Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

Illustration of the versatile nanorobot. It is 150 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. (Illustration: Marina Bräm) By Angelika Jacobs Nanorobots sound like science fiction: tiny machines for medicine, the environment, or industry. In fact, nanorobotics has become a rapidly growing field of research. It is considered a promising approach, for example, for delivering active substances to specific locations in the body. Unlike their larger-scale counterparts, they are not made of electronics, computer chips, and software, but rather of biomolecules and nanoparticles. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Palivan from the University of Basel are now reporting on a sophisticated modular nanorobot with greater functional flexibility than many existing systems. “Previous nanorobots are often designed for a specific task only,” says Cornelia Palivan. “Our modular system, on the other hand, can be adapted to different applications.” The technology could be used not only in medic...

From accelerated computing and simulation to data operations, open-source tooling, validation engineering, and continuous learning, these five platforms represent distinct control points in the emerging physical AI stack. For most of the modern AI boom, infrastructure had a single center of gravity: compute. Models grew larger, training runs consumed more GPUs, and the industry organized itself around accelerators, cloud clusters, training frameworks, and developer software. That stack was sufficient when AI’s outputs were text, images, video, or code. Physical AI changes the definition. A robot does not simply run a model. It must perceive a changing environment, reason about contact and motion, act through a specific body, and recover when its actions fail. Its development cycle spans real-world demonstrations, synthetic data, physics simulation, policy training, structured evaluation, deployment, and the collection of new failure cases. Physical AI infrastructure is becomin...

DoorDash said its drone network may handle midrange deliveries, which are less attractive to Dashers. | Source: DoorDash More drone deliveries are taking to the skies. DoorDash yesterday said it has earned Part 135 air carrier certification from the Federal Aviation Administration. With that approval, the food delivery giant is launching DoorDash Air, its in-house drone program. In recent years, DoorDash has increasingly invested in automation, and the company is interested in building much of its delivery automation in-house. Last year, it unveiled Dot, its first autonomous delivery robot. The company said it built Dot to travel on bike lanes, roads, sidewalks, and driveways to perform local deliveries. Now, the FAA’s certification means that San Francisco-based DoorDash can operate as an air carrier. “We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere,” said Harrison Shih, the head of DoorDash Air. “We’re building the full stack to make that possible fr...

Bobs Red Mill and Columbia use the UR20 robot for palletizing in their facility. | Source: Universal Robots Teradyne Robotics this week said it brought in $100 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2026. The North Reading, Mass.-based company is a unit of automated test equipment supplier Teradyne Inc., which said it expects an increase in semiconductor and data center demand to increase sales. “Our strategy to capture test and robotics opportunities from wafer to AI data center has driven another record quarter,” stated Greg Smith, CEO of Teradyne. “This strength became evident in the year-on-year market expansion for all three of our business groups.” “In the short term, our Q3 guidance reflects robust AI-related demand,” he added. “Looking further ahead, rapid increase in wafer fab equipment investment sets the stage for continued growth in 2027 and beyond.” Teradyne Robotics includes force- and power-limited robot maker Univ...

GMEX has evolved from a fitness equipment supplier to a provider of service and social robots. Source: GMEX Robotics GMEX Robotics Corp. yesterday said it has entered a definitive share-purchase agreement with Alpha Meta AI Pte. Ltd., MetaGen AI Ltd., and other parties. The companies said the acquisition will add artificial intelligence related to human behavioral modeling to GMEX’s automation portfolio. “Social intelligence has long been the missing layer between capable AI systems and meaningful real-world human interaction,” said Mark March of MediaMeta.ai. “Joining forces with GMEX gives us the opportunity to bring contextual awareness and behavioral understanding into robotics applications where trust, empathy, and human collaboration are essential. Together, we believe we can help define the next generation of intelligent machines.” Singapore-based MediaMeta focuses on AI  and human behavioral modeling. It maps social intelligence, capturing the patterns, str...

A Unitree humanoid robot at the China Humanoid Robot Conference in Seoul. Credit: Eugene Demaitre As competition in next-generation robotics and AI intensifies, the U.S. government is restricting imports of certain robots and connected power inverters produced in foreign countries. The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, yesterday said a White House-convened executive branch interagency body has determined that such products “pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States.” The FCC said it has determined that foreign-made “advanced robotic devices,” including mobile robots such as humanoids and quadrupeds , could create supply chain vulnerabilities and pose a cybersecurity risk to American critical infrastructure. At the same time, the commission provided an exemption for advanced robots and power inverters that receive conditional approval from the U.S. Department of War or Department of Homeland Security. The ruling does n...