Humanoids Latest coverage

China (Shanghai) Free Trade Zone: Humanoid Robots Accelerate 'Onboarding', Pudong's Embodied Intelligence Industry Ecosystem Booms with Energy

Pudong is accelerating the formation of an embodied intelligence industry ecosystem, driving the deployment of humanoid robots in commercial, public services, and rehabilitation medical scenarios. Companies such as Zhiyuan, Furuiyi, and Mifeng Technology have showcased multiple robot products and data platforms, promoting embodied intelligence technology from laboratories to large-scale applications.

Understanding Their Limits

Carnegie Mellon University and Siemens developed PRISM, a method to assess the safe stoppability of humanoid robots. The approach uses simulation to define safe stopping conditions, enabling proactive safety monitoring and supporting certification of fail-safe behaviors. The research highlights the importance of context in determining when a robot can be safely stopped, especially in environments with people or obstacles.

Robotics Roadmaps from Around the World: Spotlight of the Month - China

China is pursuing a strategic roadmap through its Five-Year Plans to dominate the global robotics industry, focusing on embodied AI and humanoid robotics. The 13th and 14th FYPs laid the foundation for industrial automation, while the 15th FYP emphasizes embodied intelligence, with state support for R&D and mass deployment of humanoids. Despite achievements in market share and production scale, challenges remain in precision hardware and semiconductor self-sufficiency, with risks of overcapacity and market volatility.

Unitree@UnitreeRobotics· 09:01SignalEditorial score6868

Unitree has fully open-sourced its UnifoLM-WLA-1.0 embodied foundation model, achieving new state-of-the-art results across multiple benchmarks. The model supports cross-task and cross-end-effector generalization, enabling whole-body coordination for both desktop and mobile manipulation.

Deploying Robots Into (and Onto) the Field

Boston Dynamics deployed their production Atlas robot at the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Norway-Brazil match, where it performed a ceremonial role and showcased its capabilities. The demonstration involved dynamic movement and precision, trained through reinforcement learning, and highlighted the robot's potential for industrial applications beyond entertainment.

NVIDIA and Hugging Face Bring New Models and Frameworks to LeRobot for the Open Robotics Community

NVIDIA and Hugging Face are releasing the NVIDIA Isaac GR00T 1.7 model and Isaac Teleop framework into LeRobot, an open-source robotics library, to provide developers with shared tools for training, evaluating, and deploying robot foundation models. NVIDIA Cosmos 3, a frontier world model for physical AI, is also set to be integrated soon.

Welcome to Robot Park: Where Apptronik’s Apollo Goes to Work Training the Next Generation of Humanoid Robot Intelligence

Apptronik announced the opening of its expanded Robot Park in Austin, Texas, and the launch of Apollo 2, a modular humanoid robot platform. The facility and robot are part of a global network, enabling real-world data collection and training for embodied AI models. Apollo 2 supports both bipedal and wheeled configurations, with data used to refine Gemini Robotics models for commercial deployment.

Unitree@UnitreeRobotics· 13:10SignalEditorial score7272

Unitree says it supports BitRobot in open-sourcing HIW-500, a humanoid teleoperation dataset collected across 12 real homes in Southeast Asia. The quoted announcement reports 500+ hours, 23K+ episodes, 10+ TB and more than 10 household tasks. The post does not specify the time basis or license, or link to a downloadable artifact.

Can football teach a robot to move?

Boston Dynamics explores how football can inform robot movement by using human demonstrations and reinforcement learning to train Atlas to perform a complex 'Ghost Rabona' kick, highlighting the intersection of sports and robotics in developing dynamic, whole-body control.