The U.S. is building barriers around drones and robots, but China has scale to get around them

The U.S. is shutting out more foreign-made drones and robots. China’s scale means the global competition may simply move elsewhere.

China’s Robot Olympics Keep Getting Wilder

Check out the highlights of the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.

Anthropic tests a new standard for Claude to work with factory and lab hardware
Anthropic tests a new standard for Claude to work with factory and lab hardware

Anthropic has released the Model Hardware Standard in research preview, a specification that stores how a piece of hardware works and how an AI may safely operate it, such as limiting a robot arm’s speed and angles. Europe’s Machinery Regulation starts…

Hugging Face’s Microduck Feels Like a Harbinger of the Cute AI Robot Wave

It waddles… it roller-skates… it plays ball… it learns.

Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open-source duck robot, Microduck

Hugging Face is taking orders for the Microduck, a $399 tiny open-source duck robot that developers can train at home out of the box.

Unitree shares fall 45% from their debut peak, wiping out $30bn
Unitree shares fall 45% from their debut peak, wiping out $30bn

Unitree’s shares have fallen roughly 45% from the peak they hit on their first day of trading in Shanghai. The slide has turned a national success story into an argument about how China prices its listings. The stock steadied on Tuesday after three con…

Fresh from €1.2bn, NEURA buys its second company in eleven days
Fresh from €1.2bn, NEURA buys its second company in eleven days

NEURA Robotics is buying a company that makes cleaning robots, and says it wants to replace their brains. The German firm is acquiring 100% of Adlatus Robotics, an Ulm maker of autonomous cleaning and sweeping machines. It announced the deal on Monday,…

XPENG’s robotics arm has raised more than $900M ahead of its humanoid production run
XPENG’s robotics arm has raised more than $900M ahead of its humanoid production run

XPENG said on Monday that its robotics business has raised more than $900M in what the company described as its first funding round, a substantial sum for a unit that has yet to sell a single robot commercially. The timing is deliberate, since the Chin…

Galbot Robots complete 100 consecutive rallies against a tennis champion
Galbot Robots complete 100 consecutive rallies against a tennis champion

Galbot says its robot completed more than 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies against former world number 15 Zheng Jie at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. The rally count, the autonomy claim and the robot’s identity all rest on the comp…

A humanoid robot just beat Usain Bolt’s 100m record, and roboticists are unimpressed for good reason
A humanoid robot just beat Usain Bolt’s 100m record, and roboticists are unimpressed for good reason

A robot built by Beijing’s X-Humanoid ran 100 metres in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games, beating Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second record. Roboticists point out that speed on a known course is far easier for a machine than folding laundry. A mach…