Of Note
Here are some of the latest developments in robotics innovation
🏃♂️ Humanoid Robots Compete in Half-Marathon
In a groundbreaking event on April 19, 2025, Beijing hosted the inaugural Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon. Twenty-one robots participated alongside over 12,000 human runners. The standout performer was Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre, completing the 13.1-mile course in 2 hours and 40 minutes. While some robots faced challenges like falling or running out of power, the event highlighted significant strides in robotic endurance and mobility .
🤖 China's Integration of Embodied AI
China is increasingly incorporating "embodied AI" technologies into daily life. In cities like Shenzhen, autonomous drones deliver food, and humanoid robots are being utilized in factories and public services. This push aims to address demographic challenges and revitalize the tech sector amid economic shifts .
🇰🇷 South Korea Launches K-Humanoid Alliance
On April 10, 2025, South Korea announced the formation of the K-Humanoid Alliance, a collaboration between government, academia, and industry leaders like LG Electronics and Doosan Robotics. The alliance aims to develop advanced humanoid robots by 2028, focusing on capabilities such as lifting over 20kg, weighing under 60kg, and achieving speeds over 2.5 m/s
🧠 Advances in Robotic Intelligence
Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics: Introduced in March 2025, this advanced vision-language-action model enhances how robots interact with their environment, enabling more complex task execution .
RoboPanoptes: A new robot system featuring whole-body dexterity and distributed vision sensors, allowing it to navigate and manipulate objects in cluttered environments effectively .
Microscopic Robots: Researchers have developed microrobots, comparable in size to a single-celled organism, capable of sensing, computing, and acting autonomously. These robots can be mass-produced cost-effectively and operate collaboratively in uncertain environments
Artificial Intelligence
Adobe wants to create a robots.txt-styled indicator for images used in AI training
For years, websites included information about what kind of crawlers were not allowed on their site with a robots.txt file. Adobe, which wants to create a similar standard for images, has added a tool to content credentials with an intention to give them a bit more control over what is used to train AI models.
Innovation
2025 Is the Year of the Humanoid Robot Factory Worker
Long confined to the lab, humanoids finally appear ready to work in manufacturing. There are just a few hurdles to get them to market.
Uber CEO Says Robots Could Replace Human Drivers by 2040
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicted that robot drivers will replace human drivers at scale in 15 to 20 years in an autonomous future, as long as several factors fall into place in the meantime.
How do robots feel in space?
How do robots feel in space? This is both a practical and possibly an existential question. Still, today, we'll focus on the practical side by looking at a review paper from Hadi Jahanshahi and Zheng Zhu of York University in Canada that discusses different tactile sensor types and their advantages and disadvantages for use in space.
Selling To Robots: The Marketing Revolution That Will Make Or Break Your Business
Shopping trends follow technology trends. Hot on the heels of each tech milestone of the digital age—the internet, social media, mobile—came marketers. Titans like Amazon, eBay and Temu were built by leveraging new opportunities to reach customers.
The wave of transformation that will be driven by the widespread adoption of AI agents could potentially be even more dramatic.
These tiny robots can flow like water and harden to support the weight of a person
Researchers have discovered a way to make tiny robots act like a material, mirroring embryonic tissue cells to adjust their structure on command.
Matic Robot Vacuum Review: The Best Robot Vacuum
This is the best robot vacuum we’ve tested, and it scored a rare 10 out of 10.
Who will win the race to develop a humanoid robot?
It's a bright spring morning in Hanover, Germany, and I'm on my way to meet a robot.
I have been invited to see the G1, a humanoid robot built by Chinese firm, Unitree, at the Hannover Messe, one of the world's largest industrial trade shows.
Standing at about 4'3" (130cm), G1 is smaller and more affordable than other humanoid robots on the market, and has such a highly fluid range of motion and dexterity that videos of it performing dance numbers and martial arts have gone viral.
FedEx CEO Bets on Smarter Logistics and Robots to Load Trucks
FedEx is also trying out robots to see if they can do truck loading and unloading of packages, a laborious task human workers have to do repeatedly. “It’s a very complex problem,” he said. “Can you imagine trying to figure out how to [get the robot to] load or unload?”
But the five-year digital transformation has already yielded results. FedEx has shaved $6 billion from its cost base of $87 billion from three years ago — a feat during a time of higher inflation. “The majority happened because of technological changes,” Subramaniam said.
Technology
Trump's manufacturing renaissance could mean more jobs for robots
With his sweeping tariff and trade policies, President Trump envisions a U.S. manufacturing renaissance that will bring back good-paying, working-class jobs to America's auto industry.
But advances in AI and other technologies paint a different picture of the future: Armies of robots — some in human form — doing difficult or repetitive tasks once done by people, who instead put their brains to work in different ways.
Amazon-backed Glacier gets $16M to expand its robot recycling fleet
The world has a trash problem. The amount of stuff we throw away is expected to nearly double, to 3.8 billion metric tons, by 2050. Reducing what we use would go a long way to addressing the issue, but let’s face it, we’re not very good at buying less either.
First Look at BurgerBots, an Innovative Fast Food Restaurant Concept That Employs FlexPicker Robots
BurgerBots is a brand-new fast-food idea in Los Gatos, California, that uses robots to put together burgers quickly and accurately. More specifically, ABB Robotics’ IRB 360 FlexPicker and YuMi collaborative robots. It opened on April 29, 2025, at the Breaking Dawn/First Born restaurant, created by entrepreneur Elizabeth Truong and part of the Oishi Mirai Restaurant Group.
Robots can now learn from humans by watching 'how-to' videos
Robots have long struggled with flexibility. Until now, even the most advanced robotic systems have required massive amounts of data and painstaking instruction to complete basic tasks.
Pony.ai teams up with Tencent for robotaxi services on WeChat, other apps
Chinese start-up Pony.ai said Friday it will develop autonomous driving technology in partnership with Tencent Cloud and offer robotaxi services on tech giant Tencent’s WeChat and other applications.
The Nasdaq-listed company which specializes in autonomous vehicle technology, particularly robotaxis and robotrucks, said in a press release that the deal will include cooperation in areas such as cloud services, map data, information security and intelligent cockpit ecosystems.
Investment
Canadian robotics startup Axibo raises $12 million to build humanoid robots
Axibo has raised $12 million to develop advanced humanoid robotics, with the goal of unveiling the first prototype early next year.
Anoop Gadhrri, Sohaib Al-Emara and Reiner Schmidt founded the company in 2019 as undergraduates in the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster.
Research
SC researchers explore AI robots for farming
Farmers in South Carolina may receive extra help in the future from an unexpected source: AI-fueled robotics.
At least, that’s the hope of Joe Mari Maja, the senior researcher and director of the Center of Applied Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Agriculture at S.C. State University.
'Robotability score' ranks NYC streets for future robot deployment
For delivery robots, not all sidewalks are created equal—some are uneven or clogged with people and bus shelters—so researchers at Cornell Tech developed a "robotability score" and rated every street in New York City on how hospitable it would be to robots.