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UBTECH Robotics has signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Government of Ras Al Khaimah’s Office of International Relations to establish a comprehensive cooperation framework for advanced humanoid robot research and development, real-world testing and system deployment, and to advance development and application of humanoid robot technologies suited to the Gulf region. The signing was attended by Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah; Mohamed Abdulrahman Al Hawi, Undersecretary of the UAE Ministry of Investment; Ouyang Yongqin, advisor for Greater China affairs at the Ras Al Khaimah Ruler’s Office; Zhang Ju, chief financial officer of UBTECH Robotics; and Chen Xiaoyun, overseas sales director of UBTECH Robotics. Under the plan, UBTECH will...

Singapore-based embodied AI startup Ropedia said it has released Ropedia W0, a cross-embodiment mobile manipulation world model developed with researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Duke University, the University of California San Diego and Tsinghua University. The model uses a unified action representation to predict first-person future scene changes after actions by humans, robotic arms and humanoid robots, allowing one model to cover different robot embodiments. Ropedia said W0 ranked first across five evaluation benchmarks and 11 tests. In the Ψ₀ and ω-HOME benchmarks, W0 outperformed comparison models trained on full data without post-training, the company said. On the DreamDojo official benchmark, W0 exceeded DreamDojo trained on full data using only 1% of post-training data. The model takes initial frames, text...

SoftBank is considering an acquisition of Allied Universal that would value the security services company’s equity at up to $18 billion, with talks still at an early stage. The potential deal is linked to Masayoshi Son’s robotics investment push. Reuters reported that SoftBank hopes robots will eventually take on some security duties and replace some employees. Allied Universal has about 800,000 employees worldwide and annual revenue of about $23 billion, according to information the company disclosed this year. It operates in more than 100 countries and serves more than 400 Fortune 500 companies across commercial real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and data centers. In January, SoftBank led a $1.4 billion Series C funding round for Skild AI, valuing the robot-model...

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) on Friday unveiled the second-generation Roadster, an electric sports car equipped with a cold-gas propulsion system developed with SpaceX and a fan-based downforce system that the company said can allow brief lift-offs and aerial maneuvers. Tesla called it “the last best driver’s car.” At a special event at SpaceX’s test site in McGregor, Texas, CEO Elon Musk and his team demonstrated the car. Tesla said the original 2008 Roadster had one goal: to prove electric vehicles could be fast, sexy and desirable. The second-generation model, it said, marks a new moment: the best among the last human-driven cars. The Roadster first drove onto a C-shaped ramp and stopped midway on the vertical section, hanging upside down. It...

Factories worldwide installed 603,000 new industrial robots in 2025, up 11% from a year earlier, while the global operational stock surpassed 5 million units, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said. China is setting the pace. Chinese manufacturers installed 195,000 robots domestically, giving them a 55% share of installations in their home market. The global picture is becoming more uneven: China is driving a large share of new installations, the United States is expanding, and Europe is advancing at a slower clip. For robotics companies targeting Europe, the focus may increasingly shift to identifying the factories, industries and applications where automation can address measurable operational challenges. China remained the largest market by far, installing about 354,000 robots, a 20% year-on-year...

U.S. humanoid robot maker Figure AI released a video on Sept. 30 showing several retired Figure 02 robots jumping into molten steel, in a farewell staged with “Terminator” star Arnold Schwarzenegger and intended to mark the company’s shift to newer models. The company said the footage was not AI-generated. It trained the robots to jump, shipped them to Finland and placed them into molten metal. In the video, multiple Figure 02 robots stand at the edge of a furnace, look into the molten steel, back away, run and leap in. Another robot is lowered by chain and raises a mechanical thumb before being submerged. Schwarzenegger, who starred in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” took part and said: “Hasta la vista, Figure...

Skild AI has unveiled a new post-training approach for embodied intelligence that uses physical self-play to teach humanoid robots highly dynamic skills. In a demonstration centered on soccer, the company showed a robot defending, dribbling past opponents and scoring—abilities acquired largely through self-competition rather than hand-coded rewards. The robot tracks the ball closely and denies the human opponent possession. After briefly losing focus and conceding an interception, it recovers, turns, runs with the ball and finishes into the goal. The significance is not robot soccer itself, but the use of physical self-play. Most robot foundation models are pretrained on human data. Skild’s S1 model, released last month, follows that pattern and can learn tasks from in-context demonstrations, similar to prompt-based...

The global market value of industrial robot installations has reached an all-time high of $16.7 billion, according to the International Federation of Robotics, or IFR. The Frankfurt, Germany-based organization predicted that a number of technological innovations, market forces, and new fields of business will drive future demand. Here are the top five trends the IFR identified for the robotics industry in 2026. 1. AI gives robots greater autonomy Robots that use artificial intelligence to work independently are becoming more common. The main benefit of AI in this context is the increased autonomy of robots empowered by AI. Different types of AI drive this trend: Analytical AI helps to process large datasets, detect patterns, and provide actionable insights. For example, it...

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...

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...