Know What's Happening in Autonomy
Know What's Happening in Autonomy
ClassNK certifies first autonomous container ship navigation system
ClassNK has granted its AUTO-Nav2 (All) notation to the container ship Genbu, marking the world’s first certification for autonomous navigation on medium‑ to long‑distance routes. The vessel, built by Kyokuyo Shipyard and operated by Suzuyo Marine, is part of the Nippon Foundation’s MEGURI2040 fully autonomous program.
Universal Robots announced the UR AI Trainer, a joint solution with Scale AI, at NVIDIA’s GTC 2026. The system uses a leader‑follower robot configuration to record high‑fidelity motion, force and visual data for training vision‑language‑action models. Integrated with UR’s AI Accelerator and Scale’s data stack, it creates a continuous data flywheel for physical AI development. A Generalist AI foundation model demonstrated autonomous smartphone packaging on UR robots, showcasing the platform’s end‑to‑end capabilities.
DHL Supply Chain announced deployment of SVT Robotics' SOFTBOT platform across its global warehouse network. The plug‑and‑play solution lets DHL integrate new robotics up to twelve times faster than its previous custom‑coding approach, shrinking rollout times from weeks to hours....
Gecko Robotics, the pre‑IPO robotics specialist, won a five‑year, $71 million contract from the U.S. Navy to inspect 18 warships. The deal exceeds the $60 million in revenue the company has generated to date, underscoring the accelerating demand for autonomous inspection technology...
Aigen, a maker of autonomous weed‑removing robots, migrated its machine‑learning pipeline to Amazon SageMaker AI to overcome on‑premises bottlenecks. By automating data labeling with vision foundation models and leveraging SageMaker’s distributed training, the company boosted labeling throughput 20‑fold and cut...
In this episode, Omar Zoubi, VP of Autonomous Mobility at TaskUs, explains how the company supports the autonomous vehicle (AV) ecosystem through end‑to‑end services such as remote assistance, edge‑case handling, mission‑control, and emergency response, all built around a best‑in‑class safety...
On March 21 in Shaanxi, China, a Unitree G1 humanoid robot accidentally slapped a young boy in the face while performing a choreographed spin. The 35‑kilogram (≈77‑lb) machine kept executing its routine even as handlers tried to intervene, prompting a viral...
Airbus demonstrated its Bird of Prey uncrewed interceptor in northern Germany, where the drone autonomously located and engaged a simulated kamikaze threat using a Mark I air‑to‑air missile from Frankenburg Technologies. The prototype, derived from a Do‑DT25 platform, carried four lightweight...
Tesla announced that it will begin production of its Cybercab robotaxi within weeks, expanding supervised robotaxi deployments and hiring additional drivers and testers. The company aims to scale the service to serve the 100 million U.S. commuters who drive alone and...
Skyports Drone Services has deployed an automated BVLOS “drone‑in‑a‑box” system at HOCHTIEF’s Rheinbrücke Leverkusen bridge site in Germany, with all flights piloted remotely from its Madrid operation centre. The weekly surveys generate 2D and 3D outputs via DroneDeploy, giving HOCHTIEF...
Neolix announced that its RoboVan-as-a-Service (RaaS) model has processed over 1.5 million on‑demand delivery orders and logged more than 40 million kilometers of autonomous driving across Chinese cities. In Qingdao, the company now runs one of the largest single‑city autonomous fleets, handling...
Amazon's Zoox announced a rollout of its robotaxi fleet to Austin and Miami later this year and a four‑fold expansion of its San Francisco service area. The move comes as the company readies itself to charge riders after pending NHTSA clearance,...
Uber Technologies, autonomous‑driving firm Pony.ai and Croatian fleet‑manager Verne have announced the launch of Europe's first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb. The trio plans to scale the operation to thousands of driverless cars and expand to other European cities over...
Image annotation outsourcing in the Philippines has moved from simple 2D labeling to high‑precision 3D spatial engineering, supporting LiDAR, radar and camera sensor‑fusion for robotics. Teams now employ "Spatial Technicians" who deliver sub‑millisecond synchronization, panoptic segmentation and temporal tracking across...
The Center for Auto Safety podcast argues that the AVSC’s definition of autonomous‑vehicle remote assistants (RAs) incorrectly claims they have no safety role, a premise the industry uses to downplay liability. In reality, RAs intervene in safety‑critical moments, making driving...
This is Unitree G1, a Chinese humanoid robot being tested at a hospital setting, opening drawers, restocking supplies, and moving the bed. I still have doubts about widespread use due to the Moravec paradox, but maybe healthcare professional shortages can become so...
Norway’s Reach Subsea has landed two additional call‑offs from state‑owned Equinor under their existing frame agreement, deploying its uncrewed surface vessel Reach Remote 1 for gas reservoir monitoring at the Troll field and extensive subsea inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) work...
Applied Intuition and LG Innotek have signed a strategic partnership that couples LG Innotek's camera, LiDAR and radar sensors with Applied Intuition's Self‑Driving System. The deal aims to cut development cycles for OEMs and expands into drones and robotics, leveraging...
MegazoneCloud announced a strategic partnership with Japanese AI avatar leader AVITA to co‑develop physical AI services that combine autonomous robots with conversational avatars. The alliance targets enterprise customers in retail, finance, manufacturing and public sectors, aiming to cut costs and...
Belgian startup NXTGN launched “Is This Real?”, an online T‑shirt shop run entirely by artificial intelligence. The AI generates daily designs based on current news, handles product creation, marketing, sales and automated newsletters without any human decision. Each design is...
Renewable‑powered uncrewed aerial vehicles are moving from prototype to frontline deployment, with electric and hybrid drones gaining traction across Western militaries. The UK Royal Navy cleared the T‑150 for combat, while the United States and France are pouring funds into...
Nordic Air Defence (NAD), a Stockholm‑based defence‑tech startup, announced the appointment of former UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey and Head of Product Nicholas Högasten to its board. The move comes as NAD pushes its K100XR autonomous interceptor into European...
A Reddit video shows Tesla's Full Self‑Driving (FSD) software anticipating a pedestrian crossing before a distracted BMW driver reacts, ultimately stopping to avoid a near‑miss. The incident highlights FSD's ability to read subtle body cues and predict intent, a capability...
𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱. That’s the real shift I’m seeing from NVIDIA’s GTC. Using Isaac Lab, robots are learning through reinforcement learning in simulation: ▪️ Millions of trials ▪️ No step-by-step instructions ▪️ Learning by reward and feedback That’s how a machine learns...
Merlin Labs is eyeing civil applications for its AI-powered Merlin Pilot autonomous flight control system and says there's “no hard ceiling” for the size of aircraft its tech could eventually be installed on. We sit down with CTO Tim Burns...
In 2026 three competing architectures emerged, each promising trustworthy autonomous AI agents for enterprises. One began as a developer‑focused coding tool, another is backed by a major chipmaker, and the third grew from an open‑source project that unexpectedly became the...
No Driver, No Breaks: China’s #Autonomous Bus Runs 24/7 by @jacksonhinklle #SelfDrivingCars #AutonomousVehicles #ArtificialIntelligence #Automation #Automotive #Transport https://t.co/bJdmx8VNwr
Seeing Through Its Own Eyes: Building a #Robot with True First-Person Vision via @WevolverApp #AI #MachineLearning #Robotics #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #Technology https://t.co/yby6It2Jwd
Earlier this month, sophisticated drone swarms of 12‑15 units each loitered over Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for about four hours daily. The intrusion forced the Global Strike Command headquarters to suspend B‑52 bomber launches for Operation Epic Fury...
NASA’s Zero-Gravity #Robotic Arms Master Delicate, Heavy, and Irregular Grips by @tweetciiiim #Tech #TechForGood #EmergingTech https://t.co/0GYmLH3Zxd
Motion 2 Arrives: VinMotion’s Next-Gen Humanoid for Industrial #Logistics by @CyberRobooo #AI #Robotics #Engineering #Innovation #Technology https://t.co/1yMagg0Mmx
The Robotics and AI Institute unveiled a demo of its Roadrunner robot, a 15‑kg bipedal platform that combines legs with two wheels. In the video the bot rolls, climbs stairs, skates sideways, and even balances on a single wheel by...
"Learn to weld" will go down like "learn to code." Lot of companies building AI "brains" for robots that should, among other things, know how to weld. Idea that AI won't disrupt blue collar work feels like fallacy.
Alive or not? Tiny 3D-printed robots that swim and navigate just like animals https://t.co/Nd2S2RdT5H https://t.co/H3krknX9yy
Tesla North America amplified a video of a vision‑impaired Cybertruck buyer who says Full Self‑Driving (FSD) drove for an hour and a half without his hands. The buyer purchased the vehicle specifically for FSD after his ophthalmologist recommended it. Tesla...
Nearly every major industry is bottlenecked by one thing: scarce human capital. Skild Brain is changing that. Their AI just assembled GPU racks live at NvidiaGTC, one of the most precise tasks in hardware manufacturing. Here's what makes it wild: Most robot AI is...
Scientists at Leiden University have built microrobots only a few tens of micrometres long—about ten times thinner than a human hair—that move and adapt without any onboard electronics. The devices, fabricated with a high‑precision 3D microprinter, achieve self‑propelled motion at...
Dozens of humanoid and dancing robots performed at the Boao Forum for Asia, the World Junior Wushu Championships and a high‑profile robot exhibition in Beijing, underscoring China's rapid progress in advanced motion‑control and commercial robotics. Industry analysts say the surge...
The U.S. military has begun using autonomous, AI‑enabled sea‑drone speedboats in combat operations against Iran, joining a broader deployment of 3,500 marines and amphibious assets. The move intensifies a high‑stakes conflict that has already seen drone and missile attacks across...
Microsoft and academic researchers introduced GroundedPlanBench, a benchmark that tests robots on 1,009 tasks drawn from 308 real‑world scenarios, exposing gaps between language‑based planning and precise motor execution. To bridge this gap they built V2GP, a video‑to‑spatially grounded planning system...
Tiny drones are learning to navigate like bats. By combining ultralight sonar with AI, they can move through dark or low-visibility environments using echolocation-style sensing instead of relying only on cameras. It’s another example of how AI is not just improving software,...
Tesla's FSD autopilot: 5.3 million miles between accidents. US human driving average: 660,000 miles between accidents. The robot drivers are 9x safer than humans. And it's only getting better. How long before it will be too expensive to insure human drivers because they are...
XSTO A6: A Wheeled Bipedal #Robot Built to Conquer Complex Terrain via @WevolverApp #Robotics #Engineering #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #Technology https://t.co/IZKiOFeQyq
Robotic solar installation is quickly becoming real. Planted, Maximo and others all deploying automated construction platforms. This Maximo machine just installed 100 MW of solar power https://t.co/M1NSKOSVMT
Phantom MK-1: Foundation’s New Humanoid #Robot Aimed at Factories and High-Risk Environments by @IntEngineering #Robotics #MachineLearning #ArtificialIntelligence #ML https://t.co/vJaXNzhtwN
Highly recommend this podcast on autonomy, FSD, etc They actually do fair and rigorous journalism — unlike @nytimes and @wired Just two analysts going direct
Jetson Thor–Powered Humanoid #Robot Achieves Fully #Autonomous Wheeled Mobility via @ZappyZappy7 #Robotics #ArtificialIntelligence #MI #ML #Tech #Innovation https://t.co/DQDf7xWFor
