XPRIZE, a nonprofit that runs big science contests, today named the winners of its wildfire competition. Teams had to build systems of sensors and drones that could find a dangerous new fire and fight it within 10 minutes, with no one at the controls. The defense company Anduril took first place in that part of the contest.
Read moreA small cargo plane fitted with Joby Aviation's self-flying system traveled 3,199 miles from California to North Carolina, taxiing, taking off, steering around storms and landing at every stop while the pilot on board never touched the controls. The company calls it the first fully autonomous flight across the country. Federal rules still required a pilot in the seat.
Read moreFigure, a California company that builds human-shaped robots, says its robot picked up toys, folded towels and made beds in 30 Bay Area homes it had never been in, with no adjustment for any of them. It reports success on 56 percent of attempts, up from 9 percent without its new training method. The numbers are the company's own; no outside group has checked them yet.
Read moreNearly two years after unveiling it at an event where the robots turned out to be remote-controlled, Tesla put the two-seat self-driving vehicle into service. Paid rides began the next day.
Read moreUnitree's new humanoid, developed in three months, hit 12.66 meters per second — above Bolt's fastest recorded speed. The figure is a peak over a short stretch, not a race, and nobody outside the company has verified it.
Read moreChinese manufacturers now make an estimated 85 percent of the world's humanoid robots, with entry models starting around $4,000 to $6,000. The harder problem, makers admit, is finding enough customers who need one.
Read moreThe new version of the company's system uses less than half as much equipment — 13 cameras instead of 29, four laser scanners instead of five — and costs under $20,000 a car, roughly half the previous generation.
Read moreIn the first race of its kind, about twenty humanoid robots ran a 13-mile course alongside human runners. One finished in under three hours; many stumbled, overheated, or needed to be carried. The event was equal parts milestone and blooper reel.
Read moreAt an event on a movie lot, Elon Musk unveiled a two-seat 'Cybercab' with no steering wheel and had humanoid Optimus robots tend bar and dance. Guests who talked to the robots came away suspecting, correctly, that humans were operating them remotely.
Read moreA day after saying farewell to its hydraulic Atlas, which spent a decade doing backflips in viral videos, Boston Dynamics unveiled an all-electric version meant for real work — quieter, stronger, and able to stand up from flat on its back in a way no person can.
Read moreIn a two-minute video from the startup Figure, a robot running OpenAI's technology is asked for 'something to eat' and hands over the only food on the table, then explains its reasoning while clearing dishes. Nothing in the demo was scripted, the company says.
Read moreThe program, RT-2, connects a robot arm to the same kind of AI that powers chatbots, so it can act on requests it was never trained on — like picking up the extinct animal from a table of toys, and choosing the dinosaur.
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