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Iván Hernández Dalas: Skild acquires Fetch Robotics assets from Zebra

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In a move to bridge the gap between foundation AI and industrial hardware, Skild AI has acquired the robotics division of Zebra Technologies (formerly Fetch Robotics). Skild said the acquisition will help it deploy its “omni-bodied” intelligence layer across the global logistics sector. By integrating its hardware-agnostic AI “brain” with Zebra’s battle-tested warehouse platforms, the acquisition aims to transform task-specific automation into a unified, autonomous fulfillment ecosystem while fueling Skild AI’s proprietary data flywheel. In a blog article on the Skild website, the company outlined a few details of the acquisition. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Skild wrote that the acquisition signals a pivot away from “brittle,” task-oriented robotics toward a unified intelligence layer capable of controlling diverse forms of machines. By merging its hardware-agnostic foundation model with Zebra’s established Symmetry orchestration platform, Skild AI ai...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Antioch raises funding to bring ‘software speed’ to robot development

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Antioch says simulation can help robot developers overcome testing bottlenecks. Source: Antioch Validating a robot’s behavior in the real world typically means renting physical space, manually staging environments, and resetting hardware between every run, according to Antioch. It’s expensive, slow, and covers only a fraction of the scenarios a system will face in production, said the startup. Antioch today said it has raised $8.5 million to move development and evaluation of autonomous systems out of the physical world and into cloud-based simulation. The company ‘s stated goal is to eliminate the need for hardware and elaborate physical testing. “Robotics teams are spending weeks staging warehouses and investing millions into test facilities to validate their systems,” said Antioch co-founder Harry Mellsop, who previously worked on Tesla ‘s Autopilot team. “Meanwhile, companies like Tesla, Waymo, and Anduril spend hundreds of millions a year on simulation infrastructure to minim...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Stereotaxis to acquire Robocath for up to $45M

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The next-generation Robocath surgical robot is in use during a first-in-human trial. Stereotaxis has agreed to acquire the technology. | Source: Robocath Stereotaxis announced today that it agreed to acquire surgical robot developer Robocath. The transaction includes an upfront payment of $20 million and additional contingent payments of up to $25 million tied to regulatory and commercial milestones, including FDA clearance of the company’s next-generation robotic technology. “Robocath represents a highly strategic addition to Stereotaxis, amplifying and accelerating our strategy as the leading robotic platform for the broad spectrum of endovascular procedures. By combining our complementary robotic mechanisms, we are creating a uniquely capable platform that expands our reach across interventional medicine,” David Fischel, Stereotaxis chair and CEO, said. “This transaction accelerates our strategy, enhances our technological leadership, provides attractive commercial synergies, o...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Tesla to share its roadmap for building and scaling AMRs at the Robotics Summit & Expo

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Source: Adobe Stock Most U.S. factories were built long before automation was feasible, yet they produce the majority of American manufacturing output. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for autonomous mobile robots ( AMRs ). These legacy facilities rely heavily on manual material transport, fragmented control systems, and labor-intensive routing, resulting in inefficiencies that limit throughput, safety, and operational flexibility. At the Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 27-28, 2026, Joshua Joseph, an AMR deployment engineer at Tesla , will lead the talk, “Tesla’s Roadmap for Scaling AMRs in Legacy U.S. Factories.” This session presents a practical, data-driven roadmap for deploying AMRs in legacy manufacturing environments. It will be grounded in pilot programs and scaled deployments at Tesla’s high-volume electric vehicle operations. Rather than treating AMRs as standalone tools, the talk reframes them as infrastructure. AMRs serve as a connecti...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Boston Dynamics and Google Deepmind are using Gemini to make Spot smarter

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Boston Dynamics’ Spot quadruped equipped with AIVI-Learning. | Source: Boston Dynamics Boston Dynamics today announced it is partnering with Google Cloud and Google DeepMind to integrate Gemini and Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 into Orbit AIVI -Learning. The robotics developer said the integration will allow it to deliver a more sophisticated, intuitive, and powerful AI experience. Industrial environments are incredibly complex, and the assets Boston Dynamics’ customers manage require more than just basic object recognition. The company said Gemini will bring better reasoning and adaptability to AIVI-Learning. Boston Dynamics Spot and Orbit now continuously learn about the facility they’re deployed in with unprecedented depth. This, the company said, allows for higher-order reasoning and more complex visual analysis. DeepMind released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 today. The upgraded reasoning-first model features enhanced reasoning and multi-view understanding, DeepMind said. It specializes...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Ouster releases Stereolabs ZED X Nano wrist-mounted camera

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Ouster provides digital lidar, cameras, AI compute, sensor fusion and perception software, and AI models. | Source: Ouster Ouster, Inc. yesterday released Stereolabs ZED X Nano, a compact wrist-mount stereo camera engineered for robotic manipulation, imitation learning, and high-throughput data collection. “Building on Stereolabs leadership in AI vision and perception solutions, the ZED X Nano allows us to go deeper into the industrial and robotics markets to win new sockets that require smaller form-factor placements,” said Ouster CEO Angus Pacala. “The future of Physical AI depends on massive amounts of high-quality, low-latency image data collected at the edge. With the ZED X Nano, we’re giving roboticists a major upgrade to their vision systems, enabling machines to sense, think, act, and learn with unprecedented precision.” As robotics teams scale imitation learning and reinforcement learning for manipulation tasks, RGB image quality and end-to-end capture latency have becom...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: What I’ve learned from 25 years of automated science, and what the future holds: an interview with Ross King

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AIhub is excited to launch a new series, speaking with leading researchers to explore the breakthroughs driving AI and the reality of the future promises – to give you an inside perspective on the headlines. The first interviewee is Ross King, who created the first robot scientist back in 2009. He spoke to us about the nature of scientific discovery, the role AI has to play, and his recent work in DNA computing. Automated science is a really exciting area, and it feels like everyone’s talking about it at the moment – e.g. AlphaFold sharing the 2024 Nobel Prize. But you’ve been working in this field for many years now. In 2009 you developed Adam, the first robot scientist to generate novel scientific knowledge. Could you tell me some more about that? So the history goes back to before Adam. Back in the late 1990s, I moved from a postdoc at what was then the Imperial Cancer Research Fund – now Cancer Research UK – and got my first academic job at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. ...
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