mete

T800 in da hood @REK @engineairobot @RoboStrategy

Researchers built a soft floating robot for indoor interaction. It uses helium and flapping fins instead of propellers. The result is quiet, lightweight, and safe to touch. It can follow people, give reminders, and act as a study buddy. Published at ACM DIS 2026.

@radbackwards That escalated quickly

I am become Brett Adcock!

@Scobleizer @radbackwards +1

@radbackwards Why give only one outlet an exclusive like this? Go out with at least five at the same time. And include those of us who are genuinely excited about getting a Neo and have ordered one.

I gave WIRED the exclusive on our hands launch, and they wrote a really weird article about how we are sexualizing robotics… wired.com/story/the-1x-n… I felt pretty betrayed because that’s not what they told me they were writing about not is that what I’ve ever been about… actually I stand for quite the opposite… But I’ve come to find a lot of dishonesty and malice in the journalism community so I wasn’t surprised. This is what I sent the author… I’m only sharing this because I hope it encourages journalists to resist the click bait trap and tell truly awesome stories because I for one don’t believe journalism is dead— I think it’s just starting and just needs to evolve past the weird corner of the internet where data driven optimization turns everything into smooth brained shocking brain rot bullshit. The technological revolution we are going through should inspire a journalism renaissance. Not let it fall into further decay. There is so much brilliance at play in the world and the stories should be told! My note: “[author name redacted], it was nice talking to you, but I wanted to let you know that I didn’t enjoy your article at all. I understand the need to be inflammatory because that seems to be the only thing that gets clicks these days but that doesnt mean you shouldn’t recognize when something special is in front of you. I trusted our PR team in saying we should offer you the exclusive on what is one of the most important technological developments in the history of Mankind and I deeply regret it. Good luck with the rest of your writing career. -Dar Sleeper”

@clankrmedia 🤖

Robot hands got serious. Here are four dexterous hands: 🔵 Tesla Optimus V3: 22 DOF, motors in the forearm. 🔵 BrainCo Revo 3: 21 DOF, full-palm touch sensing. 🔵 Wuji Hand: 20 DOF, motors inside each finger. 🔵 1X NEO: 22 DOF, force sensing at every joint. Which grip wins?

Robot hands getting better and better

Chinese firm Linkerbot builds dexterous robot hands 🔴 Leader in dexterous robot hands (>80% mrkt share) 🟡 $3bn valuation based on Apr 26 round 🔴 Investors include Alibaba and Bank of China 🇨🇳 I talked to Linkerbot team at Automate last month

@1x_tech 🫨

NEO’s Hands An API to the Physical World

@clankrmedia So unlike Apptronik and Neura who set up facilities to collect teleops data, they chose the other path. Interesting.

Agility Robotics co-founder doesn't believe in the teleop data story. Jonathan Hurst laid it out on The Cube at the Raise Summit in Paris. 🔵 LLMs learned from internet, robots have no equivalent for movement 🔵 Teleoperation alone would take millions people and centuries to scale. His answer is simulation, not teleop. Build a digital twin, train with RL, then transfer to the real robot. He also talked about Digit's future, and how V5 drops the cage. 🔴 Digit V5 ships by the end of this year, safety is the headline feature 🔴 V5 is built to walk into unmodified, as-built human spaces without one

@clankrmedia Japanese humanoids loading…

Mitsubishi Motors makes its new humanoid robot move! The automaker signed an MOU with Highlanders. Production starts at Mitsubishi's Kyoto plant in 2027. Robots will first work inside Mitsubishi's own factory. What we know about the robot so far: 🔵 Camera and audio sensors are packed into the face 🔵 AI drives the limbs based on what face sees 🔵 Production target: 1,000 units a month by 2027 🔵 Kepler v1.0, world model for physical AI

@clankrmedia Let them cook

1X Technologies introduced their most advanced robot hands. The new NEO hands have 25 DOF, all tendon driven. Motors sit in the forearm and pull tendons through the wrist. NEO hands run at 5:1 to 15:1 gear ratio. Every joint is force controlled and backdrivable. Push a finger and the motor reads the exact force. What the specs say: 🔵 ±0.2 mm positioning accuracy 🔵 45N fingertip force, 17.75 Nm wrist torque 🔵 Tactile skin senses pressure, contact and slip 🔵 IP68 waterproof and food safe Hundreds are already off the production line. Target: 10,000 hands this year.

@Rewkang 🦾

Current VC investment in Robotics isn't even at pre-ChatGPT levels in 2021 but it's clearly inflecting Our goal is to own as much as we can of the future leaders of the industry We raised $100m+ over the last month from long term private placement investors towards that goal both doubling down in current portfolio companies and also making new exciting investments in the sector This is the first step in proving out our model as we were able to substantially increase the amount of robotics equity exposure owned on a per share basis We plan to continue or exceed this pace of accretive growth. Our portfolio companies are making incredible progress on model development and increasing revenue, and we intend to supply them with the capital they need to continue their development.

Paradigm raises $1.2B fund to invest in robotics & AI

First successful surgery with a humanoid

@clankrmedia 🫨

This Unitree G1 performed surgery with teleoperation. First successful surgery with a humanoid. A surgeon steered it from a console the whole time. It used real surgical tools, not custom robotic ones. The G1 completed two live gallbladder removals on pigs. The work just published in Nature.

@BerntBornich 👀

Tomorrow we’re unveiling the most advanced robotic hand in human history

@Rewkang 🦾

Over the past month, RoboStrategy added ~$100m NAV of new robotics investments NAV has increased 69% since public listing month NAV/Share has increased 45% since public listing month

@clankrmedia Pretty cool

UBTECH’s Walker S2 deplyoed into a busy China–Vietnam border hub at Fangchenggang. The contract behind it is $37M This is a high-friction operations environment: 🔵 passenger queues 🔵 customs questions 🔵 cargo verification 🔵 corridor patrols 🔵 crowd density monitoring 🔵 data handoff to human reviewers Chinese reports describe the robots as assistants, not final decision makers. Walker S2 was chosen because of its autonomous battery-swapping system for continuous operation. Target use cases include airports, ports, rail stations, logistics hubs, and large public venues. The system is designed for integration into public-sector workflows and data collection processes.

@clankrmedia Asimov 1

Make your own humanoid robot! Here is top 5 fully open sourced humanoid robots: 🔵 Asimov 1 — $15K target DIY kit. Full open-source stack. 🔵 Berkeley Humanoid Lite — sub-$5K. Open-source 3D-printed humanoid. 🔵HopeJR — ~$3K. Fully open-source humanoid from Hugging Face 🔵 ROBOTIS K0 — price not announced. Full size open-source humanoid platform. 🔵 Vibe A1 — Mini humanoid. Sales price starting at $649.

Lightwheel builds robotics sim & data infra Raised $145m, based in China 🇨🇳 🔴 Turns physical objects into sim assets 🔴 Collect high-quality egocentric data 🔴 Evaluate data in sim environments They partner with top AI labs (OpenAI, NVIDIA, Alibaba, ByteDance, Manus, Deepmind) and manufacturers (Figure, Toyota, GM, Samsung, Galbot, Agibot) I talked to @jonstephens85 from @LightwheelAI

Engine AI’s T800 suddenly glitched mid-run, collapsed, and knocked down another robot.