Robotics
humanoids, drones, self-driving vehicles and machines that move on their own

Waymo Plans Driverless Taxis in Munich by Late 2027, Its First European City
The American robotaxi company will begin mapping Munich streets in the coming weeks, with public rides targeted for the end of next year.

Universal Robots Owner Sues Chinese Rival JAKA Over Copycat Cobot Claims
Teradyne Robotics has taken a second Chinese robotics firm to court in Europe this year, this time over patents covering the hardware and software inside its collaborative robot arms.

NSF Commits $90 Million to Three New Research Centers, One Built Around Robots That Learn From People
The National Science Foundation is funding a new centre at the University of Texas at Austin where scientists will teach robots to adapt to the humans they work alongside.

Hugging Face's $399 Microduck Is a Waddling Open-Source Robot You Can Train Yourself
The duck-shaped bot picks things up, roller skates, and gets back on its feet when it falls. It ships before Christmas, and the code is free for anyone to inspect or modify.

Meet the Microduck: Hugging Face's New Tiny Robot Has One Eye, Rollerskates, and Its Own Voice
Pollen Robotics, the robotics arm of AI company Hugging Face, is taking preorders for a 10-inch bipedal robot that picks up socks, follows a laser pointer, and makes sounds unlike any other robot on the shelf.

Zara's owner just opened a robot-assisted bargain store in the UK. Here's what that means.
Inditex, the Spanish group behind Zara, has brought its cut-price chain Lefties to Britain, starting in Liverpool, with robots helping run the shop floor. Primark, Shein and the supermarkets are the named targets.

Carbon Robotics swaps dozens of crop-specific AI models for one that learns a new field in minutes
A single 'large plant model' trained on 150 million labeled plant images lets farmers define crops and weeds on an iPad, then point a laser weeder at exactly what they want gone.

Autonomous vehicles jumped from one story to six in our coverage. Here is what that shape looks like.
AI2Day published six pieces on self-driving vehicles between 20 and 26 August 2026, up from a single story the week before. Three separate outlets carried the beat, so this is not one desk chasing a hunch.

BlackBerry Quietly Became a Robotics Software Company. Here Is How.
The phone maker turned automotive software firm says its QNX software is now one of its fastest-growing business lines, and robots are driving that growth.

Amazon Is Buying Two Million More Nvidia Chips as AI Demand Blows Past Forecasts
The two companies are deepening a partnership that now covers warehouse robots and cloud software, not just the chips that power AI.

Self-driving truck startup Gatik raises $200 million to expand driverless freight routes
The California company already runs dozens of autonomous trucks for customers like PepsiCo and Kroger. Now it has the cash to scale to thousands.

Two ex-Meta researchers want warehouse robots to finally understand what they're looking at
Perceptron's Isaac 0.5 is an open-weight vision model built to help industrial robots handle complex, multi-step tasks on their own. The startup raised $21 million and is targeting factories, warehouses and logistics hubs.

IDS Imaging's New Nion Camera Gives Robots Sharp 3D Vision at Real-World Speeds
A German industrial camera maker has launched a 3D sensor that tracks fast-moving objects in tricky lighting, aiming to make precise depth sensing practical on factory floors and in logistics warehouses.

Driverless Diggers Are Already Moving Earth on Real US Construction Sites
Bedrock Robotics has put fully autonomous excavators to work in Texas and Nevada, with no operator in the cab. Here is what that means for construction workers and the projects they build.

Robot brains are getting smarter, but they still can't do a real day's work
A wave of investment is pouring into physical AI, the technology that teaches machines to move through the world. But developers admit their robots are still stuck in an early, limited era, similar to where chatbots were before ChatGPT changed everything.