Robotics

Back in February, Norway's 1X showed off the progress it had made with its pick-and-place workplace humanoid, Eve. Now the OpenAI-backed company has released video footage of its latest prototype, a bipedal butlerbot named Neo Beta.

Autonomous vehicles are said to be safer than human drivers – but would you trust a mushroom behind the wheel? A new kind of “biohybrid” robot moves in response to signals from the nervous system of a fungus.

A 45-story office tower in New York has become the first in the world to deploy the Ozmo automated window cleaning system, where a platform dangled from the roof is home to robots that spritz the glass 3x faster than human cleaning crews.

Imagine that you're injured on a remote mountain path but have managed to contact emergency rescue. The first to arrive on the scene could be a small humanoid robot wearing a jetpack if Italian research bears fruit.

A few short months after Chinese startup Astribot released jaw-dropping video footage of its humanoid helper, the company has now unveiled a launch video for the S1 – which shows the bot making waffles, feeding the cat, serving tea and shooting hoops.

Unitree Robotics is a relatively recent entry in the general-purpose humanoid space, but its $16,000 G1 model is already proving itself to be quite the performer. So much so that the company has now revealed a version that's ready for mass production.

Stormwater culverts can be dangerous places, due to hazards such as crumbling concrete ceilings and toxic gas accumulations. The PIPE-i robot was designed with that fact in mind, as it takes the place of a human when inspecting such structures.

Using heaps of data, Google DeepMind trained a table-tennis-playing robot to take on human competitors and get better as it did so. The results were impressive and represent a leap forward in robotic speed and dexterity. It also looks really fun.

California-based robotics outfit Figure has today announced its second-generation humanoid robot, which is initially being aimed at production lines in commercial settings, but the company is promising a bipedal butler in our homes in the near future.

Researchers have prototyped sensor-packed robot bugs that mimic biological digestive systems to meet energy needs, employ a Janus interface for a steady supply of nutrients and move on the water's surface like a water strider.

We're already seeing humanoid robots entering the workplace, but when will we be able to kick back and let the service droid take care of household chores? A new video from Germany's Neura Robotics shows this dream is inching ever closer to reality.

Around this time last year, Chinese robotics company Unitree caught our attention with the impressive circus tricks and GPT chat capabilities of its $1,600 second-generation robot dog. Now the company has wheeled out an all-terrain upgrade.

Vayu Robotics has today unveiled its first delivery robot. The One can follow staff around stores to load up customer orders, before autonomously navigating city streets at speeds up to 20 mph to deliver the goods. Commercial deployment has begun.

Disney Research Hub has different priorities to other robot developers; its robots need to move effectively and efficiently – but also with a ton of style and personality. This super-cute biped, based on the BD-1 droid, is a perfect example.

This nifty little quadruped robot has been trained to seek and eliminate litter by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology, using a vacuum cleaner backpack with nozzles strapped to its ankles.