Dec 16, 2025 3 min read Daily Rundown

🤖 Figure Shows Proof

Plus: iRobot Goes Bankrupt, A Vertical Brain

Good Morning, Roboticists!

Robotics is splitting in two: one narrative failing in the market, the other finally proving itself.

HUMANOIDS

The World Now Knows Figure Can Deliver

Watch Helix's neural network do 60 minutes of uninterrupted logistics work

Helix now incorporates touch and short-term memory and it's performance continuously improves over time pic.twitter.com/DvfBe9IdGH
— Figure (@Figure_robot) June 7, 2025

👀 What’s happening: After AI commentator Mehmet Aykul questioned whether Figure’s humanoid could handle “10,000 messy packages without failing,” founder Brett Adcock answered with receipts, a full 60-minute, uncut video of the robot sorting bags and boxes nonstop. Every label faced down, every motion deliberate, no edits, no excuses. It follows an 11-month BMW pilot where Figure 02 loaded over 90,000 parts for X3 assembly.

🔥 How this hits reality: The world no longer doubts Figure’s technical chops. The question now is manufacturing, not motion and when can these robots actually ship to customers? The hour-long proof of competence must turn into units on floors before momentum fades. Investors and factories alike are done watching; they want delivery dates, not demos.

🤖 Our take: Everyone believes Figure can work. Now they just want it to clock in.

HOMETECH

iRobot Finally Runs Out of Floor to Clean

👀 What’s happening: After 35 years in consumer robotics, iRobot, the Roomba pioneer, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will be acquired by its contract manufacturer, China’s Picea Robotics. The company says operations, apps, and support will continue, at least for now. Once a symbol of household automation, iRobot fell under heavy pressure from cheaper Chinese rivals and the collapse of its blocked Amazon acquisition.

🔥 How this hits reality: This is what happens when a category-defining company stops evolving faster than its imitators. While Ecovacs and Roborock built vertically integrated ecosystems with AI mapping and local supply chains, iRobot spent years chasing margins in a commoditized segment. U.S. tariffs and the failed Amazon merger sealed the fate, a slow bleed disguised as resilience. The brand that taught the world to trust home robots now becomes another OEM asset.

🤖 Our take: The robot that cleaned every room couldn’t clean up its own business model.

ROBOT DOG

Texas A&M Builds a Dog with a Vertical Brain

👀 What’s happening: At Texas A&M University, two graduate engineers built a robotic dog that can see, remember, and act, not from the cloud, but from its own onboard “vertical brain.” The system fuses vision, memory, and language into a single decision core that lets the robot understand spoken commands, map chaotic environments, and recall its own past routes when navigating disaster zones. It’s designed to move like a responder, not a remote-controlled toy.

🔥 How this hits reality: Most humanoids and quadrupeds still rely on external compute to think, but this machine brings cognition into the chassis. It doesn’t stream data to a server; it processes, plans, and reacts locally, meaning it can keep operating in collapsed buildings, GPS-dead zones, or smoke-filled tunnels. That “vertical brain,” where perception, reasoning, and control stack directly instead of scattering across cloud APIs is exactly what embodied AI has been missing. If scaled, it could redefine autonomy for rescue, inspection, and industrial operations.

🤖 Our take: This dog actually thinks on its feet, while most robots still phone home for permission.

QUICK HITS

BTM Industrial will run an online liquidation auction in December 2025, selling over 200 industrial robots with no reserve prices.
A UK trial shows robotic-assisted biopsy enables precise sampling of small lung nodules, speeding up early lung cancer diagnosis.
Agibot will launch its Qingtian Rent platform on December 22, introducing an on-demand robot rental model to China.
Scotland’s whisky makers Bacardi are testing a robotic dog to detect alcohol vapor leaks, automating a traditionally manual warehouse inspection process.
Logic Robotics unveiled the Logic Pallet, an autonomous mobile robot for automating goods transport and loading across logistics facilities.

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