Robotics · Page 5

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

Illustration: A modern industrial robot arm frozen mid-motion on a factory floor
Robotics

A robotics startup wants to fix America's housing shortage with automated mini-factories

Reframe Systems has raised $40 million to build homes using robots and software instead of dozens of subcontractors. Its first proper factory opens in Massachusetts this October.

3 min read
A modern urban street at dusk photographed from street level, showing a sleek electric vehicle with a sensor array on its roof waiting at a glowing crosswalk, s
Robotics

The 'Edge AI Wall': Why Putting Powerful AI Into a Robot Body Is Harder Than It Sounds

Robots and self-driving vehicles face a crunch that more batteries and bigger chips cannot fix. Here is the problem in plain English.

4 min read
Illustration: an industrial robotic arm performing a welding operation on a thick metal plate inside a large factory
Robotics

Swarm Robotics: Centralized vs. Decentralized Power Models Explained

Power architecture shapes how robot swarms coordinate and recover from failure. Here is what Amazon and Ocado show us about the real trade-offs.

3 min read
Illustration: A large orange industrial robotic arm on a modern automotive assembly line
Robotics

50,000 robots, 25 million hours: Brain Corp's CTO on what comes after teach-and-repeat

John Black built one of the largest fleets of self-driving floor robots on the planet. Now he says the next shift is AI that finds its own path, with no human guidance required.

4 min read
Illustration: A gleaming surgical robot arm in an empty, well-lit modern operating theatre
Robotics

John Deere beats earnings forecasts and backs a $10 million AI farming startup

The farm equipment giant reported $1.38 billion in quarterly profit and signed a three-year deal with Reservoir, a California startup building rugged AI systems for cropland.

3 min read
Illustration: A low-profile unmanned grey boat skims across dark, choppy harbour water at night
Robotics

Inside the Robotic Hand That Can Pick Up a Polybag

Locus Robotics bought a Canadian gripping startup to fix one of the hardest problems in warehouse automation: picking up soft, floppy, or awkward things that suction cups simply cannot handle.

4 min read
Illustration: A sleek silver humanoid robot standing upright on a large warehouse floor lined with metal shelving
Robotics

Meta Is Quietly Testing Robots Inside Its Data Centers, and Workers Are Worried

Robotic arms, cable-swappers, and a finger-shaped button-presser are already running trials at Meta's biggest data center campus. The humans who work there are paying close attention.

4 min read
Illustration: A modern industrial robot arm frozen mid-motion on a factory floor
Robotics

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.

3 min read
A sleek white and silver wheeled robot with a humanoid upper torso and articulated five-fingered hands stands in a bright modern warehouse, rows of shelving vis
Robotics

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 hardware and software inside its collaborative robot arms.

4 min read
Illustration: A compact quadcopter drone hovering low over broken concrete rubble and twisted metal debris in a dim
Robotics

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.

4 min read
A close-up overhead shot of a small wheeled robot built from standardised components sitting on a flat competition mat with coloured grid markings, surrounded b
Robotics

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.

3 min read
Illustration: orderly booth grids, and clusters of professionals in hard hats and lanyards examining equipment
Robotics

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.

3 min read
Illustration: A sleek white spherical robot floating weightlessly inside a brightly lit space station module
Robotics

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.

3 min read
Warehouse automation
Robotics

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.

4 min read
Illustration: Abstract minimalist bar chart showing a dramatic jump from a single small bar to six taller bars
AI2Day OriginalRobotics

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.

3 min read
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