All posts tagged: robots

Wild Video Shows Delivery Robots Causing Havoc, Getting Obliterated

Wild Video Shows Delivery Robots Causing Havoc, Getting Obliterated

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Deploying delivery robots into the real world inevitably comes with a period of trial and error, but things are getting a little ridiculous. A new video compilation by the TikTok content farm @BoopMePlz shows a collection of rarely-seen delivery robot fails. While some of them are old hat, like the clip of a Coco Robotics bot getting obliterated by a passing train, others have gotten less attention, like the footage showing a six-wheeled bot from Starship Technologies rampaging through a marching band performance in Tennessee. Another shows a car, presumably in Los Angeles, rounding a corner directly into a Coco Robotics delivery bot, which is dragged along as the driver refuses to stop. Another rare snippet featuring Coco declares that “the future is here” as a delivery robot sends itself tumbling down a set of concrete stairs. One clip presumably shows the aftermath of a nasty collision, a Serve Robotics delivery bot limping along with a busted tire …

Chef Robotics escaped the robot cooking graveyard and says it’s thriving — here’s why

Chef Robotics escaped the robot cooking graveyard and says it’s thriving — here’s why

Published by skeptic

Chef Robotics CEO Rajat Bhageria likes to tell people — correctly — that his industry is a veritable startup graveyard. Whether you’re talking about Chowbotics, a salad-making startup that was acquired and later shut down by DoorDash, or Zume, a $400 million attempt to “disrupt” pizza delivery that collapsed in 2023, the effort to automate a process that has heretofore required opposable thumbs and a sentient brain has not always gone so smoothly. Bhageria thinks he’s figured out the workaround. The premise is simple, even if the execution isn’t: use AI-powered robot arms to take the labor out of large-scale food production. Originally, Chef sought to do that in fast casual restaurants, the kind that litter America’s cities. But the company pivoted early, finding success instead in food manufacturing, where it now serves enterprise customers like Amy’s Kitchen and Chef Bombay, and works with one of the largest school lunch providers in the country. Now, the company says that it has passed an important milestone: 100 million servings. What’s a “serving,” exactly? A company spokesperson …

Robots just captured a Russian position in Ukraine – but don’t worry about real-life Terminators just yet

Robots just captured a Russian position in Ukraine – but don’t worry about real-life Terminators just yet

Published by skeptic

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky recently announced that ground robots (also known as unmanned ground vehicles) had captured a Russian position. Zelenskyy said it was the first time in the Ukraine war that an enemy position had been taken exclusively by robots. Ukraine’s increasing use of drones in its defence has received a great deal of attention as Russia’s invasion has dragged on. While most of this has focused on aerial and maritime drones, the army’s use of ground robotics has been a quieter story – but one with growing significance. Military ground robotics are rapidly transforming battlefield tasks. However, for the foreseeable future, their greatest impact will be in supporting roles rather than directly replacing infantry soldiers. So, while this capture of the enemy position by robots is a milestone moment, it shouldn’t be over-interpreted. When it comes to ground robots taking on infantry combat, there are a set of serious obstacles. The first is, quite literally, obstacles. Anyone who has watched increasingly sophisticated robotics demonstrations online will have seen machines navigating complex and difficult …

How robots learn: A brief, contemporary history

How robots learn: A brief, contemporary history

Published by skeptic

That has changed. The machines are yet unbuilt, but the money is flowing: Companies and investors put $6.1 billion into humanoid robots in 2025 alone, four times what was invested in 2024.  What happened? A revolution in how machines have learned to interact with the world.  Imagine you’d like a pair of robot arms installed in your home purely to do one thing: fold clothes. How would it learn to do that? You could start by writing rules. Check the fabric to figure out how much deformation it can tolerate before tearing. Identify a shirt’s collar. Move the gripper to the left sleeve, lift it, and fold it inward by exactly this distance. Repeat for the right sleeve. If the shirt is rotated, turn the plan accordingly. If the sleeve is twisted, correct it. Very quickly the number of rules explodes, but a complete accounting of them could produce reliable results. This was the original craft of robotics: anticipating every possibility and encoding it in advance. Around 2015, the cutting edge started to do things …

Robots can’t replace guide dogs

Robots can’t replace guide dogs

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. On paper, few physical jobs seem as ripe for AI takeover as that of the loyal service dog. These four-legged assistants undergo years of intensive (and expensive) training to help people with vision loss or other physical impairments navigate their world, open doors, and retrieve items. Some can even use their impeccable noses to detect dangerous blood sugar spikes in people with diabetes.  But getting a dog to that point is no walk in the park. Guide dog school is rigorous, with only a portion of puppies graduating every year. That selectivity means training one can cost upwards of $50,000 per dog. Even when the select few do get paired with an owner, the human in need now has the extra responsibility of caring for an animal that needs to eat, exercise, and poop. And let’s not even get started on all of the hair. Robot dogs seem like an elegant solution. The machines have benefited from major advancements …

Robot Vacuum Throwdown: Shark Versus Dyson (2026)

Robot Vacuum Throwdown: Shark Versus Dyson (2026)

Published by skeptic

It was much easier to tell when Shark was using its AI feature and when it found spots. The UV Reveal uses the LEDs on the vacuum’s sides to show you when it’s scanning the floor with its ultraviolet light to find spots and stains, then it waits until it finishes its initial clean to analyze the footage and identify where it wants to return. The vacuum then heads back out, literally announcing from the base station: “I’ve detected stains. I’m going back out to viciously attack them.” It’s both amusing and informative, and then you can watch the Shark go and scrub at various spots on your floor. It didn’t do this for either cherry spill I made, but it did find a spot on the floor where I spilled orange juice weeks ago, leading me to worry about how well I know how to clean my floors on my own. The Shark app will also give you a cleaning report at the end, telling you where it found stains. Dyson’s AI is a …

Ukraine forces Russians to surrender using only robots

Ukraine forces Russians to surrender using only robots

Published by Sam Flores

Ukrainian forces have seized a Russian position using only drones and ground-based robots for the first time, Volodymyr Zelensky said. Ukraine’s president claimed that the enemy soldiers surrendered during the operation without any of his troops being put at risk. In an address to mark Ukrainian Gunsmith Day, he said: “For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned systems – ground systems and drones. “The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side.” The proliferation of drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) on the battlefield, which can be piloted by human soldiers from a safer location miles away, is rapidly superseding the use of infantry in Ukraine. UGVs are used for a range of missions, including assault operations, evacuating wounded troops from so-called “kill zones” where the risks to human life are almost untenable, detecting and neutralising mines, logistics and supply runs, and reconnaissance. 1601 Droid TW 12.7 machine gun drone More than 280 companies have been …

You Can Soon Buy a ,370 Humanoid Robot on AliExpress

You Can Soon Buy a $4,370 Humanoid Robot on AliExpress

Published by skeptic

Listing consumer electronics on the internet’s large ecommerce marketplaces is a key step in “democratizing” the products, allowing them to be purchased by anyone with just a click. It has happened to cars (in the United States, you can buy a Hyundai on Amazon), and now it’s happening to humanoid robots. The Chinese manufacturer Unitree Robotics, among the most active robot-makers in the field, is preparing to bring its most affordable model, the Unitree R1, to international markets through Alibaba Group’s marketplace. According to reports in The South China Morning Post, the rollout will initially cover North America, Japan, Singapore, and Europe. There’s no exact on-sale date for the robots yet, but the Post report says it will show up as soon as this week. This is not the first time Unitree has used AliExpress as a global storefront. The company’s G1 model, the more powerful and more expensive predecessor to the R1, is already listed at just under $19,000. The G1 is already on sale on AliExpress. It’s as much of a symbolic step before …

Mammotion Spino E1 Review: A Budget Pool Bot That Comes Up Short

Mammotion Spino E1 Review: A Budget Pool Bot That Comes Up Short

Published by skeptic

The robot uses Bluetooth to communicate with your phone and uses 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi to connect directly to your home network for over-the-air updates (but not real-time management). Onboarding requires connecting to a temporary network on the device and bridging it to your home network, a quick process that gave me no trouble during setup. Firmware updates will likely be available, but note you’ll need to check the Device Information menu for them. Mammotion didn’t proactively push or suggest any updates during my testing, and these over-the-air updates often required multiple attempts to install successfully. The app is decidedly limited, allowing you to select from the standard four operating modes and make a few small additional adjustments, including configuring the maximum speed of the robot and opting into a couple of beta features. These include a “Turbo Cleaning” mode that increases the power of the suction at the expense of battery life, and an option to improve the way the unit cleans steps and platforms. (Why this feature isn’t always on is a mystery.) Leaves Left …

Oshkosh ground support robots take on air travel’s hidden costs

Oshkosh ground support robots take on air travel’s hidden costs

Published by skeptic

The war in Iran continues to ratchet up fuel prices, and that doesn’t just make it more expensive to drive – it’s getting more expensive to fly, too. What many don’t realize is that a significant share of an airline’s operating costs are tied to ground operations, and that’s where Oshkosh is putting automation and electrification to work. With the short distances driven at limited speeds under relatively heavy loads, ground handling and support equipment (GHE/GSE) at airports present a nearly ideal use case for battery-electric vehicles. That’s a good thing, too. As prices rise and demand for on-road fossil fuels drops, airports and airlines – historically responsible for about 4% Earth’s global warming – are becoming a bigger and bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking pie when it comes to the aviation industry’s fossil fuel emissions. That’s why companies like Oshkosh are working to develop zero-emission vehicles like the Stryker Volterra Electric ARFF fire truck and the autonomous aircraft tug shown, above. All managed by the AeroTech AI ground traffic manager. Even with the sort of high-tech angle that …