Recent Robot News

FANUC's Cobot System Welds Steel Columns Without a Human Welder

FANUC's new CRX Structural Column Welding System lets one operator run four collaborative robots to weld structural steel columns on construction sites, targeting the labor shortage that has made skilled welders scarce and expensive.

Aidin Raises KRW 16 Billion for Shipyard Force Control

Aidin Robotics took KRW 16 billion from HD Hyundai Robotics and Samsung Venture Investment to scale force sensors and co-develop hull finishing cells, with a humanoid hand as a later product.

Helios 19 min read

Pony.ai Starts Fully Driverless Robotaxi Tests in Zagreb

Pony.ai and Verne began invited-passenger tests without an onboard operator on a 22-kilometer Zagreb airport route, advancing an existing supervised service toward fully driverless operation.

Maven Robotics Raises US$100 Million for Industrial Robot Deployments

Maven Robotics launched with a US$100 million Series A and said its wheeled, dual-arm systems are already working multiple shifts in an unnamed Fortune 250 operation. The next test is repeatable deployment economics.

Skild AI's Robot Model Learns New Tasks From a Single Video

Skild AI says its new S1 foundation model learns unfamiliar robot tasks from a single demonstration video, hitting a 66% per-step success rate versus 9% for prior systems, as the Pittsburgh startup passes a US$100 million revenue run rate on NVIDIA's physical AI stack.

CyberHero Launches Eight-City Humanoid Robot Sports League

Hero Esports launched CyberHero in Riyadh with EngineAI T800 humanoids and plans an eight-city circuit built around teams, technology, and live entertainment.

Vention Opens Physical AI Lab for Factory Robots

Vention opened a Montreal lab to turn robot-manipulation research into reliable factory deployments, with GRIIP and production data at the center.

AeroVironment Backlog Hits US$1.5 Billion on Record Quarter

AeroVironment posted record US$480.5 million quarterly revenue and a 37 percent jump in funded backlog to US$1.5 billion, narrowing its net loss as its five-domain expansion strategy faces its first real financial test.

AEVEX Lands Third US Drone Contract in Four Months

AEVEX Corp secured US$20.5 million in new one-way attack drone awards, its third such contract since May, even as the company faces active securities fraud litigation buyers should weigh separately from its product roadmap.

Orbbec Debuts Robot-Free Data Rig at Logis-Tech Tokyo 2026

Orbbec used Logis-Tech Tokyo to launch new perception cameras and a wearable rig that captures robot manipulation data from human demonstrators, backed by live Hitachi and automaker deployments in Japan.

Hanshow and X-Era Lab Test Embodied Robots Across 70,000 Stores

Hanshow Technology and X-Era Lab are piloting an inventory robot that uses Hanshow's existing electronic shelf labels as a built-in navigation grid, cutting one of retail robotics' biggest hidden deployment costs.

Sea Machines Wins Five-Year IDIQ Contract From US SOCOM

Sea Machines Robotics secured a five-year IDIQ contract to supply retrofit autonomy kits to US Special Operations Command, a qualification win that says more about production cadence than the still-undisclosed contract ceiling.

Samsung SDS Launches Robot Orchestration Business

Samsung SDS formally entered Robotics Transformation and plans a 2027 platform for coordinating mixed robot fleets and production equipment. The enterprise-software group brings access to more than 430 manufacturing customers but still must prove interoperability in live factories.

XPENG Opens Automated Line for IRON Humanoid Robots

XPENG commissioned an automated humanoid production line and showed an IRON unit walking off after assembly. The milestone turns a July manufacturing plan into operating infrastructure, while customer economics remain unproven.

Boston Dynamics Veterans Launch Dynamic Creatures

Dynamic Creatures emerged from stealth as Boston Dynamics' official entertainment and hospitality partner, building mobile character robots for hotels, theme parks, and museums, backed by founder Marc Raibert and led by two Boston Dynamics veterans.

GMO Launches Japan's First Humanoid Robot Ambulance

GMO AI & Robotics will launch Japan's first dedicated humanoid robot maintenance vehicle this month, a bet on field-service infrastructure that most humanoid vendors have left unaddressed as deployments scale beyond pilot programs.

AeroVironment Lands First International LOCUST Order

AeroVironment secured its first international purchase order for the LOCUST directed-energy counter-drone system, worth more than US$50 million, six days after a record US$464.8 million US Army production contract for the same laser system.

DeepCtrls Raises B+ Round Led by CATL, Aramco Backs In

DeepCtrls, a profitable Shenzhen physical AI company selling energy-optimization software to data centers and factories, raised a B+ round led by CATL with Saudi Aramco Ventures participating, months after a JinkoSolar-led B round backed the same energy-infrastructure thesis.

Palladyne AI and FANUC America Team Up on Robot AI

Palladyne AI and FANUC America will jointly optimize Palladyne's IQ embodied-AI software on FANUC's industrial robot arms, targeting adaptive motion planning and teleoperation to cut the custom integration work manufacturing and logistics deployments currently require.

AGIBOT's A3 and X2 Sweep IFA 2026 Innovation Awards

AGIBOT's A3 won IFA 2026's Innovation Award for Best in IFA Next and Emerging Technologies, with the X2 named an honoree, plus wins from TechRadar, Techlicious, Gadget Flow, and BGR, as the Shanghai humanoid maker builds consumer-facing trust ahead of hospitality and retail deployments.

Sep 8, 2026

Jaipur Robotics Raises EUR4.3M to Automate Waste-to-Energy Plants

Swiss startup Jaipur Robotics raised a EUR4.3 million (US$4.6 million) Seed round to expand computer-vision hazard detection and crane automation across the world's roughly 3,100 waste-to-energy plants, most of which still run on manual inspection.

Sep 8, 2026

Haystack Robotics Raises US$3.95M Series A for Hospital Disinfection Robots

Portland's Haystack Robotics raised a US$3.95 million Series A led by an investment entity tied to healthcare utilization-management firm Agadia Systems, a payer-side backer betting its autonomous UV-C disinfection robot can cut infection-related claims, not just cleaning costs.

Sep 7, 2026

Excelland Robotics Prices Hong Kong IPO After a 95-Times Subscription Rush

Excelland Robotics priced a richly oversubscribed Hong Kong IPO on Monday, but its prospectus also shows three straight years of losses and a thin cash cushion, the numbers procurement teams should read past the subscription hype.

Sep 6, 2026

PUDU D7 Makes European Debut at IFA 2026

Pudu Robotics brought its D7 semi-humanoid to Europe for the first time, using its 130,000-unit commercial robot base to make a broader case for embodied AI.

Guangxiang's World-Model Robot Logs 21 Hours of Zero-Failure Welding at NIO

A Tsinghua-incubated startup says its Phi-Bot X1 humanoid ran 21.5 hours of welding-line material handling at NIO with zero failures, using a world model that trains the robot to anticipate consequences, then exits the pipeline before deployment to keep runtime costs down.

D-Robotics Powers Three Home Robots at IFA 2026

D-Robotics put its Sunrise computing platform behind TCL’s hey AiMe, Vbot’s SuperDog, and xLean’s TR1 at IFA 2026. The cross-category showcase shows why buyers must audit the hidden computing and software layers inside finished robots.

iRobot's Roomba Duo Is a Concept, Not Yet a Product

iRobot unveiled the two-robot Roomba Duo concept at IFA 2026 with no price or launch date, betting on a new mechanical answer to floor-care's access gap.

Astribot's SmoothRL Triples Success on Hard Robot Tasks

A training-pipeline fix called SmoothRL lifted Astribot's S1 humanoid success rates as high as 39% to 94% on hard manipulation tasks, without any new hardware.

MagicLab's X1 and D1 Coordinate Tasks Live at IFA 2026

MagicLab showed its X1 humanoid and D1 wheeled robot sharing a single AI model to coordinate tasks at IFA 2026, but the company has not yet published EU certification for either platform.

AiMOGA's EU-Certified Mornine Joins IFA 2026's Robot Runway

Chery's AiMOGA is bringing its EU-certified Mornine humanoid to IFA 2026's inaugural robot runway on September 5, the only entrant with full hardware-and-software European certification verified by TÜV Rheinland.

PlusAI Agrees US$800 Million Autonomous-Truck SPAC Deal

PlusAI agreed to a transaction valuing it at approximately US$800 million before new money and potentially providing up to US$300 million for autonomous-truck commercialization.

XTEND AI Robotics Closes US$110 Million Merger

XTEND and JFB completed their business combination, creating NYSE-bound XTEND AI Robotics with US$110 million in total capital and US$67.7 million delivered at closing.

Youbaote Raises A+ Round for Hazardous-Work Robots

Youbaote raised an A+ round to expand production and service capacity for humanoid and quadruped robots used in mining, power, emergency response, and other hazardous settings.

Tesla Unveils US$25,000 Cybercab With No Steering Wheel

Tesla revealed the production Cybercab at an Austin event, pricing its first vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals at US$25,000 and rolling it into the existing Robotaxi app.

Galbot Opens Pre-Orders for Self-Learning ET1 Humanoid

Galbot opened pre-orders for its ET1 humanoid, a bipedal robot the Beijing startup calls the first self-learning, native agentic AI system, two weeks after its WRC 2026 tennis debut.

Unitree Shares Extend Slide, Now Half Below IPO Peak

Unitree Robotics shares fell again on Wednesday, extending a slide that has erased more than half the stock's value since its blockbuster Shanghai IPO debut, reviving scrutiny of China's STAR Market listing mechanism.

AgiBot Launches Middle East Robot Rental Program at LEAP 2026

AgiBot unveiled a robot rental program spanning seven Middle East countries at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, pricing humanoid and quadruped robots from SAR 2,000 a day as it extends the RaaS strategy it used to enter Europe and Australia.

AeroVironment Wins $464.8 Million Army Contract for LOCUST X3 Laser Weapons

AeroVironment secured a $464.8 million US Army contract to mass-produce its LOCUST X3 laser weapon, the first American production deal for a directed-energy defense system, backed by a $30 million Albuquerque manufacturing expansion.

Japan PM Takaichi Vows Faster AI and Drone Adoption for Military

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told Japan's military leadership to accelerate AI and unmanned defense asset adoption, as the country's Defense Ministry requests a record $55 billion FY2027 budget for drones and AI-enabled command systems.

Sep 2, 2026

Anduril, Palantir Win US$192 Million Army TITAN Production Award

The US Army awarded US$192 million on September 1 to move its TITAN AI-enabled intelligence ground station into production, with Palantir as prime (US$127 million) and Anduril delivering hardware and shelter integration (US$65 million) for an initial eight systems over eighteen months. The award confirms the software-led contracting model survived its transition from prototype to production, and puts both defense-tech firms on a public manufacturing clock.

Sep 2, 2026

Waymo Expands Robotaxi Service to Denver, San Diego, and Tampa

Waymo opened autonomous ride-hailing to riders in three more U.S. cities on September 1, bringing its robotaxi network to 14 metros and putting a second vehicle platform into commercial service.

Sep 1, 2026

DiDi's Next Robotaxi Drops the Safety Driver in Beijing and Guangzhou

DiDi Autonomous Driving's R2 robotaxi, built with GAC Aion, now runs fully driverless in Beijing and Guangzhou, announced from Dubai ahead of a planned UAE expansion - DiDi's first market test outside China.

Aug 30, 2026

XTRONROBOT's Inspection Robots Clear 100 Units at PetroChina

Shenzhen robotics startup XTRONROBOT has completed the first batch of a 100-plus unit order for explosion-proof inspection robots from PetroChina's Xinjiang oilfield division, backed by a new Series A1 funding round.

Aug 29, 2026

Anthropic Launches Open Standard for AI-Controlled Lab and Factory Robots

Anthropic released the Model Hardware Standard as a research preview Thursday, a specification letting any AI model discover and safely operate lab and factory hardware, tested with 16 partners including Genentech, Universal Robots, and Hugging Face.

Aug 29, 2026

Lupin Dental Raises €15 Million (US$17.5M) for a Robot That Preps Teeth, With a Dentist Watching Every Move

Lupin Dental raised €15 million (US$17.5M) in a Series A led by Fynveur to scale its supervised robotic system for veneer tooth preparation, backed by a real 12-patient accuracy study, though the device isn't yet cleared for sale in the EU or US.

Aug 29, 2026

Bill Gates Wants a Robot Tax Before "Smart" Robots Take Construction and Hospitality Jobs This Decade

Bill Gates' new essay predicts smart robots will compete with construction and hospitality workers by the end of the decade, credits China with the industry's advanced work, and proposes taxing robots like payroll to slow the shift - a policy idea economists remain split on.

Aug 28, 2026

Teradyne Robotics Sues JAKA Over Cobot Patents at Europe's Unified Patent Court

Teradyne Robotics filed a hardware-and-software patent case against JAKA's German unit at the Unified Patent Court in Copenhagen, its second IP action against a Chinese cobot maker in Europe this year.

Aug 28, 2026

AeroVironment Wins NASA Contract to Build Three Autonomous Mars Helicopters

AeroVironment's MacCready Works team will co-design and co-manufacture three autonomous helicopters for NASA's SkyFall mission, moving a 2025 Mars-flight concept into a funded program targeting a November 2028 launch.