The Robot I Didn't Expect to Build Our articles, videos, and infographics inform our readers about developments in technology, engineering, and science. A public charity, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Access to Spectrum's Digital Edition is exclusive for IEEE Members Create an account to access more content and features on IEEE Spectrum, including the ability to save articles to read later, download Spectrum Collections, and participate in conversations with readers and editors. For more exclusive content and features, consider Joining IEEE . Join the world's largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to all of Spectrum's articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits. Join the world's largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to this e-book plus all of articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits.

Trending Now Say More Look Up In My Bag Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Mashable Selects Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook AI at School Safety Net All Series The public assault was reportedly livestreamed. Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Police are figuring out how to treat sexual harassment at the hands of a robot. Generative AI is enabling a tidal wave of nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material . Social media algorithms are exacerbating online harassment and the doxxing of rape survivors .

At the recent World Humanoid Robot Games 2026 in Beijing, robots sprinted, boxed, played football and tackled tasks inspired by factories, restaurants and emergency situations. The robot Tiangong Ultra even completed the 100 metres in 8.64 seconds, quicker than Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record. But if we really want to know whether humanoid robots are ready for everyday life, a far less glamorous challenge may tell us more: doing the laundry. Can a robot take a crumpled T-shirt from a laundry basket, work out which way round it is, fold it neatly and recover when the sleeve slips from its hand? No robot system can yet reliably handle the whole laundry process, from carrying a basket to the washing machine and sorting clothes for different programmes to taking them out, hanging them to dry, folding and ironing them.

A robot shaped like a human--white with a black head and torso--has been popping up on video feeds. Perhaps you've seen it dance or pass popcorn, put trash in a bin, vacuum, or press the button of a microwave. Or maybe you've watched it fall backward while handing out water bottles or struggle to iron a shirt. This would be Tesla's Optimus, an AI-powered humanoid robot that Elon Musk, the company's CEO, believes will be "not just Tesla's biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever," headed to work on factory floors and, later, in our homes. Eventually it "will have human and then superhuman dexterity," he told shareholders in July. Optimus robots could automate almost all human labor--from hauling sheet metal to folding laundry--for as little as $20,000 each, Musk argues. Speaking at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January, he predicted they could be on sale to the public by the end of 2027.

Download this complimentary White Paper today! This White Paper gives robotics researchers and engineers an overview of a new large-scale motion capture dataset built to close the data gap limiting humanoid robot learning. It also shows how policies trained on the dataset transfer to a real humanoid robot.   What you will learn about:  Why humanoid robot learning, a central problem in embodied AI and Physical AI, needs data that internet video and existing motion capture datasets cannot provide.  How FrameNet, a linguistic framework for human action, can guide motion capture collection to systematically cover a broad range of whole-body motion.  Why synchronized object trajectories and meshes make human-object interaction data useful for teaching robots real-world tasks such as carrying, pushing, and pulling.  How reinforcement learning policies trained on this motion capture data improve with scale, and how sim-to-real transfer carries them onto a physical humanoid robot.    Click 'LOOK INSIDE' to Download Now.

Kodiak's self-driving trucks are hitting the highways, and I took a ride in one Kodiak is preparing to put fully driverless semis on highways, starting with Ikea. We took a ride to see the technology in action.

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Say More Look Up Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Mashable Selects In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now All Series An AI robotics company programmed its bots to take a dive into molten steel, and the footage is wild. Timothy Beck Werth is the Tech Editor at Mashable, where he leads coverage and assignments for the Tech and Shopping verticals. Tim has over 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, and he has particular experience covering and testing consumer technology, smart home gadgets, and men's grooming and style products. Previously, he was the Managing Editor and then Site Director of SPY.com, a men's product review and lifestyle website. As a writer for GQ, he covered everything from bull-riding competitions to the best Legos for adults, and he's also contributed to publications such as The Daily Beast, Gear Patrol, and The Awl. Meet the new humanoid with'smart skin' (I touched it) 4:23 Google DeepMind tests Gemini Robotics 2 doing chores around the house, and the future looks bright!

Technology Engineering Severed robot hand looks like a futuristic Thing from'The Addams Family' The creepy and kooky robot can type on a keyboard, play a video game, and could help future humanoid robots. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Halloween is just around the corner, which means it's the perfect time to present another undeniably spooky robot . Or, more specifically, an -inspired detached robot hand . Like its gothic sitcom predecessor, this fully articulated appendage can balance on its own fingertips and creep around.

More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. NASA has been working on bipedal robots for over a decade. Valkrie, its early prototype, was completed in 2013. Humans won't be the only ones aboard future NASA missions . At Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, researchers on the agency's Dexterous Robotics Team are working on the next generation of advanced robots to aid crews during their increasingly uncharted journeys to the moon and possibly even Mars .