Today the money and the models are doing the talking: Dream Labs lands $90M for a cross-manufacturer robot brain, while Tesla starts Optimus production even as its profits slide. Elsewhere, researchers tighten up trajectory tracking and humanoid teleoperation, DARPA eyes self-running reactors for space, and DJI keeps the firmware updates flowing.

In today’s roundup

• Dream Labs raises $90M and launches Dream API — The Robot Report
  Dream Labs' pitch is portability—an AI model that works across robots from different makers and lets them share learning—which, if real, chips away at the hardware silos.
• DJI Neo and Neo 2 drones get new firmware, but what’s changed? — DroneDJ
  New firmware for DJI's palm-sized Neo and Neo 2 is here, though owners will want to know exactly what changed before tapping update.
• Robots get 15% better trajectory tracking for flying and walking with new framework — Interesting Engineering
  A UIUC learning framework reportedly boosts trajectory tracking by 15% across both flying and walking robots, a rare result that generalizes across very different machines.
• US defense agency backs autonomously-controlled nuclear reactors for space missions — Interesting Engineering
  A US defense agency is backing autonomous reactor control for space missions, pushing autonomy into one of the highest-stakes domains imaginable.
• Warping the Workspace: Expanding Visual Access with Adjustable Reach Mapping for Humanoid Teleoperation — arXiv cs.RO
  This work tackles a real teleoperation headache—reaching side and rear targets without constant operator rotation—using a panoramic warp and coupled visual-motor remapping.
• One Policy, Many Styles: Where to Aggregate Preferences for Steerable Humanoid Control? — arXiv cs.RO
  The question of where to aggregate user preferences for a single steerable humanoid policy is the kind of design detail that decides whether runtime control actually works.
• DJI updates Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S, and Mavic 4 Pro with new firmware — DroneDJ
  DJI pushes fresh firmware to the Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S, and Mavic 4 Pro, giving its flagship consumer flyers another maintenance check.
• Tesla starts Optimus robot production in California as profit falls 43% — TechCrunch Robotics
  Tesla is ramping Optimus production in California even as profit drops 43%, a telling bet that robots and AI matter more than this quarter's margins.

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