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Tech News
Reuters reports that Anthropic, the AI company known for publicly warning about the risk of AI-assisted bioweapon design, has quietly established a physical wet lab in the US where its Claude model directs robotic assistants through biology experiments. The setup reportedly lets Claude plan and oversee lab procedures with minimal human intervention.
Amazon has discounted the Mammotion LUBA Mini 2 AWD 1500H robot lawn mower with garage by $300, bringing its price to $1,699 from a $1,999 list price. This marks the mower's lowest price in roughly six months, a 15% reduction.
Robotics startup Vsim, founded by former Nvidia Isaac Sim engineers Lu and Storey, has built a high-performance training simulator optimized for modern GPU chips rather than older algorithms from the 1970s and 80s. The resulting software is efficient enough to run directly on the hardware of their robot Freddo, letting it simulate tens of thousands of possible near-future scenarios in real time while moving.
Gorai is a Go-based robotics platform that treats every robot as a distributed system, connecting sensors and actuators as discoverable services over a NATS messaging mesh rather than hard-wired components. It introduces NCP, a NATS-native capability protocol similar in spirit to MCP, letting AI agents or deterministic controllers perceive and act on hardware without a dedicated MCP server. The project supports 'Composite Robots' that can span multiple physical machines acting as one logical unit, with full documentation and architecture guides published in a companion repository.
Dyson has released three new robot vacuums under its Nurovi line: the R1 Nurovi Dry ($550), R2 Nurovi Wash + Dry ($700), and R3 Nurovi Spot+Scrub UV ($1,200). All three share a redesigned light gray look, lidar-based navigation replacing the previous camera system, and a Twin-Capture system for cleaning both carpets and hard floors, with the top model adding UV stain detection. The R2 will be Costco-exclusive, while the R1 and R3 sell through Dyson's website and other retailers.
A VicOne-sponsored analysis highlights how physical AI systems—robots that use multimodal sensors and AI models to perceive and act—can be manipulated through corrupted training data, tampered infrastructure, or spoofed real-time sensor input, without any visible malfunction. It cites BadVLA, a NeurIPS 2025 study showing how a hidden trigger embedded in a Vision-Language-Action model can cause a robot to behave normally until the trigger appears, then subtly alter its physical movements.
WIRED updated its annual robot vacuum roundup for 2026, testing new models from Shark, Eufy, Roborock and other brands across a multi-story home with kids and pets. The update also notes a new FCC ban that will affect future robot vacuum designs and features going forward.
Agility Robotics has introduced Digit 5, a humanoid robot equipped with a safety system that lets it detect nearby humans and respond by moving away, freezing in place, or crouching into a seated position. Early access is planned for the first half of 2027, with wider availability by year's end, and the robot will be produced at Agility's retooled RoboFab facility in Salem, Oregon.
A journalist bought a quadruped robot from Chinese manufacturer Unitree and used it to commute nearly four miles round-trip in Washington, DC, drawing crowds and curious questions along the way. On the uphill afternoon walk home in 87°F heat, the robot's battery dropped to 5% and its internal temperature hit 84°C before it collapsed onto its back just steps from the front door.
Mecka AI, a startup that pays people to record themselves performing everyday tasks to generate motion data for training humanoid robots, is close to finalizing a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital valuing the company at roughly $500 million. The deal comes just three months after Mecka raised $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures, though the exact size of the new round remains unknown and terms could still change.
Roborock's flagship robot mower, sold as the X120H Lidar in the US and Z120 Lidar in the UK, uses Lidar and AI vision instead of satellite navigation, paired with 4G connectivity and a three-year data plan. It offers four-wheel drive with independently pivoting front wheels, a 9.5-inch cutting deck, coverage up to 21,500 square feet, and the ability to mow slopes as steep as 39 degrees, running 110 minutes per charge.
DoorDash's internal labs division has been recognized as Innovation Team of the Year after building the autonomous delivery robot Dot, which launched commercially in fall 2025. The cross-functional team created a platform that plugs directly into delivery workflows while accounting for local merchants' order-fulfillment capacity, taking the project from concept to market in roughly three years.