The California State Athletic Commission has sent a letter to technology startup REK ordering it to stop staging unapproved fights after it held a human-versus-robot match last month. On Sept. 18, Frankie LaPeña faced one of REK’s humanoid robots. The robot was remotely controlled by a human through a virtual reality system, according to the report. REK describes itself on its website as a “humanoid robot fighting league.” The robot in the match may have been an EngineAI product fitted with a head resembling the robot in “The Terminator.” REK CEO Sixx Liiv posted the commission’s notice on X on Sept. 30. The commission determined the earlier match was unapproved and told Liiv and REK not to hold, promote or...
China’s National Intellectual Property Administration has published an appearance-design patent for an “embodied intelligent robot,” naming BYD Co Ltd as the patent holder, in the first official look at the automaker’s self-developed humanoid robot. The patent description says the design is for an intelligent robot capable of walking, balancing and interaction, with potential applications in service, education or industrial settings. Patent drawings show a humanoid robot with a black-and-white body. Its head is rounded and curved, with no display screen. The torso, arms and legs feature multiple joint structures, suggesting high motion flexibility. The design closely resembles “Xiaodi,” the humanoid robot BYD previously teased.
Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics has launched a new five-fingered dexterous hand, the Dex5-S, featuring 22 degrees of freedom per hand and a design that matches the size of a human hand. It is priced from 39,900 yuan. In a demonstration video released by Unitree, the Dex5-S picked up a spoon, cut paper with scissors and tossed and caught a lemon, showing capabilities in fine object manipulation, multi-finger coordination and dynamic grasping. The Dex5-S upgrades the earlier model in both degrees of freedom and dimensions. All 22 motors support direct drive, backdriving and dual-encoder control, according to Unitree. It also adds a roll degree of freedom for the little finger, which the company said improves whole-hand dexterity. Unitree said the...
A humanoid robot weighing 37.15 kg pulled a 1,434 kg car 9.92 metres on two legs in Beijing, setting a Guinness World Record for the heaviest vehicle pulled by a humanoid robot under 40 kg, its developers said. The robot was powered by Thor, a whole-body control model jointly developed by Chinese robotics firm XYZ Embodied AI Co. (XYZ), Ltd. and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI). The challenge took place in Beijing’s Yizhuang. Developers said the feat was not merely a display of brute force. The core difficulty was maintaining balance and coordinating the whole body while withstanding a large, changing external force. Unlike running, jumping or dancing, pulling a car is a strong-interaction task: the robot’s movement...
Beijing-based embodied AI startup Livsyn Robotics said it has completed a Series A funding round of more than 100 million yuan, jointly invested by Huafang Capital, Daohe Yuanqi under Daohe Longterm, Suwen Electric Energy and an unnamed leading strategic industrial investor in the embodied AI sector. Founded in February 2023, Livsyn positions itself as an embodied AI infrastructure provider. It focuses on RUDA (Robotics Unified Device Architecture), a fully self-developed unified architecture for embodied models that aims to build a cross-embodiment general foundation for robots. RUDA forms a self-evolving closed loop covering data collection, model training, robot execution and feedback. Its general Harness system supports heterogeneous hardware including humanoid robots, various dexterous hands and industrial grippers. Within the system, RUDA...
Most science fiction readers know that Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and later republished them in I, Robot. In an age when AI seems to threaten civilization itself, those laws feel more prescient than ever: a robot may not injure a human or allow harm through inaction; it must obey human orders unless they conflict with the First Law; and it must protect itself unless that conflicts with the first two. Yet almost no generative-AI company has embedded even the First Law into its core algorithms. Only Advanced Robotic Technologies Inc., which applies generative AI to large-scale industrial manufacturing, has adopted it as a foundational software principle. Without...
TwelveLabs said its latest video-understanding model, Pegasus 1.6, can now analyze first-person footage, more accurately identify people and objects, and process still images through the same API used for video, broadening its use for robotics, media and security customers. The model builds on Pegasus’s core function: converting video into structured, searchable text such as summaries, tags and timestamps that applications can use. The company said the biggest addition is support for egocentric video — footage shot from the perspective of a person or machine, including body cameras and robot-mounted cameras. Such data is increasingly used by robotics and embodied-AI teams for labeling and training, a category TwelveLabs previously did not support well. Pegasus 1.6 also improves entity recognition, making it...
Boston Dynamics has tapped ex‑Amazon AI executive Rohit Prasad to fill its chief executive role, nearly nine months after Robert Playter stepped down from the top post. The robotics firm stated Prasad’s appointment will take effect the day following the announcement. Previously serving as senior vice‑president and lead scientist for Alexa and Amazon’s artificial general intelligence initiatives, Prasad is tasked with accelerating Boston Dynamics’ physical‑AI roadmap. The firm notes his expertise will fuse robotic hardware with cutting‑edge AI to scale commercial deployment of intelligent machines. “Boston Dynamics holds a distinctive edge in advancing physical AI, built on its world‑renowned robotics engineering talent,” Prasad commented in an official press release. “I’m privileged to join the business at this defining turning point...
Researchers at Caltech and Stanford have unveiled HomeBody, a system that gives GPT Astra persistent spatial memory and the ability to execute compound humanoid actions for long-horizon tasks. In a kitchen demo, a Unitree G1 robot guided by Astra cleaned the room and retrieved remembered items from ambiguous requests. The team said the system requires no environment-specific training or additional policy learning. HomeBody replaces the trained intermediate VLA layer in conventional three-part architectures—System2 VLM for vision and instructions, System1 VLA for control commands, and System0 for coordinated motion. As frontier models such as Astra improve, the researchers argue trained VLAs are no longer necessary and System2 can directly manage reusable motion skills. A plug-and-play VLM calls a composable skill library....
SiMa.ai, a leader in Physical AI, announced $150 million in Series C financing, bringing the total capital raised to $500 million and valuing the company at $1.45 billion. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, +ND Capital, Point72 and StepStone Group. AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan, and the State of Michigan also joined the round as new investors. The global market for Physical AI devices, including robotics, automotive, and drones, is set to explode with cumulative shipments projected to hit 145 million units by 2035, according to Counterpoint Research. This surge marks AI’s transition from software applications into tangible, real-world consumer and industrial hardware,...
