The Robot Report
Robotics news, research, analysis and investment insights for industry professionals
Visual Drone Detection Moves Into Critical Infrastructure Playbooks
Unauthorized drone activity around critical infrastructure is surging, prompting agencies like CISA to issue updated guidance for operators. Incidents have risen dramatically—over 217% across facilities and up to 300% at European airports—driving demand for specialized visual detection systems. The global counter‑drone market is projected to grow nearly 30% CAGR, reaching $30.5 billion by 2034. Visual drone detection solutions combine ruggedized cameras, high‑zoom optics, thermal imaging, AI analytics, and multi‑sensor fusion to identify and classify threats in real time.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada to Deploy Agility Robotics’ Digit Humanoids
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) has signed an agreement with Agility Robotics to deploy its Digit humanoid robots across its Ontario assembly plants after a successful year‑long pilot. The rollout will add seven additional Digits to load and unload totes...
NVIDIA Adds Cosmos Policy to Its World Foundation Models
NVIDIA introduced Cosmos Policy, a post‑trained robot control policy built on its Cosmos Predict‑2 world foundation model. By encoding actions, future states and reward signals as latent video frames, the single diffusion‑based model achieves state‑of‑the‑art results on the LIBERO and...
Mitsubishi Electric Follows Digital-First Strategy for Advanced Air Mobility
Mitsubishi Electric United States is rolling out a digital‑first strategy that blends SaaS platforms, data‑driven tools, and AI to bridge physical and digital operations. Its flagship AnyMile logistics software orchestrates cargo‑drone missions, handling fleet, airspace, payload, and regulatory complexities. The...
IFR Releases Position Paper on AI in Robotics
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) published a position paper outlining how artificial intelligence is reshaping robotics, from enhanced vision and navigation to generative code creation. It highlights rapid advances in physical AI, deep‑learning perception, reinforcement learning, and natural‑language interfaces...
ARM Institute Opens Project Call for Military Supply Chain Technology
The Advanced Robotics in Manufacturing (ARM) Institute has issued a member‑only project call to modernize the Department of Defense’s organic industrial base (OIB) supply chain. The call seeks proposals that combine digital operations, AI‑driven robotic process planning, real‑time sensors, in‑situ...
Manifest 2026 Recap
In episode 230 of The Robot Report podcast, hosts Mike Oitzman and Eugene Demaitre recap the Manifest 2026 supply‑chain trade show in Las Vegas and interview eight robotics CEOs, including leaders from Gather AI, Robust.AI, Slamcore, Slip Robotics, Ambi Robotics, Corvus Robotics, Glid Technologies and AutoPallet. The episode...
Symbotic Acquires Autonomous Forklift Maker Fox Robotics
Symbotic announced the acquisition of autonomous forklift developer Fox Robotics during its Q1 2026 earnings call, though financial terms were undisclosed. Fox Robotics operates over 100 FoxBot forklifts across 54 sites, with about 25 pilot customers, including Walmart, Symbotic’s largest...
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter Steps Down
Robert Playter announced his retirement, stepping down as Boston Dynamics CEO on February 27, 2026. He guided the firm since 2019, overseeing Hyundai’s 2020 acquisition and the commercial rollout of Spot, Stretch, and the electric Atlas. Under his leadership the...
APEM Launches Dual Icon Series of LED Indicators
IDEC Corp., operating as APEM, introduced the Dual Icon series of 14 mm panel‑mount LED indicators. The bi‑color devices combine green and red icons in a single compact unit, delivering three states—off, green, and red—while fitting standard panel holes. Built with...
Stryker Introduces Mako Handheld Robotics with RPS Launch
Stryker announced a limited market rollout of its new Mako RPS handheld robotic system for total knee replacement, merging the company’s established Mako robotic platform with power‑tool functionality. The device features intra‑operative planning, a robotically enabled saw, and patented active‑adjustment...
Destro AI Launches Agentic AI Brain for Human-Robot Collaboration
Destro AI emerged from stealth to launch its Agentic AI Brain, a cloud‑based intelligence layer that coordinates robots and humans as a single adaptive system. The platform, powered by MothershipOS and VisionOS, provides off‑robot reasoning and on‑robot execution, enabling real‑time...
Flipping the Script: How ‘Upside-Down’ AutoPallet Robots Solve Palletizing Density
AutoPallet Robotics unveiled its upside‑down, ceiling‑mounted palletizing system at Manifest 2026, showcasing small autonomous mobile robots that cling to steel panels and use vacuum grippers to build dense pallets. The self‑contained units run on lithium‑phosphate batteries, communicate via a wireless...
How ADR and Intel Went Underground with Edge AI
Australian Droid + Robot (ADR) has teamed with Intel to embed Xeon and Core Ultra processors into its Explora autonomous inspection robots for underground mining. The edge‑AI platform processes 3D lidar, thermal imaging, and gas‑sensor data in real time, enabling...
AMD Expands Midrange FPGA Offerings with Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 Family
AMD announced the Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 FPGA family, a mid‑range line that modernizes memory, I/O, and security for industrial, medical, and broadcast applications. The new devices deliver up to five times higher memory bandwidth and double the PCIe channel...
