🤖 Humanoids Enter The OR
Good Morning, Roboticists!
The machines are getting quieter, cheaper, and more specific, which is usually when the future stops waving and starts working.
Humanoids Enter The OR
TL;DR: UC San Diego researchers used teleoperated humanoid robots in two preclinical surgeries on large nonprimate mammals, including gallbladder removal. The Surgie robots stand about 5 feet tall, weigh 60 pounds, use standard surgical tools through adapters, and aim to show how smaller humanoid systems could fit existing operating rooms. Read more →
Car Plants Court Humanoids
TL;DR: Mitsubishi Motors and University of Tokyo startup Highlanders signed an MOU to explore humanoid robot development and possible mass production at Mitsubishi's Kyoto Plant. The plan starts with using Highlanders robots inside Mitsubishi factories, then studying whether production can begin during fiscal 2026. Read more →
Robots Navigate On One Eye
TL;DR: Mistral AI introduced Robostral Navigate, an 8B robotics model built for autonomous navigation using only a single RGB camera. The company says it reaches 76.6% success on unseen R2R-CE benchmarks without depth sensors, LiDAR, or multi-camera rigs, pushing physical AI toward leaner robot hardware. Read more →
Ham Labels Lose The Human
TL;DR: A Spanish integrator automated Serrano ham labeling with AI vision and a hygiene-ready Staubli SCARA robot. The system can inject up to 900 labels per hour while detecting bone positions in irregular 8 to 12 kg hams, turning a skilled, physically repetitive food-production task into robotic work. Read more →
Pallets Stop Needing Programmers
TL;DR: Doosan Robotics launched PalletizHD+ at Automate 2026, pitching it as an AI-powered palletizing system for high-mix manufacturing. It can process up to 11 boxes per minute, handle four boxes at once, and automatically generate pallet patterns and robot motion paths from box and pallet specs. Read more →
Warehouse Pilots Learn To Crawl
TL;DR: Robust.AI announced a ShipLab deployment in Vista, California, using Carter collaborative mobile robots for ecommerce fulfillment. The rollout starts with tote transport between fulfillment and packing stations, then expands only after performance validation, with a Crawl, Walk, Run RaaS model meant to lower automation risk. Read more →
Space Robots Get A Sandbox
TL;DR: Rice University and NASA launched iMETRO Dynamic Simulation, an open-source platform for testing intravehicular space robots. The simulator mirrors NASA Johnson Space Center's iMETRO facility, models an eight-degree-of-freedom robotic manipulator, and supports ROS 2 and MuJoCo so researchers can move faster from virtual spacecraft to hardware. Read more →
Drilling Robots Hit Jobsites
TL;DR: DEWALT and August Robotics commercially launched DALE, a fleet-capable downward drilling robot built to accelerate data center construction. The system automates repetitive overhead layout-to-drill workflows on jobsites, turning a labor-heavy construction step into coordinated robotic work for contractors facing speed and workforce pressure. Read more →
Human Hands Become Robot Data
TL;DR: MANUS detailed how its gloves supplied ground-truth hand motion data for NVIDIA's DreamDojo robot world model. DreamDojo pretrains on roughly 44,000 hours of egocentric human video, then transfers that knowledge to robot embodiments such as Fourier's GR-1 humanoid, using precise manipulation data to bridge humans and robots. Read more →
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