Formally verified AES-XTS: The first AES algorithm to join s2n-bignum
Simplifying and clarifying the assembly code for core operations enabled automated optimization and verification.
Industrial
Latest news and articles about industrial
Amazon acquires autonomous robotics startup Rivr
Amazon has acquired Rivr, a Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup previously valued at $110 million, to enhance its logistics and package delivery capabilities. Rivr's four-legged robots with wheels are designed to navigate stairs and uneven surfaces, with the company having just released its second-generation model. The acquisition supports Amazon's broader automation strategy, including its goal to automate 75% of its operations.
The Inspection Economy: How Digital Twins Are Turning Robots Into Industrial Fortune Tellers
From Navy ships to agricultural fields, a quiet revolution is underway where robots aren't just doing work—they're predicting what needs to be done. The convergence of inspection robotics and digital twin technology represents a fundamental shift from reactive maintenance to predictive intelligence, creating an entirely new economic model for industrial operations.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
A multi-armed robot for assisting with agricultural tasks
Researchers presented a methodology at IROS 2025 for safely manipulating plant branches using multi-armed robots to assist agricultural tasks like pollination and fruit harvesting. The approach combines motion planning with real-time force feedback to handle deformable branches without causing damage, enabling occluded flowers to be brought into reach of robotic manipulators.
AI-powered robot learns how to harvest tomatoes more efficiently
Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University developed an AI-powered tomato-picking robot that predicts the difficulty of harvesting each fruit before attempting to pick it, using image recognition and statistical analysis to optimize picking angles. The system achieved an 81% success rate and can adjust its approach mid-task, representing progress toward intelligent, collaborative farming where robots handle easy harvests while humans manage challenging fruits.
The Legacy Code Paradox: Why AI's Next Frontier Isn't Building New Systems, But Understanding Old Ones
While the tech industry chases cutting-edge AI applications, Amazon's AGI Lab is pursuing a counterintuitive strategy: training autonomous agents to navigate decades-old legacy systems that power critical infrastructure. This approach reveals a profound shift in how we think about AI's role in enterprise technology.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Pentagon's AI Pivot: Why Military Contracts Are Suddenly Reshaping the Robotics Industry
In just one week, we've seen two landmark defense contracts signal a fundamental shift in robotics and AI development. From Gecko Robotics' record Navy deal to OpenAI's controversial Pentagon partnership, military applications are no longer a side business—they're becoming the primary driver of innovation and investment.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Gecko Robotics lands the largest U.S. Navy robotics deal yet
Gecko Robotics has secured the U.S. Navy's largest robotics deal yet, a five-year IDIQ contract worth $54 million initially with a $71 million ceiling. The Pittsburgh-based company will deploy robots and sensors to inspect Navy ships and create digital twins for predictive maintenance, starting with 18 vessels in the Pacific Fleet, to help the Navy achieve its 80% ship readiness goal by 2027.
The Touch Revolution: Why Robots Are Finally Learning to Feel Like Us
While AI chatbots and image generators dominate headlines, a quieter breakthrough in robotic sensing could prove far more transformative. New graphene-based tactile sensors matching human fingertip resolution represent a fundamental shift in how robots will interact with the physical world—and why touch, not vision, may be automation's missing link.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Vegas Gamble: Why Autonomous Vehicles Are Finally Betting on Real Passengers
After years of controlled pilots and safety-driver rides, Uber's Las Vegas robotaxi launch signals a crucial shift in the autonomous vehicle industry—one where actual passengers, not test metrics, become the measure of success. This marks the transition from endless testing to real-world viability.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Why physical AI is becoming manufacturing's next advantage
For decades, manufacturers have pursued automation to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and stabilize operations. That approach delivered meaningful gains, but it is no longer enough. Today's manufactur...
The Manufacturing Mindset Shift: Why 'Physical AI' Is More Than Just a Buzzword
As manufacturers grapple with labor shortages and supply chain volatility, a subtle but significant linguistic shift is underway. The industry isn't just talking about 'automation' anymore—it's embracing 'physical AI,' a reframing that signals a fundamental change in how factories will operate in the coming decade.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Glass Ceiling: Why Your Next AI Chip Might Be Built on a Material From the 19th Century
While the AI industry races toward ever-more-powerful models and flashier applications, a quiet materials revolution is unfolding in chip manufacturing. Glass substrates—the same material that's held our windows for centuries—may be the unglamorous solution to AI's most pressing physical constraint: heat.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Future AI chips could be built on glass
Glass substrates are emerging as a superior alternative to organic materials in AI chip packaging, with South Korean company Absolics beginning commercial production this year and Intel advancing glass integration in next-generation chip packages. Glass substrates can better handle the heat generated by high-performance AI chips, enable denser connections (10x more per millimeter), and allow for more efficient cooling and power delivery, addressing mechanical constraints that limit current chip scaling.
Teamsters urge DOJ to block Paramount's Warner Bros. merger
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union that covers warehouse workers, drivers and a diverse collection of other laborers, has come out against Paramount Skydance's merger with Warner Br...
Coding for underwater robotics
MIT undergraduate Ivy Mahncke developed and field-tested an algorithm during a summer internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory that enables collaborative navigation between human divers and robotic underwater vehicles in GPS-denied environments. Her work culminated in successful field tests across multiple sites including the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, demonstrating practical applications of underwater robotics and autonomous navigation.
Canopii looks to succeed where past indoor farms have not
Canopii, a Portland-based robotics startup, has achieved a major milestone by developing an autonomous robotic greenhouse that can grow crops from seed to harvest without human intervention, producing up to 40,000 pounds of produce annually while using minimal water and space. The company has raised approximately $3.6 million primarily through grants and strategic investors, deliberately avoiding venture capital early on to avoid the pitfalls that plagued other indoor farming companies like Bowery Farming and Plenty.
The Haptic Renaissance: Why Touch Is Becoming Robotics' Most Critical Sense
While the industry obsesses over vision systems and language models, a quiet revolution in tactile sensing is addressing robotics' most fundamental limitation. From surgical fingertips to robotic manipulation, the race to restore the sense of touch may determine which robots actually work in the real world.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world
Niantic Spatial, an AI company spun out from Niantic, is leveraging 500 million crowdsourced images from Pokémon Go players to build a visual positioning system that helps delivery robots navigate urban environments with centimeter-level precision. The technology addresses GPS unreliability in dense cities and has been deployed with Coco Robotics, which operates around 1,000 autonomous delivery robots across US and European cities.
The Robotics Stack Convergence: Why 2025 Is the Year Hardware Finally Catches Up to Software
After years of AI models outpacing physical capabilities, we're witnessing a fundamental shift as chip manufacturers, simulation platforms, and hardware makers align around standardized robotics stacks. Qualcomm's dual announcements with Neura Robotics and Arduino signal a maturation of the industry that could finally unlock mass deployment.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Qualcomm Pivot: How Chipmakers Are Becoming the Kingmakers of Robotics
Qualcomm's dual announcements this week—partnering with Neura Robotics and launching the Arduino Ventuno Q—signal a fundamental shift in the robotics industry. We're witnessing the emergence of chipmakers as the central orchestrators of robotic development, creating platforms that determine which startups succeed and which hardware architectures become standard.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Anthropic sues US government over supply chain risk designation
According to Reuters, Anthropic has filed a lawsuit to prevent the Pentagon from adding the company it a national security blocklist. This comes days after the Department of Defense sent a letter to A...
Qualcomm's new Arduino Ventuno Q is an AI-focused computer designed for robotics
Qualcomm-owned Arduino announced the Ventuno Q, a single-board computer combining AI and robotics capabilities with a Dragonwing IQ8 processor, dedicated microcontroller, and 40 TOPs tensor performance. The platform features pre-trained AI models for offline operation and supports a full robotics stack for vision processing and motor control, targeting edge AI systems, smart devices, and robotics education; it will launch in Q2 2026 for under $300.
The Sensor Fusion Awakening: Why Navigation Breakthroughs Matter More Than Model Upgrades
While the AI industry obsesses over frontier models and parameter counts, Carnegie Mellon's Super Odometry system reveals a more profound truth: the real bottleneck in robotics isn't intelligence—it's perception. The ability to navigate reliably in extreme conditions represents the unglamorous infrastructure layer that will ultimately determine which robots escape the lab.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Apple is reportedly looking into 3D printing aluminum iPhones and Apple Watches
There could be even more 3D-printed Apple products coming in the future. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is exploring ways to 3D print aluminum to make the manufacturing processes for iPho...
Anthropic says it will challenge Defense Department's supply chain risk designation in court
In a new blog post, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has admitted that it received a letter from the Defense Department, officially labeling it a supply chain risk. He said he doesn't "believe this action i...
The Gimbal Gimmick: Why Smartphone Robotics Is the Wrong Kind of Innovation
Honor's Robot Phone at MWC 2026—featuring a camera mounted on a 4-degrees-of-freedom robotic gimbal—represents a troubling trend in consumer robotics: adding mechanical complexity to solve problems that don't exist. As hardware companies scramble to differentiate in saturated markets, they're bolting robotic components onto devices without asking whether anyone actually needs a phone that nods.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Hardware Hustle: Why Consumer Tech Companies Are Suddenly Building Robots
From Honor's Robot Phone to Google's absorption of Intrinsic, consumer electronics giants are making unexpected pivots into robotics. This shift reveals less about robotics innovation and more about the existential crisis facing smartphone and device makers in an AI-saturated market.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
AI robotics company started by Alphabet is joining Google proper
Intrinsic, an AI robotics company started by Alphabet, is being folded into Google as a distinct group to advance physical AI in manufacturing. The company develops software tools and adaptive intelligence platforms to make robots more affordable and easier to use, positioning itself as 'the Android of robotics' for developers building applications across different robotic hardware and sensors.
The Stateful Revolution: Why Persistent Memory Is the Missing Link in AI's Production Problem
While the tech world fixates on funding rounds and model capabilities, a quieter transformation is underway in how AI systems actually work in production environments. The introduction of stateful runtime environments signals a fundamental shift from demo-ready chatbots to industrial-grade AI that can finally remember what it's doing.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Alphabet Homecoming: Why Google Is Reabsorbing Its Robotics Moonshots
Google's decision to fold Intrinsic back into its core operations marks a significant strategic shift in how tech giants approach robotics innovation. After years of the "Alphabet model"—spinning out ambitious projects into independent subsidiaries—the pendulum is swinging back toward centralization, revealing hard truths about what it actually takes to commercialize physical AI.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
A boost for manufacturing
MIT political scientist Suzanne Berger, an advocate for US manufacturing revitalization, is now co-director of MIT's Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), launched in May 2025. The initiative aims to help small and midsize manufacturers adopt new technologies and innovation practices to boost productivity and create quality jobs, with Berger noting that only about one-tenth of US manufacturers currently use robots despite their potential to advance the sector.
The Corporate Partnership Paradox: How Big Tech's Dueling Alliances Are Fragmenting the AI Ecosystem
OpenAI's simultaneous partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google reveal a troubling trend: the AI industry is building incompatible infrastructures that will force enterprises to choose sides. Rather than creating an open ecosystem, we're witnessing the balkanization of artificial intelligence into competing corporate fiefdoms.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Surveillance Shift: Why Employee Monitoring Is AI's Most Troubling Application
While AI powers breakthrough cancer detection and robotic innovation, the technology's most widespread application may be its least inspiring: watching workers. From Burger King's 'friendliness monitors' to call center scam detection, AI is increasingly being deployed not to augment human capability, but to measure, judge, and discipline it.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Vine-inspired robot fingers can reach out and grab someone
MIT and Stanford engineers have developed a vine-inspired robotic gripper that uses pressurized tubes to inflate, twist, and coil around objects before retracting to lift them with a gentle sling-like grasp. The system combines open-loop and closed-loop mechanics and has potential applications in eldercare, agricultural harvesting, cargo handling, and industrial operations like port and warehouse automation.
The Robotic Hand's Existential Crisis: Why Grasping Is Still the Industry's Hardest Problem
While autonomous vehicles expand to ten cities and AI chatbots debate military ethics, researchers are still celebrating the ability to pick up objects with inflatable tubes. The robotics industry's persistent struggle with manipulation reveals a fundamental truth: the problems that seem simplest to humans remain devastatingly complex for machines.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The String-Pull Revolution: Why Simplicity Is Robotics' Next Frontier
As robotics companies race to add more sensors, actuators, and computational power, a countertrend is emerging from research labs: systems that achieve complex behaviors through elegant mechanical design rather than computational brute force. From MIT's single-string deployable structures to vine-inspired grippers, the future of practical robotics may lie in knowing when not to add another motor.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Apple will start making Mac minis in the US
Starting later this year, Apple will start manufacturing Mac minis meant for sale in the US within the country. The company took The Wall Street Journal on a tour of its Houston facility, where Foxco...
The Equity-for-Chips Era: How Semiconductor Scarcity Is Rewriting Corporate Finance
Meta's unprecedented deal to potentially exchange up to 10% equity ownership for AMD GPU access signals a fundamental shift in how AI companies are financing their computational infrastructure. As chip scarcity persists, we're entering an era where silicon has become as valuable as cash—and companies are willing to trade ownership stakes for guaranteed supply.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
When AI Becomes the Patient Zero: The Growing Crisis of Self-Inflicted Digital Outages
From AWS's 13-hour catastrophe to TikTok's rogue advertising campaigns, 2026 is revealing a troubling pattern: AI systems making autonomous decisions that cause cascading failures their creators never anticipated. As we deploy increasingly autonomous tools into critical infrastructure, we're learning the hard way that the biggest threat might not be malicious actors—it's our own algorithms going off-script.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Robot Talk Episode 145 - Robotics and automation in manufacturing, with Agata Suwala
Robot Talk Episode 145 features a discussion with Agata Suwala from the Manufacturing Technology Centre about leveraging robotics and automation to make manufacturing systems more sustainable. The episode explores advanced manufacturing automation, particularly in the aerospace sector, and how automation and robotics can enable the transition to a circular economy.
The Autonomous Mistake Problem: When AI Tools Start Making Consequential Decisions Without Human Oversight
Amazon's 13-hour AWS outage, reportedly caused by its own AI coding assistant autonomously deciding to delete and recreate an environment, reveals a critical blind spot in AI deployment: tools designed to assist are increasingly making consequential decisions on their own. This isn't just about better guardrails—it's about fundamentally rethinking how we deploy AI agents in production systems.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
The Detachable Future: Why Modular Robotics Is Finally Breaking the Fixed-Form Paradigm
EPFL's reversible, detachable robotic hand represents more than innovative gripper design—it signals a fundamental shift toward modular, reconfigurable robotics that can adapt their physical form to match their task. This approach challenges decades of fixed-architecture thinking and could redefine how we build machines.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Reversible, detachable robotic hand redefines dexterity
Researchers at EPFL have developed a reversible, detachable robotic hand with up to six identical fingers that can form any combination of opposing pairs, overcoming limitations of human hand design. The hand can perform 'loco manipulation'—simultaneous grasping and autonomous mobility—by detaching from its arm to crawl spider-like and retrieve objects beyond normal reach, with potential applications in industrial, service, and exploratory robotics.
The End of Amazon's Blue Jay: What Warehouse Robotics Cancellations Tell Us About Real-World Deployment
Amazon's abrupt cancellation of its Blue Jay warehouse robotics project after just six months signals a broader reality check in industrial automation. While flashy demos capture headlines, the unsexy truth is that successful warehouse robotics requires ruthless pragmatism about what actually works at scale.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Amazon halts Blue Jay robotics project after less than six months
Amazon has halted its Blue Jay warehouse robotics project less than six months after unveiling it in October, with the multi-armed robot designed to sort and move packages in same-day delivery facilities. The company stated it will repurpose Blue Jay's underlying technology for other robotics manipulation programs, crediting AI advancements for the robot's rapid one-year development timeline.
The Confidential Computing Gambit: Why Privacy-Preserving AI Infrastructure Is Tech's Next Arms Race
Meta's massive deal with NVIDIA to deploy confidential computing for WhatsApp AI marks a watershed moment in tech infrastructure strategy. As AI capabilities expand into sensitive personal domains, companies are racing to build privacy-preserving computation architectures—not just as a compliance measure, but as a fundamental competitive advantage.
Creative RoboticsOriginal
Tesla stops using 'Autopilot' to promote its EVs in California
Tesla has stopped using the term "Autopilot" to sell its cars in California, thereby avoiding a 30-day sales and manufacturing ban in the state. If you'll recall, a California administrative law judge...
"Robot, make me a chair"
MIT researchers developed an AI-driven robotic assembly system that allows users to design and build physical objects by describing them in natural language. The system uses generative AI models to create 3D representations and determine component placement, then automatically assembles objects from prefabricated parts, with demonstrations showing furniture fabrication and user preference validation above 90 percent.
The Enterprise Security Awakening: Why 2025 Is the Year Organizations Finally Take AI Protection Seriously
After years of racing to deploy AI tools, enterprises are confronting a sobering reality: their most powerful productivity gains are also their biggest security vulnerabilities. Recent announcements from OpenAI, Anthropic, and security researchers signal a fundamental shift from AI adoption to AI protection.
Creative RoboticsOriginal