🤖 Construction Gets A Mixed Fleet
Good Morning, Roboticists!
Civilization is quietly growing a second body, and this one runs on batteries, lidar, and purchase orders.
Construction Gets A Mixed Fleet
TL;DR: ASI and SoftBank Group formed a joint venture to commercialize autonomous construction machinery across haul trucks, dozers, loaders, and compactors. SoftBank also invested $225 million in ASI, whose software aims to coordinate mixed, OEM-agnostic fleets on road, airport, rail, and industrial projects. The deal takes robot autonomy beyond a single machine into a managed jobsite-level operating model. Read more →
Service Robots Stop Being Niche
TL;DR: The International Federation of Robotics recorded nearly 250,000 professional service robots sold in 2025, up 24 percent, with logistics accounting for 117,500 units. Consumer service robots rose 37 percent to 34.2 million, while medical installations also climbed. The figures show robot adoption spreading across warehouses, homes, and clinics, even as humanoids remain a tiny slice. Read more →
Hospitals Gain A Second Shift
TL;DR: Relay Robotics deployed Dash and Daisy at HCA Florida JFK Hospital in Atlantis, Florida, where the autonomous delivery robots now move medications, specimens, and equipment through the facility. The deployment puts the pair into daily clinical logistics rather than a pilot display, giving hospital staff another route for routine internal transport while they remain focused on patient care. Read more →
Warehouse Shelves Reach Higher
TL;DR: Iron Mountain expanded its work with Dexory by becoming the first customer to deploy the company's new 18-meter autonomous scanning robot. The taller AMR is designed to capture warehouse inventory data across more vertical storage without stopping operations, extending a partnership centered on turning dense archives and logistics sites into continuously mapped physical spaces at scale for daily planning. Read more →
China Reinforces The Robot Core
TL;DR: China presented a humanoid in Yichang, Hubei, built around a domestically developed electronic architecture that links perception, planning, and movement. The project claims the machine continued operating in simulations of damaged joints, cyberattacks, and computer-virus disruptions. Specifications and independent testing remain limited, but the launch frames robot reliability as a systems problem rather than just a mechanics problem. Read more →
The Tugger Gets A Second Job
TL;DR: Cyngn received a follow-on order for its DriveMod Tugger from an existing Fortune 100 heavy-equipment manufacturer, expanding the robot into a second material-handling workflow that feeds an assembly line. The autonomous tugger can move loads up to 12,000 pounds without guide wires or floor tape. The company did not name the customer or disclose fleet size, pricing, or deployment timing. Read more →
Warehouses Go Lower
TL;DR: ZS Robotics brought its H125 four-way pallet shuttle to the U.S. market, pitching a 125-millimeter chassis that moves beneath storage loads in dense warehouses. The company says the system carries 13 safety sensors and meets CE, UL, and CSA requirements, following more than 1,000 deployments globally. It is also opening a Houston demo and training center with Kingmore. Read more →
Silicon Backs The Body
TL;DR: SiMa.ai raised a $150 million Series C, valuing the physical-AI chip company at $1.45 billion and bringing total funding to $500 million. The company plans chiplets and systems-on-chip for drones, humanoids, and automotive machines in the first half of 2028. The financing points to the compute race behind robots, though the planned hardware remains years from launch. Read more →
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