Today's Highlights

· The first customer project for Volvo and Waabi has started in Texas, with autonomous trucks hauling freight for Warp between Dallas and Houston, still with an observer in the driver's seat

· IFR: about 7,000 units of full-size humanoid robots were sold worldwide in 2025, and professional service robot sales grew 24%

· Waymo incidents in Los Angeles County rose from 69 in 2024 to 219 in 2025, most with no apparent injuries

· Deliveroo and Coco have launched robot food delivery in London's Canary Wharf, Deliveroo's first use of autonomous delivery in the UK

· Minneapolis's mayor vetoed an ordinance requiring a person in the driver's seat of robotaxis; the city council needs 9 votes to override

· Given only a ROS 2 terminal for Claude Code, with no custom interfaces written, the simulation success rate on CaP-Bench reached 99.0%

ProWAM: a world action model that replaces full-video prediction with a sequence of sparse visual subgoals · world-model

HF 45↑, the most popular in the community today. World action models (WAMs, models that predict future frames and robot actions together) are too slow when they generate entire videos, and predicting only a single frame loses the "how to get to the goal step by step" information. ProWAM instead predicts ordered sparse visual subgoals; the video backbone runs forward only once and caches features, and the subgoals can also be learned from videos without action labels. It reaches 85.8% on LIBERO-Plus, and zero-shot success in new real-robot scenes rises from 55.0% for the strongest baseline to 70.0%.

Fei Zhang et al. · arXiv 2610.02508 source

NAVA-WAM: pretraining action policies directly on videos without action labels · world-model

HF 36↑, sharing several authors with ProWAM. Previously, with observation-only videos, methods either first learned visual representations and then transferred them to control, or first inferred latent actions and then aligned them to robot commands; NAVA-WAM passes the video-prediction supervision directly into the Action-DiT, skipping that intermediate layer, and then post-trains with action-labeled demonstrations. The authors say it outperforms prior methods both in-distribution and out-of-distribution, and report real-robot generalization results.

Zhaochong An et al. · arXiv 2610.03391 source

OpenRUA: an off-the-shelf coding agent given only a ROS 2 terminal can act as a zero-shot manipulation policy · manipulation

No dedicated primitives and no workflow orchestration: Claude Code (Claude Opus 5) is given only ROS 2 documentation and terminal access. Its success rate is 99.0% on CaP-Bench and 87.0% on LIBERO-PRO, both simulation benchmarks. In 96.80% of episodes the agent wrote its own programs to process raw sensor data, and in about half of episodes it built its own control programs that adjust actions based on sensor feedback. The code is open-sourced.

Zhaoyang Chu et al. · arXiv 2610.02459 source

CriticHack: when optimizing against a visual reward model, wrong-object grasp failures rise along with it · benchmark

Reward curves and task success rates rise together, so everything looks healthy, yet failures from grasping the wrong object are being amplified. The authors fine-tuned a diffusion policy five times with Robometer rewards: success rose 10.2 percentage points, and wrong-object failures rose 10.9 percentage points; Robometer's AUROC for distinguishing "wrong object" from "success" is only .37. Swapping in a frozen outcome verifier, the same optimization returns to the correct task.

Jiaxuan Luo et al. · arXiv 2610.02527 source

EyeRobot 2.0: a rotating "eye" replaces the wrist camera · perception

With the wrist camera removed, a standard policy's real-robot success rate drops from 52% to 27%. EyeRobot 2.0 lets a pair of stereo views actively turn toward the point of gaze, allocating more visual tokens to the image center; when the grasped object blocks the wrist view, its success rate is 48%, versus only 22% for the wrist-camera approach. The experiments include more than 1,000 real-robot trials.

Kush Hari, Justin Kerr et al. · arXiv 2610.03710 source

SoTa: a full-hand tactile skin costing under $10 in materials, with one set of contacts shared by human and robot hands · perception

Human demonstrations are much cheaper than teleoperation, provided the tactile signals of human and robot hands line up. SoTa keeps the same 202-contact layout on both kinds of hand, allowing mixed training without learning a cross-sensor mapping; with the amount of robot demonstrations held fixed, adding human demonstrations raises the average success rate across eight conditions from 22.8% to 45.9%. The authors plan to open-source the fabrication materials.

Jingyun Yang et al. · arXiv 2610.02338 source

CoFiT: fine-tuning a humanoid whole-body tracking policy together with a safety filter · locomotion

When the tracking policy and the safety filter are trained separately, the state distribution the policy sees changes as soon as the filter intervenes. CoFiT, proposed by Marco Pavone and colleagues, cuts TWIST2's constraint-violation time by 83% on a real Unitree G1 (Chinese robot maker); no trials needed a manual stop, whereas in half the baseline's trials an operator had to hit the emergency stop.

Pranit Mohnot et al. · arXiv 2610.02341 source

NEEDLEWORK: offline "stitching" of verified action bridges into demonstration data · manipulation

Failed and roundabout demonstrations also contain usable segments. Shuran Song's team, using only RGB, proprioception and episode success or failure, inserts short, feasibility-verified action bridges between existing observations, with no new environment interaction needed; on real-robot tasks it beats each strongest baseline by an average of 21 percentage points.

Juntao Ren, Yifan Hou, Shuran Song · arXiv 2610.02339 source

RobCo (Germany) ｜ Secondary share sale ｜ $40 million ｜ Valuation above $1 billion · industrial

This $40 million went mainly to employees selling existing shares; RobCo itself received no new money. New investors Cherry Ventures and European Tech Collective, along with returning backers Sequoia, Lightspeed, Lingotto and Leitmotif, took on the shares, at a valuation double the roughly $500 million of the January Series C. RobCo makes modular robotic arms for machine tending, pick-and-place and deburring at small and mid-sized manufacturers; the company says more than 1,000 units are running in factories, with BMW among its customers. Sources: WSJ source; Startup Fortune source

Safeworld ｜ Seed round ｜ Over $12 million · adjacent

Led by Shine Capital and a16z Speedrun, with Carnegie Mellon University's endowment and others participating. Co-founder Ding Zhao heads Carnegie Mellon's Safe AI Lab; the company builds scenes with realistic human bodies in Genesis and MuJoCo, letting the robots under test run their own real software, and runs thousands of scenarios in batches. a16z Speedrun partner Jonathan Lai said, "By the time a robot in the home hits a child and there's a safety incident, it's too late." Source: TechCrunch source

September humanoid robot funding (compiled by Hangjiashuo Robot, a Chinese robotics industry outlet) ｜ 49 deals ｜ RMB 10.83 billion · humanoid ⚠️ Compiled figures

There were 49 deals, the number of events down only 7.5% month on month; the 42 deals with disclosed amounts total RMB 10.83 billion, down 38.3% month on month. Only 2 exceeded RMB 1 billion: D-Robotics's (Chinese robot-chip company) $400 million Series C and SemiDrive's (Chinese automotive chip maker) roughly RMB 1 billion, and neither makes humanoid bodies. Tactile and perception deals numbered 10, and pure dexterous-hand deals 0. In 29 deals the investor list includes state-owned or local-government industry funds, accounting for 59.2%. Source: EE Times China citing Hangjiashuo Robot source

Bright Machines ｜ Strategic investment ｜ Amount undisclosed · industrial

Teradyne has taken a stake, and the two will evaluate installing Teradyne's robots and test equipment in Bright Machines's AI server production lines, covering precision assembly, test-equipment loading and unloading, and in-plant material handling. Bright Machines says it has deployed more than 130 microfactories in over 10 countries. Sources: Dealroom source; GlobeNewswire

PTC to be acquired by Schneider Electric ｜ All cash ｜ About $22.6 billion · adjacent

At $205 per share, it is Schneider's largest acquisition ever, for which it will take on €16 billion to €17 billion of debt. PTC makes CAD and PLM software, and once the deal closes Schneider will compete head-on with Siemens, Dassault and Autodesk. Source: Trending Topics source

First customer project for Volvo and Waabi: hauling freight for Warp on a Texas trunk route · autonomy

Volvo VNL Autonomous trucks equipped with the Waabi Driver have begun carrying Warp's freight between Dallas and Houston, delivering directly to third-party terminals and running both less-than-truckload (LTL) and full-truckload service. It is the first customer project since the two companies began their partnership. An observer still sits in the driver's seat for now, one step short of driverless operation. LTL consolidates freight from multiple customers into the same network, demanding tighter timing coordination than full-truckload, and the two companies are treating this deployment as a test of the LTL use case. Source: Truck News source

Deliveroo and Coco sign exclusive UK partnership, launching first in London's Canary Wharf · industrial

Coco's (sidewalk delivery robot startup) sidewalk delivery robots began taking orders this month at Wood Wharf in Canary Wharf, with the first merchants being Patty&Bun, Signorelli and Beam, and will expand to Milton Keynes, Leeds, Stockton-on-Tees and Nottingham over the following weeks to months. This is Coco's first entry into the UK, and the first time DoorDash-owned Deliveroo has used autonomous delivery in the UK. Most orders are still delivered by riders. Sources: Retail Week source; Moomoo source

NVIDIA and Foxconn use robots to assemble GB300 test trays · industrial ⚠️ Vendor-reported figures

The two tasks are busbar assembly and multi-connector insertion, with a target success rate of 99.5% and a cycle time no more than twice that of a skilled worker. Current validation data show busbar assembly success above 95% and insertion between 90% and 95%, still short of the target. The busbar requires 16 screws, with a target cycle time of 124 seconds, completed by three robotic arms working together. The project is advanced by NVIDIA's Seattle Robotics Lab and the Isaac team. Sources: BigGo Finance source; Focus Taiwan

Walden Robotics: robots running full shifts in a factory since May · embodied ⚠️ Vendor-reported figures

The company, spun out of Toyota Research Institute in January and unveiled in July with $300 million, says through co-founder Adrien Gaidon that its robots have been working the same shifts as human workers since May, doing machine tending, parts kitting and sub-assembly. When a robot runs into difficulty it calls for remote human assistance, which Gaidon likened to one person tending 40 looms 120 years ago. Source: SiliconANGLE source

Ecovacs-style store humanoid guides at Asd (Chinese cookware maker): officially credited with about RMB 2.23 million in sales over 3 days · humanoid ⚠️ Vendor-reported figures

Following the 100 AgiBot (Chinese humanoid maker) Lingxi X2 units that moved into Asd stores from September 28 (already reported), official data say 3 days of trial operation drove cumulative sales of about RMB 2.23 million, with average results across 100 stores up 39%. The robots handle greeting and product demonstrations, while deals are still closed by human sales guides, and the robots' own contribution cannot be separated out from these figures. Source: Sing Tao source

FF Robotics sales and shipments of 265 units in September · humanoid ⚠️ Vendor-reported figures

Following last week's announcement that the robot business will be acquired by FFR, FF says robot unit sales and shipments in September were 265 units, 575 in the third quarter, and 817 cumulatively from the end of February to the end of September, with the count covering both humanoid and biomimetic robots. Source: Eastmoney Caifuhao source

IFR: about 7,000 full-size humanoids sold in 2025, professional service robots up 24% · adjacent

IFR's World Robotics 2026 Service Robots report says global professional service robot sales rose 24% in 2025 to nearly 250,000 units; transport and logistics accounted for 117,500 units, up 21%, or 47%. About 7,000 full-size humanoids, over 140 cm tall and used in commercial and professional settings, were sold worldwide. IFR writes that most humanoid applications remain special-purpose and often require human teleoperation, and that safety standards, training and maintenance costs, and an insufficient business case remain obstacles. Consumer service robots grew 37% to nearly 34.2 million units, and surgical robots reached 8,400 units, up 57%. The humanoid figure here covers full-year 2025 with a defined size and use, whereas IDC and Frost & Sullivan earlier gave first-half 2026 shipments, so the two cannot be compared directly. Sources: INSIGHT EU MONITORING source; Supply Chain Digital source

Waymo incidents in Los Angeles County rose from 69 to 219 in a year · autonomy

The Los Angeles Times compiled data reported to NHTSA: Waymo incidents in Los Angeles County numbered 69 in 2024 and 219 in 2025, with 186 already this year, growing alongside fleet expansion. Most incidents involved no apparent injuries, and many occurred while the Waymo was stationary. In several fatal crashes Waymo did not appear to be primarily at fault. Matthew Raifman, who studies autonomous driving at UC Berkeley and compiled the incident dashboard, said: "I hope this isn't a robotaxi race, even though it is. I hope it's a slow walk toward safe mobility." Source: Los Angeles Times source

Minneapolis mayor vetoes ordinance requiring a person in the robotaxi driver's seat · autonomy

The ordinance, called "Workers Drive Minneapolis," requires a human supervisor in the driver's seat of driverless vehicles such as Waymo, the Tesla Cybercab and Zoox. Mayor Jacob Frey said in vetoing it that requiring a driver in a driverless vehicle makes no sense. Ride-hail driver Fowsia Abdi had told a council meeting earlier, "We work too hard to be pushed aside by billion-dollar companies and new technology." The city council needs 9 votes to override the veto. Source: KYMA source

Volkswagen reportedly picks Wayve for advanced driver-assistance software · autonomy ⚠️ Rumor-level reporting

Following a series-production agreement with Mercedes-Benz in late September, Wayve reportedly beat rivals including NVIDIA in an internal Volkswagen bake-off, held a few weeks ago with real vehicles in a large city in southern Germany. The software will be integrated by Cariad into Volkswagen's existing electronic architecture. The two sides have not signed a binding contract, and Audi's purchasing department is still negotiating terms. Sources: Phoenix New Media Tech source; heise

Hitachi teams up with Agile Robots and FANUC on the same day for factory Physical AI · industrial

The agreement with Agile Robots connects Hitachi's edge AI chips and manufacturing experience to the partner's robotic arms, mobile robots and the Agile One humanoid, with results sold globally through Hitachi's HMAX Industry product line, targeting parts handling, machine tending, assembly and changeover. Agile Robots founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen said the aim is to make flexible, autonomous manufacturing a reality for customers. Hitachi's separate collaboration with FANUC centers on the same goals. Source: AI Insider source

Galbot (Chinese embodied-AI startup) releases ET1, a bipedal humanoid starting at RMB 79,000 · humanoid ⚠️ Vendor-reported figures

The three versions are priced at RMB 79,000, 139,000 and 179,000, and the company says reservations passed 200 units within 24 hours of going online. It stands 1.25 m tall and weighs about 32 kg, aimed at home companionship and tourism and entertainment performances; the body's motors are supplied by Unitree (Chinese robot maker). It is still in the reservation stage, with no volume deliveries yet. Source: Pacific Auto source

AgiBot pledges up to 1 billion ringgit of investment in Malaysia through 2035 · humanoid ⚠️ Plan-level figures

AgiBot founder, chairman and CEO Deng Taihua made the pledge after meeting Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar in Hangzhou, and also said the company would create 5,000 jobs. AgiBot has already deployed more than 100 humanoids at its experience center in i-City, and the two sides are developing home robots for a 500-unit residential project due for completion in 2030. Source: The Star source

Panasonic plans mass production of humanoid robots by 2029 · humanoid ⚠️ Plan-level figures

Panasonic's chief AI officer Akira Sakakibara told Nikkei Asia that the robots will first be used in its own factories and warehouses, and that the battery team and robot team are jointly designing custom battery packs that fit the torso and limbs. Source: LavX News source