Robotics Special: Robot dogs light up the stage at AGT

Welcome back, Superhuman. The robot revolution just took a turn none of us saw coming, as five of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs strutted up on stage at America’s Got Talent and blew the judges away with the performance of a lifetime. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has finally offered a tentative date for Tesla’s much-hyped robotaxi launch.

P.S. The Robotics Special is designed to help you stay on the cutting edge of the latest breakthroughs and products in the industry. Our regular AI and Tech updates will resume as usual on Monday.

WHAT’S NEXT

The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week

1. Tesla offers a tentative date for its much-anticipated robotaxi launch: The company has “tentatively” earmarked June 22 as the day it’ll finally roll out its robotaxi service. Musk says the launch hinges on final safety checks and may be delayed if the checks don’t come through, but a viral video of a Tesla robotaxi test-driving on the streets of Austin already has people excited. The company will only roll out 10 to 20 Model Ys in Austin for now, but plans are in place to expand to cities like LA and San Francisco.

2. 1X’s humanoid robot NEO now thinks and moves more like a human: The Norwegian startup just dropped Redwood, a new AI controller powering its humanoid robot NEO. Trained on thousands of real-world sessions, the model fuses motion, manipulation, and language into one unified system, allowing NEO to adapt to sudden changes in real time. With in-home trials already underway, the company plans to eventually scale production into the millions. Watch Redwood-powered NEO do some chores here.

3. Meta’s new “world model” helps robots think before they act: As part of a broader AI push, the social media giant has unveiled V-JEPA 2, an upgraded AI model designed to help delivery robots and self-driving cars better understand and navigate the physical world. Unlike language models, V-JEPA 2 builds internal simulations of reality — enabling robotic systems to reason about object motion, interactions, and outcomes in real time and predict consequences with human-like logic.

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ROBOTS IN ACTION

How robots are transforming the world around us

🏗️ Moving Day: The local government in Shanghai, China, is using a fleet of 432 small walking robots to lift and move a massive building complex in order to make way for a construction project beneath it. Once the project is complete, the complex will return to its original location. Catch the unusual feat of civil engineering here.

🩺 Dr. GPT: The NHS in the UK has unveiled plans to massively expand robot-assisted surgery, aiming to ramp up annual procedures from 70K to 500K by 2035 and make robotic surgery the default for 90% of keyhole operations. This paves the path for faster recoveries, shorter hospital stays, and increased surgical capacity to cut waiting times.

🦟 Dead Drop: Scientists are using drones to drop millions of specially bred “reproductively incompatible” male mosquitoes across Hawaii in order to reduce local mosquito populations that are threatening native birds with deadly diseases. The robotic delivery system replaces risky helicopter drops, making such complex conservation efforts safer and more efficient.

🤖 City of the Future: In a world-first, Toyota is set to unveil Woven City, a 175-acre robot city at the feet of Mount Fuji in Japan. The smart city is designed from the ground up to test next-gen autonomous mobility and AI-powered living. What makes this concept unique is its dual purpose as both a simulation environment and a liveable, functioning city.

ROBO REEL

Watch: Robot dogs wow judges at America’s Got Talent with the performance of a lifetime

If you still don’t believe that the robots are going mainstream, here’s your cue.

In what the show billed as a history-making move, five Spot quadruped robots bust out the moves in a synchronized dance to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” on the America’s Got Talent stage this week. The performance snagged four “Yes” votes from the judges, meaning Spot will be taking to the stage again for the next round of the competition.

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INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Everything else you need to know this week

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

• Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock broke the internet with a “boring video” of the Figure 02 humanoid sorting packages for an hour straight without overheating.

• Nvidia and Samsung are reportedly backing robotics startup Skild AI with a $35M cash injection as part of the company’s Series B funding round.

• Sam Altman-backed Coco Robotics has picked up $80M in funding to scale last-mile delivery robots.

• Tesla has sued one of its former engineers, accusing them of stealing trade secrets from its robot project Optimus to build a startup for robotic hands.

• DJI, China’s top drone maker, is reportedly looking to enter the ground robotics space with the launch of a new combo vacuum-mopping robot later this month.

• Wandercraft, a French robotics company, has raised $75M in Series D funding to commercialize its Eve self-balancing exoskeleton by 2026.

• MIT researchers have created a control system that enables drones to maintain their flight paths even in the face of unpredictable weather.

ROBOT OF THE WEEK

A robot that caught our eye this week

San Francisco-based XRobotics is making waves in the pizza industry with its compact xPizza Cube, a countertop robot that can churn out over 25,000 pizzas a month.

Designed to assist rather than replace staff, the machine uses AI to apply sauce, cheese, and toppings, saving up to 80% of staff time. The startup recently snagged $2.5M in funding to scale production and plans to expand the product into Mexico and Canada.

You can learn more about the product here.

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Until next time,

Zain and the Superhuman AI team