Robotics Special: Uber bets $10B on a driverless future

Welcome back, Superhuman. Half-court shots are a low-percentage gamble even in the NBA. Now, Toyota has unveiled a basketball robot that can sink long-range shots on demand with a level of consistency that would shock even the best in the game. Meanwhile, a Unitree robot broke the internet for chasing a herd of wild boars through a parking lot in Poland — a chaotic clip that somehow turned into a lucrative brand deal.

WHAT’S NEXT

The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week

1. Uber goes all-in on robotaxis with $10B war chest: After years of riding shotgun on the robotaxi wave, Uber is getting behind the wheel. According to the Financial Times, the company has committed over $10B to partners including Baidu, Rivian, and Lucid. It's a sharp pivot from the gig-economy model that built Uber's empire, driven by fear that robotaxi rivals could disrupt the business it spent a decade building. Driverless services are targeted for 28 cities by 2028.

2. Toyota’s new basketball robot shoots near-perfect hoops: The company’s CUE7 robot has finally hit the court this week. The bipedal robot, which builds on the previous CEU6, combines reinforcement learning with a hybrid control system to visually lock onto targets, calculate trajectories, and sink shots with near-perfect consistency. It serves as Toyota's real-world testbed for vision systems, motion control, and embodied AI. Videos of the robot nailing shots from insane distances have blown up on socials. Watch it here.

3. New model shocks own creators by learning skills it was never taught: San Francisco startup Physical Intelligence just published research which claims that its π0.7 model lets robots tackle unfamiliar tasks using skills learned in entirely different contexts. The breakthrough model caught the company’s own researchers off-guard: one researcher randomly handed a robot a gear set, asked it to rotate a gear, and was surprised to see that it worked. If true, it could be a major unlock for the industry.

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ROBOTS IN ACTION

How robots are transforming the world around us

✨ Claim to Fame: Social media users couldn’t believe it when they came across a clip of a Unitree humanoid robot chasing after wild boars across a parking lot in Warsaw. The video spread like wildfire, racking up millions of views. Now, the robot has landed its first brand deal, promoting a diamond-encrusted Rolex worth around $20,000. Creators behind the robot argue humanoids offer brands something human influencers can't: full messaging control with no controversies. Watch the viral video that started it all here.

🪜 Step Squad: Months after a blaze displaced over 4,500 residents at Hong Kong's Wang Fuk Court, elderly survivors are using robotic exoskeletons to climb back to their apartments for the first time. With towers reaching 31 floors and over a third of residents aged 65 or older, the technology is probably the only way for older people to make one last climb home and retrieve decades of belongings. Watch the emotional moment unfold here.

💰️ Dish Dividends: What if your most boring Saturday chore was suddenly worth $25 an hour? A growing cottage industry of companies is paying gig workers to record themselves folding clothes, washing dishes, and doing other chores around the home. The footage is then used to create the training data that robot AI models desperately need. Researchers believe the same scaling laws that made chatbots smarter with more text data will eventually do the same for robots — if they can collect enough of it.

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Everything else you need to know this week

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

• Boston Dynamics has upgraded its Spot robot with Google DeepMind’s Gemini AI, letting it interpret instructions and carry out real-world tasks with reasoning.

• Ukraine claims it’s captured a Russian frontline position using only drones and ground robots — a glimpse into how autonomous warfare is starting to play out.

• Waymo has begun testing its all-electric Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis in London, inching closer to launching the city’s first commercial driverless ride service.

• Skild AI has acquired Zebra Technologies’ robotics automation arm to scale end-to-end warehouse automation powered by its Skild Brain software.

• Tesla is eyeing its Shanghai Gigafactory as the backbone for scaling its Optimus humanoid robots.

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ROBOT OF THE WEEK

A robot that caught our eye this week

What if your post-workout recovery basically did itself?

RheoFit has dropped the A1 Robotic Massage Roller, a hands-free robotic roller designed for full-body muscle recovery. It delivers a deep rolling massage with interchangeable heads and app-based AI modes that adapt to muscle stiffness. Watch it in action here.

You can check it out here.

ROBO REELS

Watch: Unitree robot comes dangerously close to breaking Usain Bolt’s sprint record

Usain Bolt's world record may not be safe for much longer.

Unitree Robotics just dropped footage of its H1 humanoid robot sprinting at 10.1 meters per second on an athletics track, putting it within striking distance of Usain Bolt's world record pace. The company believes humanoid robots could break the 10-second 100-meter barrier by mid-2026. Just two years ago, the fastest humanoid could barely manage a brisk walk. The gap is closing faster than almost anyone predicted.

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Zain, Faiq, and the Superhuman AI team