Robot ID codes and patrol robots
China drafts a lifetime ID code for every robot it makes, Ring launches a patrol drone and security rover, and LiveKit bridges ROS 2 graphs over WebRTC.
#humanoids
38 posts
Multi-floor SLAM and a blocked robot deal
StrataSLAM keeps one map per floor in ROS 2, China blocks SoftBank's ABB Robotics purchase, and Meituan releases a 15,060 hour desktop VLA model.
China blocks SoftBank's ABB robotics deal
Beijing stops SoftBank's 5.4 billion dollar ABB Robotics purchase, Agility closes its first trading day, and ROS 2 removes topic statistics.
Robot imports become a security question
Washington opens trade talks on imported robots, Agility starts trading as AGLT, and two open-weight models rebuild manipulation data from force and gloves.
Intrinsic open-sources its robot runtime
Intrinsic put its industrial robot runtime on GitHub under Apache 2.0, Agility cleared its SPAC vote, and Tutor raised $75M to scale real-world robot data.
ROS 2 zero-copy, humanoid tender data
ROS 2 weighs a zero-copy messaging redesign, VicOne reports 28 zero-days in physical AI tooling, and an open catalog shows what labs paid for humanoids.
Meta's humanoid Max, robot orders climb
Meta built a humanoid with Fourier in three months, North American robot orders rose 24.8 percent, and Hyundai cut robot debugging time with AI agents.
Agility shortfall, Audi humanoids, ATEX quadrupeds
Agility raises $465M instead of $620M, Audi tests wheeled humanoids for parts sequencing, and ANYmal X is certified for explosive atmospheres.
Section 232, Starship fault, BMW policies
Washington opens robot import negotiations, a Starship robot misreads a Tallinn signal, and BMW builds a humanoid data pipeline.
CircuitHub's Grid, A3 orders, world model tests
CircuitHub shows a factory-scale PCB robot, A3 reports a 24.8 percent order jump, and WorldOracle scores world models against real executions.
Spot for ICE, Digit at GXO, ROS 2 agents
Boston Dynamics staff fail to stop an ICE Spot sale, Agility adds two GXO sites, Bedrock raises $600M, and a free ROS 2 to VLA course ships its code.
End Effector Poses Buy Generality, Force Buys Throughput
Dream-1 and Eka's VFA model both claim general manipulation, but their action spaces differ, and that choice decides whether a robot can act on contact.
Optimus line, VFA funding, lab agents
Tesla starts Optimus production in Fremont, Eka raises $150M for a vision-force-action model, AGCO signs Digit, and a benchmark scores agents on wet lab work.
Tactile skins, data factories, welding AI
MIT open sources a shear sensing tactile skin, Generative Bionics plans a humanoid data factory in Italy, and ESAB ships a cobot that plans its own weld path.
Dream API, lab benchmarks, biometric suits
Dream Labs opens a $3/hour robot API trained on video, Agility's co-founder questions Digit 5, and delivery robots face Illinois biometric suits.
humanoidsphysical-aiworld-modelssynthetic-dataros2planningsimulationgazebomanufacturingteslaagility-roboticsbenchmarks
Optimus starts, Cosmos opens the pipeline
Tesla begins building production Optimus units in Fremont, NVIDIA opens Cosmos blueprints and training tools, and PlanSys2 4.0.0 covers PDDL 1.2 through PDDL+.
humanoidswarehouse-roboticssafetyindustrial-robotsinspectiontactile-sensingsim-to-realros2swiftbiohybrid-robots
Digit 5, Navy contracts, tactile data
Agility's Digit 5 bets on barrier-free humanoid safety, Gecko quadruples its Navy contract to $300M, and Daimon builds a tactile data pipeline.
ros2open-sourcephysical-aiindustrial-robotssimulationhumanoidsmanipulationbenchmarksrobot-datavla-modelssim-to-real
Intrinsic Core, AWS stack, Atlas hands
Intrinsic open sources its industrial robot stack, AWS packages an open Physical AI pipeline, and a new benchmark shows frontier models failing at control.
mars-roversautonomous-navigationautowareautonomous-vehiclesrobot-safetysimulationindustrial-robotsros2robot-programminghumanoids
Perseverance record and Autoware research center
Perseverance passes Opportunity's driving record using AutoNav, TIER IV and TUM open an Autoware research center, and SafeWorld funds robot safety simulation.
nvidiavla-modelshumanoidsbatteriessurgical-roboticsros2edge-aiindustrial-robotsrobot-foundation-modelsrobot-safety
Nemotron edge models and Digit 5 charging
NVIDIA ships open vision models sized for robot hardware, Agility names the battery supplier behind Digit 5, and Stryker invests in surgical robotics.
humanoidsrobot-foundation-modelsbenchmarksimitation-learningindustrial-robotsphysical-airobot-datamanipulationautonomous-vehiclesrobot-safety
Frontier models fail humanoid control benchmark
Vals AI's Robo-bench scores frontier models under 2 out of 100 on humanoid control, Hitachi and FANUC partner on physical AI, and ABB ships new robots.
boston-dynamicshumanoidsros2physical-ainvidiamanipulationteleoperationcobotsopen-sourcesim-to-realamazon-roboticswarehouse-roboticsindustrial-robots
Boston Dynamics' new CEO and Atlas hand
Boston Dynamics names Rohit Prasad CEO and shows a 13 DOF Atlas hand, Intrinsic open sources its core stack, and Amazon passes one million warehouse robots.
Isaac ROS 5.0 lands on Pixi
Isaac ROS 5.0 arrives as conda packages for Pixi, a 617 hour human motion dataset targets humanoid policies, and ros2_control 6.12.0 breaks deprecated APIs.
Boston Dynamics picks Alexa's Prasad as CEO
Boston Dynamics hands the chief executive job to an AI product veteran, and two papers measure what VLA policy routing and recovery actually buy.
Zero-copy ROS 2 and a $10 tactile skin
ROS 2 gains zero-copy GPU buffers, a mission state that survives restarts, and SoTa tactile skins that make human demonstrations count.
Atlas hand drops the pinky
Boston Dynamics' new Atlas hand trades a pinky for 13 degrees of freedom, NoDL lands for ROS 2, and two warehouse robot startups scale real deployments.
NVIDIA's OpenShell watchdog for robot agents
NVIDIA ships an open runtime and a hardware watchdog for robot agents, NASA traces its space arm trouble to the transporter, and ScaFi scales a swimming robot.
The Robot Stack Is Going Modular, and the Guard Layer Has No Home
HomeBody deletes the learned policy, FLUX 3 Action shrinks it to a checkpoint, and RoboHarm shows the frontier model that takes over refuses almost nothing.
Open 7B action model, all-linear hand
Black Forest Labs opens a 7B world action model that tops a public robot benchmark, a Duke lab builds a hand from linear motion, and HFlow opens data tooling.
PickNik to Qualcomm, Intrinsic goes open
Qualcomm buys the steward of MoveIt, Google's Intrinsic open sources its industrial stack, Boston Dynamics starts Atlas training, and a VLM drives a humanoid.
Cognex buys RealSense, Agility eyes wheels
Cognex buys RealSense for about $500M, Agility explores wheels, Tesla's Optimus line hits hand limits, and two papers make demonstrations go further.
Five million robots, and no refusal layer
The IFR counts five million industrial robots, frontier agent policies follow harmful commands, ANYmal learns to pass doors, and a Jetson runs targeting.
Atlas Metaplant opens, Halos safety stack
Boston Dynamics starts training Atlas inside Hyundai's Metaplant America, NVIDIA argues safety has to be a whole stack, and robot policies rarely refuse.
Gorai, Jetson strike drone, humanoid recycling
A Go and NATS robotics framework, autonomous target selection running on a Jetson Orin Nano, and why retired humanoids are a hard recycling problem.
Digit 5, SoftBank RAI, JOY microgravity
Agility's Digit 5 adds a cooperative safety architecture, SoftBank moves to buy the Robotics and AI Institute, and Icarus tests a free-flying robot in microgravity.
Helix 2.5, OpenArm, Arm capability levels
Figure's Helix 2.5 works in 30 homes it has never seen, an open humanoid arm ships CAD and ROS 2 packages, and Arm maps the physical AI stack.
Digit 5, OpenRobOps, Gazebo armhf cutoff
Agility's Digit 5 humanoid targets barrier-free factory work, InOrbit open-sources a fleet operations stack, and Gazebo ends 32-bit ARM binaries.
Universal Robots Gen 7, Unitree UnifoLM
Universal Robots ships its Gen 7 cobot platform, Unitree opens a 6B humanoid foundation model, plus ROS 2 releases and new VLA safety work.