Robotics

Japan has 70% of global industrial robotics and still faces an 11 million worker shortfall by 2040. The robots already exist. What Japan lacks is the AI to make them think.

Zoox has 2M autonomous miles, 350K free riders, and a Uber partnership ready to go. What it still cannot do is charge. NHTSA has until April 10 to decide why that matters.

Galaxea AI raised $291M at a $2.9B valuation. Its own CFO says the embodied AI moment is years away. The market is betting $2.9B that he is wrong.

China showed it could refuel satellites in GEO last year. A commercial startup just ran the same test in LEO — and the US is only now planning what China already proved works.

The FCC wants the drone industry to write its own spectrum roadmap. Chairman Carr visited Anduril in Texas and called it the tip of the spear. The BVLOS operators who have been waiting years for waivers largely were not in the room.

The Fastsort-Textile can sort 220 pounds of clothing in minutes. It also employs four workers per shift to watch it happen — not zero, not replaced, reskilled.

Uber has 20+ AV partnerships and just launched its own ops unit. The bet: no robotaxi maker will build its own ride-hail app from scratch when Uber already has the riders, insurance, and charging network.

The $14 billion humanoid robotics boom runs on real humans: workers in Nigeria and India paid $15 an hour to film themselves folding laundry and stacking boxes so robots can learn by watching.

While AI code gets easier to run, robot hardware setup stays brutal. A new $5.5M seed round is betting that changes.

PickNik's CEO now evaluates robots like a hiring manager: 90% independence is acceptable. Nine out of 10 times.

No eyes, no retina, no optic nerve. But the cells in these living robots turned on the genes for vision anyway. Scientists grew neurobots from frog embryos and found something evolution left behind.