Today in Robotics — Wednesday, October 7, 2026
The data problem behind humanoid learning takes center stage today, with a new motion-capture benchmark and fresh work on adapting whole-body references to real terrain. Elsewhere, a cobot legal spat finally quiets down, soft robots borrow tricks from marine invertebrates, and autonomy gets both smarter flight planning and cheaper hardware.
In today’s roundup
- Teradyne Robotics, Elite Robots settle cobot dispute — The Robot Report
Teradyne Robotics and Elite Robots have resolved their software dispute on undisclosed terms, closing a chapter in the collaborative-robot market's competitive maneuvering. - Feather star-inspired underwater robot gets 3D maneuverability from only two actuators — TechXplore Robotics
Inspired by feather stars, this soft swimmer achieves full three-dimensional movement with just two actuators, a tidy lesson in doing more with less. - HiPHI: A Large-Scale Benchmark for High-Precision Human Motion and Object Interaction — IEEE Spectrum Robotics
HiPHI offers a large-scale motion-capture dataset aimed squarely at the data gap holding back humanoid learning, with policies trained on it to prove the point. - Harmonic Drive to share how integrated actuators can reduce engineering at RoboBusiness — The Robot Report
Harmonic Drive will make the case at RoboBusiness that integrated actuators simplify system integration and cut engineering effort. - 'SANDO' system ensures a robot's flight path will remain collision-free in uncharted territory — TechXplore Robotics
The SANDO system promises collision-free flight paths in uncharted environments, opening the door to drones that can venture into wildfires for rescue data. - China’s new 98.5% efficient wireless EV charging system to support EVs, autonomous fleets — Interesting Engineering
A China-UK team's 20 kW wireless charger hitting 98.5% efficiency could ease charging for both EVs and the autonomous fleets that depend on uptime. - Want a DJI drone? This $139 Neo deal is tempting — DroneDJ
The DJI Neo's price has dropped to the point where a capable drone becomes an impulse buy, lowering the barrier for newcomers. - BRACE: Adapting Whole-Body References for Force and Terrain Aware Humanoid Motion Tracking — arXiv cs.RO
BRACE tackles a practical gap in whole-body tracking by adapting level-ground references for the forces and uneven terrain humanoids actually encounter.
Read this roundup on RobotCafe →
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