Robotics archive
Every Robotics story, newest first. 84 in this archive.
Aug 1, 2026
Inbound at Last: JD Logistics Deploys Zhiyuan's Spirit G2 Max in Live Warehouse Operations
At WAIC 2026, JD Logistics and Zhiyuan Robotics deploy the Spirit G2 Max humanoid for live inbound warehouse operations—a production claim in a segment still dominated by mobile automation.
Aug 1, 2026
The Covered List Meets the Humanoid: FCC Blocks New Foreign Robot Imports
On July 28, 2026, the FCC added foreign-produced humanoid and quadruped robots to its Covered List after White House national security determinations — blocking new equipment authorization while leaving previously approved models in place.
Jul 31, 2026
Three Speeds, One Hype Cycle: The Humanoid Industry's Production Reality Check
A July 31 industry reality check contrasts Figure 03's logged BMW shifts, Tesla's undisclosed Optimus ramp, and Unitree's 5,500-plus 2025 shipments.
Jul 31, 2026
Feet to Fingertips: Gemini Robotics 2 Brings Whole-Body Control to Humanoids
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 2 controls humanoids from feet to fingertips, adds multi-robot collaboration, and ships the ASIMOV-Agentic safety benchmark.
Jul 31, 2026
Europe's Humanoid Unicorn: Humanoid Raises $152M to Mass-Produce KinetIQ-Powered Robots
London-based Humanoid closed a $152 million Series A at a $1.35 billion valuation, partnering with Bosch for mass manufacturing of wheeled industrial robots running its four-layer KinetIQ AI stack.
Jul 31, 2026
Future-State-Aware: MIT's VLASH Makes VLAs Real-Time Without Inpainting Overhead
MIT's VLASH framework enables asynchronous VLA inference with up to 11.8× faster reactions — letting π₀.₅ play ping-pong and whack-a-mole without architectural changes.
Jul 30, 2026
Feet to Fingertips: Gemini Robotics 2 Ships Whole-Body Control and Open ER 2
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 2 family adds whole-body humanoid control, ships ER 2 reasoning on the Gemini API, and gates the hardest VLA models to hardware partners — with published success rates and a new agentic safety benchmark.
Jul 30, 2026
The Import Gate: FCC Closes the Door on New Foreign Humanoid Robots
The FCC's July 28 Covered List action blocks new foreign humanoid and quadruped robot imports — a market-access shock aimed principally at Chinese supply.
Jul 30, 2026
Beyond Hyundai: Atlas Gets Its First External Client Pilot in 2027
Boston Dynamics confirmed at a July 22 webinar that Atlas will begin pilot testing with a non-Hyundai client in 2027 — the humanoid's first step beyond captive factory data.
Jul 30, 2026
Showroom First: BYD Confirms August Humanoid Debut and Denies Factory-Scale Rumors
BYD confirmed an August humanoid debut at Di Space while denying viral factory-deployment rumors — a showroom-assistant strategy from the world's largest EV maker.
Jul 29, 2026
The Sequencing Tier: Figure 03 Moves BMW Spartanburg From Body Shop to Logistics
After Figure 02's body-shop pilot, BMW deploys Figure 03 at Spartanburg for logistics sequencing with Helix 02 loco-manipulation.
Jul 29, 2026
The Covered List Clause: FCC Blocks New Foreign Humanoid Imports as U.S.–China Robot Competition Hardens
The FCC added foreign-made advanced humanoid and quadruped robots to its Covered List on July 29, banning new U.S. imports over remote-access and surveillance risks — without blocking previously authorized models.
Jul 29, 2026
The Thirty Percent Line: Highline Commerce Puts Wall-Powered Humanoids on Brooklyn Fulfillment
Highline Commerce reports Ultra Robotics OP1 humanoids handle up to 30 percent of pick-tote-scan workflows in live Brooklyn 3PL production — a mid-market milestone outside Amazon's ecosystem.
Jul 29, 2026
The WAVE Stack: Matrix Robotics Pitches General-Purpose Humanoids at WAIC 2026
At WAIC 2026, Matrix Robotics demonstrated four MATRIX-3 humanoids running live task switches on its WAVE foundation model, announced a WAVE upgrade, and launched a global partner program with pricing from RMB 580,000.
Jul 28, 2026
The Skin-First Stack: Generative Bionics Ships Gene.01 as a Tactile, Open Humanoid Platform
Generative Bionics' Gene.01 pairs full-body tactile sensing with an open digital twin and a Fincantieri welding configuration — a physics-native counterpoint to camera-first humanoid stacks.
Jul 28, 2026
The Multi-Sensing Module: LG Innotek and TDK Bet That Humanoids Need Better Eyes and Skin Before Better Brains
LG Innotek and TDK will jointly develop vision and tactile sensing modules for humanoids by 2027, betting that multi-sensing—not bigger LLM backbones—is the next physical-AI bottleneck.
Jul 28, 2026
The Slow-Start Line: Tesla's Optimus Gen 3 Factory Is Ready Before the Ramp Is Real
Tesla converted its Fremont Model S/X line into an Optimus Gen 3 factory, but Elon Musk warns production will be extremely slow — with 10,000 unique parts and no published output count.
Jul 28, 2026
The Pipeline Proof: London's Humanoid Unicorn Bets Europe Can Scale Industrial Robots
London startup Humanoid raised $152 million at a $1.35 billion valuation, reporting nine Fortune 500 deployments, 34,000 pre-orders worth $2.4 billion, and Q4 2026 beta rollouts with Bosch and Schaeffler as manufacturing partners.
Jul 27, 2026
The Captive Customer: Hyundai’s Atlas Bet Puts a Vertically Integrated Humanoid on the Factory Floor
With full ownership of Boston Dynamics, Hyundai committed all 2026 Atlas production to internal deployment and Google DeepMind — targeting 25,000 factory robots and a 30,000-unit annual line near Savannah by 2028.
Jul 27, 2026
The UMI Bridge: How Xiaomi-Robotics-1 Tests Whether Robot Policies Scale Like Language Models
Xiaomi's new VLA foundation model pre-trains on 100,000 hours of handheld gripper data, auto-labels it in two weeks, and reports the first clean embodied scaling curves — from simulation SOTA to real-robot suitcase packing.