A visit to Unitree's Hangzhou factory revealed that most actuator production still relies on human workers using traditional winding machines, with only one or two automated lines in operation. Unitree's own IPO prospectus describes its viral robot-assembly video as a pilot project, noting assembly is 'currently mainly manual.' Financial filings show the company's total machinery was valued at roughly $1.7 million despite producing nearly 32,000 robots in 2025, implying about $50 of equipment per robot.
josef.cn
· 2026-11-07
Meta has indefinitely delayed changes to its commercial terms that would have required Facebook Business account holders to allow extensive AI training on any external websites linked from their pages. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters the company is pausing the changes to keep engaging with stakeholders, and that existing terms remain in effect for now.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-11-06
Researchers have developed a manual toothbrush with bristles made from a specially stretched and heated polymer that generates an electrical charge when bent during brushing. That charge reacts with saliva to produce reactive oxygen species that damage bacterial cell membranes, according to a study published in Science Advances. The bristles reabsorb the charge when they relax, allowing the effect to repeat with each stroke.
nature.com
· 2026-11-05
German startup Neura Robotics operates a Munich facility where up to 100 humanoid robots from various companies practice physical tasks like stacking boxes, picking up parts, and gripping objects, guided remotely by human trainers. The New York Times was given first-ever media access to the site, which Neura uses to generate real-world training data that doesn't exist in the volumes available to language models. Neura, which raised up to $1.4 billion from investors including Nvidia and Amazon in June, already runs a similar gym in Hangzhou, China, and plans five such facilities globally by the end of next year.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-31
Google has joined Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in committing to recognize a proposed robots.txt directive that lets publishers block AI training crawlers with a single common signal instead of separate rules per company. The proposal, authored by Anthropic's Kevin Kelley and under consideration at the IETF, introduces a dedicated user-agent tag that can block or selectively allow scraping for AI training without affecting normal search indexing. Anthropic has already begun honoring it, Microsoft and Google plan support in 2027, and OpenAI says it will implement it within months.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-31
Krafton, the maker of PUBG, says it plans to use its experience building AI game teammates to help humanoid robots better understand and interact with people. The move comes as investment pours into humanoid robotics, with companies like Figure and Skild AI recently raising over $1 billion each to develop machines capable of physical work.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-30
The four AI companies say they will support a new 'policy token' signal, proposed by Anthropic's Kevin Kelley through the Internet Engineering Task Force, that lets publishers set AI training preferences once within their robots.txt file rather than contacting each company separately. Anthropic has already adopted the signal, OpenAI says it will implement it, and Google and Microsoft plan to support it next year, with Microsoft also offering separate controls for AI training versus AI grounding.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-30
President Trump signed an October 28 proclamation declaring imports of foreign-made industrial robots a threat to national security, directing new negotiations with trading partners and leaving open the possibility of future tariffs. The order cites a Commerce Department investigation under Secretary Howard Lutnick that found such imports pose risks to the US industrial base and create cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Major manufacturers including GM, Ford, Tesla, Boeing and Lockheed Martin rely heavily on these imported robots for production.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-29
Speaking after GM's New York event unveiling its AI-driven 'intelligence-defined vehicle' strategy, chief product officer Sterling Anderson said he does not believe humanoid robots are the right tool for building cars. The broader roadmap centers on centralized computing, new battery chemistries, and virtualized engineering aimed at cutting vehicle development time roughly in half.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-27
Chicago residents have filed separate lawsuits against delivery robot companies Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics, alleging their sidewalk robots used onboard cameras and LIDAR sensors to capture biometric data—including images of hands, bodies, and faces—without consent. One plaintiff says a human operator remotely watched his delivery, while another claims his data could be retained for AI training or shared with third parties. Coco has called the suit against it frivolous, denying it collected biometric data in Chicago.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-25
Meta edited the business terms for its platform, removing explicit language saying it could 'train' AI models on content from linked news websites, after publishers objected. The revised terms, effective October 30th, still permit Meta to use scraped content to 'develop' business products, a term attorneys say is undefined and broad.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-22
Elon Musk said on SpaceX's latest earnings call that there is
theverge.com
· 2026-10-22
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