Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

Ratel Robotics makes uncrewed ground vehicles for Ukrainian defense. Credit: Viktor Kharyton, Swarmer Ukrainian companies have demonstrated their ability to develop and field autonomous systems at a fraction of the price of Western defense contractors, according to Swarmer Inc. The company today said it has signed an agreement to acquire Ratel Robotics, a leading manufacturer of uncrewed ground vehicles or UGVs. “Ratel is a major provider of UGVs for Ukraine,” stated Alex Fink, co-founder, president, and U.S. CEO of Swarmer. “Combining a battle-tested launch platform with our combat-proven autonomy software is the key to creating versatile, interoperable solutions. We are excited to have [CEO] Taras Ostapchuk and his team at Ratel Robotics be the first to join Swarmer and grow our business in Ukraine and beyond.” Founded in 2023, Swarmer said it specializes in vendor-agnostic software that allows one operator to control hundreds of autonomous platforms in real time. The Austin, Tex...

Comau designed its MyCo family of cobots for quick installation, easy programming, and rapid redeployment. | Source: Comau Comau SpA yesterday said it has designed and validated an order-preparation system tested in Decathlon’s e-commerce fulfillment operations. The system is part of MASTERLY, a European initiative designed to accelerate the transition from traditional mass production to highly flexible, customized manufacturing systems. The system uses the Turin, Italy-based company ‘s MyCo collaborative robot with a ROS 2-based software architecture. It integrates an advanced modular gripper to autonomously manage picking , handling , and palletizing tasks across variable product flows. “Comau’s role in the MASTERLY project is fully aligned with our commitment to advancing next-generation manufacturing by promoting reconfigurability, efficiency, and human-centric automation,” said Alessandro Piscioneri, the head of product and solution management of advanced automation so...

Unitree offers its G1 humanoid robot for $13.5K. | Source: Unitree Shares of Unitree Robotics have fallen nearly 40% from their first-day closing price on Aug. 19 2026, erasing roughly $20 billion in market value from that point and about $35 billion from their peak. Unitree, trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange under the ticker 688836, closed Wednesday at 513.93 yuan ($72.10). That’s down about 39% from its 845-yuan closing price on debut and about 53% below its first-day high of 1,100 yuan. Unitree shares are still more than three times higher than their 150.80-yuan IPO price. Unitree raised about 6.1 billion yuan ($900 million) in its IPO and saw its shares soar 460% on the first day of trading. The stock briefly climbed as high as 1,100 yuan, pushing Unitree’s valuation to nearly 445 billion yuan, or roughly $66 billion. Before the IPO, Unitree had targeted a valuation of roughly 42 billion yuan ($6.2 billion). It ultimately priced the offering at 150.80 yuan per...

AGIBOT’s semi-humanoid robot working in a pilot at Longcheer Technology’s Nanchang factory. | Source: AGIBOT While generative AI has redefined the digital world, the true frontier lies in the physical realm in translating embodied AI into scalable, commercial reality. For global enterprises and scaling startups alike, the bottleneck is no longer just algorithm training. The bottleneck is the systemic deployment of hardware capable of execution in complex human environments. At RoboBusiness 2026, Yinghao Song , the head of North America and product lead at AGIBOT, will talk about “Scaling Humanoids from Lab to Real-World Deployment.” The event will take place on Oct. 20 and 21 in Santa Clara, Calif. Song will give his talk on the first day of the show at 1:15 p.m. PT. In this session, Song will break down the strategic blueprint for taking advanced robotics from pilot projects to global go-to-market (GTM) execution. He will draw from his company ‘s exper...

Vention and its partners have invested in space and equipment for its new physical AI lab. Source: Vention To generate high-quality data for training the AI models that operate next-generation robots, you need scale. Vention Inc. today opened its Physical AI Lab in Montreal. The company said the new laboratory focuses on robotic manipulation in manufacturing. “Any physical AI foundation model is data-hungry,” Etienne Lacroix , founder and CEO of Vention, told The Robot Report . “We move several hundred robot cells a year, and they all collect high-quality industrial manipulation data. It was a massive asset that was not properly leveraged until now.” Vention said its technology stack includes hardware, software, and physical AI. The Montreal-based company claimed that it enables businesses to design, program, and deploy turnkey or custom automation in days. It has deployed more than 28,000 machines worldwide and a community of more than 6,000 factories. Vent...

US robotics researchers and industry are looking for a cohesive national robotics strategy that will maintain basic research and innovation while improving domestic production and adoption of robots. By Ellen H. Rumley and Allison Okamura A leader in tech innovation Robots are a crowd-pleasing example of American innovation and global technological leadership. The latest press release of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas executing the ‘Ghost Rabona’ soccer kick highlights the increasingly natural movements of humanoids ( 1 ). At the other end of the spectrum, academic researchers are redefining the limits of miniaturization and building robots at the micrometer scale ( 2 ). Private and government funding propel foundational research forward, leading to breakthroughs in both hardware and software across U.S. labs and corporations ( 3 , 4 ). Such progress reaffirms the U.S. as an intellectual and innovative powerhouse, a reputation that carries large geopolitical weight. But retaining a lead s...