Iván Hernández Dalas: Top 10 robotics stories of May 2026

May 2026 was a busy month full of robotics news, topped off by last week’s Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston. The event brought together thousands of robotics experts to discuss the latest technology and industry advances.

Here are the 10 most popular articles on The Robot Report in the past month. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter and listen to The Robot Report Podcast to stay up to date on the latest robotics developments.

Humanoid and Bosh are collaborating on production and distribution of HMND in Europe, starting in May 2026.

10. Humanoid partners with Bosch, Schaeffler to scale robot production in May 2026

The race to develop commercially viable humanoid robots continues to prompt industry partnerships. London-based Humanoid said it is working with Bosch to scale production after the successful completion of a joint proof of concept in March. Read more.

QA inspector checks fit on a newly built NEO robot.9. 1X begins production of NEO humanoids in California facility

1X Technologies launched full-scale production at its new facility in Hayward, Calif. It serves as the primary hub for NEO, the company’s humanoid robot designed to operate quietly—at a decibel level lower than a modern refrigerator—while navigating domestic spaces. Read more.

A color automotive point cloud. Ouster said in May 2026 that its Rev8 OS is its first patented native-color lidar sensors with point-for-point 3D color vision.8. Ouster releases REV8 OS sensor family with native-color lidar

Ouster in May 2026 announced Rev8, its new family of OS digital lidar sensors using its next-generation L4 Ouster Silicon. The company said Rev8 features its patented native-color lidar sensors and provides up to double the range and resolution of the previous generation. Read more.

Familiar Machines & Magic launched its doglike robot companion in May 2026.7. Inside Colin Angle’s bid to build companion robots with Familiar Machines & Magic

Colin Angle has already defined consumer robotics once with the Roomba. iRobot didn’t just build a successful product; it reshaped how people think about robots in the home. Now, Angle is attempting the seemingly impossible again. Read more.

An Aescape recovery table located in a room. The company acknowledged in May 2026 that it has made a business pivot.6. Five lessons for robotics entrepreneurs from Aescape’s business model pivot

If you’ve built a robotics company in the past 10 years, chances are you’ve at least flirted with the idea of robotics as a service, or RaaS. It’s attractive: recurring revenue, smoother adoption for customers, VC‑friendly narratives, and comparisons to SaaS. Read more.

Fraunhofer IPA has developed a benchmark to test humanoid robots such as the Unitree G1.5. Fraunhofer IPA offers new test benchmark for humanoids

In recent years, humanoid robots continue to fascinate us. On social media as well as in public spaces, they are guaranteed to attract attention. The technology is poised to take over tasks in areas where, due to demographic change, human labor will no longer be available in the future. Read more.

Hugging Face's Reachy Mini robot.4. Hugging Face launches agentic toolkit for Reachy Mini

In May 2026, Hugging Face launched an agentic toolkit that lets anyone build a working app for Reachy Mini, its open-source desktop robot. The toolkit works in under an hour, without writing a single line of code. Instead, an AI agent writes all the code. Read more.

wide angle view of the entire smartbay tire changer. Automated Tire emerged from stealth in May 2026.3. Automated Tire decloaks in May 2026 with new autonomous tire-changing SmartBay

Aiming to modernize the traditional service bay, Automated Tire emerged from stealth to unveil SmartBay, an AI-powered robotic platform that automates tire changes and vehicle inspections. By replacing manual, injury-prone labor with advanced computer vision and robotics, the system can cut service times in half to as little as 30 minutes, said the startup. Read more.

The GENE026.5 robot brain enables dexterous bimanual food preparation.2. Genesis AI introduces GENE-26.5 model for more dexterous robot manipulation

After years of development, dexterous robotic manipulation is improving, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. Genesis AI in May 2026 unveiled GENE-26.5, which it claimed gives robots “human-level physical manipulation capabilities.” Read more.

1. 2026 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards

For 15 years, the RBR50 awards have recognized the world’s leading robotics organizations in terms of technology and business innovation. This year’s cohort includes several repeat winners, as well as first-time honorees, and it is a prestigious list of the leading commercial robotics developers and suppliers from around the world. Read more.

The post Top 10 robotics stories of May 2026 appeared first on The Robot Report.



View Source

Popular posts from this blog

Iván Hernández Dalas: 4 Show Floor Takeaways from CES 2019: Robots and Drones, Oh My!

Image
We’ve had some time to recuperate from the madness of CES, in which more than 150,000 attendees and thousands of exhibitors displayed their latest gadgets, gizmos and yes, even robots, on the CES show floor. Last week’s reporter’s notebook focused on the collection of startups around the Eureka Park area of CES, but several of the same trends were evident on the main South Hall 2 area of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where drones, robotics, AR/VR, and gaming took center stage. While most of our time was spent at CES hosting the Service Robots Arrive in Daily Life event, we did have some time during the week to visit the show floor and record observations. Here’s what we saw on the show floor, as well as some of our own individual meetings: 1. Underwater drones make a big splash On the main floor, there was no busier aerial drone booth than the DJI booth, but that is expected given the company’s dominance in the space. But once you got past that, you noticed a lot more drone co...
Read more

Iván Hernández Dalas: Physical Intelligence open-sources Pi0 robotics foundation model

Image
Physical Intelligence, the San Francisco-based startup that has raised more than $400 million , has open-sourced its Pi0 robotic foundation model. Pi0 was introduced a few months ago and can be tuned to a range of tasks, including folding laundry, cleaning a table, scooping coffee beans, and more. Physical Intelligence has released the code and weights for Pi0 as part of its experimental openpi repository on GitHub. It also provides checkpoints for a few “simple tasks” on available platforms such as ALOHA and DROID, example code to run inference on real-world and simulated robot platforms, and the code for fine-tuning the base π0 model for your own tasks and platforms. The company said between 1-20 hours of data was sufficient to tune Pi0 to a variety of tasks in its own experiments. HuggingFace has also prepared a PyTorch port of openpi for those developers who prefer PyTorch over JAX. “We believe that general purpose models that can control any robot to perform any task will b...
Read more

Iván Hernández Dalas: How automation and farm robots are transforming agriculture

Image
Source: EOS Data Analytics Agriculture is becoming the most high-tech industry today. All the top-notch technologies are finding a place in the way we produce, harvest, and distribute our crops. And in all cases, farm automation and robots are not an affordable luxury, but a necessary minimum due to tackling the rising global food demand. Agricultural robots can mitigate labor shortages by automating tasks like planting, harvesting, and weeding, while also supporting sustainable practices. Combined with satellite imagery tools for data-driven farming, these innovations can make precision agriculture more efficient, resilient, and environmentally responsible. According to the United Nations report , by 2050, the world will need 70% more food to feed nearly 9.7 billion people. Considering this demand, farm robots and remote sensing are the cornerstone of the proper work of the supply chain. Smart machines arise for the farm Farm robots are no longer experimental concepts — they ...
Read more