Robotics Special: Honor's Robot Phone finally launches

Welcome back, Superhuman. The wait is finally over. Just when it seemed that the modern smartphone had converged on one winning design, Honor has thrown a curveball. Its much-hyped Robot Phone has finally hit the market, with a unique design that’s broken the mold of what you’d expect a typical smartphone to look like.

1. Honor’s highly anticipated Robot Phone has finally launched: After turning heads at MWC, Cannes, and the Shanghai Film Festival earlier this year, Honor's Robot Phone is officially here. The unique device packs a built-in motorized gimbal that tracks subjects and executes cinematic shots autonomously, reacts to its surroundings, and Honor says it can also hold real conversations with you. Pre-orders opened in China on August 12, with sales beginning August 18. You can see the transformative design in action here.

2. Uber blindsides Serve Robotics, sells its entire stake in the company: Uber has divested its full stake in Serve Robotics, the delivery robot company that spun out of Postmates after Uber's $2.65 billion acquisition in 2020. Serve found out about the exit only when Uber filed regulatory disclosures — a major surprise given their five-year relationship. The split reflects the companies’ diverging views on how to scale operations around autonomous delivery fleets.

3. US robotics startups are reportedly carrying robot parts in their luggage: With humanoid robot development moving faster than domestic supply chains can support, US engineers are making personal shopping trips to Shenzhen and hand-carrying components back in their luggage, according to a report by The Information. If true, it highlights a growing tension: Washington banned new Chinese robot imports last month, yet it seems America's robotics industry still depends heavily on Chinese hardware.

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Cleanup Crew: Matic, the home robotic vacuum cleaner, has launched Cues, a new update bringing voice and gesture control to its robot vacuum. It allows you to point at a spill, say "clean here," and the robot locates it using its five onboard cameras and cleans it autonomously. The update is free for all existing Matic owners, though the robot's price is expected to spike from $1,245 to $1,495 on September 9. See how it works here.

Super Service: Wonder, the New York food hall chain, is rebuilding its restaurant operations, deploying robots capable of making 500 bowls of food an hour, tripling kitchen output without adding new staff. The company is also using a new AI program that lets anyone build their own restaurant menu for $10 a month. Backed by a fresh $650 million at a $9 billion valuation, Wonder is eyeing a public market debut next year.

Space Bots: Chinese scientists have proposed using quadruped robots as workers in the country's International Lunar Research Station, due for completion in 2035. The robots would patrol the station, collect rock samples, mine minerals, regulate air and temperature, and even provide emotional support to astronauts. China plans to launch a mission later this month to extract water ice at the lunar South Pole.

Here are the biggest developments in the robotics space that you should know about:

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In 2017, Raghav Gupta was trying to figure out how to enjoy the home-cooked meals he grew up with without spending hours in the kitchen or shelling out for a private chef. He decided to turn to robotics and founded Posha.

A countertop robot that's essentially a "coffee machine for food”, Posha enables users to select recipes and add pre-measured ingredients, while the device handles the actual cooking. Gupta claims the robot slashes kitchen time by about 70%, turning an hour of meal prep into a 10-20 minute affair.

You can check it out here.

Figure’s humanoid robots could be losing their jobs to ….. well, robots.

Shenzhen-based X Square Robot livestreamed its WALL-B system sorting 1,816 parcels per hour with 98% accuracy, feeding packages from a chaotic unloading pile onto a live sorting belt. For context, Figure AI's three humanoids ran for 200 hours and processed roughly 1,250 parcels per hour combined. See how the two robots stack up against each other here.

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Zain, Faiq, and the Superhuman AI team