Robots, autonomous vehicles, and AI acting in the physical world.
Current topic Robotics & Physical AI · 16 Switch topic
Latest stories
-
Travis Kalanick's Atoms might be getting into the robotaxi business
Atoms, the robotics startup founded by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, is exploring a move into the robotaxi business. The company raised $1.7 billion this summer in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, and Uber separately invested $100 million in it. Kalanick calls the expansion "unfinished business" from his Uber days.
-
Inside Meta's push to put robots to work in data centers
Meta is testing robots from vendors including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB to handle tasks like plugging in cables and resetting servers inside its data centers, according to current and former employees. In one experiment, a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm is being evaluated for power-cycling servers, while another robot is being tested to swap networking cables. One Meta data center worker, saying "we thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore," estimated the robots could replace up to 80% of certain workers' tasks if the effort succeeds.
-
Anthropic wants to do for physical hardware what its Model Context Protocol did for software
Anthropic unveiled the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), which lets AI agents control physical devices like microscopes and robotic arms through a unified interface. It extends Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), which gave AI standardized access to software tools and data, into the physical world. A single reusable MHS driver replaces the custom integration work each device used to require, with a goal of cutting connection time from weeks or months to hours or minutes.
-
Inside Meta’s Push to Put Robots to Work in Data Centers
Meta is testing robots from several vendors inside its data centers that can swap networking cables and power-cycle servers. One data center worker estimated that if the robots succeed, they could replace up to 80% of some people's workloads. Meta is piloting robots from Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB in Iowa, Virginia, and Ohio, though for now they're slower than humans and still work under supervision.
-
Anthropic Unveils 'MHS,' a Physical-AI Version of MCP for Connecting AI Agents to Hardware
Anthropic unveiled the Model Hardware Standard (MHS) on August 27, a common specification that lets AI agents directly understand and control physical lab equipment, from microscopes to liquid handlers to robotic arms, instead of needing custom integration code for each device. Building that integration used to take weeks or months per device; Anthropic says MHS aims to cut it to hours or minutes. The company describes MHS as a physical-world counterpart to MCP, its software connection standard, with AWS, Danaher, Doosan Robotics, Universal Robots, and Hugging Face signed on as early partners.
-
This Is How Anthropic Thinks AI Agents Should Navigate the Physical World
Anthropic unveiled the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a new framework that lets AI agents directly control physical lab equipment like microscopes, liquid-handling machines, quantum computing hardware, and robot arms. Instead of writing custom integration code for each device from a different manufacturer, MHS gives them one common interface, which Anthropic says can cut experiment setup time from weeks or months down to hours or minutes. A demo video shows Claude figuring out, without being specifically trained, how to direct a robot arm to pick up an aluminum can.
-
I spent a day at a robot "carnival" in Shanghai. Here's what I saw.
A MIT Technology Review reporter visited a robot "carnival" at an R&D center outside Shanghai, where more than 100 companies showed off their machines. Demonstrations included DexForce's coffee-making humanoid, a robotic arm folding laundry, quadruped robots training to climb stairs, and humanoids performing drunken-boxing routines and backflips. About 90% of the roughly 13,000 two-armed, two-legged humanoid robots shipped worldwide in 2025 were made in China.
-
Former SpaceX engineers are building a robotic factory for making steel parts
Three former SpaceX engineers launched 1872, which opened its Factory One robotic facility in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 22. Using AI software and robots, the startup builds steel skids — movable foundation frames — to supply AI data center and small modular reactor construction projects. With the American Welding Society projecting a need for 320,500 new welders by 2029, 1872 aims to close that labor gap through automation.
-
What happens when a kid's robot best friend dies?
Moxie, a child-companion AI robot launched in 2020 to help neurodivergent kids — particularly those on the autism spectrum — build social skills, went dark in 2024 when developer Embodied shut down and its cloud-dependent robots stopped working. A new investor relaunched Moxie in 2025, only for the company to announce another shutdown that same year, forcing emotionally attached children through a second loss.
-
The Next Big Influencer Is This 4-Foot-Tall Robot From China
Unitree's G1 humanoid robot has become an unlikely social-media star. In Poland, a G1 wired to a large language model for live conversation — nicknamed "Edward" — has racked up over a million followers and 4 billion views, and a 24-year-old in Miami paid $66,000 for a fully-loaded version to bring to World Cup after-parties. Unitree is going public on China's stock market in about two weeks; it shipped 5,511 humanoids in 2025 at an average price under $25,000 and turned profitable for the first time.
August 20262
July 20264
- Gemini Robotics ER 2: powering robotics with video understanding, task orchestration, and multi-robot collaboration ↗
- At Waymo, an AI project isn't ready until its evals are — not when the model performs well ↗
- Enigma raises $71M to make controlling a robot as easy as adjusting the volume ↗
- Hyundai claims humanoid robot plan is not part of talks with striking workers ↗