In a minimalist Tokyo lab, a woman lounges in a chair that could easily pass for something in a fancy spa. But she’s actually controlling a humanoid robot across the room with just the tiniest flexes of her muscles. The robot copies her every move, from lifting a box to wiping down a table to shaking someone’s hand. This is H2L’s Capsule Interface.
A smartphone running a full-on Linux operating system, not just some jazzed-up Android skin, feels like a middle finger to the iOS-Android stranglehold. Meet the Liberux NEXX, a bold project from a scrappy Spanish crew aiming to win over privacy geeks and open-source diehards. But with a crowdfunding campaign that didn’t hit its sky-high $1.7 million mark, the NEXX’s story is as gripping as it is shaky.
Amazon’s warehouses can now be described as a wild dance of robotic arms and zippy bots weaving through aisles, sorting packages with a precision that’s almost eerie. As of July 2025, the online retail giant has rolled out over a million robots across its global web of fulfillment centers, nearly neck-and-neck with its 1.56 million human workers.
A tiny marvel, barely bigger than a fingernail, has buzzed out of China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in Hunan. Showcased on CCTV 7, China’s military channel, this mosquito-sized drone is an engineering stunner, blending biology and robotics into a near-invisible spy tool. At just 0.6 to 2 centimeters long and a featherlight 0.3 grams, it’s built to slip through cracks, cling to walls, and eavesdrop in ways bigger drones can’t.
Today, Joby Aviation dropped off its first production electric air taxi in Dubai, kicking open the door for the world’s first commercial air taxi service, ready to soar by early 2026. This slick six-rotor ride can whisk a pilot and four passengers at a blazing 200 mph, shrinking the 45-minute crawl from Dubai International Airport to Palm Jumeirah into a quick 12-minute jaunt.
Photo credit: SCMP
Shanghai’s Zhangyuan neighborhood, a 140-year-old maze of tight alleys and Shikumen-style homes, just pulled off an engineering stunt for the ages. The Huayanli complex—7,500 tons of century-old buildings—was hoisted and shuffled across the city by 432 tiny robots, each small enough to fit in your hand, in a jaw-dropping technological dance.
Surveying a construction site used to mean long days of sweaty work, pounding stakes into the ground, and hoping your measurements didn’t go wonky. Then along comes CivDot, a nimble little robot from Civ Robotics that’s turning that old grind into something almost magical.
A robot dog that can pick up a ball and hurl it across a field sounds like something a Pixar movie, but researchers at ETH Zurich have turned this concept into reality. Their creation, a quadruped named ANYmal, doesn’t just walk or run—it manipulates objects with a precision that rivals human dexterity.
Photo credit: Tom’s Hardware]
The HDMI Forum has just finalized the HDMI 2.2 specification and its Ultra96 cables. Supporting 16K at 60Hz and 4K at 240Hz, this standard doubles HDMI 2.1’s bandwidth to a whopping 96Gbps, setting the stage for TVs, gaming monitors, and more to flex some serious muscle.
