🤖 Convenience Stores Grow Robots
Good Morning, Roboticists!
The robot apocalypse has been delayed. They are busy restocking shelves and cleaning the airport.
Convenience Stores Grow Robots
TL;DR: ACE Robotics and PetroChina Shanghai have begun trial operations at a Kunlun convenience store, where real Meituan orders trigger a robot to identify, pick, move, and pack goods. The wheeled system works in 75-centimeter aisles and reaches two-meter shelves, linking storage, replenishment, shelving, order picking, and packing in a single live retail test. It is a pilot in Shanghai. Read more →
One Body, Someone Else's Hands
TL;DR: South Korea's Robros added full-body teleoperation to its IGRIS-C humanoid, letting an operator mirror squats, turns, and handling motions for boxes, bags, and balls. The company says the system is aimed at manufacturing, logistics, cleanrooms, and refrigerated distribution, while its 36 produced units and 18 cumulative sales show a young platform still being taught by people. Read more →
Rescue Practice Gets A Robot Deadline
TL;DR: Beijing will stage its Robot Warrior Challenge on October 17-18, putting humanoids, quadrupeds, and wheeled quadrupeds through 14 rescue-style tasks. Competitors will tackle doors, valves, obstacles, and simulated emergencies in remote-control and autonomous categories, turning the city's next robot contest into a practical test of whether machines can work through disorder instead of simply perform on a flat stage. Read more →
Someone Else Opens The Box
TL;DR: Viam will show BoxBot at IROS in Pittsburgh, where the robot arm cuts tape with image-based visual servoing and uses a vision-language-action model to open a box's flaps. The project was trained on 125 human teleoperation demonstrations collected in about five hours, offering a compact test of whether warehouse robots can handle one of logistics' stubbornly ordinary jobs. Read more →
Middle East Kitchens Go Robotic
TL;DR: Circus SE has started commercial CA-1 food-production robot operations in Abu Dhabi with Royal Prestige Food Contracts, marking its first market outside Europe. The caterer produces more than three million meals a year for UAE institutions, while Circus says Dubai is next. It did not disclose unit numbers, the first site, or terms of the operating arrangement. Read more →
Paint Jobs Lose Their Bottleneck
TL;DR: Legend Robot says its automated paint-and-putty spraying fleet worked on an Athens hotel renovation across 19 room layouts, reaching a peak 237 square meters an hour and reducing material waste by up to 15%. The company will present the CE-compliant system at BATIMAT in Paris, while pitching future navigation upgrades that re-route around obstacles on changing job sites. Read more →
The Crane Has A Flying Backup
TL;DR: RWE and Ampelmann completed a six-week cargo-drone campaign at the 857 MW Triton Knoll offshore wind farm, making more than 250 flights and moving over nine tonnes between a service vessel and turbines. Pilots supervised routine automated flights, while an unmanned winch-and-hook system handled pickup. Ampelmann says the workflow increased technicians' effective tool time by 15-20%. Read more →
Twenty-One Robots Take The Terminal
TL;DR: Cleantech delivered 21 autonomous cleaning robots to Incheon International Airport over three days, completing the hardware phase of an airport robot-integration project. The fleet combines SP50 dry-vacuum and L3 wet-scrubbing machines, and will next be connected to operating scenarios and system integration. Cleantech says it will also provide maintenance through its direct service network. The award came in April. Read more →
One Console, Every Horizon
TL;DR: Rheinmetall is using REPMUS26 in Portugal to test a containerized operations center that connects unmanned systems from different manufacturers for harbor and critical-infrastructure protection. Its Battlesuite software joins sensors, mission modules, and other systems into one interface for the German Navy, framing the exercise around interoperability rather than the performance of a single robot or vehicle. Read more →
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