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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.

Imagine a robot designed to install solar panels with much greater speed and precision than a human. The robot is made from expensive materials and powered by a heavy battery that must be recharged every few hours. If the costs of building and operating the robot outweigh the benefits of the clean energy it helps produce, can it really be considered sustainable? In a 2025 article published in, Aude Billard, head of the Learning Algorithms and Systems Lab in EPFL's School of Engineering and Academic director of the Robotics Center, gives precisely this example to illustrate the tension between robotic performance and sustainability. Roboticists, she argues, can no longer ignore the fact that robots use energy-intensive power systems and electronic components made from finite resources.

China's Unitree soars in market debut as investors bet on humanoid robots China's Unitree Robotics has soared in its market debut, a sign of investors' confidence in Chinese innovation in the burgeoning field of human-like robots. Shares of Unitree surged more than 620 percent on Wednesday as it began trading in Shanghai, lifting the Hangzhou-based company's market capitalisation to as high as 445 billion yuan ($66bn). Unitree, whose main competitors include China's AgiBot and US-based Tesla and Boston Dynamics, had priced its initial public offering at 50.8 yuan per share for a company valuation of about 61 billion yuan ($9bn). The landmark IPO marked the first listing of a humanoid robotics company in mainland China. Unitree, founded in 2016 by engineer Wang Xingxing, is one of China's leading makers of humanoid robots, with its demonstrations of human-like figures performing dancing and martial arts routines capturing widespread attention.

This year, RoboCup took place in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event saw teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. Take a look at what the participants got up to in our round up from social media. RoboCup 2026 officially begins today! A post shared by RoboCup Federation (@robocup.official)

Undergrads' weed-killing robot wins top prize A team of Cornell undergraduates beat 95 other teams to take the grand prize at The Farm Robotics Challenge with their invention: an autonomous robot that kills weeds with electricity. Their robot can travel through a vineyard or orchard without a human operator, zapping weeds with a small amount of electricity, saving labor and energy and preventing crop loss, without the use of herbicides. Led by Andrew James, an agricultural sciences major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), the team of agricultural specialists and engineers studied the existing electrical weeding technology, developed their own low-energy system and built a working prototype over the course of four intense months. Natalia Kurz, a biological engineering major in CALS, said the project required a lot of late nights. "There were fears for us, like, was it just going to be for nothing?"

This year, RoboCup took place in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event saw teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. Take a look at what the participants got up to in our round up from social media. RoboCup 2026 officially begins today! A post shared by RoboCup Federation (@robocup.official)

NVIDIA introduces Halos for Robotics, which the company calls the industry's first full-stack safety system for robotics and physical AI operating near people.

The dust at this busy recycling plant is pervasive and the steady noise of hoppers and conveyor belts makes this a challenging environment to work in. The facility in Rainham, east London is owned by Sharp Group, a family-run skip and waste management firm. Along the conveyor belts runs everything you could imagine, from shoes, to old VHS cassettes and blocks of concrete. The team here processes up to 280,000 tonnes of mixed recycling every year with 24 agency workers on its rapid conveyor belts. This is a hazardous industry.

Humanoid home robots are on the market - but do we really want them? Last year, Norwegian-US tech company 1X announced a strange new product: "the world's first consumer-ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home". Standing 168 centimetres tall and weighing in at 30 kilograms, the US$20,000 Neo bot promises to automate common household chores such as folding laundry and loading the dishwasher. Neo has a built-in artificial intelligence (AI) system, but for tricky tasks it requires a 1X employee wearing a virtual reality helmet to remotely take over the robot. The operator can see whatever the bot does inside your house, and the process is recorded for future learning.