United Kingdom

Humanoid robot developers are increasingly trying to reduce one of the main barriers to adoption: the amount of engineering required before a robot can perform useful work. New robots from UBTECH illustrate this shift, with built-in skills for industrial material handling as well as reception and service tasks. Smart Robot Solutions is now bringing these systems to the Netherlands, where it plans to add locally developed applications on top of the pre-trained capabilities.

Training robots to perform varied physical tasks requires large amounts of data, but collecting that data through teleoperation is expensive and time-consuming. Three recent studies propose different ways to address this constraint: converting human videos into robot training material, using shared exoskeleton hardware to improve demonstrations and creating a large physical benchmark that allows experience to be reused across tasks, environments and robot platforms.

Renault Group and French robotics company Wandercraft are working toward deploying 350 humanoid robots in Renault factories in France and Spain by the end of 2027. At the Humanoid Robots Summit in Stuttgart, the companies provided a closer look at the industrial development behind the programme and highlighted robot training as one of the main obstacles to deployment at scale.

General Robotics has expanded its GRID robot intelligence platform to automate more of the engineering process involved in onboarding robots, integrating artificial intelligence models, creating skills and deploying them in production environments.

Hero Esports has launched CyberHero, a humanoid robot sports league, in Riyadh and plans to stage its inaugural season across eight cities in the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Asia. The Riyadh event served as the first competition in the CyberHero series and featured EngineAI T800 humanoid robots competing in a purpose-built arena. Hero Esports said two of the eight planned circuit stops will be in the Middle East.

MBody AI has wrapped up a proof-of-concept trial of its autonomous robots at Mohegan Sun, one of North America’s largest casino and entertainment resorts, and the robots have stayed on site under a paid commercial arrangement since the trial ended. Mohegan Sun, located in Uncasville, Connecticut, spans roughly 5.5 million square feet and includes 1,600 hotel rooms, two casinos, a 10,000-seat arena, and 275,000 square feet of meeting and convention space that runs continuously, year-round. According to the companies, Mohegan Sun now plans to scale up the number of robots on site through a multi-year subscription agreement later in 2026.

Palladyne AI Corp. and FANUC America have entered a strategic collaboration to integrate Palladyne AI’s physical artificial intelligence software with FANUC’s industrial robotic platforms. The companies plan to develop robotic capabilities for manufacturing, warehousing and logistics applications, with a focus on simplifying deployment and enabling robots to adapt to changing operating conditions.

A new survey from Elon University reveals that AI chatbots are becoming confidants, advisors and even friends for a significant share of American internet users. Nearly a third of those forming social or emotional bonds call their AI companion a “friend.”

XPeng has started production of its IRON humanoid robot at a dedicated manufacturing facility, with the first unit completing the production process and walking off the line autonomously. The Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer plans to move the robot into mass production by the end of this year, followed by a wider commercial launch in 2027.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has declared that artificial general intelligence has arrived following the launch of OpenAI’s new GPT-6 Astra model. His statement adds to a broader shift in the language surrounding frontier AI, with OpenAI president Greg Brockman also arguing that the industry may now have entered the “AGI era.”