Tootfinder

How China boosts its humanoid robot industry, giving companies land, favorable bank loan terms, and sometimes subsidizing the robots' purchase price by ~10% (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/china-is-going-al…

Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May,
with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage.
The Chinese-made humanoid robots will move travellers’ luggage and cargo on the tarmac at Haneda Airport,
which handles more than 60 million passengers a year.

When Meta released its new AI-enhanced smart glasses last October, many minds travelled back to Google Glass, the search giant’s abortive venture into the same territory a decade previously. A lot has changed in 10 years.
https://www.computing.co.…

When AI goes hands-free: The rise of smart glasses and humanoid robots
In the fourth part of our coverage of IT trends in 2026, we look at the return of smart glasses and the rise of humanoid ...

Can you imagine how hard it is to train robots to be as reckless as baggage handlers?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwp87j1llvo

Japan Airlines trials humanoid robots as ground handlers
These robots may in future help clean cabins and operate ground support equipment.

Sources: Neura Robotics, which is building cognitive, humanoid robots for logistics, is raising ~€1B in a funding round backed by Tether at a ~€4B valuation (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-04/neura-robo…

Sources: Chinese companies move to cement their role in humanoid robot supply chains as Tesla and others turn to China for components the US sees as strategic (Raffaele Huang/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/under-the-skin-of-ameri…

Encord, whose software helps companies developing AI models manage training data for robots and other uses, raised $60M at a $500M pre-money valuation (Rocket Drew/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/robot-data-startup-raises-60-million

A Robot Data Startup Raises $60 Million
Companies developing AI models to power humanoid and other robots have been hard at work collecting videos and other data for training their models, even paying people to record themselves completing tasks in homes and workplaces.As these data-collection efforts start to pay off, and robots take ...

Will we all become cyborgs? https://2digital.news/will-we-all-become-cyborgs/ Interview with @… on

Sowas verkaufen die als "Chance".
Humanoide #Roboter könnten laut der Studie Humanoid Robots 2026 von #RolandBerger in wenigen Jahren verstärkt in #Fabriken eingesetzt werden.

Studie: Humanoide Roboter stehen kurz vor ihrer Massenverbreitung
Humanoide Roboter könnten in wenigen Jahren Fabriken weltweit prägen und den Robotikmarkt auf bis zu vier Billionen Dollar wachsen lassen, sagt ein Forscher

Simulating Infant First-Person Sensorimotor Experience via Motion Retargeting from Babies to Humanoids
Francisco M. L\'opez, Hoshinori Kanazawa, Ondrej Fiala, Yakov Balashov, Valentin Marcel, Lukas Rustler, Miles Lenz, Dongmin Kim, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jochen Triesch, Matej Hoffmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.27583
arXiv:2604.27583v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Motion retargeting from humans to human-like artificial agents is becoming increasingly important as humanoid robots grow more capable. However, most existing approaches focus only on reproducing kinematics and ignore the rich sensorimotor experience associated with human movement. In this work, we present a framework for simulating the multimodal sensorimotor experiences of infants using physical and virtual humanoids. From a single video, our method reconstructs the infant's body configuration by extracting its skeletal structure and estimating the full 3D pose from each frame. Then we map the reconstructed motion onto several developmental platforms: the physical iCub robot and the virtual simulators pyCub, EMFANT and MIMo. Replaying the retargeted motions on these embodiments produces simulated multisensory streams including proprioception (joints and muscles), touch, and vision. For the best-matching embodiment, the retargeting achieves sub-centimeter accuracy and enables a rich multimodal analysis of infant development as well as enhanced automated annotation of behaviors. This framework provides a unique window into the infant's sensorimotor experience, offering new tools for robotics, developmental science, and early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders. The code is available at https://github.com/ctu-vras/motion-retargeting/.
toXiv_bot_toot

A look at Hyundai's Atlas humanoid robot, slated for assembly tasks in 2028; Hyundai has invested billions in robotics since acquiring Boston Dynamics in 2021 (Hyonhee Shin/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

At the Beijing half-marathon, several humanoid robots beat human winners by 10 minutes; a robot made by Honor beat the human world record held by Jacob Kiplimo (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sports/humanoid-robots-r…

STMicro plans to retrain workers and deploy humanoid robots in its older chip plants for repetitive and physically demanding tasks, aiming to avoid closures (Nathan Vifflin/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/stmicroelectronics-pla…

A look at China's rapidly expanding robotics sector, which now has roughly 140 companies hoping to build humanoids, fueled by massive state-backed investments (Chang Che/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/19/inside-chinas-ro…