Jan 5, 2026 3 min read Daily Rundown

🤖 Play the Risk

Plus: Live Tennis Control, Robot Cop Hits Streets

Good Morning, Roboticists!

Robots are stepping out of the lab and into situations where mistakes actually matter.

TRAINING

Unitree Keeps Training Kicks Where Humans Least Want Them

👀 What’s happening: Unitree just posted another H2 training clip, and it feels oddly proud of where it aims lately, clearly. The 70 kg humanoid lands flying spin kicks, launches two 30 kg punching bags, and heel-kicks a watermelon above head height. A handler flinches as a foot whips past his face.

🌍 How this hits reality: This lands right after the G1 training clip where the operator got kicked in the groin by his own mirrored move. Put them together and Unitree’s curriculum looks oddly specific: protect the head, protect the… other head. With a 70 kg, 1.8 m body and about 360 N·m leg torque of G1, “keep distance” stops being etiquette and needs to be the main safety spec.

🤖 Key takeaway: The truth is, Unitree is not training a bully. They’re training high-energy motion primitives and recovery under tight control. But until guards, speed limits, and kill switches ship by default, the jokes will keep writing themselves.

HUMANOIDS

A Humanoid Stops Posing and Starts Returning Live Balls

👀 What’s happening: UBTech Robotics posted footage of its Walker S2 humanoid rallying live tennis shots with a human. This was not a looped demo. The robot tracked a moving ball, adjusted balance, and returned strokes in real time. UBTech says this marks a shift from scripted motions to adaptive control.

🌍 How this hits reality: Tennis compresses perception, prediction, and contact into one loop. A missed timing collapses balance. Walker S2 handled impacts while pitching forward and squatting, suggesting whole body control is reacting, not replaying. UBTech also says over 1,000 units are built, with 500 deployed, pushing this beyond lab theater.

🤖 Key takeaway: This points to humanoids leaving choreography and entering contact work. If adaptive balance holds, factories get robots that handle uncertainty, not scripts. That shifts timelines for logistics and inspection and pulls labor closer.

HUMANOIDS

China Tests Humanoid Police Presence in Public Spaces

👀 What’s happening: In Shenzhen, a humanoid robot was seen walking with police during a public patrol. Built by EngineAI, the machine is part of its T800 family. Officials call it a demo, but this was a deliberate public appearance, not a lab test or fenced pilot.

🌍 How this hits reality: Forget for a moment whether humanoid robots are actually good at policing. The real effect here is psychological. A human sized, fast moving, armored looking T800 machine walking with officers changes crowd behavior instantly. Visibility does the work before sensors, autonomy, or legal frameworks even matter.

🤖 Key takeaway: Even if humanoid robots are years away from real security utility, their presence already reshapes behavior. Expect early adoption to focus less on function and more on signaling. Deterrence arrives first. Capability can follow later.

QUICK HITS

ECOPEACE is deploying AI-powered ECOBOT robots in Singapore and the UAE to pilot autonomous water management.
Arrive AI is deploying Arrive Point smart mailboxes in hospitals to enable asynchronous robotic delivery of medical samples and supplies.
Figure CEO Brett Adcock predicts that humanoid robots, eVTOLs, and multimodal AI agents with persistent memory will reach major milestones in 2026.
Researchers in China developed a new MFDE MRI technique enabling real-time, artifact-free navigation of magnetic microrobots inside the body.
Mekion launched the open-source Bimo Project, using 3D-printed hardware and sim-to-real training to lower the barrier to bipedal robotics research.

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