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On April 19, 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 two hours. How did they do it? Is there some magical technology or technique that unlocked this performance? How did they beat the significantly better-known Unitree (who reportedly had to supply an ice backpack to try and complete the race without overheating)? My doctoral thesis involved building and con

Pegasus and CYBERDYNE will invest in startups developing robotics, physical AI, healthcare, automation, and intelligent systems. The post Pegasus Tech Ventures launches $60M fund for physical AI startups appeared first on The Robot Report .

Kawasaki Robotics says its 8-DoF robot, Pulseboard inspection tech, and other systems will show its vision for intelligent automation. The post Kawasaki Robotics to debut RL030N physical AI platform at Automate appeared first on The Robot Report .

Genesis plans to begin Eno’s production and targeted customer deployments by the end of 2026, with home deployments coming later. The post Genesis AI launches Eno general-purpose robot appeared first on The Robot Report .

xLAB and Built Robotics partner to capture additional data, advancing AI models to improve construction site safety. The post Built Robotics, Penn xLAB to develop physical AI for construction appeared first on The Robot Report .

PSYONIC is combining its Ability Hand with ABB Robotics' GoFa cobot arm to apply data from prosthetics users to robotic grasping. The post PSYONIC partners with ABB Robotics to apply human touch to robot dexterity appeared first on The Robot Report .

Stockholm-based Einride operates a fleet of heavy-duty electric trucks servicing Global Fortune 500 companies across the U.S. and Europe. The post Autonomous freight developer Einride goes public via SPAC appeared first on The Robot Report .

The 44 hp Burro Grande brings more than 1 million hours of real-world experience to industrial towing, site logistics, and facilities operations. The post Burro introduces Grande 44 with proven outdoor autonomy built for heavy industry appeared first on The Robot Report .

While service robotics adoption grows, industrial automation faces greater demand and bigger obstacles, notes a columnist. The post Modernizing the global economy with industrial robotics is needed but not inevitable appeared first on The Robot Report .

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 advance for them to successfully work with people? In a recent study, researchers trained collaborative robots to read human emotions by not only accounting for facial expressions, but

Before Windows, only engineers and computer scientists could work with computers. Edge AI is causing a similar accessibility shift for robotics. The post Windows for robots: Edge AI expands usability appeared first on The Robot Report .

Explore how GreyOrange's software revolutionizes warehouse automation with AI, transforming logistics into dynamic, predictive ecosystems. The post AI in warehousing: Akash Gupta’s vision for the future appeared first on The Robot Report .

Allison Okamura and Ayoung Kim won MassRobotics' 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star Medal, which honor women in robotics. The post MassRobotics announces the winners of 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star awards appeared first on The Robot Report .

At the Robotics Summit & Expo, experts weighed in on humanoid robotics today — and the ability to achieve a $20,000 price point tomorrow. The post Robotics Summit panel explores the state of humanoid robot design appeared first on The Robot Report .

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 through hands-on experimentation. It was Kuo’s introduction to programming logic. Yen-Ling Kuo Employer University of Virginia in Charlottesville Title Assistant professor of com

The partnership focuses on PepsiCo’s regional transportation networks, where it moves products daily from site to site. The post Gatik to bring autonomous freight to PepsiCo’s North American supply chain appeared first on The Robot Report .

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, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! We present MotionDisco, a framework that discovers contact-rich, long-horizon hum

The World Economic Forum has honored Hello Robot, whose Stretch system provides mobile manipulation to older adults and people with disabilities. The post Hello Robot is recognized by World Economic Forum as a tech pioneer appeared first on The Robot Report .

X Square Robot has open-sourced XRZero-G0, a framework that reduces real-robot training data requirements by up to 20x. The post Inside XRZero-G0, a new 2,000-hour open dataset for robotics research appeared first on The Robot Report .

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 Learn Why the senior care crisis exceeds incremental automation. Demographic pressure, workforce shortages, and a daily wellness-programming gap all strain traditional care models. What defines a wellness robot as a category. The seven ICAA wellness dimensions and eight properties separate these robots from companion a

NEURA Robotics plans to expand its platforms for robot learning and global production of humanoids and other systems. The post NEURA Robotics to raise up to $1.4B in Series C funding for physical AI appeared first on The Robot Report .

The Llama moment in robotics will not be the day a policy becomes downloadable. It will be the day another team can take that policy, adapt it to its robot, release it into a customer process, and still know what failed weeks later when the line stops repeating. The post Robotics will not have a clean Llama moment appeared first on The Robot Report .

Wing plans to bring drone deliveries to Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. The post Walmart, Wing add 7 markets in drone delivery expansion appeared first on The Robot Report .

As the proposed National Commission on Robotics advances, industry leaders continue to call for more unified U.S. policy. The post Effort to establish a National Commission on Robotics advances in Congress appeared first on The Robot Report .

Standard Bots asserted that investments in robotics are key to making U.S. manufacturing competitive on the global stage. The post Standard Bots raises $200M to expand U.S. manufacturing footprint appeared first on The Robot Report .

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 balloon into loops, bends, and joints without popping it. Visitors stopped, watched, and often returned with colleagues to watch again. AGILINK’s balloon dog demonstration draws a c

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 Laboratory) has traveled nearly 37 kilometers , drilled into and sampled 42 different rocks , and as of publication has snapped nearly 763,000 photos . The fact that this robot is s

Allen Control Systems will use the funding to scale manufacturing and accelerate deployment of its autonomous weapon station, Bullfrog. The post ACS raises $200M to scale autonomous counter-drone system appeared first on The Robot Report .

Embodied AI is evolving from vision-centric perception toward Physical AI. The post Daimon Robotics and Galbot jointly launches RobOmni for benchmarking tactile perception and dexterous manipulation appeared first on The Robot Report .

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, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! It’s been a while since a humanoid robot video actually impressed me, but the beg

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 such a machine, so he set about building one himself, in his attic. To help with his project, he organized a weekly get-together of a dozen or so like-minded folks. Every Wednesday

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, VIENNA RSS 2026 : 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! What is the right number of legs for a robot? T

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, VIENNA RSS 2026 : 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! Just months after its debut, Atlas is proving w

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’t. What is certain is that regardless of form factor, robots will all rely heavily on AI in order to deliver real-world value. In 2025, total investments in robotics companies re

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 exported. The world is projected to generate 82 million tonnes of e-waste annually by 2030, according to the United Nations’ most recent Global E-Waste Monitor report in 2024. The report

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 addresses hazard identification, risk assessment, and different use scenarios. It does not, however, set limits, propose testing methods, or have enforcement mechanisms that might

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 machinery that threatens life and limb.” But determining which human activities fit into these categories is not as straightforward as it seems. What exactly is a “dull” task, and who

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, VIENNA RSS 2026 : 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! Bulk material handling is a critical, labor-int

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 do our chores. But for all kinds of reasons , legged humanoids are not yet ready for industrial or commercial applications at scale, and home applications ( if people even want th

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, VIENNA RSS 2026 : 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems : 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE Actuate 2026 : 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO Enjoy today’s videos! Introducing GENE-26.5—the first AI brain to giv