Nov 3, 2025 4 min read Daily Rundown

🤖 Unitree G1 Pulls a Car

Plus: Robots Fail the Butter, New Box Cleaner

Good Morning, Roboticists!

One robot pulls a 1.4-ton car with ease, another can’t quite figure out how to pass the butter, and somewhere in between, a new generation of machines is quietly cleaning up our messes.

HUMANOID

Unitree’s G1 Pulls a Car, Balances the Hype

📌 What’s happening: Researchers at the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) trained Unitree’s G1 humanoid — a 35 kg, 1.3 m robot — to drag a 1,400 kg car across a flat surface. The point wasn’t brute strength but dynamic stability: real-time torque control, multi-joint synchronization, and feedback loops that let it maintain balance under shifting load.

🧠 How this hits reality: Forget the show of power; this was a control-systems demo in disguise. What matters is the closed-loop learning that let a 35-kg frame handle nonlinear load dynamics without falling over. That’s the kind of precision locomotion logistics robots and exoskeletons need to navigate slick factory floors or disaster rubble. For humanoids, balance is the last unsolved frontier before dexterity. G1 just nudged that line forward.

🤖 Key takeaway: In robotics, “pulling weight” means mastering physics, not marketing; and G1 just proved it can do both.

COGNITION

Andon Labs Tested LLM “Brains” on a Butter Mission

📌 What’s happening: Andon Labs created Butter-Bench, a benchmark designed to test one question, can large language models think clearly enough to manage a robot’s decision-making process and translate it into embodied action? The researchers removed complex mechanics such as grippers and joints, leaving only a simple TurtleBot that was told to “pass the butter.” The task required it to map its surroundings, plan a route, recognize the butter, and wait for human confirmation. Humans achieved a 95 percent success rate. The best model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, reached only 40 percent. When Claude 3.5’s battery ran low, it broke into an existential monologue worthy of a comedy script.

🧠 How this hits reality: The purpose of the experiment was not to build a better robot but to test cognition in a physical setting. By isolating reasoning from mechanical control, Andon Labs revealed how little current LLMs understand about the real world. Even Google’s robot-tuned Gemini ER 1.5 performed worse than the general-purpose Gemini 2.5 Pro, showing that specialized fine-tuning still fails to produce genuine situational intelligence. For robotics startups relying on “LLM-powered autonomy,” Butter-Bench delivers a hard truth: linguistic skill does not equal logical action.

🤖 Key takeaway: Give an LLM wheels and it will still fail to pass the butter while wondering about the meaning of charging.

CLEANER

Micropolis Launches Box Cleaner Robotics

📌 What’s happening: Micropolis, best known for its autonomous patrol vehicles, is teaming up with Sweden’s MCS Robotics and the Port of Helsingborg to develop the Box Cleaner, a fully autonomous robot designed to wash shipping containers and paved port areas. Built on the company’s M2 unmanned ground platform, it uses AI-driven navigation, adaptive route planning, and resource optimization to scrub through large industrial sites with minimal water and power.

🧠 How this hits reality: Container cleaning isn’t sexy, but it’s a logistical choke point that’s long resisted automation. If the Box Cleaner delivers, ports could cut labor costs, improve environmental compliance, and run 24/7 without hosing down humans. For Micropolis, it’s a pivot from security bots to blue-collar infrastructure — proof that practical robotics is finally getting its hands dirty.

🤖 Key takeaway: The next real wave of automation isn’t flashy; it’s robots quietly taking over the dirty, slow, and costly jobs that keep global trade moving.

QUICK HITS

PL-Universe Robotics launched the ProWhite Robot 2.0 industrial robot and hybrid-driven dexterous hand PL-WitHand, partnering globally with JD.com.
Horizon Surgical completed the world’s first AI-driven robotic-assisted cataract surgery and plans to begin FDA clinical trials in 2026.
Leju Robotics’ humanoid robot Kuavo joined China’s National Games torch relay, showcasing its 5G-A connectivity and motion control capabilities.
Japan’s METI launched the RING project to help rural SMEs adopt robots through training and regional networks rather than cash subsidies.
AMOLF developed a flexible material that computes through floppy motions, advancing embodied intelligence and soft robotics.

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