🤖 Atlas In 60 Minutes
Good Morning, Roboticists!
The demos are over. The production lines are live.
New Atlas Factory Debuts
TL;DR: In a 60 Minutes segment titled “Here Come the Humanoids,” Boston Dynamics revealed its all-electric Atlas performing real factory work at Hyundai’s Georgia plant—autonomously sorting roof racks on an assembly line. Unlike the hydraulic, algorithm-driven Atlas of viral fame, this version runs on reinforcement learning, teleoperation, and large-scale simulation, with redesigned joints built for industrial endurance rather than acrobatics.
G1 Robots Building Robots
TL;DR: In a 44-second factory video, Unitree showed its G1 humanoid assembling robot comaponents inside its own plant, powered by a new embodied model, UnifoLM-X1-0. Unlike past gala demos and boxing clips, this marks a rare precision manufacturing tasks, feeding real production data back into its “data engine” as the company builds a commercial case ahead of a planned 2026 IPO.
The Future of Surgery
TL;DR: Medtronic secured FDA clearance for its Stealth AXiS spinal surgery system, blending planning, navigation, and modular robotics into a single platform. With real-time motion tracking via LiveAlign, surgeons can adjust to spinal movement without repeated imaging. Positioned within Medtronic’s AiBLE ecosystem, the system strengthens its competitive push in surgical robotics beyond da Vinci.
Allonic Braids Robots Like Rope
TL;DR: Budapest robotics startup Allonic raised a record $7.2 million pre-seed to industrialize its “3D tissue braiding” system, which fabricates robot hands and joints by weaving soft, load-bearing structures around a printed skeleton in one automated pass. Instead of bolting together rigid parts, the platform produces compliant, biomimetic robot components in minutes.
Gather AI Bets on Physical Truth
TL;DR: Gather AI raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Smith Point Capital to scale its “Physical AI” platform for warehouses, training robots on millions of real-world images to close the gap between digital records and on-floor reality. With 99.9% inventory accuracy and ROI under six months, the company is positioning itself as the intelligence layer for global logistics.
Folding Robot Built in a Day
TL;DR: In under 24 hours, maker Nick Maselli built “Sourccey,” a functional laundry-folding robot, using mostly PLA 3D-printed parts for rapid iteration and quick fixes. Powered by a Raspberry Pi 5 and trained overnight via teleoperated demonstrations, the system learned fabric folding through vision-based AI rather than scripted motions.
Amazon Shelves Blue Jay
TL;DR: Amazon has shut down Blue Jay, its ceiling-mounted, multi-arm robot built for same-day delivery warehouses to pick and sort items at high speed. Launched just months ago, the system struggled with cost and deployment complexity. The company is now pivoting toward its modular “Orbital” warehouse model, reusing parts of Blue Jay’s tech while rethinking automation economics.
China’s Inflatable Shape-Shifter
TL;DR: Researchers at Southern University of Science and Technology introduced GrowHR, an inflatable, shape-shifting humanoid that can shrink its frame, float on water, and squeeze through tight gaps. Built from air-filled chambers inspired by hollow human bones, the lightweight prototype targets search-and-rescue missions, navigating collapsed buildings or flood zones where rigid, heavy robots struggle.
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