Digit 5 May Be the First Humanoid Robot Worker That’s Truly Safe
Despite the recent deluge of videos of humanoid robots doing backflips and kung-fu, the actual pace of progress towards humanoids that can do economically viable jobs at scale has at times seemed a bit plodding.…
There are some good reasons for this: a humanoid robot needs to be pow…
But all three of those necessary features actively work against each o…
With its new Digit 5 robot, announced today, Agility Robotics may have…
Imagine you are trapped under rubble after an earthquake and you see an electronics-covered cockroach with a spring-loaded needle on its back scuttling toward you.…
Although the sight might be unnerving, to say the least, this prototyp…
The Hardest Problems in RoboticsFor decades, scientists have sought to…
Thang Vo-Doan, director of the University of Queensland’s Biorobotics …
Is Shipyard Welding the Right First Job for Humanoid Robots?
Humanoids desperately need to stop making YouTube videos and get a job already, and Persona AI is one of the few humanoid companies which seems to be entirely focused on making that happen.…
Persona’s approach has been to carefully select a job that is economic…
IEEE Spectrum first spoke with Persona two years ago, shortly after it…
Radford led NASA JSC’s Valkyrie program back in the day and was also t…
This DIY Bipedal Robot Used Pneumatic “Air-Muscles” Instead of Motors
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 couldn…
To help with his project, he organized a weekly get-together of a doze…
Every Wednesday night, his wife, Sally, would make a big pot of spaghe…
Defining Autonomy for Wellness Robots in Senior Care
An examination of how socially assistive wellness robots could support the seven dimensions of senior wellness, and how a framework can measure their autonomy.…
What Attendees will LearnWhy the senior care crisis exceeds incrementa…
Demographic pressure, workforce shortages, and a daily wellness-progra…
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 unlocked this perfo…
How did the company beat the significantly better-known Unitree (which…