Zhang Wanruo, a 2021 direct-entry PhD student at Peking University's Open Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, has had the paper "MXPose: Multiplex interactive learning for multi-view 3D Human Pose Estimation" officially accepted by Pattern Recognition (PR), a journal in the pattern recognition field. Her research direction is multi-view 3D human pose estimation.
Strutt ev¹ has released version 1.1.9.11, adding a controlled emergency stop triggered by pressing the power button while driving, low-battery alerts at 20% and 5%, sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, sleep shutdown after 120 minutes, and OTA updates requiring at least 50% battery.
Fuwei Intelligence's embodied-intelligence industrial robot solution, built on its self-developed GRID large model, was selected for the 2025 Guangzhou Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development List as an "Outstanding AI+Manufacturing Case" and was also named to the "Startup Potential List." The list is assessed under the leadership of the Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau, with review covering five major dimensions including technological originality and implementation feasibility. The solution features multimodal perception, autonomous environment recognition, real-time intelligent decision-making, and adaptive motion control, and targets industrial scenarios such as intelligent sorting, flexible assembly, and material transport.
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.
SoftBank Robotics America announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with Direct Supply to accelerate the deployment of autonomous floor-cleaning robots in senior living communities; since the partnership was officially announced in March 2025, it has reached nearly 100 communities, with more than 100 robots operating daily. Case examples show that Sabra Health Care REIT has shifted staff from heavy floor-cleaning work to resident services, while Dial is in the early stages of deploying its autonomous cleaning program.
UK robotics company Humanoid has signed a binding phased deployment and supply agreement with Schaeffler, targeting the deployment of a four-digit number of wheeled humanoid robots across Schaeffler's global factories by 2032. The first systems are to go live in a production environment in Germany by the end of 2026, with an initial phase from December 2026 to June 2027 covering the Herzogenaurach and Schweinfurt sites.
Why it matters: The agreement sets out a phased deployment timeline and a RaaS billing model, which can be used to gauge the pace at which humanoid robots move from proof of concept to real production lines.
On April 23, Beyond Imagination brought SMASH, billed as the world's first outdoor autonomous humanoid ping pong robot system, to the Shandong City Table Tennis Super League (Zibo stop). World champion Chen Meng, CCTV host Ju Ping, commentator Gao Han, actor Zhang Xiaolong and other guests took the stage to play against the robot live, producing real rallies. This was a live demonstration and interactive challenge; the original article did not provide metrics such as the autonomous execution success rate.
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.
Noble Machines published an article introducing its three-layer robot learning stack for industrial autonomy, along with on-site test results from GTC 2026: over four days, the same model simultaneously drove multiple Moby robots to complete two autonomous tasks at the NVIDIA booth and its own booth.
Intrinsic announced an integration with FANUC that connects FANUC industrial and collaborative robots to the Intrinsic Platform and the Flowstate digital twin development environment. FANUC integrators and customers can use composable, off-the-shelf AI skill blocks from design to deployment for continuous adaptation and optimization of vision, motion, and manipulation tasks, spanning the CRX collaborative series to heavy-payload models.
The evSense system on the Strutt ev¹ provides obstacle detection and assistance features such as Co-Pilot, Co-Pilot+, Waypoints, and Pathfinder. Co-Pilot+ can steer around obstacles along a set direction, but none of these features is autonomous driving; the driver must be ready to take over with the joystick at any time.
Pro Universe Robot released its high-precision fusion data collection solution AcCI and the Dabai robot intelligent loading and unloading module at its Global Partner Conference on May 12, 2026, and introduced an all-domain symbiosis ecosystem strategy. AcCI offers sub-millimeter precision, all-modality collection, and an end-to-end closed loop, and supports both master-slave and UMI dual collection modes; the Dabai robot has completed POC validation across multiple industries and has operated stably for over a year on production lines including the Dreame smart factory.
Persona AI announced a research and development collaboration with Under Armour to explore using high-performance textile materials to provide protection for humanoid robots. The two parties are in the early research and testing stage, examining the durability, thermal regulation, and overall performance of different textiles under the radiant heat of welding arcs, spatter, friction, and repeated motion. The project is explicitly research rather than a product; there is nothing available for purchase and no timeline. The two parties hope to establish standards for robot protective gear.
At Singapore's inaugural AI Robotics Summit, Sharpa announced strategic partnerships with A*STAR, JTC, and Grab. Singapore Minister of State Alvin Tan attended, and Sharpa's robot North took part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Yaskawa Electric announced it has begun sales of the MOTOMAN-HC35 collaborative robot (35 kg payload, 2,030 mm maximum reach), replacing the previous MOTOMAN-HC20DTP (20 kg payload, 1,900 mm reach).
Lumos Robotics has completed several hundred million yuan in A1 and A2 funding. The A1 round was led by Mitsubishi Electric, with participation from Puhua Capital and Wuzhong Financial Holdings, among others. Mitsubishi Electric continued to lead the A2 round, with participation from Hundsun Electronics, Haigao Group, and Kunshi Investment, among others. The funding will be used for embodied large-model R&D and scenario expansion. After the funding, the company's cash reserves reached several hundred million yuan. Its flexible quality-inspection embodied intelligence solution, co-created with Mitsubishi Electric, has been put into trial use at Mitsubishi Electric's factory in China. Its self-developed Lumos Nexcore physical AI engine and bodyless data-collection system Lumos FastUMI Pro support industrial deployment and data feedback.
Why it matters: The original text provides details on the funding structure and industrial partnerships, allowing readers to understand its industrial deployment path and data-collection technology layout.
Elephant Robotics has launched a series of robotics education solutions for the education and research market in the Americas. These solutions aim to simplify deployment, lower technical barriers, and reduce compatibility issues that schools, universities, and research laboratories face when integrating robotic arms, mobile platforms, sensors, and open-source software from multiple vendors themselves, thereby accelerating hands-on learning in robotics and artificial intelligence. The original article did not provide specific models, specifications, or pricing information.
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.
Elephant Robotics has launched a comprehensive robotics education solution for the Americas market, emphasizing out-of-the-box readiness and aiming to shorten the cycle from procurement to the start of classes for U.S. university robotics labs. The solution is delivered as a vertically integrated product portfolio rather than as scattered sales of individual components, covering common lab elements such as robotic arms and vision systems. The company's background includes the HAX accelerator.
Figure AI demonstrated two humanoid robots equipped with Helix-02 collaborating to tidy a bedroom within two minutes, completing tasks such as opening a door, hanging clothes, putting away headphones, closing a book, taking out trash, pushing a chair under a desk, and making a bed together. The two robots run the same learned vision-language-action (VLA) policy, with no shared planner, message passing, or central coordinator; each infers the other's intent from its actions via its own cameras. The company says that to its knowledge this is the first demonstration of multi-humanoid collaborative mobile manipulation completed by a single learned neural network directly from pixels to actions.
Why it matters: The official demonstration shows two humanoid robots driven by the same VLA system collaborating to tidy a bedroom, giving readers insight into an approach to multi-robot collaboration without a shared planner.
The Kepler K2 humanoid robot is being marketed in a "fitness beast" mode for extreme endurance, strength, and precision control, with claims that it can easily handle a 30KG payload, deliver continuous output on a single charge, and show no performance degradation. The source does not provide specific figures such as battery life, degrees of freedom, test conditions, or success rates; the performance claims are the company's marketing statements and are not labeled as verified results.
Strutt has launched the Resource Hub, offering tutorial videos, setup and travel PDF guides for the ev¹c personal smart mobility device, along with full product specifications (including dimensions, motor performance, and range data) and open-source 3D file downloads for space planning and accessory customization.
Recently, automotive-grade RoboVan company White Rhino announced the completion of its Series C1 funding round. On May 6, it disclosed investors including a leading global logistics industry capital, Shenzhen Nanshan Zhanxintou, and existing shareholder Yuanhe Houwang. The funds will mainly be used for core technology R&D and iteration, large-scale production of automotive-grade products, multi-scenario commercialization, and global market expansion.
Why it matters: It reviews White Rhino's production and scenario deployment pace before and after the funding, helping assess how the capital injection corresponds to its commercialization progress.
Team Equilibrio, this year's Focus project at ETH Zurich's Robotics Systems Lab, has built Wheeliam, a single-wheel robot with highly dynamic legs and a single-wheel design that can perform agile movement and jumps.
The new Filics Streamliner made its first appearance before an industry audience at the LogiMAT trade show in Stuttgart, where the booth drew a strong response and a large number of specific inquiries.
Genesis AI's robotic foundation model GENE-26.5 autonomously completed a continuous one-handed fine manipulation sequence: unwrapping a straw, flipping the straw with one hand, dropping it into a cup, and then handing the drink to a person. The entire sequence was executed autonomously and filmed at 1x speed, not teleoperated. The demo showcases fluid one-handed dexterous manipulation across multiple small, precise actions.
Genesis AI's robotic foundation model GENE-26.5 autonomously arranges and bundles wires at 1x speed. Wire harness assembly is regarded as one of the hardest tasks in electronics and electrical engineering, and this demonstration shows the precise, coordinated hand control required to achieve human-level dexterity.
Genesis AI demonstrated a robot autonomously making a smoothie end to end at 1x real speed, including handling ingredients, pouring, blending, and two-hand coordinated mid-air serving. GENE-26.5 is Genesis AI's foundation model for human-level physical manipulation.
Genesis AI demonstrated a robot powered by GENE-26.5 autonomously solving a Rubik's Cube at 1x speed. GENE-26.5 is its robotic foundation model for human-level physical manipulation; the robot uses continuous in-air manipulation to achieve high-speed reasoning and precise wrist control.
Genesis AI's robot performs lab pipetting, liquid transfer, and mid-air manipulation of delicate instruments in autonomous mode at 1x speed, using its robotic foundation model GENE-26.5. The demo targets fine motor control, a highly demanding test scenario, and showcases the model's manipulation capabilities in high-precision laboratory work.
Linear Capital released its portfolio quarterly review, covering progress across four categories: funding, new product launches, major partnerships, and industry recognition. On funding: Tashi Intelligence completed a $455 million Pre-A round; Digua Robotics's Series B reached a cumulative $270 million; Wujie Dynamics's angel round reached a cumulative over $200 million and it signed over 500 million yuan in global market orders; Dajie Robotics completed a Series D round of several hundred million yuan.
The Human Interactive Driving team at Toyota Research Institute (TRI) presented a paper at the AutoUI conference introducing a data-driven, user-centered scenario development method for studying the application of drift-capable control to road safety.
1X announced that its NEO Factory in Hayward, California, is now fully operational, spanning about 58,000 square feet with more than 200 employees. It is the first vertically integrated high-volume humanoid robot factory in the United States, with capacity to produce 10,000 NEO units per year.
Why it matters: 1X itself disclosed the factory's capacity, in-house production of core components, and delivery schedule, so readers can use this to check how the company's NEO mass-production and shipping commitments are progressing.
SoftBank Robotics announced that its autonomous cooking robots STEAMA and FLAMA will make their US debut at the National Restaurant Association Show 2026 in Chicago (May 16 to 19).
LimX Dynamics has officially open-sourced FluxVLA Engine, a standardized VLA engineering foundation for embodied intelligence that covers the full pipeline from data and training to simulation evaluation and real-robot deployment.
Why it matters: LimX Dynamics has officially open-sourced its VLA engineering foundation, which lets readers understand how unified configuration and real-robot deployment workflows lower the barrier to research and development.
Figure announced that its BotQ factory has delivered more than 350 third-generation humanoid robots, Figure 03, with takt time improving from 1 unit per day to 1 unit per hour, a 24-fold throughput increase in 120 days. The line is driven by self-developed manufacturing execution software and covers more than 150 networked workstations. First-pass yield for completed units exceeds 80%, the battery line's first-pass yield is 99.3%, more than 9,000 actuators have been produced, and each robot undergoes more than 80 functional verification tests before leaving the factory.
Why it matters: The official figures give specific production and quality-control numbers and explain how fleet scale supports the deployment of perception-conditioned whole-body control.
PAL Robotics leads the validation of robotics use cases in the PiQASO project, developing and testing software for secure communication and data exchange between robots at its own facilities, targeting sensitive environments such as healthcare and industry. PiQASO (Platform for Quantum-Safe Operations) brings together 23 partners from 11 countries to develop a platform-as-a-service solution that integrates quantum-resistant encryption algorithms and protocols without requiring specialized hardware.
On April 26, Zerith Robotics was invited to attend the 4th China (Anhui) Science and Technology Innovation Achievement Transformation Trade Fair, presenting embodied intelligence commercial deployment through a dual approach of "indoor industry display + outdoor real-world validation." Over the three-day fair, its robot shop (with a solution built by SenseTime Shanhui) exceeded 200 daily sales per device, with a fulfillment rate above 98% and an error rate below 1.5%. Zerith also showcased an "omni-modal" data collection system based on the Zerith-H1 wheeled-arm humanoid robot, and next plans to promote the clustering and development of upstream and downstream robotics industry players in Anhui.
Dema Technology, together with Maiqing Intelligence, released OmniEgo, a first-person full pipeline for embodied intelligence data collection. The companies claim that a single person can stably collect data for more than 8 hours per day on average, that a team of 1,000 people can produce more than 200,000 hours of valid data per month, that collection efficiency is improved by more than 10 times, and that overall costs are reduced by 80%. The pipeline covers collection, cleaning, self-labeling, and quality inspection. It relies on the self-developed OmniEngine to achieve millimeter-level hand pose perception, with self-labeling coverage exceeding 85% and overall processing efficiency improved by 90%. Dema Technology is also opening this collection capability globally and announced a three-year goal of producing 10 million hours of high-quality embodied data per year.
On April 28, 2026, Apptronik announced a series of executive appointments: former Waymo Chief Product Officer Daniel Chu will serve as Chief Product Officer, while Kevin Garell, Chirag Shah, Dave Perry, and Justin Birtz will lead service support, software, marketing, and people operations, respectively, to accelerate the commercialization of its humanoid robot Apollo.