Robotics Special: Tesla's Cybercab finally rolls off the assembly line

Welcome back, Superhuman. Millions tuned in as Unitree robots took the stage at this year’s Spring Festival Gala in China, giving a live performance for the ages. Videos from the event have been trending on socials all week. Meanwhile, Tesla’s much-anticipated Cybercab has finally rolled off the assembly line and is set for mass production — but one last hurdle still stands in its way.

WHAT’S NEXT

The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week

1. Unitree robots break the internet at Chinese Spring Festival Gala: Millions of viewers at China's Spring Festival Gala watched Unitree's G1 and H1 robots execute "Drunken Fist" kung-fu alongside human performers, with videos of the performance going viral across social media. Fresh off the successful outing, the company revealed that it now plans to scale production to ship up to 20,000 humanoid robots this year, nearly 4x last year's 5,500 units. You can watch the viral performance here.

2. Tesla hits Cybercab production milestone ahead of April launch: Tesla’s Cybercab has finally rolled off the assembly line, ticking off a major milestone for the company. It’s autonomous, and has no steering wheels or pedals, running entirely on Tesla's FSD system. Mass production kicks off in April using a process that Tesla claims will cut costs and factory footprints. However, US regulations say that all vehicles must have steering wheels, and Tesla is still waiting for exemptions to deploy the vehicle at scale.

3. Waymo offers a clarification after Senate hearing controversy: When the company’s safety chief admitted that some of Waymo’s remote assistants are stationed in the Philippines, some people were outraged about overseas drivers controlling vehicles in the US. The company has since rushed to offer a clarification: unlike Tesla, Waymo’s agents don't actually teleoperate the vehicles. Instead, they provide advice when robotaxis encounter ambiguous situations, with interactions lasting seconds in most cases.

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ROBOTS IN ACTION

How robots are transforming the world around us

🕵️ On the Rounds: ST Engineering has deployed Boston Dynamics' Spot robot to patrol its massive aerospace plant, catching equipment problems before they escalate into costly breakdowns. The quadruped monitors high-risk machinery, collecting machine health data that maintenance teams often missed during urgent repairs — work that previously required multi-week operations with multiple engineers. See it in action here.

🥌 Curling GPT: Korea University has just unveiled Curly, a robotic system that uses deep reinforcement learning to go toe-to-toe with human opponents in the Olympic sport of curling. The robot can read ice conditions and adjust its shots in real-time, often outplaying human opponents on the ice.

🥊 Robot Royale: China just kicked off the Ultimate Robot Knockout Legend, billed as the "world's first" free humanoid combat competition. Participating teams get EngineAI's T800 robots free-of-charge. The robots feature aviation-grade aluminum, active cooling systems, and 4-hour battery life for continuous combat. The winning team will bag a gold championship belt worth $1.44M.

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Everything else you need to know this week

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

• Amazon has hit the brakes on its Blue Jay robotics project less than six months after unveiling the system, shifting its core technology to other programs.

• Barclays analysts have predicted that robotics could become a trillion-dollar market by 2035. They’ve dubbed the next 10 years the “Decade of the Robot”.

• Toyota Canada has contracted 7 Digit humanoid robots from Agility Robotics under a robots-as-a-service deal to work at its RAV4 plant.

• Uber is investing $100M to build EV charging hubs across major US cities, betting on robotaxi infrastructure to strengthen its AV ambitions.

• Waymo is piloting payments to gig workers from DoorDash to manually close robotaxi doors left ajar, highlighting hidden human costs behind AV operations.

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ROBOT OF THE WEEK

A robot that caught our eye this week

You can now sear a "restaurant-quality steak" with the push of a button.

Agari just dropped the AI Smart Cooker, a countertop robot that rolls a sous vide chef and grill master into one machine. It scans your food using AI, cooks under pressure in one-third the time, giving users a perfect steak sear in under 60 seconds.

You can check it out here.

ROBO REEL

Watch: How the ‘world’s fastest developed’ humanoid robot was built in record time

The development timeline for building a robot is shrinking rapidly.

UK startup Humanoid just dropped a short documentary showcasing how it built a bipedal robot in just 10 months. The firm is now sitting on 30,000 non-binding pre-orders after its HMND 01 Alpha hit 90% autonomous success at Siemens and exceeded Ford's expectations by 60%. Production-ready Beta units are set to arrive later this year.

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Until next time,

Zain, Faiq and the Superhuman AI team