Category
Bipeds, androids, and general-purpose humanoid platforms.
Humanoid robotics is the most heavily funded and most heavily disputed corner of the field. The premise is that a machine shaped like a person can work in spaces already built for people — no re-tooled factory floor, no bespoke fixturing — and that one hardware platform can therefore be amortised across many jobs. That argument is what draws the capital.
The counter-argument is equally simple: legs are an expensive way to cross a flat floor, and almost every task a humanoid is demonstrated doing can be done faster and more reliably by a purpose-built machine. Most credible near-term deployments are narrow — moving totes, tending machines, loading trailers — and run under close supervision.
The honest read is that hardware has outpaced autonomy. Walking is largely solved; dexterous, reliable, unsupervised manipulation in a cluttered environment is not. Watch what the robots do without a teleoperator in the loop, and how long they run between interventions.
The ban largely affects U.S. imports from China, which currently dominates the global market for making humanoid robots and solar inverters.
The FCC has banned some foreign humanoids, which industry experts say could help U.S. industry but hinder innovation. The post Experts react to FCC limits on U.S. imports of new humanoid and mobile robots appeared first on The Robot Report.
Humanoid robots have become an important area of research in robotics, attracting attention from universities, research institutions, and technology companies. The post How integrated actuators improve humanoid robot joint performance and system integration appeared first on The…
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. Summer School on Multi-Robot…
People have been fantasizing about humanoid robots for decades. Movies such as Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence imagined a future where robots and AI could interact with humans and save them from loneliness. Today, those sci-fi stories seem to be closer…
Agility is opening a new training center for its Digit robots in Fremont, California.
Surgeons at UC San Diego just handed the scalpel to two humanoid robots, who went on to complete live surgical procedures for the first time in history. This milestone moves beyond the fixed robotic arms found in operating rooms today and hints at an operating room of the future…
This weekend saw the finale of the league competitions at RoboCup 2026 in Incheon, South Korea, with the winners in the small, middle, and large humanoid divisions decided. Congratulations to the following teams, who finished in the top three positions in each size class: Small…
While other humanoid startups chase sky-high valuations, Agility Robotics is betting its future on execution — and a SPAC.
“In the future, the relationship between humans and robots will deepen, and the distinction between them will probably disappear.” This prediction, from one of the attendees at the recent Humanoids Summit in Tokyo, might have been unremarkable had it not come directly from an…
The second day’s play at RoboCup 2026 has drawn to a close with another bumper set of matches. Teams have come from far and wide to take part in the humanoid soccer competition this year, with 17 different countries represented. China is the most represented country, boasting 15…
Image credit: RoboCup Federation. RoboCup 2026 kicked off today in Incheon, South Korea, with the league competitions running until 5 July. It’s an exciting time for RoboCup, as there have been some updates to the leagues and competition format. Most prominently, the soccer…
Agility Robotics, the humanoid robotics startup that spun out of Oregon State University in 2015, expects to generate $620 million in proceeds.
On 19 April 2026, the Honor Lightning humanoid robot ran a half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human world record by 7 minutes and the best robot time from 2025 by almost 2 hours. How did Honor do it? Is there some magical technology or technique that…
Unlike humanoid robots designed around a fixed form — think Boston Dynamics — Theker's machines are built to be reconfigured.
In 1987, Richard Greenhill, a British photographer who was fascinated by (but had no actual training in) robotics, decided he wanted to build a life-size humanoid that could do useful things, like carrying luggage. He was working at a startup called Intergalactic Robots, but he…
