
From Demos to Daily Transport: How Las Vegas Is Turning Autonomy Into Real Urban Infrastructure
Las Vegas is rapidly converting autonomous technology from pilots to everyday infrastructure, with Amazon‑owned Zoox launching a public robotaxi service on the Strip. Remote‑driving startup Vay now delivers rental cars via teledrivers, while the Regional Transportation Commission runs autonomous shuttles linking the medical district. The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is expanding toward a 68‑mile tunnel network capable of moving 90,000 passengers per hour. Meanwhile, AI‑orchestration platform Strata aims to synchronize the growing fleet of driverless machines across the city.

3 Surprising Trends That May Change Your View of Autonomous Farming Technology
Sabanto has deployed over a hundred autonomous tractors by retrofitting existing farm equipment rather than building new machines. The company finds that autonomy is being used to amplify the productivity of current workforces, allowing farms to scale without hiring additional...
The Best AR and MR Glasses in 2026: Expert Tested and Reviewed
ZDNet’s 2026 roundup evaluates the fastest‑growing AR and MR glasses market, naming Meta Ray‑Bans 2 as the overall best choice thanks to its 3K video, longer battery and sleek design. The guide also highlights niche leaders such as Viture Beast for...

Nvidia Launches Robotics Hackathon with $5,000 Top Prize to Spur Physical AI Development
Nvidia has launched the Cosmos Cookoff, a global virtual hackathon aimed at accelerating robotics and physical AI development. Participants must build applications using Nvidia’s Cosmos foundation models, with registration open Jan 29 to Feb 19 and submissions due Feb 26. The competition offers...

ABB Launches ‘Automation Extended’ to Help Industries Modernize Control Systems without Disruption
ABB unveiled Automation Extended, a new architecture that lets industrial operators upgrade control systems without costly shutdowns or full equipment replacement. The solution builds on ABB’s existing DCS portfolio—800xA, Symphony Plus, and Freelance—while adding AI, advanced analytics, and IoT capabilities through a...

The Rise of Collaborative Robots and Human-Robot Teams in Modern Factories
Collaborative robots, or cobots, are increasingly deployed in factories to work side‑by‑side with human operators, delivering flexibility and rapid reconfiguration. Unlike traditional isolated robots, cobots handle delicate assembly, inspection and quality‑control tasks, demanding high positional accuracy. Manufacturers are turning to...
Robots that Keep Moving when Flipped? Sea Star Tube Feet Offer a Blueprint
Researchers at USC’s Kanso Bioinspired Motion Lab have uncovered how sea stars achieve locomotion using decentralized control of hundreds of tube feet. By attaching a 3D‑printed backpack and measuring individual foot responses, they showed each tube foot adjusts adhesion via...

Amazon’s Delivery Dreams Grounded as Texas Drone Crash Sparks Fresh Safety Fears
Amazon’s Prime Air MK30 drone collided with a Richardson, Texas apartment building on February 4, 2026, sparking renewed safety concerns. The crash follows earlier mishaps in Arizona and Waco, highlighting potential flaws in the MK30’s LiDAR‑based navigation system. Critics argue...

The View From Zasche: Where Human Skill Meets Smart Automation – the Case for Semi-Automated Bin Picking
Zasche Handling promotes semi‑automated bin picking as a middle ground between manual handling and full‑scale robotics. The approach lets operators retain judgment while machines perform the physically demanding lifting and positioning tasks, improving safety and productivity. Flexible grippers and modular...
RC Mowers Awarded Canoe Procurement Group Cooperative Contract
RC Mowers has secured a cooperative purchasing contract with Canoe Procurement Group, granting Canadian municipalities, public agencies and nonprofits streamlined access to its autonomous mowing systems. The agreement reduces procurement cycles from months to weeks and aligns with Canoe’s partnership...

Micropolis Robotics Appoints AfricAI as Its Exclusive Continental Partner
Micropolis Robotics has granted AfricAI exclusive, multi‑year rights to commercialise, deploy and scale its advanced robotics platforms across Africa. The partnership prohibits direct sales or other distributors, positioning AfricAI as the sole gateway for autonomous systems in security, logistics, industrial...

Comau Deploys in.Grid Robot Monitoring Platform at Iveco Plant to Advance Smart Manufacturing
Comau has installed its cloud‑based in.Grid Robot Monitoring platform on the Door Ring and Mascherone lines at Iveco’s Valladolid plant in Spain. The system autonomously captures production data, flags anomalies, and tracks user‑defined KPIs to boost robot utilization and cut...

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...

US Marine Designs Corps’ First NDAA-Compliant 3D-Printed Drone
The U.S. Marine Corps unveiled HANX, its first 3D‑printed first‑person view drone that meets National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) security requirements. Developed by Sgt. Henry David Volpe at the II Marine Expeditionary Force Innovation Campus, the drone is approved by...
Josh Ogden Thinks Canada’s Drone Industry Can Gain some Altitude
Josh Ogden, CEO of AVSS, warns that Canada’s drone sector has dwindled to fewer than 20 manufacturers that merely assemble foreign components rather than develop core technology. He points to historic successes like Aeryon Labs, many of which were acquired...

Norway Drone ‘Threat’ Fails to Materialise as Spy Service Finds No Link to Foreign States
Norway’s Police Security Service (PST) concluded that none of the dozens of drone sightings reported in 2025 were linked to foreign intelligence agencies. Investigations revealed that most incidents were misidentified celestial bodies, weather phenomena, or conventional aircraft. The surge in...

Oil and Gas Robotics Deployment Expands as Global Market Heads Toward $205 Billion in 2030, Says GlobalData
Robotics in oil and gas is entering a rapid expansion phase, propelled by AI and cloud computing that enable autonomous decision‑making and navigation. GlobalData projects the overall robotics market to climb from $90.2 billion in 2024 to $205.5 billion by 2030, with...

What Happens when Waymo Runs Into a Tornado? Or an Elephant?
Waymo has launched a new "World Model" built on Google’s Genie 3 AI, enabling the creation of hyper‑realistic 3D driving simulations from simple text or image prompts. The platform can generate extreme edge cases—tornadoes, flooded streets, rogue elephants—and run them at...

Around the Commercial Drone Industry: Air Taxi Demos, Police Drone Programs, and Weather Forecasting
SkyDrive Inc. will showcase its SD-05 eVTOL passenger drone in Tokyo this February, a public demonstration that precedes a planned 2028 market launch and supports Japan’s 2030 commercial vertiport roadmap. In Ohio, six police agencies have adopted Skydio drones, fielding...

Robot Talk Episode 143 – Robots for Children, with Elmira Yadollahi
Robot Talk’s Episode 143 featured Elmira Yadollahi, an assistant professor at Lancaster University, discussing how children interact with robots. Yadollahi’s research focuses on explainability, multimodal perception, and managing expectations to build trust and AI literacy among young users. She has...

Hail Our New Robot Overlords! Amazon Warehouse Tour Offers Glimpse of Future
Amazon opened its Stone Mountain, Georgia warehouse to the public, offering a rare glimpse of the robots that now assist human pickers and stowers. The tour revealed only a handful of mobile shelf‑moving units, a single palletising arm, and a...

7.5 Metres Wide Autonomous Implement Carrier From Cyclair
French ag‑tech startup Cyclair unveiled its hybrid autonomous implement carrier line at GOFAR’s field day, showcasing the 2‑metre Rover GS prototype and announcing the larger 7.5‑metre Rover GW slated for commercial release in late 2026. The Rover GW will weed up to 5.4 metres...
Robotics Build Path From Rural Kenya to World Stage
Jeremiah Kithinji, once a computer‑naïve student, now leads robotics clubs in Laikipia, Kenya. The clubs, serving roughly 200 pupils, recently sent a three‑member team to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore, where Kithinji also acted as the competition’s first Kenyan...

NūMove Robotics & Vision Partners with KPI Solutions to Develop New Robotic Order Picking System for Beverage Warehousing
NūMove Robotics & Vision and KPI Solutions have teamed up to launch RAPTOR, a dual‑robot order‑picking system designed for beverage warehousing. The vision‑guided solution occupies roughly 2,500 sq ft and separates depalletizing from palletizing using temporary SKU‑specific buffer lanes. RAPTOR can handle...

New Generation of Robotic Cells to Drive Flexible, Zero-Emission Aerospace Manufacturing
The ROBOCOMP project, led by the DANOBAT cooperative and supported by IDEKO, has created a new generation of flexible, sensorised robotic cells for aerospace component manufacturing. These cells can machine carbon‑fibre parts vertically, improving access to complex geometries while cutting...

Upcoming Lunar Rover Missions (2026–2035)
Between 2026 and 2035 a wave of lunar rover missions will transform Moon exploration from static landers to mobile surface operations. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, along with national agencies and private firms, will launch dozens of rovers ranging...

Tesla Admits Optimus Robots Are Doing No Useful Work & Other Things We Learned From Mag 7 Earnings
Tesla confirmed on its earnings call that Optimus humanoid robots are still in R&D and are not performing useful work in its factories, contradicting earlier claims. The admission resets expectations for the robotics sector, underscoring the gap between prototypes and...

Paladin Unveils Knighthawk 2.0: Advancing Public Safety Infrastructure and Emergency Response Worldwide
Paladin introduced Knighthawk 2.0, an autonomous NDAA‑compliant drone built on Drone‑as‑a‑First‑Responder (DFR) technology, aimed at modernizing public‑safety infrastructure worldwide. The platform reaches incident sites in 70 seconds, offers 40 minutes of flight time, and streams 4K video plus thermal imagery via unlimited‑range 5G/LTE...

Unusual Machines Promotes Drew Camden to President
Unusual Machines announced that Drew Camden has been promoted to President while retaining his Chief Operating Officer duties. Camden will continue overseeing manufacturing, supply chain, and operational execution as the company expands its U.S. production footprint. Under his leadership, the firm...

‘No Strangers to Drones’: Singapore Eyes Unmanned Surge with Israeli Tech
Singapore’s Air Force is expanding its unmanned fleet by operationalising Israeli‑made Orbiter 4 and Hermes 900 UAVs, while introducing new doctrines to counter low‑cost drone swarms. A dedicated DROID unit and UAS Warfare and Tactics Centre will experiment with micro‑drones and integrate...

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...
Dynamic OCR Inspection with HALCON Ensures Maximum Product Quality
H&H Group’s manual label verification caused mislabeling, complaints, and financial loss. The company partnered with Shenzhen Jiangrun Xuneng Technology to build a machine‑vision platform that uses MVTec HALCON for dynamic OCR of batch numbers, dates and other codes. HALCON’s preprocessing...
RoboDK Launches CAM Solution Designed to Slash Robotic Machining Deployment Times
RoboDK has introduced RoboDK CAM, a new software that automates robot code generation from CAD designs, dramatically shortening robotic machining deployment times. The solution covers milling, drilling, deburring, cutting and additive manufacturing, and offers both a standalone interface and add‑ins for...

Russia’s Domestic Drone Push Is a Mixed Bag for Its War on the West
On January 1 2026 Russia enacted a tax incentive that lets companies deduct two rubles from income tax for every ruble spent on domestically produced unmanned aerial vehicles. The measure is designed to accelerate the home‑grown drone sector that has become central...
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Palladyne AI announced the first flight of IntelliSwarm, its integrated SwarmOS autonomy software and BRAIN X2 flight computer, on the Banshee loitering‑munition UAV. The three‑week integration demonstrated autonomous collaboration with Red Cat drones, proving decentralized edge AI in a heterogeneous multi‑vehicle scenario....
Valqari Secures 17th U.S. Patent Expanding Autonomous Drone Operations to Package Sending
Valqari, a Chicago‑based autonomous drone startup, secured its 17th U.S. patent (US12528599B2) covering automated loading of packages onto drones and outbound deployment. The patent expands Valqari’s technology from receiving to full “send‑to‑end” operations, completing its control of the drone distribution...
XAG P150 Max Agricultural Drone Comes to U.S. with Proven Efficiency and Reliability
XAG has introduced its P150 Max agricultural drone to the U.S. market, offering a 176‑lb payload, 44.7 mph cruise speed and up to 80 acres per hour spraying capacity. The platform supports autonomous spraying, spreading, mapping and logistics, and can be...

Stanford, Princeton Scientists Launch MedOS AI-XR-Cobot Clinical System
Stanford and Princeton researchers unveiled MedOS, the first AI‑XR cobot system designed to act as a real‑time clinical co‑pilot. The platform fuses smart glasses, collaborative robotic arms and a multi‑agent AI that builds a 3‑D world model, enabling perception, planning...
Basler AG at LogiMAT 2026: Tailor-Made Machine Vision Solutions for Logistics
Basler AG will exhibit at LogiMAT 2026 in Stuttgart from March 24‑26, showcasing its full machine‑vision portfolio for logistics. The highlight is the debut of the new Basler Stereo mini 3D camera, a lightweight, cost‑efficient stereo sensor designed for object...

Staples Canada Boosts Productivity, Cuts Training Time with Fulfillment Center Robotics
Staples Canada, a three‑decade leader in next‑day delivery, has modernized its fulfillment network by adding Locus Robotics to two warehouses and plans three more deployments this year. The robots, integrated with a Manhattan Active WMS, have nearly doubled productivity, boosted...

Innovative Drone Tech Start-Up to Reach New Heights at Space Park Leicester
DroneOD, a 2025‑founded start‑up, has joined the University of Leicester’s Space Park to develop a universal, secure IoT controller for drones. Its rugged GNSS‑enabled device offers real‑time tracking, geofencing, autonomous control and fleet analytics across all major drone platforms, and includes...

AutoFlight Unveils World’s First 5-Ton Class eVTOL Aircraft
AutoFlight unveiled Matrix, the world’s first 5‑ton class eVTOL, completing a public full‑transition flight. The aircraft features a 20‑meter wingspan, 5,700 kg maximum take‑off weight, and offers both pure‑electric (250 km range) and hybrid (1,500 km range) variants. The passenger version seats up...

Moog and Echodyne Announce Collaboration to Advance Weapon Systems for Global Defense
Moog Inc. and radar‑platform specialist Echodyne have signed a partnership to fuse Moog’s precision weapon‑system technology with Echodyne’s Metamaterial Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radars. The joint effort will target integrated air‑and‑missile defense (IAMD), airfield safety and combat‑vehicle applications, accelerating hardware‑software...
For Rayhawk Technologies, Automating Away Risk Is a Family Story
Rayhawk Technologies, founded by Tom Boehm, has turned a family‑rooted safety concern into an automated gantry system that opens and closes railcar lids at grain elevators. Leveraging machine‑learning and computer‑vision, the solution replaces hazardous manual work with precise, weather‑resilient robotics....
Faraday Future Launches Three Series of Robot Products in Las Vegas at the Annual NADA Show
Faraday Future Intelligent Electric announced the formation of a U.S.-based robotics subsidiary, FF EAI‑Robotics, and unveiled three robot products—a pair of humanoids and a quadruped—at the NADA show in Las Vegas. The company says it has secured paid, non‑binding deposits...

Robotics Startup Octobotics Raises Rs 10 Cr in Seed Round
Octobotics, an AI‑enabled non‑destructive testing robotics startup, raised roughly Rs 10 crore in a seed round led by Navam Capital with BYT Capital joining. The capital will fund accelerated product development, certification, and expansion into Singapore and the Middle East. Founded in...
U.S. Robotics at Strategic Inflection Point, AUVSI-Backed Partnership for Robotics Competitiveness White Paper Warns
A new white paper from AUVSI’s Partnership for Robotics Competitiveness warns that the United States is at a drone‑sector‑style inflection point for robotics and physical AI. It argues that delayed, fragmented policy could let Chinese state‑backed firms dominate critical supply...

Neura Robotics and Drees & Sommer Launch Strategic Partnership for Robotics-Ready Buildings
Neura Robotics and Drees & Sommer have formed a strategic partnership to develop robotics‑ready buildings, beginning with automated sanitary facilities. The collaboration blends Neura's cognitive robotics and AI with Drees & Sommer's expertise in planning, sensor technology, digital twins, and...

Nightfood Holdings: Transforming Hotels and Guest Experiences Through Robotics
Nightfood Holdings announced the launch of a dedicated hospitality robotics vertical, combining two owned hotels with its newly acquired TechForce Robotics and RoboOp365 companies. The firm is deploying autonomous pallet‑style robots for linens and trash, and culinary assistants for 24/7...
SMART and NUS Pioneer Neural Blueprint for Human-Like Intelligence in Soft Robots
SMART, NUS and MIT researchers unveiled a neuron‑inspired AI controller that lets soft robotic arms learn a full suite of motions once and instantly adapt to new conditions without retraining. The system combines offline‑trained structural synapses with online‑updating plastic synapses...