Normally, I begin off these annual highlights posts by saying that it was the very best yr ever for robotics. However this yr, I’m not so certain. At the end of 2024, it actually appeared like AI and humanoid robots had been poised to make a transformative quantity of progress in the direction of some kind of practicality. Whereas it’s actually true that progress has been made, it’s laborious to rationalize what’s truly occurred in 2025 with the sum of money and hype that has suffused robotics over the course of the yr. And for higher or worse, humanoids are overshadowing all the things else, elevating questions on what is going to occur if the businesses constructing them finally don’t succeed.
We’ll be going into 2026 with each optimism and skepticism, and we’ll hold doing what we at all times do: speaking to the specialists, asking as many laborious questions as we will, and ensuring to share all the cool robots, even (or particularly) those that you just received’t see anyplace else.
So thanks for studying, and to all you superior robotics people on the market, thanks for sharing your work with us! IEEE Spectrum has a bunch of thrilling new stuff deliberate for 2026, and as we shut out 2025, right here’s a fast look again at a few of our greatest robotics tales of the yr.
Eddie Man
Humanoid robots are laborious, and so they’re laborious in a lot of alternative ways. For a few of these methods, we no less than perceive the issues and what the options will probably contain. However there are different issues that don’t have any clear options, and most humanoid firms, particularly the well-funded ones, appear quite happy to wave those problems away whereas persevering with to boost extraordinary quantities of cash. We’re going to maintain calling this out each time we see it, and anticipate much more skepticism in 2026.
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Safety is a kind of pesky little issues that’s tremendous vital in robotics however that early-stage robotics companies usually deal with as an afterthought as a result of it doesn’t drive funding. Chinese language producer Unitree is absolutely the one firm with humanoids robots which might be out there sufficient and reasonably priced sufficient for intelligent folks to carry out a safety audit on them. And to the shock of nobody, Unitree’s robots had serious vulnerabilities, which as of but haven’t all been fastened.
The factor I respect concerning the people at Amazon Robotics is how relentless they’re to find inventive options for problems at scale. Amazon merely doesn’t have time to fiddle, and so they’re designing robots to do what robots do greatest: specific repetitive tasks in structured environments. Within the present local weather of robotics hype, it’s refreshing, actually.
Did I point out that humanoids robots are laborious? Whether or not or not anybody can ship on the guarantees being made about them (and personally, I’m leaning increasingly strongly in the direction of not), progress is being made in the direction of humanoids that are much more capable and versatile than they ever have been. The collaboration between Toyota Research and Boston Dynamics on giant habits fashions is only one instance of how far we’ve come, and the way far we nonetheless need to go.
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My least favourite story to jot down occurred proper on the finish of the yr—iRobot filed for bankruptcy. This was not a complete shock; regulators shutting down an acquisition by Amazon in 2024 primarily gutted the corporate, and it’s been limping alongside in the direction of the inevitable since then. Proper after the information was introduced, we spoke with iRobot co-founder and ex-CEO Colin Angle, who had a lot to share about the place issues went improper, and what we will study from it.
Evan Ackerman
My favourite story of 2025 was as a lot about cows because it was about robots. I used to be astonished to study simply what number of totally autonomous robots are laborious at work on dairy farms around the world, and totally delighted to additionally study that these robots are actively bettering the lives of each dairy farmers and the dairy cows themselves. Dairy farming is limitless laborious work, however thanks to those robots, small household farms are capable of hold themselves sustainable (and sane). All people wins, because of the robots.
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