https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news-updates Humanoid, robotics and smart-wearable news from The Humanoid Group. en Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/boston-dynamics-atlas-hyundai-factory https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/boston-dynamics-atlas-hyundai-factory Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Atlas has graduated from pilot to production at Hyundai's Metaplant America in Georgia, handling chassis sub-assembly tasks during regular shifts. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/supply-chain-rare-earth-actuator https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/supply-chain-rare-earth-actuator Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Industry Analysis A combination of Chinese export controls and surging humanoid demand has tripled lead times for rare-earth-magnet actuator components, prompting urgent diversification efforts. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/automatica-2026-munich-record-attendance https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/automatica-2026-munich-record-attendance Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Events The world's leading smart automation expo kicked off in Munich this week, drawing more than 75,000 visitors and showcasing over 200 humanoid and service robots making their public debut. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/tesla-optimus-v3-shareholder-meeting https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/tesla-optimus-v3-shareholder-meeting Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Optimus V3 sports redesigned hands with 22 degrees of freedom each, a new in-house actuator, and a target unit cost of $20,000 at volume. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/neura-robotics-eu-sovereign-stack https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/neura-robotics-eu-sovereign-stack Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Germany's Neura Robotics, together with Mistral AI and ASML's spinoff Brainport Robotics, will build a fully EU-sovereign humanoid platform under the EuroHumanoid initiative. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/japan-meti-humanoid-elder-care https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/japan-meti-humanoid-elder-care Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Policy Japan will subsidize humanoid robot deployments in 5,000 nursing facilities by 2028, prioritizing domestic vendors but allowing foreign tech with local integration partners. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/unitree-h2-marathon-record https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/unitree-h2-marathon-record Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Humanoids Unitree's flagship H2 humanoid completed the 42.195 km Hangzhou Robotics Marathon course without falling, setting a new world record and signaling a major leap in bipedal endurance. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/labor-displacement-mit-study https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/labor-displacement-mit-study Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Industry Analysis A new MIT Sloan study tracking early humanoid deployments finds a net positive employment effect — but with a meaningful skill mismatch that policy must address. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/berkeley-bipedal-self-supervised-rl https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/berkeley-bipedal-self-supervised-rl Sun, 21 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Research A UC Berkeley team has used self-supervised reinforcement learning to teach a Cassie+ bipedal robot novel locomotion gaits with zero human demonstration data. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/nvidia-isaac-gr00t-n2-release https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/nvidia-isaac-gr00t-n2-release Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI & Research GR00T N2 is NVIDIA's second-generation foundation-model-and-tooling stack for humanoids, featuring a new synthetic-data pipeline that compresses months of teleoperation into days. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/skild-brain-foundation-model https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/skild-brain-foundation-model Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI & Research Skild AI claims its new Skild Brain model generalizes across 70+ robot embodiments and 200+ tasks, with a single weights file deployed across drones, quadrupeds, arms, and humanoids. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/figure-03-mass-production-bmw https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/figure-03-mass-production-bmw Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Figure AI announced it has begun serial production of its third-generation humanoid in California, with BMW signing a multi-year agreement to deploy 1,500 units across its Spartanburg and Munich plants. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/xpeng-iron-customer-pilots-q3 https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/xpeng-iron-customer-pilots-q3 Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Chinese EV maker Xpeng will launch external customer pilots of its Iron humanoid in Q3 2026, starting with three undisclosed automotive and electronics OEMs. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/us-national-robotics-strategy-2026 https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/us-national-robotics-strategy-2026 Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Policy The Trump administration's executive order on robotics establishes a national strategy, dedicated funding pool, and new federal coordinating office aimed at securing US leadership in embodied AI. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/exoskeleton-german-bauhaus-deployment https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/exoskeleton-german-bauhaus-deployment Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Smart Wearables Hochtief and German Bionic struck a landmark deal that puts 4,000 Apogee-Plus exosuits onto construction sites across the EU, reducing back-strain injuries by an estimated 40%. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/soft-robotics-mit-electronic-skin https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/soft-robotics-mit-electronic-skin Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Research A team at MIT CSAIL has demonstrated a stretchable electronic skin with 10,000 tactile sensing 'pixels' per square decimeter, enabling whole-body tactile coverage for humanoids. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/softbank-pepper2-launch https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/softbank-pepper2-launch Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Product Launch Eight years after Pepper, SoftBank Robotics is back with a wheeled-base humanoid running a Figure-licensed Helix model, targeting Japanese retail and hospitality. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/1x-neo-home-rollout-europe https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/1x-neo-home-rollout-europe Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Product Launch Norwegian-American startup 1X has started fulfilling the first 5,000 NEO Home pre-orders across Germany, Norway, the UK, and the Netherlands following CE-certification approval. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/humanoid-bom-cost-2026 https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/humanoid-bom-cost-2026 Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Market Analysis Independent teardown analysis shows the average bill-of-materials for a tier-1 humanoid has dropped from $54K to $33K in just 12 months, led by actuator and battery cost compression. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/ces-asia-2026-shanghai-recap https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/ces-asia-2026-shanghai-recap Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Events Shanghai's CES Asia drew over 180,000 visitors and saw a record number of robotics product launches, with 60% of debuts coming from Chinese startups under three years old. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/agility-digit-amazon-100-warehouses https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/agility-digit-amazon-100-warehouses Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Following a 12-month pilot at three fulfillment centers, Amazon has placed a binding order for 8,000 Digit humanoids and committed to a network-wide rollout. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/stanford-mobile-aloha-2 https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/stanford-mobile-aloha-2 Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Research Stanford's IRIS lab has open-sourced Mobile ALOHA 2, a bimanual mobile manipulation platform with a complete BOM under $20,000 and full ROS 2 / LeRobot integration. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/google-deepmind-gemini-robotics-1-5 https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/google-deepmind-gemini-robotics-1-5 Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI & Research Gemini Robotics 1.5 is a multimodal vision-language-action foundation model that runs on-robot, generalizes to unseen tasks, and is now available with open weights for non-commercial research. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/sanctuary-ai-shopify-partnership https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/sanctuary-ai-shopify-partnership Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Partnerships Canadian humanoid maker Sanctuary AI will pilot its Phoenix robot inside Shopify's flagship logistics network, focused on small-merchant fulfillment. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/physical-intelligence-series-c-2bn https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/physical-intelligence-series-c-2bn Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Funding Berkeley-founded Physical Intelligence raised the largest robotics-AI round to date, with Jeff Bezos, Khosla Ventures, and Lux Capital co-leading the financing. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/apptronik-apollo-mercedes-spartanburg https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/apptronik-apollo-mercedes-spartanburg Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Company News Apptronik confirmed its Apollo humanoid has begun production-line work at Mercedes-Benz's Tuscaloosa plant, handling subassembly delivery tasks. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/humanoid-market-citi-trillion-report https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/humanoid-market-citi-trillion-report Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Market Analysis A new report from Citi's GPS team puts the cumulative humanoid robot installed base at 648M units by 2050, generating an addressable market of $7 trillion. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/china-humanoid-procurement-2bn https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/china-humanoid-procurement-2bn Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Policy Beijing's MIIT will procure 100,000 humanoid robots from domestic manufacturers over the next 18 months, distributed across state-owned enterprises, hospitals, and elder-care facilities. https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/iros-2026-vancouver-call-for-papers https://thehumanoidgroup.com/news/article/iros-2026-vancouver-call-for-papers Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Events The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems shattered submission records, reflecting an unprecedented surge in academic-industry crossover work.