Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

The RSF-5B IDT Sumpermini actuator with an integrated servo drive. | Source: Harmonic Drive Selecting the right motion architecture is one of the most important design decisions in robotics. At RoboBusiness 2026, Marcel Almonte, a mechatronics applications engineer at Harmonic Drive, will lead the session, “Integrated Drive Actuator Design: Combining Gearheads, Motor, Drive, and Sensors for Smarter Motion.” RoboBusiness will take place Oct. 20 and 21 in Santa Clara, Calif. Almonte will give his talk on the first day of the show at 10:30 a.m. PT. The session will examine the tradeoffs between component-level and integrated actuator architectures, helping engineers understand when each approach delivers the best balance of performance, flexibility, and development efficiency. Attendees will learn how integrated actuators can reduce engineering effort by simplifying system integration, minimizing cabling complexity, shortening testing and commissioning, and accelerating t...

Last month, I went to York to build a robot. I came back with a robot, a tiny trophy-shaped sense of achievement, and somehow a few new friends. From 25th-27th August, I joined the UK RAS STEPS MicroMaze Robot Hackathon at the Institute for Safe Autonomy, University of York. The brief sounded simple: build a small autonomous robot, then make it survive increasingly difficult mazes. Simple… right? Until you actually have to build one. Over three days, Emily, Joolz and I went from a box of parts and a laser-cut chassis to a robot that could actually make its way through a maze. There were sensors, motors, Raspberry Pi Pico W, MicroPython, plenty of debugging and, of course, the occasional, “Why is it doing THAT?” But to be honest, looking back, the technical part wasn’t even my favourite bit. Somewhere between building, debugging, failed runs and laughing at our own mistakes, the three of us went from a team that had just met to people I now genuinely consider friends. ...

Pegasus provides temporal context, spatial reasoning, and judgement on whether a task was completed. Source: TwelveLabs As the physical world rapidly digitalizes, AI teams are gathering vast amounts of complex video, but transforming raw footage into actionable models remains a critical challenge, according to TwelveLabs Inc. The company today released its Pegasus 1.6 model with added capabilities for understanding and navigating complex real-world environments. “Our mission has always been to help machines understand how the world works through video,” stated Jae Lee, co-founder and CEO of TwelveLabs. “Physical AI is the next expression of that mission. Most of what people know about doing physical work, such as a changing grip or a recovery after something slips, has never been captured in a form a machine can learn from.” “With our newest model release, we can now turn that footage into structured, reviewable knowledge, so robotics and physical AI tea...

NVIDIA has partnered with Hugging Face to ensure its role in physical AI development. Source: NVIDIA The physical AI developers determined not to rely on NVIDIA have had some wins lately. OpenAI shipped its own chip. Anthropic stood up an in-house silicon team with salaries that make FAANG recruiters wince. Also, Advanced Micro Devices acquired World Labs for $8.2 billion, Qualcomm has collaborated with Liquid AI on embedded agents, and Skild AI launched the S1 foundation model. In addition, Google DeepMind integrated Gemini Robotics 2 into Apptronik ‘s Apollo 2 humanoid. And then, almost politely, NVIDIA said it plans to spend $12.9 billion — the biggest acquisition in the company ‘s history — buying Hugging Face, the place where the planet’s developers go to pick which model to run. Cute war. NVIDIA just bought the battlefield. Chasing chips focuses on the wrong layer Several headlines have read “Labs race to cut NVIDIA loose.” Adorable fra...

The OV Spark in production at MEC. | Source: Overview AI Overview AI today launched the OV Spark and OV Spark Pro. The new cameras make up a new line of AI inspection cameras with an agentic AI layer that answers questions in plain English. Spark ships with 10 inspection tools that can be mixed and matched in a single recipe. Seven are deep learning AI models: AI Trigger, Alignment, AI Classification, AI Segmentation, AI Count, AI OCR, and Anomaly Detection. The other three are ready to inspect out of the box, with the option to add images when an inspection needs training. This includes for barcodes, measurements, and color match. “In a robot cell, the part doesn’t always land the same way twice,” Christine Chacko, a technical product marketing manager at Overview AI, told The Robot Report . “ OV Spark anchors on features of the part itself, so every inspection region follows it as it shifts or rotates.” “If no part is found, the capture fail...

Bright Factory is an intelligent manufacturing platform connecting design, automation, and data. | Source: Bright Machines Teradyne Inc. today announced a strategic investment in Bright Machines Inc., a builder of AI and data center infrastructure. The companies are also launching a strategic collaboration focused on integrating Teradyne robotics and test technologies with Bright Machines’ manufacturing platform. The move comes as Teradyne has been increasingly investing in AI across its ecosystem. In its most recent earnings statement , the North Reading, Mass.-based company marked its fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Teradyne credited AI as a main driver of its revenue growth. In addition, Universal Robots , a Teradyne subsidiary, recently released its seventh-generation cobot arm , which is designed to take advantage of AI advances. “Physical AI is changing what is possible on the factory floor, and Teradyne and Bright Machines are partnering to accelerate this ...