This is what’s hiding inside the next generation of... robotic hands. Compact frameless motors can be integrated directly into dexterous robotic hands to drive finger and joint movement while keeping the mechanism extremely compact. For humanoid robots, hand performance will depend heavily on this kind of engineering high torque, precise control and more actuators packed into very limited space. Walking gets most of the attention. But dexterous hands may decide how useful humanoid robots actually become.show more

.Xynova is one of the top rising players in... China’s dexterous hand and humanoid robot components space, based in Hangzhou • They develop not only the hands but also all core components (linear actuators, motors, etc) and algorithms fully in-house • They use a hybrid drive system, combining tendon-driven and direct-drive methods • One of the most exciting features is wrist control and finger abduction/adduction, delivering much more natural hand and arm dexterity • They prevent the hand from overheating by placing one of the actuators in the arm (below the palm) • Hands are equipped with tactile sensors and lidars, with 23 DoF (human hands have ~27 DoF) The overall design is deeply inspired by real human hand and arm muscle movements, impressive biomimicry approach The Humanoid Hub and I interviewed their tech lead so stay tuned for more technical details!show more

Humanoid robot legs internals on full display Look at... the engineering density in every joint Motors actuators and circuit boards working together This is how the next wave of humanoids is actually made What surprises you most here?show more

EngineAI burned $15,000,000 in R&D to build this humanoid,... and it just deadlifted live on stage Seeing EngineAI's SE01 humanoid clean and press a barbell at the World Humanoid Robot Games is insane. Behind this viral lift lies a massive engineering breakthrough. 3 truths behind this flex: End-to-End Neural Control: Unlike jerky hydraulic predecessors, SE01 uses end-to-end neural networks to master human-like joint coordination. Harmonic Drive Actuators: Lifting heavy iron requires custom high-torque joint motors, preventing catastrophic gear teeth stripping under load. Dynamic Center of Mass: Recalculating balance millions of times per second keeps the biped stable as load physics shift overhead.show more

Tesla showed off its first tendon-driven hand in October... 2024, but demos of Optimus grasping things with integrated tendon-driven hands remain scarce. Here's an instance of grasping action. The forearm packaging is impressively compact. Notice how the hand springs back after leaving the bottle. This could be the sandwich flexure connecting the finger joints (described in Tesla patents), giving that spring-back. Elon said they've already changed this design and it "didn't actually work." This is probably not the very latest hand.show more

BOOM! Humanoid Robots Just Performed Surgery for the First... Time! REAL VIDEO! In a groundbreaking preclinical breakthrough, researchers at UC San Diego have achieved what many thought was years away: teleoperated humanoid robots successfully completing live surgeries. Published in Nature, the study marks the world’s first use of humanoid robots for in-vivo laparoscopic procedures on large animals (pigs). Two separate surgeries were completed: Key Details •. Procedure: Laparoscopic gallbladder removal (cholecystectomy) •. Team 1: Human surgeon + one humanoid robot (the robot performed core tasks while the human assisted) •. Team 2: Two humanoid robots working together with no human at the operating table •. Robots: Custom “Surgie” humanoids (~5 ft tall, ~60 lbs) using standard surgical tools •. Control: Fully teleoperated by surgeons (remote human control, not autonomous) •. Significance: First demonstration of humanoid robots handling real surgical workflows in a live setting, proving compatibility with existing OR tools and spaces This proof shows humanoid robots could one day help address surgeon shortages, enable remote procedures in rural areas, battlefields, or even space all at a fraction of the cost and space of traditional surgical robots like da Vinci. Read the full publication here: Project page with video: The future of surgery just got a whole lot more interesting. And medical cost for the first time in decades will be scheduled to go down, much further down.show more

HUMANOID ROBOTS ARE STARTING TO WALK AMONG US At... first, this looks like a completely normal street video. A woman is walking down the sidewalk on a sunny day, with people, stores and traffic around her. Then you notice who’s walking beside her. A humanoid robot. There’s no robotics conference, no laboratory and no team of engineers around it. The robot is simply walking through the city next to her as if this is already part of everyday life. Until recently, humanoid robots were mostly something we saw in controlled demonstrations, factories and tech presentations. Now they’re beginning to appear in ordinary public spaces, walking alongside people without looking completely out of place. The biggest shift isn’t just how advanced these machines are becoming. It’s how quickly they’re starting to blend into the real world. At this pace, seeing a humanoid robot walking next to you in public might soon stop feeling unusual at allshow more

teleoperator kicking himself over not programming Asimov's Laws of... Robotics... Worth considering if we should base today's reality on the science fiction musings from the past. Testing with humanoid robots is a very interesting new challenge. Historically robots have been confined to keep out zones with rigid walls and laser barriers, lock-out/tag-out, etc. This is the easy way to ensure people don't get hurt by very capable machines. But the more we integrate humanoid robotics into collaborative roles with humans the more we need to remove those barriers by nature of the work.show more

This massive robotic tile layer is straight-up replacing an... entire crew on a huge job site Watch it autonomously grab giant slabs, laser-align them perfectly, and lay them down flawlessly one after another with zero human hands on the floor We keep seeing robots like this getting smarter and faster every year. Be honest. Do you think this kind of AI tech is eventually going to take most construction and manual labor jobs?show more

⚠️ THIS HOTEL CLEANING CREW HAS A BATTERY PERCENTAGE... INSTEAD OF A BREAK TIME Two robots in matching Tesla aprons working a high-rise suite together, one vacuuming the nightstand, one wiping down the floor to ceiling windows, a fully stocked housekeeping cart between them. A status display on the ceiling reads out their battery level and how far into the job they are, like a delivery tracker for a made bed. Here's the honest catch. This is AI-generated concept footage, the onscreen task tracker and the duplicate robots visible in the mirror are giveaways once you look for them, no hotel is running this today. But the job itself is real and well understood, hotel housekeeping is one of the most repetitive, physically demanding jobs in hospitality, and it's exactly the kind of task these companies keep aiming humanoid robots at first. Would you actually want faster, more consistent cleaning if it meant a robot walked through your room while you were out?show more

SHE JUST DID A BACKWARD FLIP WITH HER HANDS... AS THE ONLY SUPPORT. LOOK AT THAT CONTROL! One moment she is standing normally. The next, she throws her body backward, plants both hands on the ground and sends her legs over her head in one continuous rotation. No running start, no equipment, no hesitation. Just strength, flexibility and the kind of body control that makes an extremely difficult movement look effortless. The impressive part is not simply getting upside down. It is controlling the entire rotation through 2 points of contact, keeping the body aligned and pushing back to the finish without losing momentum. One small mistake in timing or balance can ruin the whole movement, but she makes it look almost casual. Most people see a spectacular trick. What they are actually watching is years of coordination compressed into a single movement: shoulder strength, core stability, flexibility and precise timing working together at exactly the right moment. That is what real body control looks like. Not making a difficult move look difficult, but making it look easy.show more

TESLA’S NEXT-GEN OPTIMUS V3 HAND IS GETTING CLOSE TO... HUMAN-LEVEL Tesla engineers just shared new details on the Optimus V3 hand — and the progress is striking. They’re now saying that as they move into Gen-3 and mass production, the hand is getting very close to human functionality and form factor. One engineer described it clearly: “It won’t even look like a robot. It will look like a human in a superhero suit. It will be something revolutionary.” This level of dexterity and human-like design is a critical milestone. The hand is one of the hardest parts of building a truly useful humanoid robot — and Tesla is iterating extremely fast.show more

We’ve seen humanoid robots walk around for a while,... but when will they actually help with useful tasks in daily life? The challenge here is the diversity and complexity of real-world scenes. Our new work tackles this problem via 3D visuomotor policy learning. Using data from only 1 scene, our Improved 3D Diffusion Policy (iDP3) enables a full-sized humanoid robot to autonomously pick&place objects, pour water, and wipe tables, in the wild open world. (and all these skills are useful, right?) Web: Fully open-sourced code:show more

⚠️ THE WEIRDEST PART OF THIS ROBOT DEMO? NOBODY... SEEMS SURPRISED ANYMORE! Humanoid robots are moving through a crowded public space while people walk around them like they're just another part of the environment. There’s no empty laboratory, no isolated testing area and no perfect path marked on the floor — just machines and humans sharing the same space. That makes this feel less like a robot demonstration and more like a preview of everyday life. Getting one humanoid to walk is one problem. Getting several machines to move safely around unpredictable people is another, because humans constantly stop, turn, cross paths and change direction without warning. Every movement requires the robots to perceive what is happening around them, maintain balance and continuously adjust their path. That's the shift worth paying attention to. The milestone isn't simply that robots can walk among humans — it's that we're starting to see environments where they can actually belong. Once that becomes reliable enough for shopping centers, airports, factories and offices, the question stops being whether humanoids can enter our world. It becomes what we're going to ask them to do once they're here.show more

Figure is aiming to develop the world’s largest and... most diverse real-world humanoid pretraining dataset. For this purpose, they’re partnering with Brookfield, a global asset manager overseeing $1 trillion in assets, including 100,000 residential units, 500M square feet of commercial office space, and 160M square feet of logistics space. The data collected from this collaboration will be used to train Figure’s Helix AI model, enabling humanoids to perform tasks autonomously in real-world environments designed for humans. In addition to data collection, the partnership will explore support for next-generation GPU data centers, real estate for robotic training environments, and commercial use cases across Brookfield’s global footprint.show more

A HUMANOID ROBOT JUST FOUND ONE OF THE MOST... EXPENSIVE AISLES IN THE WORLD. An airplane cabin. Think about why this environment is so interesting. Narrow aisle. Human-sized equipment. Repetitive service. Hundreds of passengers. Thousands of flights every day. And almost everything inside the cabin was already designed around the dimensions of a human worker. That's exactly why the humanoid form matters. You don't redesign the aircraft. You build a machine capable of operating inside what already exists. But the bigger opportunity isn't necessarily replacing the crew. Imagine robots eventually handling repetitive cabin tasks while humans remain responsible for safety, judgment and passenger care. Drinks. Trash collection. Moving supplies. Routine cabin checks. Every small task removed is another minute of human labor redirected somewhere more valuable. That's how humanoid automation may actually arrive. Not: “This robot replaced five people.” But: “This robot removed 30% of the repetitive work from their shift.” Multiply that across an entire industry... and suddenly the boring little drink cart becomes a very interesting business case.show more

China now has its own “Bolt” — a robot... named after sprint legend Usain Bolt. A Chinese research team has unveiled the world’s first full-size humanoid robot to reach a peak speed of 10 meters per second, setting a new global benchmark for humanoid running. Bolt runs like a body pushed to the limit. Its joints and power systems work in tight coordination, keeping it balanced even at sprint speed. Built to match the build of an adult man—1.75 meters tall and 75 kilograms—it is a life-sized system operating at the edge of physics. Compared with Usain Bolt’s iconic 9.58-second 100-meter world record, which many experts believe may stand for decades, the gap between humans and machines is narrowing fast. Chinese robots are now challenging the ceiling of human performance—much as AlphaGo once challenged Go champion Ke Jie. The breakthrough builds on earlier world-record achievements in high-speed robotic running and marks a giant leap for China in humanoid motion and control. Beyond records, Bolt also carries practical value: robots are leaving the lab and stepping into real-world settings—sports training, emergency response, and demanding industrial tasks where speed, balance and control truly matter.show more

The most dangerous part of a humanoid robot may... be the face. UBTECH’s Walker shows how a machine can use gaze stillness and humanlike expression to create trust before proving judgment reliability or accountability. Should robots be allowed to look this human in public spaces? Putting the debate aside this is clearly a work of art. Congratulations to UBTECH for this achievement. Walker looks so refined that I may need to buy one fast before the stock runs out lol. Credit : UBTECH Roboticsshow more

🚨 MERCEDES JUST PUT A MOTOR ONLY 8 CM... THICK INTO A CAR THAT CAN HIT 62 MPH IN 2.1 SECONDS. Instead of conventional radial flux motors, Mercedes is betting big on axial flux technology. In these motors, the electromagnetic force flows parallel to the axle, allowing two magnetic rotors to sandwich a central stator in a flat, disc-like layout. The result is dramatically smaller and more powerful. The front motor in the new all-electric Mercedes-AMG GT 4-door Coupe is just 9 cm wide. The rear motors are even thinner at roughly 8 cm each. Despite their tiny size, they help launch the heavy performance car from 0-62 mph in just 2.1 seconds, with a top speed of up to 186 mph. Why this matters: • Axial flux motors are significantly more power-dense and can be up to 50% lighter than traditional designs • Their extreme thinness frees up packaging space in the vehicle for better weight distribution, aerodynamics, or interior room • Mercedes acquired YASA in 2021 and has spent years developing the complex manufacturing processes needed to build them at scale • The technology is debuting in a high-performance AMG model, showing Mercedes is serious about using it in its most demanding cars The deeper implication: While most of the EV conversation focuses on batteries and software, the electric motor itself is undergoing a quiet revolution. Axial flux designs have long been seen as theoretically superior but extremely difficult to manufacture at scale. By solving the production challenges and putting these motors into a real high-performance car, Mercedes is pushing the entire industry forward. The next generation of electric performance cars may not just have bigger batteries they may have fundamentally better motors. We’re watching the physical hardware of EVs evolve as dramatically as the software has. How important do you think motor technology (rather than just battery size) will be for the future of electric performance cars? Follow for more frontier automotive engineering and electric vehicle technology.show more

Genesis AI just unveiled Eno. It's humanoid robot that... challenges everything the industry assumed about what robots should look like. Forbes just called it 'the iPhone moment for humanoid robots'. No head. No face. No exposed motors or cables. 22 degrees of freedom per hand with different finger lengths (like actual human hands). Back-drivable for safety. Onboard cameras and tactile sensors. In demos: bundling wires with tape (genuinely hard, tape is sticky and unpredictable), performing lab automation with millimeter precision on unmodified equipment. Optional chest screen shows the robot's reasoning before it acts, a visual window into its mind to build trust. Powered by Genesis AI GENE foundation model. Payload 3-5kg per arm, 4-6 hours battery. Industrial deployments late 2026, homes much later. ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →show more