Tesla is behind on its goal to produce at least 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots by the end of 2025.

TRIC Robotics just raised a $5.5 million seed round for its tractor-sized robots that help eliminate bacteria and pests on strawberry plants.

Former Waymo engineers have launched an autonomous vehicle startup with $80 million in venture funds.

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To maintain competitive advantage through the next five years, which innovations must forward-thinking companies prioritize right now?Read More

As the AI chipmaker rockets past a $4 trillion valuation, CEO Jensen Huang lays out a stunning vision of a future with robot assistants and revived American factories, but admits the transition won't be painless.

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Hugging Face launches Reachy Mini, a $299 open-source desktop robot that democratizes AI development for millions of builders worldwide.Read More

Hugging Face is releasing two versions of its desktop robot meant for designing and coding AI applications.

Some of the most ingenious tech has been inspired by nature. From color-changing materials that function like cephalopod skin to a tiny biomimetic robot that looks and moves like an actual cockroach, the extraordinary adaptations of some organisms have upgraded our technological capabilities. Now the octopus is lending an arm—or a sucker.

Octopus tentacles have remarkably strong suckers with an adhesion power that could be an asset to soft robots that need to pick things up and hold onto them. Existing artificial suction cups have trouble with irregular surfaces such as rocks and shells. Cephalopods such as octopuses and squid have evolved biological suckers that can adapt to each surface and attach to them. This is why a team of researchers at the University of Bristol, led by Tianqi Yue, have created robotic suckers that are closer to the real thing than ever.

One reason biological suckers have an edge is mucus secretion, better enabling them to stick on an irregular surface. While robotic suckers can’t exactly go there, Yue figured out a way for them to use water instead of mucus.

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We sometimes call chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT "robots," but generative AI is also playing a growing role in real, physical robots. After announcing Gemini Robotics earlier this year, Google DeepMind has now revealed a new on-device VLA (vision language action) model to control robots. Unlike the previous release, there's no cloud component, allowing robots to operate with full autonomy.

Carolina Parada, head of robotics at Google DeepMind, says this approach to AI robotics could make robots more reliable in challenging situations. This is also the first version of Google's robotics model that developers can tune for their specific uses.

Robotics is a unique problem for AI because, not only does the robot exist in the physical world, but it also changes its environment. Whether you're having it move blocks around or tie your shoes, it's hard to predict every eventuality a robot might encounter. The traditional approach of training a robot on action with reinforcement was very slow, but generative AI allows for much greater generalization.

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The investing conglomerate is looking to team up with TSMC on the initiative as SoftBank continues to pour money into AI.

A dance crew of four-legged robots from Boston Dynamics appeared on "America's Got Talent" to perform a synchronized routine to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now."

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A robot powered by V-JEPA 2 can be deployed in a new environment and successfully manipulate objects it has never encountered before.Read More

Bedrock Ocean wants to use autonomous underwater vehicles to make mapping the seafloor faster and cheaper.

Milan Kovac, head of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot program, is leaving the company to spend more time with family, and he said that his support for Musk and Tesla is "ironclad."

Figure AI has drawn attention for making claims that its AI-powered robots possess human-like fine motor skills and can manipulate objects with precision but hasn't done a live demonstration of the humanoids.

It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights.

Special relativity made visible

Credit: TU Wien

Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: An object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It has not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics.

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AI dev platform Hugging Face continued its push into robotics on Thursday with the release of two new humanoid robots.

Teddy Warner, 19, has always been interested in robotics. His family was in the industry, and he says he “grew up” working in a machinist shop while in high school. Now Warner is building a robotics company of his own, Intempus, that looks to make robots a bit more human. Intempus is building tech to […]

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Impossible Metals, a deep-sea mining startup, submitted a formal request to the Department of the Interior to sell leases to mine the ocean floor.