Presented by
Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Los Angeles just crossed 500 Serve delivery bots on its sidewalks, and residents can't decide whether to pity them or resent them.
The robots aren't coming, they're already clogging crosswalks while humanoids clock into warehouses and a $2,500 pair of robot legs lands on GitHub. So who actually gets to decide where all of them belong?
In today's recap:
LA's sidewalks fill up with delivery robots
Figure's humanoids report to a JCPenney warehouse
Rockwell backs Slamcore's $14M raise
Hugging Face open-sources $2,500 robot legs
LATEST DEVELOPMENT
SERVE × COCO
HOT
LA's sidewalks now belong to the delivery bots
WHAT
Serve Robotics just rolled past 500 delivery robots across 40 LA neighborhoods, up from two back in 2023, and rival Coco is running about 300 more. Residents are split: the bots are cute enough to earn nicknames and blinking-eye sympathy, but they're also blocking sidewalks, clipping pedestrians, and worrying delivery drivers about their jobs.
WHY IT MATTERS
Glendale is weighing a moratorium and Chicago has already capped expansion, so the fight over sidewalk robots is turning into a real zoning question, not a novelty. If cities start adopting Cornell's new "robotability score" to decide where bots can go, deployment maps could end up drawn by urban planners rather than the robotics companies.
PRESENTED BY WISPR FLOW
Your prompts are leaving out 80% of what you're thinking.
When you type a prompt, you summarize. When you speak one, you explain. Wispr Flow captures your full reasoning — constraints, edge cases, examples, tone — and turns it into clean, structured text you paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool. The difference shows up immediately. More context in, fewer follow-ups out.
89% of messages sent with zero edits. Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Try Wispr Flow free — works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
FIGURE AI
DEAL
Figure's humanoids are reporting to a JCPenney warehouse
WHAT
Figure just signed a commercial deal to put its humanoid robots inside Catalyst Brands' distribution network, starting at the company's Reno, Nevada logistics center. Catalyst owns JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers, so the bots are walking straight into mainstream retail's supply chain.
WHY IT MATTERS
Figure says its BotQ line went from building one Figure 03 a day to one an hour in four months, and it's already shipped more than 350 robots, so this reads as a deployment story, not a demo reel. If multi-brand holding companies start treating humanoids as a "primary growth engine," the warehouse floor becomes the first real proving ground for general-purpose robots at scale.
SLAMCORE
FUNDING
Rockwell automation just backed Slamcore's raise
WHAT
Slamcore pulled in $14M with a check from ROKStar Ventures, the venture arm of industrial giant Rockwell Automation, taking its total to $40M. Its stereo-camera visual AI tracks every vehicle on a factory or warehouse floor without GPS, beacons, or floor markers.
WHY IT MATTERS
Forklifts cause tens of thousands of injuries a year and sit idle more than half the time, so the pitch is safety plus utilization from infrastructure-free tracking. If the industry's biggest automation players see vehicle-tracking AI as foundational rather than a point tool, every manual fleet on a factory floor becomes a data source for the next generation of physical AI.
HUGGING FACE
RESEARCH
Hugging Face open-sourced a $2,500 pair of robot legs
WHAT
Hugging Face just released LeRobot Humanoid, a $2,500 bipedal platform built from 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf components, shipping with the full bill of materials, wiring, assembly steps, and control software for both the physical robot and simulation. Engineer Virgile Batto is blunt that it isn't the most advanced humanoid, it's one you can build, repair, and run experiments on.
WHY IT MATTERS
Commercial humanoids still run $30,000 to $150,000 a unit, so a printable pair of legs drops the entry price for real-world robot research by more than an order of magnitude. If the open-hardware loop of design-in-sim, test-in-body, feed-the-data-back catches on, the next wave of robot-learning breakthroughs could come from labs and hobbyists, not just the well-funded giants.
QUICK HITS
NEWS
Amazon could quadruple its robotic-fulfillment footprint in Middletown, Delaware, a sign its warehouse-automation buildout is still expanding fast even as humanoid hype cools. Spotlight Delaware
South Korea opened Galaxy Robot Park near Seoul, where K-pop-dancing androids and automated artists perform, a bet that robotics can anchor a new kind of entertainment and tourism. The Guardian
Boston Dynamics' Atlas pulled off a clean "rabona" soccer kick that went viral and left the Inside the NBA crew, Shaq and Charles Barkley included, visibly stunned on air. Reddit
Robots are now cooking and plating meals for a nonprofit in San Francisco's Tenderloin, an early look at automation moving into community kitchens and social services. WIRED
China's eldercare push is being framed by state media as proof of its robotics industry's resilience, with an aging population positioned as the sector's durable source of demand. Global Times
NATO put ground robots center stage at its Innovation Range demo day in Latvia, pushing forward the alliance's shift toward manned-unmanned teaming on the battlefield. Breaking Defense
A San Francisco startup is accused in a lawsuit of secretly testing robots inside rented Airbnbs and trashing them, raising fresh questions about how embodied-AI firms run real-world trials. SF Standard
Human Archive raised $8.2M to pay gig workers in India to wear head-mounted cameras, turning everyday chores into training data for the world's robots. SiliconANGLE
Robot security dogs helped Atlanta police corner two car-break-in suspects at a West Midtown apartment complex, responding automatically after cameras flagged the intruders. Robotics & Automation News
Greenpeace sent an underwater robot 2,300 meters down the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge for the deepest banner protest ever staged, demanding action to protect deep-sea ecosystems. Robotics & Automation News
🧡 Enjoyed this issue?
🤝 Recommend our newsletter or leave a feedback.
How'd you like today's newsletter?
Cheers, Jason
