Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

Warp Sciences plans to create chemistry infrastructure for sovereign biotech. Source: deni AI, Adobe Stock Warp Sciences last week emerged from stealth with $215 million in funding to create infrastructure that enables biotech and pharmaceutical companies to discover new medicines faster. The startup said it is building a U.S.-based chemistry contract research organization, or CRO, to bring together chemists, robotics, and AI to make and test molecules for research teams. The South San Francisco-based company ‘s stated goal is to provide experimental data to train better AI that in turn enables more capable labs, giving scientists the ability to test more ideas. “AI has dramatically accelerated software engineering and mathematics, but it has yet to make the same impact in the physical sciences,” stated Kevin Weil , co-founder and CEO of Warp Sciences. “Chemistry and biology move forward when you make something, test it and learn from the result.” “If we want to b...

Key Takeaways WorldOracle is a benchmark for action-conditioned world models (ACWMs) that scores each model’s predicted rollout against the paired real-world execution, with both starting from the same initial observations and following the same action sequence. Seven representative models were evaluated; arm motion was predicted relatively well, but object positions and movements often deviated from reality, and performance dropped over complete operation sequences. The platform opened to developers on October 16 and accepts both open-weight and closed-source models. In one WorldOracle case, the robot’s grasp missed, yet the world model predicted a successful pick. Credit: [WorldOracle team / AgiBot] In one case showcased by WorldOracle, a robot’s grasp missed, yet the world model predicted that the robot had successfully picked up the fruit. Given the initial frame and action sequence of a real manipulation episode, the model generated a rollout that looked pl...

Team NimbRo’s robot in action during the RoboCup@Home competition at RoboCup 2026. Raphael leads the team. Raphael Memmesheimer has been successfully competing in the RoboCup@Home league winning the RoboCup@Home competition five times. He and his colleagues won the best paper award at RoboCup 2026 for their work “Efficient Image Annotation via Semi-Supervised Object Segmentation with Label Propagation” . We caught up with Raphael to find out more about this research, his history with RoboCup, and the challenges of the @Home competition. Could you start by telling us how you got involved with RoboCup@Home? I’ve actually been involved in the @Home league since I was a student, and my first time going to a World Cup for @Home was in 2013. That competition motivated me to do a PhD and infected me in a way that meant I basically aligned my academic career to it. I always return to robot competitions because this is one of the rare places where you can benchmark robots in a rea...

ANYmal X is certified to operate in hazardous atmospheres. Source: ANYbotics Hazardous environments are good use cases for robots, which are expanding into new use cases. ANYbotics AG today launched ANYmal X, which it claimed is “the world’s first legged inspection robot for explosive atmospheres.” The new quadruped is designed to meet strict safety standards in oil, gas , and chemicals, said the company . ANYmal X uses an advanced industrial AI stack to conduct routine autonomous inspections in environments that are dangerous to people, it said. “Four years of pioneering engineering with more than 10 patents went into ANYmal X,” stated Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and CEO of ANYbotics. “Many experts thought a legged robot could never be made safe for explosive atmospheres. “Oil, gas and chemical plants are among the most hazardous and most costly places to operate,” he added. “That makes them the prime case for physical and industrial AI, yet until now...

The Xpanner X1 Piling R6 is an automated pile-driving system for utility-scale solar and battery energy storage sites. | Credit: Xpanner Xpanner today announced the X1 Piling R6, a fully automated pile-driving robot built to autonomously install posts for utility-scale solar and battery energy storage, or BESS, sites. Supervised by a single operator, the system uses high-precision GNSS and onboard sensors to place each pile accurately, helping builders keep pace with new power demand despite a shortage of skilled crews. The core of the robot is Xpanner’s Everstar R6 crawler base machine. The R6 is equipped with the Santa Fe Springs, Calif.-based company ‘s automation stack with onboard sensors and controls to autonomously complete the pile driving process for each post. Xpanner designs for simplified operation An operator uploads a plan, then walks X1 Piling R6 machine to the row using a remote control interface. The operator supervises the construction as the machine ...

Bedrock Robotics automates large excavators to improve construction site economics. | Credit: Bedrock Robotics San Francisco-based Bedrock Robotics has raised $600 million in Series C funding, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, at a $4.1 billion valuation. The round brings its total funding to nearly $1 billion as it scales fully autonomous heavy equipment to address nationwide construction labor shortages. The round included new investors US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Bessemer Venture Partners, and Temasek, alongside existing investors 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, NVIDIA, and others. Bedrock said this will accelerate the deployment of Bedrock-equipped machines across commercial construction sites across the U.S., helping contractors use existing heavy equipment more safely, predictably, and at greater capacity. The new capital follows a rapid commercial expansion beyond the company ’s initial footprint in the West and Cen...