Weekly Radar

Every week the Radar rounds up the robotics and Physical AI news worth knowing: launches, funding, research and policy. Each story ends with what it means for the data robots learn from.

11 issues, newest first

Embodied AI's light blue AIR humanoid on a wheeled base, reaching into a cardboard box beside a conveyor in a bright factory hall.
Radar· 6 min read · Nov 8, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Nov 2-8, 2026

A humanoid that learns on the job from its operator, Xiaomi's eight-hour factory run, Apple training a humanoid mostly in simulation, and South Korea's national data factory for humanoids.

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A two-armed robot labeled Duo and Apptronik's Apollo humanoid labeled Apollo in a workshop, with colored point-cloud overlays on a tray and on shelf objects, and the words Gemini Robotics ER 2 across the middle.
Radar· 6 min read · Oct 31, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Oct 26-Nov 1, 2026

Google's reasoning model checks whether a task step succeeded, Bleu Robotics wants to teach factory robots from a handful of demonstrations, ROKAE puts force-controlled arms on a real factory line, and a new surgical robot venture keeps the surgeon in control.

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Four views of the same simulated warehouse with racks, a forklift and two workers in hi-vis vests: the rendered scene, a depth map, a color-coded segmentation map, and the scene with bounding boxes around the people and the forklift.
Radar· 6 min read · Oct 25, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Oct 19-25, 2026

Nvidia is releasing human activity data, OpenAI is stepping into hardware, Unitree is building a loop where AI refines its own robot code, and IDC shows humanoids moving from demos to real work.

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A person at a laptop in the foreground while an ABB robot arm behind them lifts a bagged garment out of a grey tote in a sorting cell lit by blue light bars.
Radar· 6 min read · Oct 16, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Oct 12-18, 2026

Germany is reportedly preparing a major state-backed Nvidia partnership, ABB is closing the loop on its fashion-logistics robots, NEURA is giving robots memory, and Hong Kong is building a place to test them all.

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A silver and black UBTECH Walker S Lite humanoid robot standing on a car plant floor beside orange overhead assembly equipment.
Radar· 6 min read · Oct 10, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Oct 5-11, 2026

Humanoids are heading for the logistics floor, robots are getting a memory, and money keeps pouring into the people who film how humans work.

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The Flourish One home robot, white with a green hat-shaped head, wiping a coffee table while a father reads to his child on the sofa.
Radar· 6 min read · Oct 4, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Sep 28-Oct 4, 2026

A home robot you train with your phone, a startup betting on touch, a new five-finger hand, a shipyard trying autonomous welding, and NASA's open testbed.

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NVIDIA Isaac ROS 5.0 announcement graphic for ROSCon 2026, a robot arm and sensor stack on a dark background.
Radar· 5 min read · Sep 28, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Sep 21-27, 2026

An open-source robotics stack learns to work with AI agents, a humanoid gets a real training floor inside a car plant, and the industry gets its first official count from the IFR of how many humanoids have shipped.

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A white UBTECH Walker S humanoid crouching to lift a cardboard box in a bright warehouse, shelves of boxes behind it.
Radar· 6 min read · Sep 22, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Sep 14-20, 2026

A factory in China where robots build robots at a 10-minute pace, a robot brain trained on human hand data alone, a humanoid built to work without a safety cage, and Japan's robot ambulance.

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Unitree's title card for its autonomous sparring demo: a G1 humanoid in boxing gloves squaring up to a human trainer in a ring.
Radar· 6 min read · Sep 12, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Sep 7-13, 2026

A humanoid that spars with no one at the controls, a $100 million warehouse robot raise, Samsung reorganizing to build its own humanoid, and a fresh bet on the layer beneath every robot.

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Nscale's announcement card for its strategic partnership with humanoid robotics company Figure.
Radar· 7 min read · Sep 5, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Aug 31-Sep 6, 2026

Nscale bets $3.5B of compute on Figure, a dual-arm robot ties rebar on a building site, Medtronic puts $700M into surgical robotics, Lightberry opens reservations for a $39,990 humanoid on a Unitree body, and Nvidia pushes real inference to the edge.

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Skild AI's S1 robot gripper potting a plant, from the S1 announcement.
Radar· 6 min read · Aug 30, 2026

This Week in Robotics: Aug 24-30, 2026

Skild's S1 learns from one video, Figure scales human data with Index, humanoids race in Beijing, and XPENG raises to build IRON.

Cindy DizonRead the article →