Robotics
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MIT swims a paper-thin robot on a single layer of muscle cells
An MIT team steered a gel robot covered in one layer of light-sensitive muscle cells through a water maze, the first thin-film muscle-powered robot to move.
PrimeBot puts two home robots on sale at 19,999 yuan
Qiyuan Robot (PrimeBot) launched its Q1 companion humanoid and T1 shape-shifting robot in Shanghai on 20 September 2026, priced from 19,999 yuan (about $2,800).
Boston Dynamics gives Atlas a four-finger, 13-joint hand
The new Atlas hand drops the little finger, doubles the degrees of freedom to 13, and adds tactile sensing across fingertips and palm.
Singapore opens a humanoid robotics centre for public safety
The Home Team Humanoid Robotics Centre opened on 30 September 2026, with a goal of a humanoid robot working alongside officers by 2028.
DYNA Robotics launches Dyna-2.1 with an hour of unaided laundry
The physical agent ran an uncut one-hour laundry-room workflow, about 79 steps per cycle, on Taku, a new semi-humanoid robot.
AgiBot delivers its 20,000th robot to a Chinese theme park
More than 300 AgiBot robots now work across Chimelong Spaceship Park in Zhuhai, a deployment that carried the 20,000th unit off the company's production line.
Boston Dynamics opens a centre to train Atlas inside a car plant
The Robotics Metaplant Application Center, on Hyundai's Georgia campus, trains Atlas humanoids on parts sequencing ahead of assembly work targeted for 2030.
Unitree prices a fully driven 22-joint robot hand at $6,500
Unitree launched the Dex5-S, a human-sized hand whose 22 joints are all driven and backdrivable, from about $6,500 per hand before tax and shipping.
Spirit AI has dozens of Moz1 robots working CATL and JD lines
The Hangzhou startup says tens of its wheeled humanoids are in production use at a battery maker and a retailer, with a $2.9bn valuation behind them.
Figure releases Helix 2.5 and tests it in 30 unseen homes
Helix 2.5 tidied living rooms, folded towels and made beds in 30 Bay Area homes with no training data collected in any of them, succeeding 56% of the time against 9% for a policy trained from scratch.
Two humanoid robots assist a surgeon through a gallbladder removal
At Samsung Medical Center on 16 September 2026 a surgeon removed a gallbladder from goat tissue with two robots as his only assistants, one passing instruments and one holding the endoscope.
D-Robotics closes a $400M Series C for robot brain chips
The Chinese chipmaker says cumulative Sunrise shipments passed 8 million units in the first half of 2026, with the S600 in mass production at over 20 customers.
Agility unveils Digit 5, a humanoid built to work without cages
The fifth-generation Digit carries an independent safety controller and sensor-based human detection, so it can work beside people without physical barriers.
Noetix gives its robots a memory and a way to learn from error
Scalabot, the embodied-intelligence brand of Beijing humanoid maker Noetix Robotics, released HERON-CRA a week after its world model.
Unitree launches the G1+ humanoid at RMB 95,000
The refreshed G1 adds a two-axis neck, shoulder and waist motors with about 110% more peak torque, 3D lidar and a six-microphone far-field array.
UBTech commissions a 10,000-unit humanoid plant in Liuzhou
The super smart factory opened in Guangxi on 12 September with a planned annual capacity above 10,000 industrial humanoids and a designed takt of one robot every ten minutes.
AGIBOT says its A3 Ultra cleared TÜV Rheinland certification
The Chinese humanoid maker announced RED DA, RED NB and Safety AK marks for its A3 Ultra at the close of IFA 2026, along with a European distribution partner.
AgiBot puts perception and balance in one model
AgiBot released AGILE 2.0 on 11 September 2026, a combined vision and whole-body control model shown balancing its Lingxi X2 humanoid on a rolling ball.
A humanoid covered in 18,000 touch points raises 500M yuan
Kinetix AI, founded a year ago by former Huawei autonomous-driving engineers, closed an angel-plus round of over 500 million yuan led by Vertex Ventures.
A humanoid crosses monkey bars using only onboard lidar
ETH Zurich reported a humanoid completing the full jump-up, swing and drop across an overhead ladder in 14 of 15 hardware trials, guided by a head-mounted lidar.
Unitree releases UnifoLM-WLA-1.0, one model for 64 robot tasks
A 6-billion-parameter world-language-action model trained on 2,500 hours of real-robot data, with code, weights and datasets published openly.
Noetix opened an embodied-AI brand with a world model
Noetix Robotics launched a sub-brand called Scalabot on 8 September 2026 and released HERON-World Model, extending from humanoid hardware into embodied-AI models.
Reuters finds the PLA testing humanoid robots for combat
A review of more than 100 procurement notices, patents and papers found Chinese military institutions buying humanoids and studying how they might fight alongside troops.
Unitree's G1 sparred with a human under its own control
A world model called UnifoLM-X2-1.0 plans the robot's stance, dodges and strikes in real time, with no teleoperation — and, so far, no paper, benchmark or released code.
GMO puts a humanoid-robot repair vehicle on the road in Japan
GMO AI & Robotics says its "humanoid ambulance", a maintenance van carrying parts and a replacement robot, enters service in September 2026.
XPeng commissions a production line for its IRON humanoid
XPeng says the first IRON walked off a newly commissioned assembly line in Guangzhou on 7 September 2026, with mass production targeted by year end.
Agility Robotics discloses $1.8M in 2025 sales in its SPAC filing
A Form S-4 filed on 4 September 2026 opened the books on the humanoid maker: $1.8 million in 2025 net sales against a $140 million operating loss.
Korea picks NC AI and LG to teach humanoids human movement
A state-funded consortium will build a human-to-robot retargeting pipeline, converting captured human motion into movement a humanoid can execute on its own hardware.
Enovis bids 155m euros for a French surgical robotics maker
A binding offer signed on 1 September 2026 would put eCential Robotics, which fuses imaging, navigation and a robotic arm for bone surgery, inside Enovis by year end.
Cyborg cockroaches carry injections to people rescuers cannot reach
University of Queensland researchers steered live cockroaches fitted with spring-loaded syringes through an obstacle course, landing an injection in 72 per cent of trials.
A wheeled-and-legged robot guide dog goes on show in Beijing
Zhiyuan Research Institute unveiled Xiaoyuan on 4 September 2026, a guide robot that rolls on flat ground and walks on four legs up stairs.
UBTech raises $139m against a 10,000-humanoid production target
The Hong Kong-listed robot maker closed a post-IPO equity round on 3 September 2026, after selling 921 full-size humanoids in the first half of the year.
Figure signs a $3.5 billion compute deal with Nscale
Nscale committed $3.5 billion of compute and up to 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs to Figure's humanoid programme, with the first Texas deployment due in late 2027.
Humanoid-run convenience stores open in Hong Kong
Galbot opened three robot-operated stores on 1 September, its first outside mainland China, and rain and internet outages disrupted the first day.
Medtronic puts $700M into a surgical robot maker
The company took a roughly $700 million stake in Cornerstone Robotics and won rights to distribute its Sentire system outside the United States.
Two humanoids join a live packing line in a Korean warehouse
CJ Logistics put two dual-arm humanoid robots into the packaging process at its Yangji distribution centre on 3 September 2026, inserting cushioning material into boxes.
Osaka Metro puts a humanoid on its station information counter
A humanoid in Osaka Metro uniform began staffing an Umeda information counter on 31 August, in a trial run with KDDI and AVITA on Google Gemini.
AgiBot and Minth start humanoid robot production in Serbia
A 20-million-euro first phase opened in Sabac on 29 August, billed as the first humanoid robot mass-production base in Europe.
Five Japanese firms open a shared humanoid training-data factory
The J-HRTI consortium began full operations of its Kanto Data Factory on 26 August, running 35 humanoid robots to generate physical-AI training data.
Sanctuary AI puts its robot control software on other makers' arms
The company said it will run its Physical AI on existing industrial robots rather than wait for humanoid hardware, citing a 99.5% success rate on a wire-plugging line.
A Unitree G1 can be rooted over Bluetooth by anyone nearby
Two disclosed vulnerability chains give unauthenticated root code execution on the humanoid, and the researcher describes the Bluetooth chain as wormable.
The humanoid 100m record fell again, to 8.64 seconds
TianGong Ultra won the closing final of the second World Humanoid Robot Games in 8.64 seconds, most of a second faster than the mark set four days earlier.
PsiBot closes a $100 million round led by industrial investors
The Chinese embodied-AI company will fund its paired policy and world models, Psi-R2 and Psi-W0, along with human-operation data collection.
Anthropic previews a standard for AI agents to drive lab hardware
The Model Hardware Standard gives agents one interface to liquid handlers, robotic arms and microscopes, cutting integration from weeks to hours.
Pollen Robotics opens orders for a $399 open-source biped
Microduck is 25 cm tall, carries 15 motors, a camera and lidar, and ships with its SDK, simulator and reinforcement-learning stack under Apache 2.0.
Renesas opens a physical AI and robotics lab in Beijing
The chipmaker says it addresses about 30% of a humanoid robot bill of materials today and is targeting 70%, and opened a Beijing lab to co-develop systems.
NSF funds a centre on humans and robots adapting to each other
One of three new Science and Technology Centers sharing $90 million over five years will study how assistive robots and the people using them co-adapt.
Korea commits 2.3 trillion won to a domestic humanoid stack
The budget ministry set out spending through 2030 to lift local content in key humanoid components from 45 to 80 percent and buy 1,080 Korean robots.
FDA clears Spineart screws for robot-guided placement in the spine
A 510(k) on 26 August 2026 moves the PERLA TL system from navigation-only to robotic-assisted pedicle screw workflows on eCential Robotics Op.n.
China opens comment on standards for consumer BCI and humanoids
MIIT put two draft industry standard-system guidelines out for public comment on 24 and 25 August, one of them covering non-medical brain-control devices for the first time.
XPeng carves out its robot unit and raises $900 million for it
A Hong Kong filing valued Dogotix at $6.3 billion post-money, with IDG Capital, Tencent and Alibaba among the outside investors and XPeng keeping about 82 percent.
A humanoid ran 100 metres in 9.32 seconds in Beijing
TianGong Ultra beat Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record at the second World Humanoid Robot Games, and the robot record fell five times in a single two-hour session.
A miniature digger arm lets novices match expert operators on day one
MIT tested a controller shaped like the machine it commands; new operators performed at expert level immediately, where joystick trainees did not.
FDA authorises a robot that draws blood without a human hand
Vitestro's Aletta cleared De Novo on 19 August 2026 as the first standalone device to perform a venous blood draw end to end, supervised but not operated.
Galaxy General shows ET1 and one model driving three robot bodies
At the World Robot Conference in Beijing the company unveiled the Galbot ET1 and a World-Action Model build of AstraBrain that runs bipedal, wheeled and heavy-load machines.
Unitree opens 629% above its IPO price on the STAR Market
Shares priced at 150.80 yuan opened at 1,100 yuan on 19 August 2026, valuing the humanoid robot maker at about 445 billion yuan before it gave back a quarter of the gain by midday.
Xiaomi puts its humanoid on the car line and reports 98% on nuts
The next-generation bipedal robot spent four months on the production line at Xiaomi's own EV plant, where self-tapping nut installation reached a 98% success rate.
American Airlines bars humanoid robots, completing the big four
The policy took effect on 17 August 2026 and covers cabins and checked baggage alike; Southwest, Delta and United adopted the same rule earlier this year.
Humanoids fought a real fire in Beijing and three of twelve finished
The emergency-response final of the second World Humanoid Robot Games ran at a working fire brigade, with 30 minutes to find hazards, shut valves and put out a fire.
NCNP and Waseda train a caregiving humanoid on prediction error
A predictive-processing network learned repositioning and wiping from 32,256-dimensional vision, and brain-like traits emerged without being programmed.
A robot hand with two air lines out-turns the human wrist
BioflexBot pinches, rotates, hooks and grasps from a coiled spring and two pneumatic inputs, turning a bottle cap nearly four times further than a human hand.
Two humanoids learned to turn a skipping rope for a third party
A Nanjing University team trained pairs of Unitree G1 robots to turn a long rope in time with a jumper, tested in simulation and on real hardware with human, humanoid and quadruped jumpers.
A stroke pilot lets the good arm drive the impaired one
Rice University and UTHealth Houston opened a 10-participant pilot in which a bilateral arm exoskeleton carries movement from a stroke survivor’s unaffected arm to the affected one.
A California county moves to require a permit for humanoid robots
San Mateo County supervisors took up a measure tying commercial humanoid robots to permits, kill switches, human supervision and job-displacement tracking.
A Korean AI kidney-stone surgery robot clears the FDA
Roen Surgical says Zamenix P has 510(k) clearance as a Class II device, opening the US market to a robot that steers a flexible ureteroscope.
X Square Robot open-sources HOST, a one-shot robot skill learner
HOST lets a robot perform an unseen manipulation task after watching a single human video of about 29 seconds, with no retraining.
A modular hip exoskeleton goes on direct sale at $1,499
Ascentiz began selling its H Series hip exoskeleton on 6 August 2026, claiming up to a 35% cut in the work of walking and up to 50 km of assisted range.
FCC adds foreign-made advanced robots to its Covered List
Public Notice DA 26-786 places foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters on the Covered List, closing the door on new FCC equipment authorizations.
Ecuador clears Wandercraft's self-balancing walking exoskeleton
ARCSA cleared the Atalante X on 27 July 2026 for spinal cord injuries from C4 to L5, stroke hemiplegia and multiple sclerosis, opening Ecuadorian rehabilitation clinics to the device.
A motor-free exosuit cuts the energy cost of walking by 13.9%
A hip exosuit driven entirely by dielectric elastomer artificial muscles, with no motors and no pneumatics, lowered metabolic cost in a treadmill test.
Unitree prices its Shanghai IPO, with DeepSeek taking a placement
The humanoid maker set 150.80 yuan a share to raise 6.1 billion yuan for 10% of its enlarged capital, and DeepSeek took 141 million yuan of it.
An MIT robot learns physical therapy technique from force feedback
A dual-arm robot trained with a diffusion model and real-time force feedback reproduced therapist technique, so far only with healthy participants.
Unitree unveils the AS2-W, a wheel-legged robot that runs at 20 km/h
The Super Athlete clears 80 cm obstacles and 45-degree inclines on wheels and legs together, and Unitree released the footage rather than a spec sheet.
Xiaomi open-sources XR-1, a 100,000-hour manipulation model
Xiaomi released weights and code for its vision-language-action model under Apache 2.0, pre-trained on more than 100,000 hours of handheld-rig trajectories.
Gemini Robotics 2 takes Google's VLA to whole-body control
One model now walks, crouches and manipulates in a single task, drives Apptronik Apollo 2 humanoids, and adds collaboration between different robot types.