Physical Intelligence is developing a general-purpose control brain that can work across many kinds of robots, using a vision-language-action (VLA) model to teach robots tasks such as making coffee, folding clothes, and peeling vegetables, rather than focusing on a single machine as Tesla, Boston Dynamics, or Amazon do.
When watching viral humanoid robot demonstration videos, first confirm whether the robot is being controlled by a human through teleoperation; unless a paper or company explicitly states it is fully autonomous, be skeptical. Next, judge whether the demonstration was completed in a new test environment encountered for the first time, and whether the video is played at 2x or 4x speed, because for safety and other reasons robots usually move slowly in reality. The informational value of demonstration videos varies widely; some are just entertainment or promotional clips, and genuine capability progress is not easily conveyed through packaging.
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Chen Yu, managing partner of Yunqi Partners, explains his views on judging long-term opportunities amid technological paradigm shifts in a video interview with PEdaily, with Yunqi Insights excerpting the core points. Yunqi began focusing on robotics and autonomous driving as early as 2016 and invested in MiniMax's angel round in 2021, favoring the approach of a foundation model solving multiple types of tasks. He believes large models enable a team of about 10 people to build products that previously required 100 people, and that the moat for AI applications lies in scenario understanding, data barriers, and multi-model collaboration.
If you're at CVPR 2026, I'll be giving another talk tomorrow (June 4) at the ScaleBot workshop, room 610/612, at 1:30 pm. Topic: making scaling robot data easier 😃 Scaling data matters, and in robotics there's a strange trick...
In an interview, Boston Dynamics mechanical design engineer Chastity Kelly explains the foot design of the Atlas humanoid robot. The new-generation foot has a symmetric structure, with the ankle joint located at the middle of the foot; combined with knees that can bend backward, this allows Atlas to walk forward and backward without turning around. The sole has multi-directional treads to provide two-way grip and prevent slipping on factory floors. She also shares her own journey: starting at a community college, she spent 15 years earning a PhD in mechanical engineering and entering the robotics industry.
The Yingzhi Technology XBOT coffee robot system can operate continuously 24 hours a day without on-site staff, producing hundreds of cups per day while maintaining consistent output standards. AI custom latte art supports printing selfies, logos, and more onto drinks, creating social exposure through customers' spontaneous sharing. Operators can remotely monitor revenue, order volume, and equipment performance through a centralized dashboard, turning the store model into scalable retail infrastructure.
Can robot soldiers really make us safer? Our CEO @sankaet's answer may surprise you. https://youtu.be/dKzbRMuu77w
Sanctuary AI CEO James Wells took part in a panel discussion and gave an interview at Web Summit Vancouver, arguing that Canada must adopt and invest in Physical AI and robotics early or its economic sovereignty could be held by others. He introduced the concept of "labor sovereignty," warning that if foreign robots take on work in Canada's key industries, control over labor productivity will flow abroad, and he called on the federal government to support domestic innovation, commercialization, and large-scale deployment on top of the six pillars of the national AI strategy.
RoboScience founder and CEO Tian Ye judges that the "GPT moment" for embodied intelligence will arrive within 5 years, marked by robots reaching the hands-on ability of a five- or six-year-old child and ordinary users being able to get started within 5 minutes.
Based on a review of nearly 10 months of real customer deployments, Dyna Robotics believes the timeline for converting robotics capabilities into commercial value is longer than current funding assumptions suggest, and that much of the market is a bubble. The article presents three judgments: hardware is not the same as a channel, pretraining data scale is not the same as downstream capability, and building deployment systems is underestimated. It says Dyna-1, released in April 2025, ran autonomously for more than 24 hours on tasks such as napkin folding with a success rate above 99%, but deployments did not self-accelerate, and no one in the industry has yet validated at scale that a second deployment is faster than the first.
Why it matters: Based on the author's review of nearly ten months of real deployments, the piece points out differences between the pace of robotics commercialization and the LLM curve, offering a useful reference for judging an industry bubble.
More U.S. self-service retail kiosk operators are turning to automation as a solution to rising labor costs and the challenge of maintaining consistency across multiple locations, with their evaluation focus shifting from technological novelty to long-term profitability. Yingzhi Technology's XBOT positions its automated coffee equipment as part of a scalable retail operating model rather than as a standalone robotic device, aiming to reduce labor dependence, stabilize beverage quality, and extend operating hours within a smaller footprint. When assessing such systems, operators focus on variables such as labor-reduction potential, throughput capacity, and payback period.
In an article, XBOT (Yingzhi Technology) argues that rising labor costs, inconsistent execution, and the difficulty of expanding across multiple stores are leading operators to evaluate automated coffee systems as retail infrastructure rather than coffee equipment. Their value lies in more repeatable service processes during peak hours, a smaller operational footprint, longer opening hours, and lower reliance on labor, making them suitable for high-traffic settings such as airports, office buildings, transit hubs, hospitals, and universities. Such systems are also connecting to data on ordering behavior, inventory management, and throughput analysis, becoming part of a more integrated retail operating model.
"Confirmation of the Subject" is far more than a simple interdisciplinary collaboration between PNDbotics and the artist; it is a profound affirmation of a frontier "subject" that has not yet emerged.
Linear Capital's "Between the Lines" Season 2 features a conversation with Tashi Zhiheng founder and CEO Chen Yilun, presenting for the first time a full picture of his entrepreneurial journey and career choices. Tashi Zhiheng set the record for China's largest angel round in embodied intelligence at $242 million, with Linear Capital backing it for three consecutive rounds; the company is going straight after industrial wiring harnesses, a field where 1 million industrial workers are currently employed in China. Chen Yilun recounts his path from physics competitions to Eaton, DJI, and Huawei's intelligent driving.
Linear Capital shared an interview with Bot Auto founder Hou Xiaodi on Zhijian autoweek, in which he said that on April 30, the day before Musk announced the production version of the SemiTruck had rolled off the line, Bot Auto completed the first fully driverless autonomous truck commercial order in the United States, with no safety driver and no real-time remote human backup.
Why it matters: The interview systematically lays out a commercialization judgment framework centered on CPM, which can be used to understand the differences between L4 companies and L2+ companies on metrics and issues.
Yuan Minglun, Executive Deputy General Manager of Kunwei Technology, said force sensing (six-axis force sensors) is becoming a must-have for humanoid robots to complete force-control tasks such as precision assembly and sorting; vision tells the robot "what it is," while force sensing determines "how much force to use." Kunwei's KWR series six-axis force sensors achieve maximum accuracy better than 0.3%FS (including crosstalk), and he emphasized temperature compensation and the challenges of open humanoid robot scenarios. The company will complete production capacity reserves of 60,000 units per year by the end of June this year and is advancing inspection automation, benchmarking against Switzerland's Kistler, to prepare for sensor demand.
Wang Letian, VP of Product at Robot Era, explains the "software-defined hardware" design logic of its XHand dexterous hand: the fully direct-drive architecture serves reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and mass-production consistency; backdrivability supports teleoperation data collection and Sim2Real transfer; and it has been used as a foundational platform in more than 20 top-conference papers worldwide. The hand has cumulative sales of over 1,000 units and weighs 880 grams; last year it reached annual production on the scale of a thousand units, a single logistics order reached 50 million, and it secured its latest funding round led by SF Express.
Elephant Robotics addresses the multi-vendor integration challenges faced by robotics labs at Latin American universities, offering a vertically integrated solution stack spanning robotic arms, vision systems, and mobile bases. With a robotics R&D background and HAX accelerator experience, the company shortens what once required weeks of cross-vendor debugging into a short cycle from unboxing to teaching. The solution stack is positioned as a complete solution for the Americas market.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I will give three workshop talks at ICLR: - Self-improvement without reward bottlenecks, including meta-harness (10:30 AM, RSI workshop) - Emergent physical generalization, including π0.7 (11:40 AM, multimodal workshop) - Reinforcement learning for robustness (1:45 PM, CAO workshop)
We believe robots have the potential to save many lives, especially for first responders. Follow along and support this mission.
Holiday Robotics founder Song Ki-young previously founded SuALab and sold it to Cognex for about 230 billion won (USD 195 million), then started the company again in 2024.
Papers don't deploy. Demos don't scale. The gap between what works in a lab and what works in an airport terminal at 6 AM is the entire value of a company. Our co-founder David Yuan wrote in Forbes about why AI's next frontier is not in the digital world, but in embodiment.
Ode to the Half-Broken and Silvia Park's debut Luminous are two new robot-themed science fiction novels read this month, with very different styles. In Suzanne Palmer's book, an old robot whose legs were stolen teams up with a half-dog half-robot, a human mechanic, and a group of liberated drones for an adventure; the tone is light and humorous, and it may suit younger readers. Silvia Park's story is set in a future 20 years after Korean reunification, where robots are everywhere, often abused, and sometimes dangerous, and the tone is heavy.
Humanoid robot hardware costs fell 40% in just one year. In the physical AI race, the moat is not who can build the best robot, but who puts it into use first. Real operating records and actuarial data will determine the winners. 🤖🏭 Read our latest white paper: https://bit.ly/4s9VJKr
SENAD's autonomous robot iLoabot-X won the Best Innovation Case Award at the 2026 Logistics Technology Conference. Company deputy general manager Han Hetian delivered a keynote speech at the loading and unloading technology forum of the conference in Huzhou, sharing the deployment logic of embodied AI in the logistics sector. Drawing on real operational data accumulated from vertical logistics scenarios, SENAD has built the logistics industry's first multimodal VLA vertical large model. The company proposes a path of "deep cultivation of vertical scenarios + data closed-loop iteration" and will continue to focus on the pain points of the final 20 meters of loading and unloading in logistics while iterating this VLA vertical large model.
(Wheels + Lift + Suction) > (Legs + Hips + Fingers)
Wandercraft published an article stating that when non-European-made humanoid robots are deployed in European factories and hospitals, they collect industrial and medical data that flows out via servers not controlled by Europe, while integrators cannot access the source code. The article cites data including China accounting for over 80% of the global humanoid robot market, Unitree announcing 5,500 units, and AgiBot having delivered 5,168 units, and draws analogies to the industry precedents of electric vehicles, photovoltaics, and batteries, arguing that Europe should pursue a path built on three pillars: software sovereignty, reciprocal industrial alliances, and a local market in strategic sectors.
New Scientist published a humanoid robot buying guide, comparing five consumer-oriented models including the Unitree R1, 1X NEO, and Figure 03, and raising four questions buyers should consider first.
Advances in autonomous systems are shifting the focus from standalone machine capability to human-machine collaboration. Our CTO Burkhard Boeckem explains how this boosts industrial efficiency—and why human oversight remains essential. Read the full article: @TechRadarPro: https://hxgn.biz/416VFzS
Linear Capital published a post reviewing how OpenClaw grew from 0 to 270,000 GitHub stars in under 100 days, surpassing Linux and React, and called it a resonance of technology, capital, and the zeitgeist in the era of AI equalization.
Dong Mengmeng, founder and CEO of Hangzhou Dewang Nano Technology, won first prize in the finals of the 5th "Hai Ju Ying Cai" Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition with the "PSE.IonTech Platform—a platform-level industrial mother machine for high-performance surface engineering technology equipment built on modular design."
Speaking at Guangdong Province's high-quality development conference on February 24, Shenzhen Capital Group Chairman Zuo Ding said the firm will target key sectors in advanced manufacturing and modern services, investing real money to cultivate Guangdong's leading technology enterprises. As of the end of January 2026, Shenzhen Capital Group had managed total funds of more than 500 billion yuan across all categories and had directly invested in more than 1,800 companies, over 90% of them hard-tech firms. In December 2025, Shenzhen Capital Group helped bring a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area fund with total scale of 50.45 billion yuan to Shenzhen; it is the first national-level fund of funds undertaken by Guangdong Province.
Physical AI—AI that drives robots to complete physical tasks in the real world—is hard because the physical world is endlessly variable: boxes deform and environments change from shift to shift. A truck-loading robot must simultaneously solve dozens of AI problems, including perception, planning, collision-free dual-arm motion, and force control, while achieving 99.9995% safety confidence for each action.
Yunqi Capital released a research report analyzing the capability gains and deployment boundaries of embodied intelligence in manufacturing and logistics scenarios relative to traditional industrial robots. Traditional industrial robots can reach 80–150 cycles per minute, while current VLA end-to-end execution remains at the 10–15 cycles per minute level, making it difficult to meet sub-millimeter precision requirements. Among deployment directions, inspection is one of the most practically feasible, material handling has the greatest potential for scale, and precision assembly has the highest barrier; the viable form is Agent architecture scheduling plus vertical-domain operation model execution.
Wandercraft co-founder and CEO Matthieu Masselin argues in an article that humanoid robots should aim for "human-machine compatibility" rather than "looking like humans." The company's robots kept a headless design when deployed at the Renault factory, with cameras initially located on the lower abdomen and now moved between the shoulders; the company is developing end effectors and manipulation capabilities for its next-generation product. He believes de-anthropomorphizing can reduce psychological friction and speed up deployment.
Linear Capital reposted LatePost's interview with Tashi Intelligence founder Chen Yilun, who laid out a technical path that differs from the mainstream: he rejects the VLA architecture that grows an action head on top of a VLM, and instead develops its own AWE (AI World Engine), aiming to represent physical quantities such as time, space, and force; it has also abandoned teleoperation data collection in favor of a self-developed collection device combining a wearable glove and a first-person-view camera.
Why it matters: The interview systematically presents technical judgments and a data approach that differ from the mainstream VLA path, giving readers a basis for understanding the specific grounds of the divergence in embodied AI approaches.
The article lists 13 benefits of warehouse automation, covering the use of technologies such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated guided vehicles (AGVs), automated storage and retrieval systems, pick-to-light picking, RFID tags, and computer vision in material handling, sorting, picking, and inventory management.
Linear Capital partner Yang Jun spoke with Ling Universe's Gu Jiawei, Ludens AI's Xue Lijun, and Bangtang Technology's Lou Xiaodu about AI consumer hardware, focusing on education, companionship, and health. Ling Universe's Xiaofang device shipped more than 20,000 units early on, validating the payment logic of parents buying an "entry ticket" to the AI era for their children; Bangtang Technology cut the customer acquisition cost of its "AI pastor" software from $1.5–2 to $0.3–0.5 and raised its renewal rate from 70% to 80%–90%, and on that basis decided to make a smart ring to enter mental health and religious scenarios.
Skild AI proposes overcoming the robot data bottleneck by watching human videos, arguing that teleoperation is limited by environment diversity and real-time collection scale and cannot reach the data volume required by foundation models. Its approach is cross-embodiment learning: with less than 1 hour of robot data for fine-tuning, the model can learn new skills from video demonstrations alone, mapping human "grasping" onto the execution actions of different robot embodiments.