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.
© Agility Robotics
Aerial drones have become a startlingly common sight on the battlefield. Ukraine, for instance, has been deploying a record number of them as global demand for the often inexpensive and relatively simple to launch devices surges.
But US-based firms are thinking far ahead, envisioning a dystopian “Terminator”-inspired future in which humanoid robot soldiers go to war on behalf of their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
Case in point, San Francisco-based tech company Foundation recently signed a $24 million Pentagon contract to do just that, as the Wall Street Journal reports. While the company’s flagship Phantom MK1 robot, an unsettling matte black apparition, doesn’t appear to be ready to hold a gun or run into open fire on its own any time soon, the Eric Trump-backed company is far from ruling out the idea.
When the tech progresses enough to allow robots to reason and adapt to their behavior, “instead of dropping a bomb in a building, you can send humanoids to actually walk inside that building and go directly to the target,” Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak told the WSJ.
In an interview last year, Pathak wasn’t willing to rule out the possibility of handing one of its robots a gun, either.
“If you’re first body in and you’re docile, then the enemies are not going to expose themselves,” he said at the time. “So you have to be first body and deadly.”
“If the US military had 100,000 robots that they could just demonstrate working, it would, by and large, end a lot of wars before they start,” Pathak added at the time.
So far, the company has rolled out around ten robots, according to the executive, including “deployments with the Air Force.” Its robots, which can carry up to 80 pounds, have even helped move larger objects in Ukraine, per Pathak.
Foundation is also “gearing up to start building a lot more” of its robots, while using AI and reinforcement learning to teach them new tasks.
In the long run, however, the company appears to be far more interested in colonizing other planets. According to the company’s website, its “master plan” involves building “technologies that make life self-sustaining on Earth and beyond,” closely echoing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s ambitions.
But before it can get anywhere even remotely close to that, the company has a lot to prove. For one, beyond major technological hurdles still to overcome, it has to convince modern society that deploying deadly humanoid robots doesn’t cross a moral line — which is far easier said than done.
More on humanoid robots: Dozens of Humanoid Robots Gather for a Protest, Marching and Waving Signs
The post These Robot Soldiers Are Getting Downright Terrifying appeared first on Futurism.
The idea of a humanoid robot folding laundry, loading the dishwasher or vacuuming once sounded like a scene from "The Jetsons." Now, as robotics companies race to develop machines that can navigate everyday environments and handle household tasks, the prospect of a robot taking over our chores feels increasingly real.
But just because robots can do the work, that doesn't mean people are ready to welcome them into their homes.
Live Science recently polled readers on whether they would want a humanoid robot doing their household chores, and the results reveal just how appealing the idea of a robotic housekeeper really is.
As of Sept. 15, over 600 people had responded, with 42% choosing to let the robot "take my chores, please." This pattern was reflected in the comments, with one reader stating, "I would, but I doubt my wife would approve of the job the robot did." To this, another reader responded, "Good for her. Take her household responsibilities for a year and report back."
Thirty-six percent of voters, the next-largest bloc, chose the opposite answer: "No, I don't trust it with my dishes (or data)." Humanoid robots are taught movements and tasks by building world models from the environments around them. While the technology remains primitive — resulting in some clumsy (albeit hilarious) mechanical failures — this, rather than privacy concerns, seems to be the current focus of deploying these machines.
It's these mechanical concerns that other commenters focused on, with one reader writing, "I don't think robots are dexterous enough to do dusting chores. Maybe vacuuming, but probably slow and clumsy moving furniture."
The reader also cast doubt on washing floors and moving furniture to mop hard floors — could it discern between items that could and couldn't be loaded into the dishwasher?
"Maybe robots can maintain houseplants," they continued. "Certainly, equipped with a moisture meter and a huge horticultural database, robots can probably serve a better role as waterers in huge commercial nurseries…"
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.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa (Photo by Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images
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.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa (Photo by Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images
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When it comes to building robotic brains, many companies in the industry focus on putting intelligence directly into their robots.
General Robotics is taking an alternate approach. The Redmond, WA company’s GRID system hosts its robotics intelligence layer in the cloud, allowing it to be delivered and deployed to robots operating remotely.
GRID hosts the models, simulations, robot representations, data and agents through which robotic skills are developed, tested, orchestrated and deployed to robots on site. “Having one layer that looks after 50 to 100 robots is way more important than 50 or 100… robots that operate completely independently,” said General Robotics CEO Ashish Kapoor.
While videos of sprinting robots crashing into pads — or humanoid robots kickboxing and breakdancing – often go viral, General Robotics focuses instead on industrial models. Its GPU-based GRID cloud provides a better base to ingest data and develop skills for specific verticals.
“Our ability to onboard new robots, our ability to take them to deployment with new skills, our ability to connect very complex simulations to the reality is enabled through GRID,” Kapoor said.
The company declined to talk in detail about its customers, but Kapoor offered an example of how the GRID-based system works. In a biolab, for instance, robots pouring liquid from beakers required in their modeling fluid tactile interaction and transparent materials.
“There exists no good way of modeling those kinds of behaviors in software right now because [of]…all of those things,” Kapoor said. “…This is where agents came in.”
AI agents were used to create a “hybrid simulator” that brought the pieces together in the cloud. The robots were then tested against the simulated model.
“The physics of the robot was coming from one simulator and… the calculation of fluid dynamics was actually created by [the] agent itself by looking at the literature,” Kapoor said. What “otherwise would have taken us at least a year to build…was done in minutes.
“GRID allows you to auto engineer those robots, retarget those skills, [and] create appropriate digital representations on its own,” Kapoor said.
Humans are involved in safety checks to make sure robots behave according to specifications.
While humanoid robots are the ones often drawing media attention, “the most value in robots in 18 months to 36 months is going to be realized in heavy industries,” he said. “These are ports, these are your energy infrastructures.”
Although the company’s cloud-based GRID architecture has advantages, the system also faces some challenges — namely, lagging cloud-to-robot communication.
“The round-trip time, the latency is of paramount importance,” Kapoor said. “The robot needs to have two loops.” He described that second loop as an “inner control loop…operating at a millisecond level…that’s on the edge.”
Another issue involves companies that must meet strict regulatory and security requirements. For example, car companies are generally against putting proprietary information —whether that be designs for new fuel injection systems or new battery designs — in the cloud.
Still, General Robotics remains optimistic its system can handle these kinds of issues long term. “Between commercial cloud deployment, between on-prem server deployment and…edge deployment, we do have a way of addressing many of these issues,” Kapoor said.
In addition to continually improving its stack, the company also seeks out partners that can help it resolve challenges, Kapoor said.
That robotics is a growing field seems obvious. Morgan Stanley in a 2025 study predicted the humanoid robot population would touch 1 billion by 2050 and be valued at $5 trillion. And a more recent study from Counterpoint Research estimated that between 50,000 and 85,000 humanoid robots would ship this year alone.
On a sunny morning in June, I walked to work with a quadruped robot beside me. I’ve never gotten more attention from strangers.
A bunch of people snapped pictures of my robot dog. Several people asked me questions. Was it mine? (Yes.) Did I build it? (No.) Was it being used for surveillance? (No.)
Biological dogs kept a safe distance from my mechanical companion. Some growled or barked at it.
© Nat Purser
“Can you shed tears for me?” a visitor asked. “Of course,” the robot replied, and its eyes welled up on command. That brief exchange became one of the standout moments at the 2026 Inclusion Conference on the Bund in Shanghai. A bionic emotion-sensing robot demonstrated its ability to physically cry in response to a simple spoken request, catching visitors off guard with just how natural the reaction looked.
The robot is built on a three-layer technical architecture designed specifically to generate convincing human emotional responses rather than simple pre-programmed animations. Its ability to produce tears on cue points to a deeper engineering goal: making robotic emotional expression feel spontaneous and responsive, rather than scripted.
Traditional systems used to animate robotic faces rely on servo motors. Those motors physically pull silicone facial skin into different shapes to generate expressions like smiles, frowns, or surprise. That approach has powered most emotionally expressive robots shown publicly in China over the past two years, letting them blink, glance around, and shift expression in real time.
The next generation of the technology moves beyond that mechanical pulling system entirely. Developers plan to add bionic muscles beneath the robot’s synthetic skin. That shift is meant to let the robot generate a meaningfully wider range of facial expressions than servo-driven skin alone can produce. Rather than a limited set of pre-built expression shapes, muscle-based actuation could let the face shift more continuously and naturally between emotional states.
Producing actual tears, as the robot did during its conference demonstration, adds a physiological layer on top of that facial architecture. Rather than relying on expression alone, generating a genuine fluid response mimics one of the most recognizably human signals of emotion. That signal is difficult to convincingly fake through mechanical movement alone.
The robot appeared as part of a wider technology exhibition running alongside the conference. That exhibition spanned nearly 15,000 square meters and drew more than 300 science and technology exhibitors. The 2026 Inclusion Conference on the Bund ran under the theme “Building the AI Economy Together.” It featured a main forum alongside more than 40 sub-forums exploring different facets of China’s expanding AI industry.
Emotionally expressive robots have become an increasingly prominent showcase at major Chinese technology events over the past year. That trend reflects a broader industry push to make human-robot interaction feel more natural and less mechanical.
Whether audiences respond to a crying robot with genuine emotional engagement or simple curiosity, demonstrations like this one carry a clear signal. Chinese robotics developers are now investing seriously in the physical, physiological details of emotional expression, not just the underlying artificial intelligence driving it.
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