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What happened in robotics — and why it matters for India.
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Humanoid says its KinetIQ Ascend approach can reach 99.9% manipulation reliability at human speed and beyond for industrial tasks. The post Humanoid says KinetIQ Ascend reinforcement learning approaches human-level dexterity appeared first on The Robot Report.
Humanoid says its KinetIQ Ascend approach can reach 99.9% manipulation reliability at human speed and beyond for industrial tasks. The post Humanoid says KinetIQ Ascend reinforcement learning approaches human-level dexterity appeared first on The Robot Report.
Looking to model to implement pose estimation? I know something that can perform detection, instance segmentation, pose estimation and classification, all of that in real-time. Yes, I’m talking about the YOLO26 from ultralytics.  It can aid security systems or can be fine-tuned to detect even smaller objects. Wond
Avride uses vision-language models, or VLMs, to improve the environmental awareness of its delivery robots. The post Context is king: How Avride uses cloud VLMs as a safety net for delivery robots appeared first on The Robot Report.
“In the future, the relationship between humans and robots will deepen, and the distinction between them will probably disappear.” This prediction, from one of the attendees at the recent Humanoids Summit in Tokyo, might have been unremarkable had it not come directly from an android that was first introduced to the wo
The second day’s play at RoboCup 2026 has drawn to a close with another bumper set of matches. Teams have come from far and wide to take part in the humanoid soccer competition this year, with 17 different countries represented. China is the most represented country, boasting 15 teams across the three divisions. Other
You tell your AI “Polish my email and send it.” Same sentence, three outcomes. The gap between Large Action Models (LAMs) and agentic LLMs is one of the most practically important distinctions in AI today, and also one of the least clearly explained. In this article, we cut through the confusion through a s
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 Ju
At the U.S. celebrates 250 years of independence and 70 years of its highway system, an expert looks at the future of autonomous transport. The post Quarterhill discusses transport modernization as U.S. marks 70 years of federal highways appeared first on The Robot Report.
Editors Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman, and Sarah Wynn review Automate 2026, analyzing key trends in physical AI, humanoids, and software orchestration. The post Automate 2026 show recap appeared first on The Robot Report.
From the 1st-5th June, the robots descended on Vienna. The 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA) brought together the top minds in robotics for one short week to showcase the latest technologies, form new collaborations, and exchange ideas. Held at the Messe Wien, a stone’s throw from t
Image credit: RoboCup Federation. RoboCup 2026 kicked off today in Incheon, South Korea, with the league competitions running until 5 July. It’s an exciting time for RoboCup, as there have been some updates to the leagues and competition format. Most prominently, the soccer leagues will have a primary focus on humanoid
Experts are recognizing the importance of mechanical positioning and its impact on the machine’s mobility, range and speed. The post Why you should combine robot dexterity with mechanical positioning for complex assembly operations appeared first on The Robot Report.
Luxonis said it plans to scale production of its OAK camera and refine its platform to support robotics and industrial automation. The post Luxonis closes Series A round to scale physical AI perception layer appeared first on The Robot Report.
As autonomy moves beyond controlled environments, ruggedized design is becoming a prerequisite for reliable robotic operations. The post In Robotics, Ruggedization Is No Longer Optional appeared first on The Robot Report.
Humanoid robots made many headlines in June 2026, whether it be for companies going public, new deployments, or hitting production milestones. The post Top 10 robotics developments of June 2026 appeared first on The Robot Report.
Built as a data collection and training platform, Apollo 2 enables continuous learning through deployment, Apptronik said. The post Apptronik unveils Apollo 2 and a flagship data collection and training facility appeared first on The Robot Report.
Anthropic has just released Claude Sonnet 5. Sonnet. Had to say it twice. It is the middle child of the Claude family, and the one most people will actually use. It is quick, capable, cheap to run, and free to use for all users without any subscription. In this article, we go over the latest […] The post Claude S
X Square Robots' system combines foundation models, robotics hardware, a data pipeline system, and real-world deployments. The post X Square Robot brings its valuation to $2.8B with four consecutive funding rounds appeared first on The Robot Report.
Queue is developing automated pharmacies to expand access to prescriptions in hospitals, retail sites, and underserved communities. The post Queue raises funding to build fully autonomous pharmacy appeared first on The Robot Report.
morph launched a physically intelligent soft robotics platform that designs and manufactures what it calls “soft robotic cells.” The post Soft, robotic cells from morph embed physical AI into hardware appeared first on The Robot Report.
Three chatbots. Same price of $20 for their subscriptions. The convergence is almost funny considering how different the offerings are. The same price does not mean the same product. I paid for all three and ran the same work through each. They are not interchangeable as you’ll soon find out. Pick wrong and you
Sonair says ADAR One was assessed as a human detection sensor according to the IEC 61496 standard for electrosensitive protection devices. The post Sonair ADAR One 3D ultrasonic sensor is now safety-certified appeared first on The Robot Report.
Brennand Pierce, founder and CEO of Kinisi Robotics, discusses the company's approach to physical AI and its acquisition by Bear Robotics. The post Insights behind Kinisi’s acquisition by Bear Robotics appeared first on The Robot Report.
The Figure 02 robot supported the production of more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles over 11 months in South Carolina. The post BMW Group deploys Figure 03 humanoid after tests with previous version appeared first on The Robot Report.
This year, RoboCup will be held in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event will see teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. It’s an exciting time for RoboCup, as there have been some updates to the leagues and competition format. Most prominently, the soccer leagues will have a
GraphRAG and Vector RAG address different retrieval needs. Vector RAG splits documents into chunks, embeds them, retrieves semantically similar passages, and sends them to an LLM. It is simple, fast to build, and works best when answers sit within one or two relevant chunks. GraphRAG adds structure by extracting entiti
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 Ju
Since the first robot-assisted surgery was performed, over 40 years ago, major advances in robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence have fundamentally changed medicine and healthcare. Innovative new technologies are already aiding skilled medical professionals in diagnosis, surgery, rehabilitation and beyo
You’ve heard the warnings! Don’t tell ChatGPT your secrets. The robots are reading everything. Your data is the product. And yet here you are: using them as a subscriber. Because AI is genuinely useful! The good news: that distrust is healthy, and you don’t have to choose between using AI and protecti
Most AI agents are weirdly forgetful. They finish a task, wipe the slate clean, and show up tomorrow ready to repeat the same mistake. No memory, no growth. The self-improving loop breaks that cycle. The agent looks at its own results, learns what worked, and gets a little better each time. This guide explains the [
Most search agents try to handle too many jobs at once. They generate new queries, remember what they have already explored, collect evidence, and decide what is relevant as the search keeps expanding. That can make the whole process messy, expensive, and hard to control. Harness-1 takes a simpler approach. Built with
For years, AI progress has centered on scaling individual foundation models: larger parameters, longer context windows, stronger reasoning, and better tool use. Sakana AI’s Fugu points elsewhere, behaving like one model from the outside while coordinating multiple expert agents internally. A single API call can trigger
Image credit: By Jeff Dahl – Own work by uploader, Based on the public domain document: [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, Link By Stephanie Parker This research from the NeuroAI Lab of Martin Schrimpf, part of EPFL’s Schools of Computer and Communication Sciences and Life Sciences, uses AI models to predict exactly where to sti
Everyone says Claude can’t make pictures. That’s partly true. Here is the kind of art it makes on its own, with no plugins and no connectors: Drawn by Claude in SVG, no image model anywhere near it. Not pixels but code: shapes and coordinates that stay sharp at any size and redraw themselves when you […] The post
One of only four teams remaining from more than 130 competitors worldwide, our team AURA Foresight is developing autonomous technology to stop wildfires before they grow out of control. AURA Foresight has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious XPRIZE Wildfire Autonomous Wildfire Response competition, emerging a
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 Ju
Claire chatted to Allison Okamura from Stanford University about developing advanced robotic systems for haptic (touch) interaction. Allison Okamura is the Richard W. Weiland Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. Her academic interests include haptics, teleoperation, virtual reality, medical robotics, soft r
In 2018, Amazon brought me in as the lead UX Sound Designer for Astro, its first consumer home robot. Astro used cameras and other sensors to map and navigate your home and workplace, and could proactively patrol, check up on loved ones, and transport small items using its built-in cargo bin. While there was a well-def
If physical AI is going to match the accomplishments of LLMs, there's a data problem that needs to be solved.
On 19 April 2026, the Honor Lightning humanoid robot ran a half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human world record by 7 minutes and the best robot time from 2025 by almost 2 hours.How did Honor do it? Is there some magical technology or technique that unlocked this performance? How did the company be
By rapidly generating a smooth path plan that cuts travel time and avoids obstacles, the open-source “MIGHTY” system could streamline disaster recovery and parcel delivery.
By Syl Kacapyr Cornell engineers have developed a robotic collective that behaves less like a machine and more like a material that flows, reshapes and adapts to its environment without centralized control. The system, called the Cross-Link Collective, consists of dozens of small robots that have limited mobility indiv
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. As robots advance in terms of dexterity and other physical capabilities, it becomes more likely that humans may find themselves working alongside them. If that happens, how will robots’ emotional capabilities need to advanc
Yen-Ling Kuo always wanted to understand how things worked. When she was growing up in Taiwan, reading the story of Michael Faraday in elementary school piqued her curiosity about the natural world. During that time, she was introduced to Logo, a computer program with a turtle cursor to help children learn basic coding
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 Ju
Claire chatted to Edward Mehr from Machina Labs about their RoboCraftsman that shapes complex metal parts for the aerospace, defence, and automotive industries. Edward Mehr is an entrepreneur and engineer specializing in advanced manufacturing, robotics, and artificial intelligence. As the Co-Founder and CEO of Machina
An examination of how socially assistive wellness robots could support the seven dimensions of senior wellness, and how a framework can measure their autonomy.What Attendees will LearnWhy the senior care crisis exceeds incremental automation. Demographic pressure, workforce shortages, and a daily wellness-programming g
This article is brought to you by AGILINK.Throughout the exhibition hall at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics (ICRA), in Vienna, one demonstration seemed to attract a disproportionate amount of attention.Two robotic hands were making a balloon dog. Slowly and deliberately, the robot twisted a long ball
Thirteen years ago last August, I was camped out in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory press room in Pasadena, Calif., waiting to see whether the Curiosity rover would survive its descent and skycrane-assisted landing on the surface of Mars. It did, and it was awesome.Since then, Curiosity (also known as Mars Science Lab
The AAMAS 2026 best paper awards were presented at the 25th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, which took place from 25-29 May 2025 in Paphos, Cyprus. The winners and nominees in the three categories (best paper, best student paper, best blue sky paper) are as follows: Best Paper Awar
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 Ju
Claire chatted to Maria Koskinopoulou from Heriot-Watt University about autonomous robotic manipulators for surgery, industry, and beyond. Maria Koskinopoulou is an Assistant Professor in Robotics and Computer Vision at Heriot-Watt University. She co-leads the ARM²Lab – Autonomous Robotic Manipulation & Multi-Agent
Deborah Lupton / Pop Chips / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0. Henrik I Christensen, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at University of California San Diego, has recently released a global robotics technology roadmap. This position paper focuses on Asia, Europe, and America and outlines the current state-of-the-art
Image credit: HIMS / Nature Synthesis. In a paper published in Nature Synthesis, researchers led by Professor Timothy Noël of the University of Amsterdam’s Van ’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences present an advance in autonomous laboratory systems for synthesis optimisation. A versatile, modular design and the opt
In 1987, Richard Greenhill, a British photographer who was fascinated by (but had no actual training in) robotics, decided he wanted to build a life-size humanoid that could do useful things, like carrying luggage. He was working at a startup called Intergalactic Robots, but he couldn’t convince anyone there to build s
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNARSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer Scho
Claire chatted to Ahti Heinla from Starship Technologies about their AI-powered delivery robots that operate independently on streets and pavements. Ahti Heinla is the co-founder and CEO of Starship Technologies, the world’s leading autonomous delivery company building AI-powered robots that operate fully independently
New MIT work advances the growing field of ionotronics, in which data are transferred through ions, potentially providing a bridge between electronics and biological tissue.
Cornell researchers used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to create a soft robot gripper that can predict the ripeness of strawberries by touch. Credit: Anand Mishra. By David Nutt When assessing the ripeness of fruit, sight and smell can tell you a lot, but the best indicator is often how the fruit feels. Cornell resea
Human Archive, a startup founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford researchers, is paying gig workers in India to wear camera-equipped caps and sensor devices to collect the real-world physical training data that AI and robotics labs are racing to acquire.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNARSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer Scho
Claire chatted to Josie Hughes from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne about using AI to develop new designs for robotic manipulators. Josie Hughes is an Assistant Professor at EPFL, where she established the CREATE Lab in 2021. She completed her PhD in the Bio-inspired Robotics Lab at the University of Cambridge
When a group of academics started making open-source robotics hardware, a generation of roboticists got years of their lives back. Now, the bigger challenge is getting robots to think—and that’s starting to be open sourced too.The shift is still early, but companies including Hugging Face, Nvidia, and Alibaba have all
This sponsored article is brought to you by Wetour Robotics.A field technician on a wind turbine, harness clipped, both hands on a wrench, needs to send a command to the diagnostic device hanging at her belt. A logistics worker on a loading dock, gloves on, eyes on the pallet, needs to redirect a connected lift. A pers
The recently launched Robotics Café is a weekly online seminar series to bring together researchers, students and industry practitioners working in the field of autonomous robotics. One of the key aims of the initiative is to provide a dedicated platform for students to present and disseminate their work, enabling broa
Over the next few decades, billions of autonomous, AI-powered robots will work alongside people in factories, perform tedious tasks in warehouses, care for the elderly, assist in unsafe disaster areas, deliver packages and food to our doorsteps, and eventually help out in our homes. Some will look like us, and many won
Electronic waste is moving up on regulatory agendas in 2026. New European waste-shipment rules, expanded recycling fees on products with non-removable batteries in California, and an e-waste import ban in Malaysia, for example, are all increasing pressure to recover more value before electronics are shredded or exporte
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is updating its 12-year-old safety requirements for personal care robots. A lot has happened since the last revision, both on the technology side and with researchers’ understanding of safety for humans collaborating with domestic robots. The proposed ISO update
For years, the field of robotics has used the terms “dull, dirty, and dangerous” (DDD) to describe the types of tasks or jobs where robots might be useful—by doing work that’s undesirable for people. A classic example of a DDD job is one of “repetitive physical labor on a steaming hot factory floor involving heavy mach
Ace rotates its paddle as it prepares to return the ball back to its human opponent, Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025. Credit: Sony AI. By Kartikeya Walia, Nottingham Trent University A table tennis robot has outperformed elite players in recent evaluations. The robot, called Ace, marks a significant st
This presentation highlights recent efforts at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to advance agentic AI for collaborative robotic teams. It begins by framing the core challenges of enabling autonomy, coordination, and adaptability across heterogeneous systems, then introduces a scalable architecture designed
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNARSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer Scho
Claire chatted to Gavin Kenneally from Ghost Robotics about robot dogs for defence, security, and public safety. Gavin Kenneally is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ghost Robotics, a company that has gained a reputation for pushing the boundaries of legged robotics technology. In his current role, Gavin spearheads a team of h
By C Huygelen Leiden researchers Professor Daniela Kraft and Mengshi Wei have created microscopic robots that move without sensors, software, or external control. Instead, their behaviour emerges entirely from their shape and the way they interact with their environment. This class of robots opens up entirely new possi
Many roboticists (and at least one robotics journalist) have been seduced by the dream of a robot butler. And the rampant popularity of videos showing humanoid robots doing household tasks in improbably clean kitchens and unrealistically tidy bedrooms suggests that we’re not the only ones interested in a robot that can
The assembly line task setup. Credit: 2026 LASA EPFL CC-BY-SA. By Celia Luterbacher In today’s manufacturing environments, upgrading a robot fleet often means starting from scratch – not only replacing hardware, but also reprogramming tasks. Even when two robots are built to perform similar jobs, different joint arrang
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNARSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer Scho
Claire chatted to Melissa Greeff from Queen’s University about autonomous navigation and learning for drones. Melissa Greeff is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University. She leads Robora Lab and is also an Ingenuity Labs Robotics and AI Institute member. Her research int
By David Nutt The way bugs and birds flap their wings may look effortless, but the dynamics that keep them aloft are dizzyingly complex and difficult to quantify. Cornell researchers created a computational model that shows the effect of insects’ morphology on stabilizing their flight. The findings could lead to a new
New research suggests constructing a simple building from interlocking subunits should be mechanically feasible and have a much smaller carbon footprint.
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