Foundry Robotics announced the completion of an oversubscribed $100 million Series A funding round led by Marlinspike Partners, with participation from new and existing investors including Khosla Ventures and Red Glass Ventures.
Tokio Marine HCC International has partnered with Adrian Flux to launch the UK's first home robot household insurance policy, underwritten by TMHCCI and sold through Adrian Flux's home insurance channel. The policy covers damage to and theft of the robot itself, sudden damage the robot causes to the home or belongings, personal liability if the robot injures someone or damages property, and emergency recovery or safe shutdown after a sudden malfunction. In the US, a home robot is already available for pre-order at $20,000, and the UK expects them to enter homes in 2027.
REEMAN outlines an approach for retrofitting existing stretch wrappers using Ironhide autonomous forklifts: the forklift handles pallet pickup, placement, and warehouse transport, while the stretch wrapper continues to perform packaging, requiring a machine control interface, status feedback, and safety interlocks. In its wireless docking demonstration, pickup alignment deviation was within 2 cm and turntable placement deviation was within 5 cm, with the demonstration process taking about 6 minutes. There is also an Ironhide 3.0 deployment at a factory in Jingmen, Hubei; the two applications are independent of each other, and the data comes from REEMAN application materials and has not been independently verified.
At the 2026 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit, Tencent disclosed that WorkBuddy has completed 9 billion task requests cumulatively since launching in March this year; its Enterprise Edition has been deployed in over 50 industries, covering 50% of China's Fortune 500 companies and 60% of China's Top 100 companies.
WorldOracle presents a case where the real gripper failed to grasp the fruit, but the generated rollout showed the fruit being picked up, despite the model receiving the same initial observation and recorded actions. When evaluating predictions, check separately whether the robotic arm follows the trajectory and whether the object's final state is correct; for an empty grasp, predicting an empty grasp is the correct answer, while a seemingly successful grasp video may actually be wrong.
Peng Zhihui of Zhiyuan Robotics proposed using Worken (Work + Token) to measure a robot's actual workload, with the formula: number of active robots × autonomous working hours × output efficiency. It counts only time spent genuinely executing tasks and running autonomously, with output compared against a human baseline. The metric draws on cloud computing's usage-based metering approach and is intended to shift the industry's competition from shipment volumes, units off the line, and fleet size toward work actually completed.
Zhuoyide and Tencent Cloud signed a strategic cooperation agreement at the 2026 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit. The collaboration centers on embodied intelligence edge inference, moving Moya's voice interaction tasks to nearby edge nodes via Tencent Cloud EdgeOne. On-site testing at the summit showed Moya's first-token response was 30% faster and interaction jitter was reduced by 4.6 times, with end-to-end latency dropping from roughly 1–2 seconds to under 1 second. As a result, the Moya body can carry less onboard compute, balancing battery life, safety, and interaction experience through device-edge collaboration.
The REEMAN intelligent pallet wrapping and handling workstation uses an external wireless communication module to link the 1.5-ton payload Ironhide autonomous forklift with a turntable wrapping machine into a continuous process. The module can use I/O, RS485, Ethernet, or CAN interfaces depending on the equipment controller, and the wireless link uses LoRa or Wi-Fi. In the demonstration, pickup alignment deviation was ≤2 cm and drop-off deviation was ≤5 cm; wrapping and film cutting are completed automatically, and the full handling and packaging process takes about 6 minutes.
REEMAN customized the forks on its Titan Mini autonomous forklift for a high-end electronic materials factory in Anhui, enabling it to directly handle the customer's existing wheeled mobile material tank trolleys without additional pallets. The trolley weighs about 275 kg when loaded, the Titan Mini has a rated payload of up to 2,000 kg, the one-way point-to-point transport distance is about 260 m, and it uses LiDAR SLAM navigation; under the current site configuration, a full work cycle takes about 4.5 minutes.
At an electronic materials factory in Jingmen, Hubei, REEMAN Ironhide 3.0 autonomous forklifts complete an integrated process: picking up goods in the production area, passing through two electric doors, handing off to a stretch wrapper, and delivering to the warehouse. The actual load is about 1,300 kg, with a rated load of 1,500 kg. The customer reports about 75 transport cycles per day, about 6.5 minutes per task, and a loaded route of about 270 meters, with support for automatic return to a mobile charging station. The forklift's reference price is about USD 9,900, and integration with doors and the stretch wrapper requires customization based on the site's controller interfaces.
A weekend PoC mounts an old Redmi 9 on a Thymio II using Lego, with the phone running ML Kit face detection (including smile probability) and image annotation, rough lighting/motion estimation, animated expressions, and voice output, while the robot only executes wheel-speed targets and sends back sensor data. Behavior is a small state machine: cruise → back up → turn → observe → stop steadily; when a face is detected it enters a "meet" state and can answer "what do you see." Obstacle-avoidance learning is simple: after a collision it tries turning for 1.2s, 2.4s, or 3.8s, scored by the free-driving time before the next contact.
REEMAN demonstrated a library inventory robot built on the Hot Wheels robot chassis, completing a mobility demo in indoor bookshelf aisles, but did not provide OCR recognition accuracy or inventory results. The chassis uses Laser SLAM and V-SLAM for mapping and localization, combined with lidar, 3D vision, and multi-sensor fusion for obstacle avoidance; published specifications include a 270° laser scanning angle and a maximum detection range of 25 meters.
The team recreated a real self-service tea station as a physically interactive 3D environment in Isaac Sim, placed a Unitree G1 in it, and used a script to execute the five-step tea-making motion. The robot's motions were not extracted from human video; the entire run took place in simulation with physics enabled. The G1 still shows imperfect contact and slipping when interacting with objects, and there is currently no learned policy or automatic trajectory generation. The team is exploring whether such environments can serve as a source of synthetic robot demonstration data, including for robots with different embodiments.
Exin Therapeutics used an Arduino-modified surgical platform to let an AI agent complete a brain injection in a mouse; the agent selected the gene therapy vector and injection coordinates itself, injecting 250 nanoliters of solution within five minutes. A connection interruption caused the Y-axis target position to deviate 34 millimeters from the bench, and the agent refused to retry twice citing calibration issues, so the team ultimately modified the code manually. The craniotomy was still performed by a human, a licensed veterinarian held a physical emergency stop switch on site, and the entity that ultimately performed the surgery was Sonnet 5.
A young Cuban control engineer posted on Reddit seeking opportunities to participate remotely in robotics projects, because sourcing electronic components locally takes about 3 months and is expensive. His experience includes STM32, Arduino, and Intel 8051 microcontrollers, as well as using MATLAB to simulate controllers such as PID and motors.
Lightberry's Lumi has become the first humanoid robot to receive conditional approval from the U.S. government, and it has obtained an FCC exemption from the Covered List, which had originally prohibited the sale of new foreign-made robots in the United States.
Lightberry (F25) is the first and currently only humanoid robot company in the US able to ship robots, and it does so using the existing supply chain. https://lightberry.com/press/dow-approval
On October 30, Qiyuan Robotics launched PrimeSim, a world-model simulator for robot training, and topped the WorldSimProbe LIBERO leaderboard. The simulator builds an interactive, trial-and-error, continuously learning virtual world for robots, supporting policy validation and reinforcement learning. In testing, reinforcement learning with it raised policy success rate from 61.7% to 73.2%.
As automated cells take on more machining tasks, more manufacturers are moving coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) next to production lines so parts are inspected within minutes of machining. International Federation of Robotics data show that global industrial robot installations reached 542,000 units in 2024, more than double the level a decade earlier, with about 4.66 million units in operation worldwide.
A Tsinghua-led team let 96 robots share experience, raising the phone-packaging success rate to 98.3%. AgiBot released GO-3 Preview, connecting reasoning, prediction, and action in a unified framework.
Musk denied a report that Optimus orders will open in December this year. The report originated from remarks by Modar Alaoui, organizer of the Humanoid Robot Summit, to the San Francisco Standard.
The October issue of the 'Kaiwu' Monthly Talk from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center mentions that the Huisi Kaiwu app store focuses on download-and-use-immediately and is compared to an 'Apple store' for embodied intelligence. The same issue also says downloads of Beijing Humanoid's RoboMIND have surpassed 50 million, and it is billed with four 'world firsts.'
The inaugural Global Ocean Robotics Day was held on October 21, with Constructor University as one of 10 in-person hubs worldwide. The event focused on how artificial intelligence and autonomous robots are transforming ocean research and exploration. Topics covered marine AI, autonomous underwater vehicles, and ocean observation robotic systems, including mapping ocean currents using marine vehicle trajectories, simulating autonomous docking with digital twins, and underwater robot swarms. The university's Ocean Systems and Robotics research group also demonstrated several autonomous marine robots developed by the team on site.
Paris-based Bleu Robotics has closed a €5 million pre-seed funding round co-led by Contrarian Ventures and OVNI Capital, with participation from Kvanted, WEPA Ventures, Motier Ventures and Charlie Songhurst. The funds will be used to grow its team and promote its software solution.
On the Quaddle mini robot dog's ESP32-S3 firmware, six Claude Code prompts were used to complete a skull eyes effect, from sketch and choosing a design to preview and on-device display. The firmware will be open-sourced in early December, and the team is also collecting sketches or images for the next Halloween expression.
Maximo Robotics announced that its US-made robotic systems have completed more than 300,000 construction tasks under task-based robotics-as-a-service contracts, and that workers collaborating with the Max 4.0 system achieved installation efficiency 2.5 times that of manual labor per person per shift hour.
Walmart and warehousing robotics company Symbotic announced an expanded commercial agreement to deploy additional automation capabilities at 25 US regional distribution centers, with an initial investment of about $6 billion, covering multiple locations over several years. Symbotic's solutions include BreakPack each-piece picking and the SymMicro micro-fulfillment solution for e-commerce, both scheduled by its AI software to move millions of cases of goods daily. Walmart said the move aims to improve upstream inventory management for e-commerce, increase storage capacity, and improve supply chain replenishment efficiency.
Laboratory automation company Opentrons Labworks announced the completion of a $40 million Series E funding round led by Avego, with participation from BroadOak Capital Partners. The funds will be used to expand its robotics, software, and data infrastructure, advance AI-driven experiment execution, and expand into new markets and regions. The company says it has deployed more than 11,000 robots in over 80 countries, covering 90% of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies.
More information about Early Access: https://www.ycombinator.com/early-access
Humans should be more coordinated than robots. But that's not the case at SIGRobotics. @_robert_molina trained one of our robotic arms with reinforcement learning to bounce a ping-pong ball on a paddle continuously for up to 7 minutes. Watch this time-lapse video: it just keeps bouncing.
NASA has announced the key event schedule for the MAX POWER aerospace expo, held November 6 to 8 at and around Kennedy Space Center. The quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft will be on display, and partners will show a lunar rover and spacecraft. A press conference will be held at 17:00 on November 7 to announce the latest progress on a lunar base planned near the Moon's south pole. Public open days are November 7 and 8, with doors opening at 9:00.
Lab Penguin has given its robot Cherry a cute new look for the Robot Crab Challenge 2026, hosted by KingKong Robotics, where community likes count toward the final score. The team needs to collect as many likes as possible on October 30 and is calling on robotics fans to show their support.
Walmart announced this week that it plans to add Symbotic automation systems to 25 regional distribution centers, with an initial commitment of about $6 billion across multiple locations over several years. The two parties have collaborated since a 2017 pilot in Brooksville, Florida; starting in 2021 they deployed automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and palletizing robots, and in 2022 they increased the planned number of facilities to 42.
Modar Alaoui, organizer of the Humanoids Summit, said Tesla plans to open Optimus preorders during or after the summit on December 1-2, and will demonstrate Optimus V3 and autonomous vehicles at the event. He expects preorders to open to the public for the first time in early December, with the first deliveries being V3; most robots will go to businesses, with only a small number reserved for consumers, and an expected price of more than $20,000.
AstraQua has received a $1,274,990 NASA Phase II contract to advance its AstraSense technology for electric and hybrid-electric aircraft, including advanced air mobility. Built on its Agentic Physical AI and Adaptive Quorum Foundation Model, AstraSense provides predictive health and operational self-awareness for autonomous systems and has already run on robotic hardware.
Schaeffler has entered a technology partnership with German robotics and physical AI company Wandelbots, focusing on developing the Wandelbots NOVA open platform for applying artificial intelligence in industrial and humanoid robotics.
Jungheinrich has formed a strategic partnership with Italian warehouse automation company Automha to jointly develop the UP-Carrier GTJ, a two-way pallet shuttle for high-density pallet storage. The solution can be integrated into existing warehouse environments, increasing storage density without major modifications; initially, pallet transport is still handled by industrial vehicles, with automation expandable step by step later. The shuttle took nine months from concept to market readiness and has been deployed in more than 200 projects in over 25 countries.
Percepto, an autonomous drone inspection company, launched Axion this week, a hardware-agnostic physical AI platform that can analyze data from any third-party drone or sensor network, marking its shift to a software-first strategy. Axion is offered as SaaS, organizes inspection data by asset, has more than 160 built-in AI models, and supports querying inspection data in natural language. Percepto said it will continue to sell and support its existing drone and hangar product lines while moving manufacturing to the United States.
Someone used Claude Code to vibecode directly in the OpenCat ESP32-S3 firmware of the Quaddle mini robot dog, creating a Halloween skull-eyes expression in about 12 minutes through six prompts. The robot dog's open-source ESP32-S3 firmware will be released in early December, at which point others will be able to reproduce the same process.
Misumi Americas has established the Misumi Imprint Foundation with $2 million in seed funding to support engineering education, robotics programs, and manufacturing skills development in the United States. It is the first corporate giving organization in Misumi Group's 63-year history.