Agility Robotics has debuted its first humanoid robot engineered to work safely near humans without risking harm to flesh-and-blood coworkers. Such safety features could unlock many more opportunities to use such robots inside warehouses and automotive factories—all without requiring isolated robot work cells and physical separation barriers.

When Agility’s new Digit 5 robot detects a person at a distance, it can autonomously take precautions, like moving to avoid the person or standing still so the person can pass by without getting closer. If a person is getting into close proximity with Digit 5, the robot can even choose to squat and assume a seated position.

“The robot was designed with a complex safe motion system that can take a variety of different mitigations depending on exactly what sort of human presence is detected,” Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer at Agility, told Ars.

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The performance gap between frontier AI models from US tech companies and the best open-weights models from Chinese companies has closed to just 4.4 months, according to a Mozilla report. That explains why many companies are shifting to the significantly cheaper open models for routine work—and helps reveal a narrow band of workloads where frontier models are worth the cost.

Most organizations should ideally be using open models as the default for the majority of their work, according to the latest State of Open Source AI report from Mozilla, published on September 15 and shared with Ars prior to publication. The report highlights how a leading open model, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, achieves a composite AI performance score on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index that is just three points behind Anthropic’s Fable 5 closed frontier model, all while costing just 30 percent of the latter.

“[A Closed model] earns its premium in a few places: expert professional work, high-intensity retrieval, and long context,” Raffi Krikorian, chief technology officer at Mozilla, said in an email to Ars. “We see the decision to pay for closed [models] as workload-specific rather than organization-specific.”

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China leads the world in churning out humanoid robots and four-legged robot dogs that also happen to be the most affordable on the market—and Unitree Robotics’ founder Wang Xingxing is arguably one of the people most responsible for that Chinese lead.

The introverted founder, who prominently appeared at a 2025 business symposium hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping, became phenomenally wealthy after Unitree launched an initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market on August 19. But extensive reporting by Beijing-based Caijing Magazine suggests Unitree’s success so far has been driven by Wang’s extreme micromanagement leadership style—an approach that may be more suited to a small startup than a fast-growing robotics company.

Caijing’s interviews with Unitree employees and investors paint a picture of Wang as someone who personally decides nearly every aspect of corporate strategy or product design, including the colors of materials and lengths of individual screws. The Caijing Magazine feature published on August 31, titled “The King of Unitree,” was translated into English by ChinaTalk, a US-based think tank and media organization, on September 10.

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China leads the world in churning out humanoid robots and four-legged robot dogs that also happen to be the most affordable on the market—and Unitree Robotics’ founder Wang Xingxing is arguably one of the people most responsible for that Chinese lead.

The introverted founder, who prominently appeared at a 2025 business symposium hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping, became phenomenally wealthy after Unitree launched an initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market on August 19. But extensive reporting by Beijing-based Caijing Magazine suggests Unitree’s success so far has been driven by Wang’s extreme micromanagement leadership style—an approach that may be more suited to a small startup than a fast-growing robotics company.

Caijing’s interviews with Unitree employees and investors paint a picture of Wang as someone who personally decides nearly every aspect of corporate strategy or product design, including the colors of materials and lengths of individual screws. The Caijing Magazine feature published on August 31, titled “The King of Unitree,” was translated into English by ChinaTalk, a US-based think tank and media organization, on September 10.

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Oracle’s proposed investment in 2 gigawatts of renewable energy projects for New Mexico comes as local opposition could delay development of the Project Jupiter data center that Oracle is building for OpenAI.

The two tech companies are developing the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, as part of the broader Stargate AI infrastructure project announced by President Donald Trump in 2025. But Project Jupiter faces local protests and court battles over concerns about its environmental impacts—and the latest Oracle announcement on September 8 seeking proposals for renewable energy projects does not change the fact that the data center will be powered by fuel cells that consume natural gas.

“Like all matching programs, this would be synthetic in the sense that 2 GW of renewables wouldn't directly power the data center,” wrote Michael Thomas, CEO of the Cleanview data platform that tracks renewable energy and data center projects, in a LinkedIn post.

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Chinese-made drones are flying out the bodies of flood victims and delivering food to survivors in the aftermath of devastating flash floods on the border of Nepal and China’s Tibetan region.

Nepal’s army has been using four DJI FlyCart 100 drones donated from China to make 10 to 16 aid deliveries each day, according to Reuters. This comes after a partial glacier collapse in the Himalayan mountains unleashed a sudden surge of water, mud, and debris that swept through border crossings, valley communities, and hydropower projects on August 26.

The DJI Flycart 100 Drones come with a 98-foot rope and winch system for picking up and dropping off heavy loads. The website of Chinese drone company DJI describes the drones as being able to carry between 187 and 220 pounds, depending on the battery configuration.

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Chinese-made drones are flying out the bodies of flood victims and delivering food to survivors in the aftermath of devastating flash floods on the border of Nepal and China’s Tibetan region.

Nepal’s army has been using four DJI FlyCart 100 drones donated from China to make 10 to 16 aid deliveries each day, according to Reuters. This comes after a partial glacier collapse in the Himalayan mountains unleashed a sudden surge of water, mud, and debris that swept through border crossings, valley communities, and hydropower projects on August 26.

The DJI Flycart 100 Drones come with a 98-foot rope and winch system for picking up and dropping off heavy loads. The website of Chinese drone company DJI describes the drones as being able to carry between 187 and 220 pounds, depending on the battery configuration.

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Apple has debuted the new AirPods 5 with improved active noise cancellation and sound quality—aiming to provide improved listening and user features at a lower launch price than the predecessor AirPods 4.

The newest AirPods will go on sale for $129 in stores starting on September 18, according to an Apple press release accompanying the company’s “Surprise and Shine” event. Customers can also purchase AirPods 5 with a wireless charging case that provides longer battery life and on-stem volume control for $149. Preorders are already open.

This is looking like a solid deal compared to the predecessor AirPods 4. The older AirPods debuted in 2024 with a starting price of $129, but users had to pay $179 for the version with active noise cancellation.

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Apple has debuted the new AirPods 5 with improved active noise cancellation and sound quality—aiming to provide improved listening and user features at a lower launch price than the predecessor AirPods 4.

The newest AirPods will go on sale for $129 in stores starting on September 18, according to an Apple press release accompanying the company’s “Surprise and Shine” event. Customers can also purchase AirPods 5 with a wireless charging case that provides longer battery life and on-stem volume control for $149. Preorders are already open.

This is looking like a solid deal compared to the predecessor AirPods 4. The older AirPods debuted in 2024 with a starting price of $129, but users had to pay $179 for the version with active noise cancellation.

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Nearly every country represented in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted in favor of promoting world maps that more accurately show the size of various continents. But the UN resolution is unlikely to change how millions of people regularly see versions of 16th-century Mercator maps depicting skewed continent sizes in navigation apps.

On September 4, the African-led resolution attracted 164 votes in favor, with six countries abstaining from voting. Only the United States voted to oppose the resolution after describing it as a “radical ideological project,” according to UN News.

The non-binding UN resolution does not impose map changes on anyone. Instead, it “encourages governments, schools, international organizations, and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps when relative size matters,” UN News reported. The resolution also encourages teaching about the trade-offs that arise from depicting a spherical planet on a flat map.

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Nearly every country represented in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted in favor of promoting world maps that more accurately show the size of various continents. But the UN resolution is unlikely to change how millions of people regularly see versions of 16th-century Mercator maps depicting skewed continent sizes in navigation apps.

On September 4, the African-led resolution attracted 164 votes in favor, with six countries abstaining from voting. Only the United States voted to oppose the resolution after describing it as a “radical ideological project,” according to UN News.

The non-binding UN resolution does not impose map changes on anyone. Instead, it “encourages governments, schools, international organizations, and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps when relative size matters,” UN News reported. The resolution also encourages teaching about the trade-offs that arise from depicting a spherical planet on a flat map.

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Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.

This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.

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Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.

This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.

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Data centers have become the largest driver of a surging electricity demand that is straining US power grids. But the AI data center boom has also accelerated investment in a technology that could provide a silver lining for everyone—solid-state power transformers that replace industrial-age technology with modern power electronics.

Power grids currently rely on conventional transformer technology that is painstakingly assembled by hand and has a fundamental design dating back to the 1880s. Two copper wire coils manually wound around a steel core create electromagnetic fields that help step up voltage levels of alternating current electricity for long-distance transmission or step down voltage levels for the electricity use of homes and businesses. The largest power transformers cannot be mass-manufactured but are instead custom-built for each utility company’s electrical substations.

Manufacturing constraints, coupled with the scramble to upgrade US power infrastructure, have meant utility companies and other customers must wait up to several years for delivery of new power transformers. That not only hinders power grid infrastructure expansion needed to support growing electricity demand, but also delays the process of replacing aging power transformers.

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This week, Romania accused Russia of sending a drone boat loaded with explosives to a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea. A Romanian F-16 fighter jet used its cannons to disable the surface drone so that explosive ordnance experts could blow it up safely.

On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard first spotted the maritime drone a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep project’s main drilling platform, where several hundred workers were busy with the platform’s ongoing installation, Defense Minister Radu Miruță said in a Facebook post. The offshore gas project would make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union once it starts full production in 2027.

To protect the lives of the workers and the offshore gas infrastructure, the Romanian military scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to stop the drone with cannon fire, Miruță said. Army specialists later carried out a controlled detonation, as seen in a Facebook video shared by the defense minister.

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A leading US distributor of China’s most popular humanoid robots and robot dogs now plans to produce its own robots at a facility on Long Island, New York. The business pivot comes amid the US government’s growing crackdown on foreign-made robots.

The company, RoboStore, had previously become the main North American distributor for humanoid robots and quadruped robots from Unitree Robotics, a Chinese robotics company that produces some of the most affordable and popular humanoid robot models. Universities like Harvard and MIT, along with tech companies like Amazon and Nvidia, purchased such robots made in China through RoboStore for their own research and development purposes.

“We’ve sold over 1,500 robots and deployed them and worked with customers like Cisco, OpenAI, Nvidia, and over 150 universities,” Teddy Haggerty, founder and CEO of RoboStore, told Ars.

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Amazon wants to grow its Prime Air delivery drone service sixfold to reach nearly 500 cities and towns across the United States by the end of 2026. The planned expansions from Amazon and its rivals could make the convenience of delivery drone services available to tens of millions more people in the coming months—but will also test more communities’ tolerance for increased noise from daily drone flights.

On August 19, Amazon announced it would soon launch Prime Air in the metropolitan areas of Chicago; Cleveland; Atlanta; Syracuse, New York; and Boise, Idaho, with more to come later in the year. Each Prime Air site offers delivery drone service within an area of about 175 square miles, with delivery times ranging from half an hour to an hour.

Prime Air already operates out of Amazon warehouses in 10 cities across seven states. Those include primarily suburban neighborhoods of Phoenix; Tampa; Kansas City; Omaha, Nebraska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Detroit; Houston; and San Antonio, Dallas, and Waco, Texas.

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Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas.

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Hundreds of US government drones have switched from border surveillance to a different surveillance mission this summer—looking for signs of screwworm infestations in wild animals and livestock herds.

The flesh-eating New World Screwworm is the parasitic larva that emerges from eggs laid by flies in the open wounds or body openings of warm-blooded animals and humans, with untreated cases potentially leading to severe injury or death. Since the first screwworm cases were detected in South Texas in June, the US Department of Agriculture and US Customs and Border Protection have been conducting “one of the most extensive animal-health surveillance operations in the country,” the USDA said on August 10 in social media posts on platforms like X and Facebook.

The effort involves at least 200 drones owned by the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. But the actual number in use "varies depending on availability and need," a USDA spokesperson told Ars.

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