#robotics

#robotics

Inside a glass-walled lab at Tesla's engineering headquarters, dozens of workers act out the motions of everyday life: lifting a cup, wiping a table, pulling open a curtain. They repeat each action hundreds of times during eight-hour shifts, and their work is captured by five cameras attached to their helmet and a heavy backpack. CEO Elon Musk sometimes stops by to watch, and Tesla investors visit regularly for demos. It's like being a "lab rat under a microscope," one former worker told Business Insider. The goal is simple: Teach Optimus, the company's robot, how to move like a human.

Mbodi wants to make training robots easier and quicker with the help of AI agents. The company will be showcasing this tech as one of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. New York-based Mbodi built a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, that is designed to integrate into existing robotic tech stacks. The software relies on a multitude of AI agents that communicate with each other to gather the needed information to help a robot learn a task faster.

"We behave differently when we're anxious or when we're experiencing fear, versus when we are feeling courageous. And mice do the same," explained Alexandra Klein, postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, during a lab tour, adding that there are multiple experiments conducted in the lab to analyze a mouse's behavior - all this to understand human brain functions better and potentially cure diseases. The tour even showcased a real mouse brain in a test tube.

Imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon. Of course, we need to make sure Optimus is safe and everything. But I do think we're headed for a world of sustainable abundance,

Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics - driving a groundbreaking evolution that will propel humanity forward.

Charlotte is the product of innovative minds combining Crest Robotics' advanced robotics with Earthbuilt Technology's unique extrusion and compaction systems. The result is a fully autonomous, spider-like robot that is lightweight and highly adaptable. Charlotte delivers a construction solution that is affordable, fast, and low in carbon emissions. She offers answers to both space-age challenges and real-world housing demands. Designers: Crest Robotics and Earthbuilt Technology Based in Delray Beach, Florida, the digital craftsmanship behind Charlotte makes her more than just a robot.

U.S. technology company Nvidia and Fujitsu, a Japanese telecommunications and computer maker, agreed Friday to work together on artificial intelligence to deliver smart robots and a variety of other innovations using Nvidia's computer chips. "The AI industrial revolution has already begun. Building the infrastructure to power it is essential in Japan and around the world," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said, hugging his Fujitsu counterpart Takahito Tokita on stage. "Japan can lead the world in AI and robotics," Huang told reporters at a Tokyo hotel.

Traditional video methods [are a] brute-force approach to pixel generation, where you're trying to squeeze motion in a couple of frames to create the illusion of movement, but the model actually doesn't really know or reason about what's going on in that scene, Previous video-generation models had physics that were unlike the real world, he added, which general-purpose world model systems help to address.

In a new essay, he calls this approach "pure fantasy thinking." The problem? Human hands are incredibly sophisticated, packed with about 17,000 specialized touch receptors that no robot comes close to matching. While machine learning transformed speech recognition and image processing, those breakthroughs built on decades of existing technology for capturing the right data. "We don't have such a tradition for touch data," Brooks points out.

A four-legged robot that keeps crawling even after all four of its legs have been hacked off with a chainsaw is the stuff of nightmares for most people. For Deepak Pathak, cofounder and CEO of the startup Skild AI, the dystopian feat of adaptation is an encouraging sign of a new, more general kind of robotic intelligence. "This is something we call an omni-bodied brain," Pathak tells me.

September 2025 will be remembered as the month technology finally caught up with our crazy dreams. Companies across every category seemed to collectively decide that incremental updates were no longer enough. From phones thinner than physics should allow to robots that actually climb stairs, each launch pushed boundaries we didn't even know existed. The timing wasn't coincidental; this felt like a coordinated assault on mediocrity.

For Walmart, it's a priority to quickly stock store shelves with the freshest food possible. In doing so, the nation's largest grocery-store retailer can prevent food waste from eating into its profits, even in an industry known for thin margins. Yasemin Gunay, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, told Business Insider that retailers and restaurants have historically planned their inventory levels based on their internal data, mostly based on past sales trend data.

The tech company leased a warehouse in the Mission District last month that will serve as a research and development space to advance its autonomous delivery technology, a June letter sent to San Francisco Zoning Administrator Corey Teague shows. "This project reflects a broader commitment to reinvesting in San Francisco's innovation economy and creating pathways for local employment in emerging technologies," the letter said. The 34,325-square-foot building at 1960 Folsom St. is roughly two miles away from DoorDash's headquarters. About 200 people are expected to be employed at the site.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 hits Moscone West in San Francisco from October 27 to 29, bringing together 10,000+ startup and VC leaders for three days of bold ideas, groundbreaking tech, and future-shaping conversations. One of the most highly anticipated sessions happening on one of the two AI Stages will spotlight where AI hardware is heading next, featuring a live look at the robotics and autonomous systems pushing boundaries in real time.

Imagine a robot built from 3D-printed parts, tiny motors, and an ordinary marker pen. Each robot is compact and low-cost, driven by two stepper motors with O-rings for wheels and an Arduino Nano as its brain. The pen sits at the center, ready to draw as the robot carefully moves across a whiteboard or a sheet of paper. Early versions moved slowly and carefully drew lines, but the design kept evolving.

Every September, hundreds of thousands of visitors descend upon Berlin for IFA, one of the largest trade tech conferences in Europe. IFA heralds the unofficial start of Techtember, when companies launch products in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. For over 100 years, companies, financiers, and journalists have crossed the Spree and eaten cold liver sausage for breakfast, just to check out the latest innovations in consumer electronics.

Who needs legs? Eufy, Anker's smart home brand, believes it has solved the problem of how a single robot vacuum can clean multiple floors in your home. Its new MarsWalker robot is equipped with four arms to carry a vacuum between levels, so you don't have to lug it up the stairs yourself or buy a robot for each floor. However, you've now got two robots, so perhaps it's not really solving that problem.

The University of Florida and the South Florida Water Management District developed the python-hunting tech this year, crafting remote-controlled, solar-powered stuffed rabbits that look and even smell like the real thing. The robo-rabbits also emit a realistic heat signature, sending the message to heat-sensing snakes in nearby swamps that dinner is served. Unbeknownst to the snakes, the robotic rabbits are also equipped with cameras that scan for pythons who have taken an interest in them.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered the keynote address at the company's annual GTC conference in March, he outlined the "four waves" of the AI revolution: perception AI was the first wave, which started about 10 years ago and focused on recognizing speech and classifying images. Generative AI, the second wave that's dominated the past five years and characterized by large-language models like ChatGPT, creates text and images based on predictive patterns.

"We see this as building our own autonomous marketplace," Ahmed said.