Flexiv previews 7-DOF tactile arm and modular humanoid at ICRA

Flexiv will preview two unreleased robotic platforms at ICRA 2026 in Vienna, including a 7-DOF force-controlled arm with whole-body touch sensing and a modular humanoid system combining dual arms, vision, and an autonomous mobile base. The systems represent the company's push into high-dexterity man...

Robot dogs track car thieves to arrest at Atlanta apartment complex

Two suspects breaking into cars at an Atlanta affordable housing complex were tracked and arrested with assistance from Undaunted's autonomous quadruped robots on May 21. One robot pursued fleeing suspects while another alerted Atlanta Police, who arrived within minutes — one suspect was caught flee...

Gecko Robotics tests Ouster's Rev8 color lidar for infrastructure inspection

Gecko Robotics is testing Ouster's Rev8 digital lidar sensor to enhance its Cantilever platform for industrial infrastructure inspection. The Rev8's ability to output colorized 3D point clouds alongside infrared and intensity data enables Gecko's AI to more reliably detect structural anomalies that ...

Brain Corp partners with UC San Diego on contextual mapping for robot autonomy

Brain Corp and UC San Diego have expanded their research partnership to develop contextual 3D semantic mapping technology for autonomous robots in commercial and industrial settings. The collaboration addresses a critical gap: making next-generation AI-powered robots reliable and deployable in dynam...

FANUC partners with Google to deploy physical AI across industrial robot lineup

FANUC announced a strategic partnership with Google to integrate advanced AI capabilities across its industrial robot product line, targeting more adaptive automation in manufacturing. The company has already shipped over 1,000 robots for physical AI applications since unveiling the system at IREX T...

Merlin Pilot targets pilot-free cargo aircraft with AI flight system

Merlin has introduced Merlin Pilot for Commercial Cargo, an AI-powered flight system designed to operate large cargo aircraft autonomously. The company is pursuing staged certification, starting with the system as a co-pilot alongside human safety pilots, then advancing to fully autonomous operation...

Open-source AI platforms accelerate robot intelligence development

Major tech companies including Hugging Face, Nvidia, and Alibaba have released open-source AI models and tools specifically for robotics, making it easier to build intelligent physical systems without specialized expertise. Hugging Face's LeRobot platform now hosts over 58,000 robotics datasets — th...

Opentrons launches compliance software for Flex lab robots

Opentrons has released Compliance Ready Software for its Flex liquid handling platform, enabling pharmaceutical and biotech labs to deploy benchtop automation in FDA-regulated workflows. The software provides 21 CFR Part 11-aligned authentication, audit trails, and electronic record integrity at a t...

Shield AI wins contract to add autonomy software to LUCAS attack drones

Shield AI secured a Pentagon contract to integrate its Hivemind autonomy software onto LUCAS one-way attack drones, enabling coordinated swarm operations with a single human operator retaining strike authority. The pilot program, run by the USD(R&E), represents a major step toward operationalizing c...

Unitree launches GD01 mecha suit at $650K, function unclear

Chinese robotics firm Unitree has unveiled the GD01, a piloted mecha suit that walks bipedally or quadrupedally at human walking pace. Priced at $650K, the 1,100-lb platform appears to be a first-generation prototype with exposed wiring, no visible controls, and no disclosed capabilities beyond basi...

Genesis AI unveils GENE-26.5 model with human-scale robotic hands

Genesis AI has launched its first foundational model, GENE-26.5, alongside human-scale robotic hands developed with China's Wuji Tech. The hands perform complex manipulation tasks including cooking, piano playing, and lab work — trained on human video data and teleoperation collected via a lightweig...

Physical Intelligence releases π0.7 robotics foundation model

Physical Intelligence has released π0.7, a vision-language-action model that performs dexterous manipulation tasks across different robot platforms and can combine learned skills to solve new problems. The model uses multimodal prompts—language, visual subgoals, and metadata—to integrate diverse tra...

NVIDIA releases open Physical AI Data Factory Blueprint for robotics training data

NVIDIA has released the Physical AI Data Factory Blueprint, an open reference architecture that automates training data generation, augmentation, and evaluation for robotics, autonomous vehicles, and vision AI agents. The blueprint addresses a core bottleneck in Physical AI development: generating m...

Ouster launches Rev8, the first LiDAR with native color perception

Ouster has released Rev8, the first LiDAR sensor family that captures color natively in every 3D data point, removing the need for separate camera fusion or post-processing. The flagship OS1 Max offers 500-meter range, 256 channels, and operates across extreme lighting conditions—from near-darkness ...

Army pushes autonomous breaching tech to protect combat engineers

The U.S. Army is developing teleoperated and autonomous breaching systems to protect combat engineers who clear minefields and obstacles under fire. While mounted platforms like the Assault Breacher Vehicle are gaining remote control capabilities via contracts awarded in 2022, dismounted engineers s...

GE Vernova acquires Robotech Automation to build in-house robotics integration

GE Vernova has signed an agreement to acquire Robotech Automation, a Quebec-based robotics systems integrator with ~35 employees. The acquisition aims to accelerate robotics deployment across GE Vernova's energy manufacturing supply chain, building in-house integration capabilities rather than relyi...

Kawasaki opens Silicon Valley Physical AI center focused on healthcare robotics

Kawasaki Heavy Industries has launched a Physical AI development center in San Jose, partnering with Nvidia, Microsoft, Analog Devices, and Fujitsu to build autonomous healthcare systems. The facility will integrate AI with Kawasaki's existing surgical and service robots, starting with a "hospital o...