#robotics

#robotics

"We need to be able to bring a new task to bear in a day or two," Playter said. "And that's because, I think in a factory, there's literally hundreds of tasks and the tasks evolve."

January 7th, 2026 29 minutes

Hyundai's decision to use its CES keynote to tout Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot sends a pretty clear message about how the auto industry is absorbing the bad news about EVs in the United States in 2025, and where it thinks things are heading in the new year. EVs are out, and AI and robotaxis are in. In addition to Hyundai, Mercedes announced its plans to roll out its Nvidia-powered Level 2++ driver assist feature in the US later this year.

If you listen to the CES hype machine this year, you might think that robots are finally ready to take over your domestic duties. To some extent that's true, but take note of the plural: there's no single robot ready to take over all of your household chores yet, but an army of them just might. You might have had one of these single-purpose robots in your home for years already, of course.

The company has equipped it with its proprietary AI engine and promises "human-like cognition, emotional awareness and expressive behavior." The doll, which in the marketing video is called Emily, is Lovense's answer to the global loneliness crisis. It says, over time, a user's relationship with the system will grow deeper as it learns to adapt to their needs. And that the doll is the natural evolution of the virtual companions that have, until now, "existed only on phones and screens."

When Hyundai acquired the robotics giant Boston Dynamics in 2021, very few observers thought that using mechanical dogs to spot-check welds in car factories would be the endgame. Today, at CES 2026, Hyundai offered a detailed look at what it really wants to do with robots: make them more humanlike, and then put them to work building cars. The goal, Hyundai officials said, is simple: better safety, better quality, more durability and reliability, and at lower production costs.

The company, Lyte, emerged from stealth on Monday after raising about $107 million to date from investors including Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Exor Ventures, Key1 Capital, VentureTech Alliance and a group of private investors led by the Israeli entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz. Mountain View, California-based Lyte was founded in 2021 by three former Apple employees Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati, and Yuval Gerson who played a major role in building the depth-sensing and perception technology that Face ID uses to capture faces.

There is no question that 2026 is already set up to be something of a continuance of 2025, at least in the sense of moving deeper into the world of AI, automation, and robotics. As companies deploy AI at scale and industrial robots continue to replace human labor slowly, chip manufacturers can't keep up with demand, and the hype isn't really hype anymore, as it's infrastructure being built in real time.

"This is good news for us. It keeps us alive for the long term," he says. "It keeps 500 employees employed, and it keeps a global brand, based in Boston, viable," he says. "We just signed a long-term lease on our headquarters as a result of this and are keeping all of the engineers, R&D, and software development in this building."

The defense ministry has announced that it's funding research and development at SWARM Biotactics to create technology that can "steer cockroaches and send them on reconnaissance missions," CBS News reported. CEO Stefan Wilhelm said the cockroaches are "super resilient" and can crawl through "tiny spaces," climb up walls, go into pipes, and navigate through rubble. How does this work? Neuroscientists at the company put electrodes on the critters' antennae to "stimulate the insects' natural ability to navigate."

In the future, a caregiving machine might gently lift an elderly person out of bed in the morning and help them get dressed. A cleaning bot could trundle through a child's room, picking up scattered objects, depositing toys on shelves and tucking away dirty laundry. And in a factory, mechanical hands may assemble a next-generation smartphone from its first fragile component to the finishing touch.

Artificial intelligence and robotics could automate more than half of all work carried out in the United States - with existing technology - according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute. The research finds that 57% of US work hours could be automated today if organisations redesigned workflows around the capabilities of AI agents and robots. The analysis suggests that nearly half of American jobs sit within occupations facing significant disruption from automation.