launched the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, a $70 module bringing edge vision processing to the popular single-board computers. Powered by Sony’s IMX500 sensor, it runs neural networks directly on the chip without needing extra GPUs or accelerators. Why it matters: It gives makers and developers a dirt-cheap way to run real-time computer vision locally.
Mileseey Golf just launched the GenePro S1, an AI-powered golf rangefinder that factors in weather conditions to compensate distances. Beyond standard elevation, it analyzes humidity, wind, temperature, and air pressure, while offering centimeter-level green readings. At $799.99, it basically packs a PGA-level caddie's playbook into your golf bag.
Jony Ive just confirmed he is teaming up with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to build a new AI hardware device. Designed by Ive's firm LoveFrom and staffed by key former iPhone engineers, the venture could raise $1 billion by year's end. Specifics and release timing remain under wraps, but they're aiming to reinvent computing beyond traditional software.
Meta is gearing up for its annual Connect conference, where Mark Zuckerberg is expected to unpack major Meta AI updates across apps like WhatsApp alongside new Llama models. Hardware leaks point to a cheaper Quest 3S headset, fresh Ray-Ban updates, and a glimpse of the Orion AR glasses. Meta is tying its AI chatbot push directly into mainstream wearable hardware.
Disney Research just developed an AI system that lets robots learn complex, lifelike movements directly from random motion data. By breaking down and simplifying short movement clips, the system trains controllers to execute dynamic motions that actually hold up in the real world. Why it matters: It could eliminate tedious motion programming and help service robots adapt to unpredictable real-world environments.
