Automation

The first of 35 driverless trains set for Taiwan's 100% autonomous Light Green Line has been delivered. When complete, the 22.8-km (14-mile) line will shave 30 minutes off the current commute time end to end, from New Taipei City to Taipei.

From washing urinals to tidying up the beach, we can already see a future where our robot servants help keep our world a little cleaner. Now, a robotic arm has mastered the surprisingly complex task of sink washing, showing off its ability to learn.

The next wave of game-changing AI models will soon be upon us – "agent" style models that'll be able to take over entire ongoing tasks and jobs with full autonomy. Anthropic's newest AI model gives us a sneak peek, by taking over your whole computer.

At its core, this system uses a "simple" cross-spherical gear paired with a monopole gear to control pitch, roll, and yaw. With clever gearing, coupling, and sliding motions, however, the ABENICS gear is extremely precise in its movements.

There are no humans working the new Xiaomi production lines – this new Smart Factory is 100% automated. Indeed, the company says the system is smart enough to diagnose and fix problems, as well as optimizing its own processes to "evolve by itself."

Meal kit delivery services are proving to be quite popular, but … you still have to cook the ingredients yourself. The Chefee home robotic chef is intended to take things further, by actually preparing hot meals that are ready to eat when you get home from work.

OpenAI-backed robotics company 1X has released a video of a bunch of wheeled service robots seamlessly moving from one simple task to another as they tidy up an office space, prompted into action by a voice-controlled natural language interface.

A month ago, we were impressed by these robots being able to pick things up, put them in the right spot, open doors and charge themselves. But new video released hours ago makes it clear that autonomous humanoid work is starting to accelerate like mad.

Tall, capable, and vaguely insectoid looking, a series of Digit robots are now moving around empty bins at an Amazon research and development facility. The trial run is the first step towards using the bots to automate repetitive warehouse processes.

Tending a garden is an enjoyable way to spend a sunny afternoon, but mowing the lawn is too much of a chore. Robot helpers have been on hand for decades, and the latest from Segway taps into AI for dual mapping and positioning chops.

A fruit fly's pinhead-sized brain is not the place you'd expect find inspiration for new robotics. But in a bold move, researchers have built a speedy robot with a 'brain' based on the insect's low-energy, highly efficient navigational neural network.

It's a shock video because Atlas is unboxing and racking shocks – sorry about that. But it's also a shock because Atlas has always been a humanoid robotics research platform, not a commercial product – and this new video has us wondering.