Robotics

Boston Dynamics and Hyundai Motor Group unveiled a production-ready Atlas humanoid in January 2026, with deployments planned at Hyundai and Google DeepMind and a fleet trained using reinforcement learning and foundation models.

EnterpriseRoboticsHardware & compute

Figure 03 is Figure's third-generation humanoid robot, announced in October 2025. It is designed around the company's Helix AI for home tasks and mass manufacturing, with a new camera system, tactile hands and wireless charging.

EnterpriseConsumer appsRobotics

IRON is XPENG's humanoid robot, first shown in November 2024 and redesigned a year later. It borrows the chip, vision system and AI models XPENG developed for its cars, and was trialled on a car production line.

ChinaEnterpriseProduct history

Figure 02 is the humanoid robot Figure introduced in August 2024, with redesigned hardware, 16-degree-of-freedom hands and triple the onboard compute of Figure 01. It loaded sheet-metal parts at BMW's Spartanburg plant before being retired in favour of Figure 03.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Boston Dynamics unveiled a fully electric Atlas in April 2024, saying it would be stronger, more dexterous and quieter than earlier generations and calling it the start of the robot's commercial journey, with Hyundai as first partner.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Figure 01 is the bipedal humanoid robot that startup Figure unveiled in March 2023, with design targets of 5 ft 6 in, 60 kg and a 20 kg payload, followed by a coffee-making demo and a BMW manufacturing agreement.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Tesla revealed a humanoid robot concept, later named Optimus, at its first AI Day on 19 August 2021, describing a person-sized machine meant to take on unwanted work, with a first physical version expected in 2022.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Stretch is Boston Dynamics' first commercial robot designed specifically for warehouses, unveiled in March 2021 to unload trucks and, in later plans, to build orders.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Spot is Boston Dynamics' four-legged commercial robot, sold since September 2019 for industrial use. It carries modular payloads such as cameras and LIDAR, walks over steps and slopes, and more than 1,500 units are in customers' hands.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

EVE is a wheeled humanoid robot released by Halodi Robotics, later 1X, in 2018 for logistics, security and medical work. It later became the company's testbed for learning autonomous manipulation from video and teleoperation.

EnterpriseProduct historyRobotics

Baxter was a two-armed robot unveiled by Rethink Robotics in September 2012, designed to work safely beside people on factory lines without safety cages and to be taught by hand, at a list price of $22,000.

EnterpriseRoboticsIndustrial automation

Curiosity is NASA's Mars rover, which landed in Gale Crater in August 2012 carrying a science payload far larger than earlier rovers, and which used a sky-crane descent to set down on its wheels.

RoboticsHardware & computeScience

Robonaut 2 is a humanoid robot built jointly by NASA and General Motors that flew to the International Space Station in 2011 to show how dexterous robots behave in orbit, and later gained legs to move around inside the station.

Research historyRoboticsScience

Stanley is the Stanford University robotic vehicle that won DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge, completing a 132-mile desert course autonomously in 6 hours 53 minutes and claiming the $2 million prize.

Research historyProduct historyRobotics

A small NASA rover that landed on Mars on July 4, 1997 with the Mars Pathfinder lander and became the first wheeled vehicle operated on another planet.

Research historyRoboticsHardware & compute

PackBot is iRobot's tactical mobile robot, developed under a 1998 DARPA contract. It carried out search work at the World Trade Center site in 2001 and was first deployed by the US military in 2002.

Research historyEnterpriseProduct history

A four-wheeled planetary rover prototype built at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute with NASA funding, Nomad tested autonomous driving and rock analysis in Antarctica, hunting meteorites on the ice without step-by-step human control.

Research historyRoboticsScience

Digit is Agility Robotics' human-centric, multi-purpose robot for logistics work. It moves and handles totes in warehouses, including repetitive tote recycling for Amazon and conveyor feeding at a GXO facility.

EnterpriseRoboticsHumanoid robots