🤖 Figure Breaks With OpenAI
Good Morning, Roboticists!
Autonomy compounds and human roles narrow to oversight at the edges.
Figure Breaks With OpenAI
TL;DR: Figure CEO Brett Adcock revealed the company ended its partnership with OpenAI after internal teams outpaced collaboration needs, choosing to build its own unified AI system. He also described new robot capabilities like “limp mode” for self-repair navigation, ongoing safety concerns in home environments, and scaling plans to mass-produce humanoids for industrial deployment.
Robot Wolf Pack Revealed
TL;DR: China’s military unveiled coordinated “wolf pack” robot dogs designed for urban combat, capable of operating in swarms under a single operator. Different variants handle reconnaissance, logistics, and armed attacks, with some equipped with grenade launchers or missiles. The system integrates with aerial drones and supports semi-autonomous targeting, though human approval is still required for strikes.
Robots Finally See the Invisible
TL;DR: Researchers at Tokyo University of Science developed HEAPGrasp, a vision-based system that lets robots pick up transparent and reflective objects using only RGB cameras. By reconstructing 3D shapes from object silhouettes instead of depth sensors, the system achieved a 96% success rate in tests, reducing camera movement and execution time while working reliably across varied materials.
Sweating Hands for Robots
TL;DR: Xiaomi unveiled a redesigned CyberOne humanoid hand that mimics human sweat glands using internal liquid-cooling channels to manage heat from dense motors. The new hand is 60% smaller, features full-palm tactile sensing and higher dexterity, and achieved over 150,000 grasp cycles, with early factory tests showing strong performance in real industrial assembly tasks.
AGIBOT Reaches 10,000 Units
TL;DR: Shanghai-based AGIBOT announced it has rolled out its 10,000th humanoid robot, rapidly scaling production with the jump from 5,000 to 10,000 units completed in just three months, with robots now actively used in logistics, hospitality, and industrial manufacturing across multiple countries.
HMND 01 Factory Trial
TL;DR: UK robotics company Humanoid deployed its HMND 01 robot in a live automotive factory, where it executed warehouse picking tasks end-to-end by receiving instructions from SAP systems. The robot navigated, collected items, and delivered them within existing workflows without human intervention, showing stable performance and validating its integration into real production.
Robots Now Peel Apples
TL;DR: Sharpa introduced a humanoid robot that can autonomously peel apples using two human-like hands. Powered by its MoDE-VLA system and an IMCopilot module, the robot combines vision, touch, and force sensing to coordinate complex finger movements. In testing, it handled multi-step tasks like assembly and achieved a 73% success rate in apple peeling.
Robots Are Heading to Space
TL;DR: U.S. robotics startup Icarus Robotics signed a mission contract with Voyager Technologies to send its free-flying Joyride robot to the International Space Station by 2027. The mission will test navigation, autonomy, and real operations alongside astronauts, following a $6.1 million seed round aimed at building robots to handle space labor and support future human expansion beyond Earth.
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