Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

At the 2026 Robotics Summit & Expo, attendees will once again have the opportunity to meet some of the top innovators in robotics at the RBR50 Gala. The event will honor this year’s RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award Winners, and some of the top names in the industry will be in attendance. The  RBR50 Gala will be on May 27 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET at the Thomas M. Menino Boston Convention and Exhibition Center at the end of the first day of the Robotics Summit & Expo . The gala offers a chance to connect with the world’s leading robotics innovators. It’s also an evening to honor leading roboticists and their impressive achievements. Some of the categories for the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards include: Robot of the Year : Amazon Vulcan’s sense of touch automates warehouse picking and stowing Startup of the Year : Physical Intelligence ‘s PI models change how robots learn Application of the Year : Harvard University ‘s Soft Exoskeleton is a wearable robot that aids ...

By Adam Zewe Inside a giant autonomous warehouse, hundreds of robots dart down aisles as they collect and distribute items to fulfill a steady stream of customer orders. In this busy environment, even small traffic jams or minor collisions can snowball into massive slowdowns. To avoid such an avalanche of inefficiencies, researchers from MIT and the tech firm Symbotic developed a new method that automatically keeps a fleet of robots moving smoothly. Their method learns which robots should go first at each moment, based on how congestion is forming, and adapts to prioritize robots that are about to get stuck. In this way, the system can reroute robots in advance to avoid bottlenecks. The hybrid system utilizes deep reinforcement learning, a powerful artificial intelligence method for solving complex problems, to figure out which robots should be prioritized. Then, a fast and reliable planning algorithm feeds instructions to the robots, enabling them to respond rapidly in constantly ...

Claire chatted to Rich Walker from Shadow Robot Company about their advanced robotic hands for research and industry. Rich Walker has been at Shadow Robot since long before it was a company, working initially on software and systems engineering before “jumping the fence” into management. He led Shadow Robot’s engagement with a number of R&D initiatives in UK and across Europe, as well as developing proof-of-concept projects for dexterous robotics with a number of commercial organisations. Rich represents robotics SMEs at the European level as one of the Directors of euRobotics, as well as maintaining Shadow Robot’s research engagements and policy programme. View Source

AGIBOT said its G2 robot is made with 100% automotive-grade components and has full machine IP42 protection. | Source: AGIBOT AGIBOT this week announced it deployed its AGIBOT G2 robots into a live consumer electronics precision manufacturing environment operated by Longcheer Technology. With the deployment, AGIBOT said it has achieved large-scale industrial implementation of embodied AI systems within core production workflows in consumer electronics manufacturing. Longcheer has integrated multiple AGIBOT G2 robots into its tablet production lines. Here, the robots work alongside human operators in real manufacturing environments. AGIBOT said the deployment marks a transition of embodied AI from laboratory demonstration to stable, scalable industrial deployment. “2026 marks the beginning of large-scale deployment for embodied intelligence,” said Dr. Yao Maoqing, a partner, senior vice president, and president of the embodied business unit at AGIBOT. “This project demonstrates t...

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...

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...