This Week's Good ReadsBoston Dynamics — Inside the Stretch LabA quick peek inside BD’s warehouse-scale testbed where engineers replicate real dock layouts and freight to train Stretch’s ML models, stress-test reliability, and prototype new jobs like pallet building. Go inside the lab.

‍Forbes — China Market Update: Value Rules the Day; Midea to Release Household Robots in 2–3 Years

Brendan Ahern’s latest China note flags a tilt toward value stocks and highlights appliance giant Midea’s timeline for bringing household robots to market within 2–3 years—another signal of how quickly embodied AI is moving from demo to deployment. Read the market note.

A reported look at the booming market for first-person “how humans do things” datasets—how startups are collecting them, the ethics of consent and pay, and the privacy questions that follow as humanoids learn household skills. Read the investigation.

TIME — The Experiment That Left Claude Needing “Robot Therapy”

TIME’s In the Loop newsletter covers Andon Labs’ butter-fetching test of LLM-controlled robots (Claude, Gemini, GPT, etc.): sub-40% success rates, safety gotchas, and one memorable “meltdown,” underscoring how jagged AI capabilities remain in the physical world. Read the newsletter.

Robotics Companies Funding

• Infravision – $91 M, Series B round (3 Nov 2025), led by GIC; participation from Activate Capital, Hitachi Ventures and Energy Impact Partners (PitchBook). Aerial-robotics TX System that replaces helicopters for power line stringing and grid construction.
• Mimic Robotics – $16 M, Seed round (3 Nov 2025), led by Elaia (co-lead Speedinvest); participation from Founderful, 1st Kind, 10x Founders, 2100 Ventures, Sequoia Scout Fund, Tiny VC and Venture Kick (PitchBook). ETH Zurich spin-out developing human-level dexterity via AI-trained robotic hands on standard robot arms.
• ROLO Robotics – US$3.45 M, Seed round (31 Oct 2025), led by BEENEXT; participation from A2D Ventures, Antler, Blueprint Ventures, Lotus One Investment, Seedstars, SUTD Ventures, TIS Japan and angels (Crunchbase). Singapore startup building autonomous micro-kitchen kiosks (MAYA) for 24/7 hot food.
• Tethys Robotics – €3.5 M, Pre-seed round (30 Oct 2025), led by Redstone; participation from Alpine VC, Euregio+, Zürcher Kantonalbank, ETH Foundation, Kickfund and Venture Kick (PitchBook). ETH Zurich spin-off with a compact hybrid AUV/ROV (“Tethys ONE”) for subsea inspections.
• Agtonomy – $18 M, Series B round (28 Oct 2025), led by DBL Partners; participation from Nuveen, Autotech, Allison Transmission, Rethink Food and Black Forest Ventures (PitchBook). “Physical AI” autonomy platform embedded with ag equipment OEMs.
• Augmentus – Undisclosed, Strategic investment (27 Oct 2025) from Applied Ventures (Applied Materials’ VC arm) (PitchBook). No-/low-code robotic path planning (welding, finishing) with adaptive 3D vision and motion planning.

Robotics News

• Wyoming Ready To Be First State To Have Human Vs. Robot Combat Sports — The Wyoming Combat Sports Commission drafted the nation’s first rules for “synthetic combatants,” outlining safety shutoffs and case-by-case oversight for human-vs-robot “hybrid bouts.” Cowboy State Daily
• Samsung Teams With NVIDIA To Lead the Transformation of Global Intelligent Manufacturing Through New AI Megafactory — Samsung will stand up an “AI Megafactory” using 50,000+ NVIDIA GPUs, digital twins (Omniverse), and Jetson/Thor to accelerate chipmaking and advance humanoid robotics. Samsung Global Newsroom
• China’s service robots take lead with world’s first hotel using humanoid and specialized robots — Keenon’s XMAN-R1 humanoid joins task-specific robots at Shanghai’s Shangri-La Hongqiao Airport hotel to handle reception, cleaning, deliveries and luggage. People’s Daily Online
• Robot.com Launches With 1.7 Million Real-World Robot Tasks Completed — Kiwibot’s operator launches as Robot.com with 500+ robots and 1.7M completed tasks, citing deployments with Sodexo, SKIP and AWS across the U.S., Canada, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Business Wire
• Foxconn to deploy humanoid robots at Houston AI server plant — Foxconn will introduce NVIDIA Isaac GR00T-powered humanoid robots on production lines building AI servers for NVIDIA in Houston, targeting initial deployment in early 2026. Reuters
• Geekplus unveils new Robot Arm Picking Station, ushering in an era of fully unmanned warehouses — New station completes end-to-end unmanned picking; “Geek+ Brain” promises rapid plug-and-play deployment, millisecond-level inference and near-zero errors. FT Company Announcements
• Johnson & Johnson MedTech advances surgical robotics with NVIDIA AI — J&J MedTech highlights use of NVIDIA Isaac and “physical AI” simulation to speed robotics development, clinician training and workflow optimization. MassDevice
• NEO Home Robot | Order Today — 1X launches a consumer-ready humanoid for the home (pre-orders: $20k or $499/mo), shipping in 2026; 22-DoF hands, ~66-lb body, quiet operation (22 dB) and optional remote expert guidance. 1X
• Jurassic spark: Dobot revives feathered dinosaur to take robotics beyond the factory floor — Dobot unveils a lifelike, AI-powered Sinosauropteryx robot for museums and tourism that can walk, “breathe,” and interact with visitors. South China Morning Post
• ZF and Horizon Robotics to jointly launch driver-assistance system up to SAE L3 with urban NOA in China — Partners announce an ADAS coPILOT system for China, with mass production slated for 2026 on a local EV platform. ZF Press

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