robotics engineering

The large robotic arm on the International Space Station, a critical tool for capturing cargo vehicles and supporting spacewalks, has reportedly stopped working. Engineers at NASA and its partners are expected to assess the fault and work on restoring the Canadarm2, which has been a workhorse of station operations for over two decades. Discussions are focused on what caused the failure and how operations might proceed without it.

MIT engineers have created a robotic swimmer about the size of a stick of gum, powered by a sheet of living mouse muscle less than 15 micrometers thick. Light at 470 nanometers makes the cells contract, bending gel fins that let the robot steer itself through a maze at roughly four body lengths per minute. The work is drawing attention as a striking example of biohybrid robotics, combining living tissue with artificial materials.

Moxian, a tactile sensor startup founded by a former DJI engineer, has raised $1.49 million in funding, according to Dealroom data. The company develops sensors that give machines a sense of touch, a technology of growing interest in robotics and manufacturing. The pre-seed or early-stage round signals continued investor appetite for deep-tech hardware spun out of China's drone and robotics ecosystem.

Amazon Web Services has released an open-source toolchain aimed at physical AI, giving robotics developers shared tools for building, testing and deploying intelligent machines. The move is intended to speed up robotics development by lowering barriers for engineers and researchers. It also positions AWS to compete more directly in the fast-growing physical AI and robotics software market, where cloud providers are racing to win over developers.

Boston Dynamics has shared new details about the redesigned hand for its Atlas humanoid robot, outlining improvements in dexterity and engineering. The update offers a closer look at how the company is refining the gripper as it moves Atlas toward commercial, industrial use. Robotics observers are watching closely, as hand design is considered a key hurdle for humanoids performing real-world tasks.

Several technologies imagined in Star Wars are advancing in real engineering: AI-driven robots, bionic limbs, holograms and directed-energy systems all have credible research paths today. By contrast, hyperspace travel, lightsabers and antigravity remain firmly in fiction, with no known practical route to building them. The comparison highlights how far robotics and energy research have come while showing the limits of current physics.

A vision-based waste-sorting robot has been developed that can identify high-value recyclables in real time, according to Interesting Engineering. The system uses cameras to recognize valuable materials as waste moves along sorting lines, potentially improving recycling efficiency and recovering more material that would otherwise be discarded. Details about the developers, the technology's accuracy, and deployment plans have not been reported.

A user is reminding people of the future as it was projected in 1998, sharing a playlist that appears to collect materials on futurism, robotics, artificial intelligence, engineering and Lego. The reflection invites comparison between late-1990s predictions about technology and automation and how those expectations have actually played out today.

Warehouse robots can already move reliably between locations, but experts point out that true material handling demands more: a system must decide what needs moving, where it should go, and verify that the transfer actually succeeded. In dynamic warehouse environments, where goods and conditions constantly change, these perception and verification tasks remain significant engineering challenges beyond simple point-to-point navigation.

A new tutorial-style project called JBR-001 walks readers through building robot vision, published on the maker platform Hackster.io. The guide is pitched as a hands-on introduction, giving hobbyists and engineers a practical starting point for teaching machines to see. Details beyond the guide's existence are limited so far.

Leva is recruiting a mid to senior mechanical engineer to work at its studio in Turin, Italy. The listing, shared via the creative applications jobs board, points to a role involving CNC machining, additive manufacturing, fabrication and robotics, likely for kinetic installations or research-driven projects. It is drawing attention among people following the intersection of engineering and creative technology.

An AI-powered robotic hand has been shown walking on its fingers, a demonstration highlighting new levels of dexterity in robotics. Engineers are showcasing how machine learning can give robot hands agile, finger-based movement that goes beyond traditional gripping tasks. The demonstration is drawing attention as another example of how quickly robotic capabilities are advancing.

A new piece on Robohub recounts lessons from a three-day robot-building project, reflecting on the hands-on challenges of robotics work. It highlights how quickly prototypes test assumptions and how much practical experience differs from theory, offering perspective for engineers and hobbyists entering the field.

Ukraine is working to maintain reliable communications links for its growing fleet of unmanned ground and aerial robots used for logistics, reconnaissance and combat tasks on the battlefield. Keeping these systems connected despite jamming and electronic warfare is a key engineering challenge, and discussion is focusing on the technologies and networks needed to sustain the country's robotic forces.

An engineer has written about a hands-on crash course in robotics, arguing that knowing when to get out of the way matters as much as technical skill. The piece reflects on lessons learned building and working with robots, and readers are weighing in with their own experiences and questions about the field.

Three AI fronts accelerated at once this week. Anthropic open-sourced a small model, Haiku 5.5, while Moonshot released 1.56 TB of weights for its Kimi K3 model. SpaceX is reportedly raising $40 billion to buy NVIDIA GPUs, and Microsoft and NVIDIA launched AI PCs with integrated local inference. DeepMind also unveiled Gemini Robotics 2. Commenters note models are getting cheaper, compute scarcer, and PCs are starting to take over part of inference work, forcing engineering teams to reassess cost and deployment boundaries.

A former lead on Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot program is starting a new company focused on industrial robotics, according to a report by The Information. The move adds to a wave of exits from major robotics programs by engineers founding their own ventures, as demand grows for automation in factories and warehouses.

The Safety of Robotics Engineering Standards (SRES) community hosted a fireside chat examining how robot safety standards can keep pace with rapid advances in artificial intelligence. The discussion, promoted by the Association for Advancing Automation, focuses on how AI-driven and learning-based robotic systems challenge existing safety frameworks, which were largely designed for machines with fixed, predictable behavior. Industry observers say updating these standards has become urgent as AI-enabled robots move into factories, warehouses and public spaces.

Hyundai and Boston Dynamics are making a major investment in AI-based robot training for manufacturing. The effort focuses on using artificial intelligence to teach industrial robots new skills, aiming to speed up automation in Hyundai's production operations. Trade publications covering engineering and design have picked up the announcement, highlighting how AI simulation and training could reshape factory robotics.

Robotics engineers have decided against adding a fifth finger to a robotic hand after running an unusual experiment: team members taped their little fingers to their ring fingers for a day and noted which everyday actions became impossible. They concluded that the extra finger's benefits did not justify the added complexity of building and controlling it.