Sentigent Technology was showing off this tiny rugged outdoor companion at CES, highlighting its ability to tackle tough terrain and stairs. Though, with a battery life of just six hours and standing only 1.5 feet tall, it’s not gonna be able to through-hike the Appalachian.
Sentigent also suggests sending it out to the playground with your kids as a robo-babysitter. But that seems even more ill-advised.
The much promised AI-driven, do-it-all humanoid robots sure can dance in canned demos, but they bumble about slowly when faced with objects in the real world. Even when it’s just... carpet.
As my colleague Dom summed up yesterday, “We’re still not close to Rosey the Robot running our homes, but in the meantime the robot revolution is coming one single-purpose bot at a time.”
CES day 1 (or day 5, or day 200, depending on the calendar you observe) is coming to a close and we are all clearly feeling it. Case in point: I watched this robot walk out of the Central Hall and into the plaza where it threw a few punches and knocked itself out. Honestly? Big same. But we’ll be back at it again bright and early tomorrow. No word on the robot, though.
Who needs humanoid robots when your vacuum can sprout legs?
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang brought a pair of adorable BDX droids on stage while speaking about the future of AI and robotics. These little bots probably can’t put a towel inside a washing machine, but they sure are cute!
The “Partnering Human Progress” livestream is set to kick off at 1PM Pacific/4PM Eastern, when Hyundai Motor Group will unpack a slate of AI and robotics announcements, including the debut of Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robot.
You can tune into the livestream below or from Hyundai’s YouTube channel.
The household robot made its debut at the company’s CES 2026 press conference, rolling onto the stage and giving a ponderous demo of putting a towel into a laundry machine.
The sizable wheeled robot used its articulating arms and huge hands to perform the action and talked to the audience about its technology and capabilities, using human-like hand gestures to emphasize its words.
We love a good robot-kicking video here at The Verge. One example from EngineAI had so many people convinced of CGI fakery that the Chinese robotics company released “BTS footage” and a video of its CEO being kicked by the robot to prove it’s real. I’m entertained, but unconvinced.
The robot. His groin. It works on so many levels. Roll it again.
China sees humanoids as an economic engine and Musk wants a ‘robot army.’
Some people think they can pull a fast one by “returning” something they’ve bought, but replacing the original with a knockoff and keeping the real deal. UPS’s return centers are using machine learning to spot minor differences that might get missed by their human auditors. But the real fun in this video from Reuters is the swarm of robots that ferry returns around the warehouse.
The Roomba maker is being sold to its Chinese contract manufacturer, a move CEO Gary Cohen says will keep the company alive and allow it to grow.
iRobot’s collapse marks the end of an era. Co-founder Colin Angle calls it a blow for robotics.
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Posha uses AI and a motorized arm to cook your dinner autonomously. It’s impressive but expensive, and raises all the usual concerns about connected kitchen appliances.
Footage of Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robot falling over at the company’s Autonomy Visualized event is raising questions over its, well, autonomy. We can’t be sure, but it certainly looks like a teleoperator removing a VR headset.
It wouldn’t be the first time Tesla disguised humans as robots.
The fan-favorite Transformer uses 28 servo motors to convert from robot mode to a Walkman replica that functions as a Bluetooth speaker and voice recorder, while Frank Welker recorded new lines for the robot in the character’s iconic synthesized voice. Soundwave is now available for preorder for $1,399, temporarily discounted to $999.
Lacking a skilled labor pool, Trump officials and sycophants say that industrial robots are key to a US return to manufacturing might. But China’s already well on its way to automating production lines that make products faster and for less, in order to respond to tariffs and to supplant the labor gap created by a society that won’t work long factory hours anymore. According to data compiled by the International Federation of Robotics:
China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, nearly nine times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined.
[The Wall Street Journal]
