Hacker News with Generative AI: Robotics

How Google built its Gemini robotics models (google)
Powered by Gemini Robotics models, robots can learn complex actions like preparing salads, playing games like Tic-Tac-Toe and even folding an origami fox.

Robotics, Google, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

199 points by simonpure 1 day ago | 82 comments

Tearing Down the Unitree Go2: A Robotics Expert's Deep Dive [video] (youtube.com)

Robotics, Hardware, Reviews, Video

4 points by viewtransform 4 days ago | 0 comments

Tiniest Flying Robot (Wingspan <1cm) Soars Thanks to Magnets (ieee.org)
A new prototype is laying claim to the title of smallest, lightest untethered flying robot.

Robotics, Engineering, Microelectronics, Nanotechnology

18 points by bookofjoe 4 days ago | 10 comments

Robotics Meets Runway: Unitree G1's Catwalk Debut at SHFW (chinaminutes.com)
Unitree G1, a humanoid robot, made its stunning debut at Shanghai Fashion Week, walking the runway alongside human models.

Robotics, Fashion, China, Artificial Intelligence, Humanoid Robots

35 points by lewiswatson 8 days ago | 8 comments

Artificial muscle flexes in multiple directions, offering a path to soft robots (news.mit.edu)
MIT engineers have developed a method to grow artificial muscle tissue that twitches and flexes in multiple, coordinated directions.

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Materials Science, Engineering

3 points by gmays 10 days ago | 0 comments

The Missing Data Infrastructure for Physical AI (rerun.io)

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Data Infrastructure

14 points by Tycho87 11 days ago | 0 comments

Legged Locomotion Meets Skateboarding (umich-curly.github.io)
This paper introduces Discrete-time Hybrid Automata Learning (DHAL), a framework using on-policy Reinforcement Learning to identify and execute mode-switching without trajectory segmentation or event function learning.

Robotics, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning

156 points by jam 14 days ago | 37 comments

Boston Dynamics shows off another major leap in humanoid mobility (newatlas.com)
Chinese humanoids are starting to move with extraordinary grace and agility, but Boston Dynamics is the OG in this field, and fresh video of its swivel-jointed Atlas robot running, cartwheeling and breakdancing shows it's still at the bleeding edge.

Robotics, Humanoid Robots, Boston Dynamics, Artificial Intelligence, Technology

101 points by matthewsinclair 14 days ago | 76 comments

Ask HN: Nvidia pretended their robot was not remote controlled – why? (ycombinator.com)
When Musk used actors in robot suits or demoed remote-controlled robots without admitting they weren’t real, I was genuinely confused.

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Deception, Technology, Public Perception

22 points by ionwake 14 days ago | 7 comments

Nvidia Isaac GR00T Generalist Robot 00 Technology (nvidia.com)
NVIDIA Isaac™ GR00T is a research initiative and development platform for developing general-purpose robot foundation models and data pipelines to accelerate humanoid robotics research and development.

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, NVIDIA, Research

7 points by lastdong 15 days ago | 2 comments

Cake is watching you: I built a camera cake (medium.com)
I attended the 95th New York Hardware Meetup on Smart Cities and IoT at Viam headquarters and during the mingling period, I met a very interesting and fun attendee named Abigail. She told me she is a confectionery roboticist making bizarre cakes. Listen, two things make me very excited: desserts and robots. So I was already hooked. She showed me her website and our love story began.

Creative Projects, Robotics, Food

54 points by hazalmestci 15 days ago | 15 comments

Opentorque actuator – A powerful, compliant actuator for legged robotics (gabrael.io)
OpenTorque is an open-source implementation of the quasi-direct-drive actuation scheme pioneered by the MIT Biomimetics lab.

Robotics, Open Source, Hardware, Actuation

15 points by nill0 16 days ago | 1 comments

Newton, an Open-Source Physics Engine for Robotics Simulation (nvidia.com)
Physical AI models enable robots to autonomously perceive, interpret, reason, and interact with the real world. Accelerated computing and simulations are key to developing the next generation of robotics.

Robotics, Simulation, Open Source, Physics

13 points by davidwihl 16 days ago | 1 comments

Nvidia released Isaac GR00T N1 under Apache 2 license (github.com/NVIDIA)
NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1 is the world's first open foundation model for generalized humanoid robot reasoning and skills.

Robotics, Open Source, Artificial Intelligence

4 points by Tycho87 16 days ago | 1 comments

Jensen Huang – Nvidia GTC 2025 Keynote (nvidia.com)
Watch Jensen Huang live at the SAP Center as he shares what’s next in agentic AI, robotics, accelerated computing, and more.

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Accelerated Computing, Technology Events

75 points by moondistance 16 days ago | 74 comments

How Firefly was able to nail its first lunar landing (arstechnica.com)
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon's surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface.

Space Exploration, Lunar Missions, Robotics

3 points by sohkamyung 17 days ago | 0 comments

The smallest ESP32 drone you can fly with your phone Powered by XIAO ESP32S3 [video] (youtube.com)

Robotics, Drones, Microcontrollers, Embedded Systems, Hardware

26 points by meilily 18 days ago | 9 comments

Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C (arstechnica.com)
The Athena spacecraft was not exactly flying blind as it approached the lunar surface one week ago. The software on board did a credible job of recognizing nearby craters, even with elongated shadows over the terrain. However, the lander's altimeter had failed.

Space Exploration, Robotics, Lunar Exploration

231 points by 01-_- 21 days ago | 267 comments

Sikorsky Successfully Flies Rotor Blown Wing UAS in Helicopter and Airplane Mode (lockheedmartin.com)
STRATFORD, Conn, March 10, 2025 – Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company (NYSE: LMT) has successfully validated the advanced control laws to successfully fly a ‘rotor blown wing’ uncrewed aerial system (UAS) in both helicopter and airplane modes.

Robotics, Aviation, Technology, Military

8 points by iancmceachern 22 days ago | 5 comments

Gemini Robotics (deepmind.google)
Introducing Gemini Robotics, our Gemini 2.0-based model designed for robotics

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Google DeepMind, New Releases

933 points by meetpateltech 22 days ago | 561 comments

Open-sourcing 5,000hrs of self-driving dataset (huggingface.co)
To unlock the potential for robotics AI, Yaak teamed up with the LeRobot team at 🤗 and is excited to announce Learning to Drive (L2D) to the robotics AI community. L2D is the world’s largest multimodal dataset aimed at building an open-sourced spatial intelligence for the automotive domain with first class support for 🤗’s LeRobot training pipeline and models.

Robotics, Open Source, Artificial Intelligence, Datasets

63 points by SnYaak 23 days ago | 11 comments

America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1 (semianalysis.com)
This is a Call for Action for the United States of America and the West. We are in the early precipice of a nonlinear transformation in industrial society, but the bedrock the US is standing on is shaky.

Robotics, Labor Economics, Automation, United States, Economy

268 points by lasermatts 24 days ago | 418 comments

Cat-Eared Robots Are Waiting Tables in Japan's Restaurants (bloomberg.com)

Robotics, Japan, Food Service

43 points by xqcgrek2 26 days ago | 41 comments

Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon (theguardian.com)
A robotic private spacecraft designed to provide crucial data for returning humans to the moon toppled over as it landed on the lunar surface, bringing an immediate and premature end to the mission, its operators said on Friday.

Space Exploration, Robotics, Moon Missions

263 points by pseudolus 27 days ago | 340 comments

Nomars: No Manning Required Ship (darpa.mil)
The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program has built a ship designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea.

Autonomous Systems, Robotics, Military Technology, Naval Engineering

25 points by croes 27 days ago | 50 comments

HyperShell X Outdoor PowerSuit Exoskeleton (hypershell.tech)
Step into the future with Hypershell X, where robotics and wearable exoskeleton technology converge to transform every step you take.

Robotics, Wearable Technology, Exoskeletons

113 points by danboarder 28 days ago | 67 comments

VW is testing its robotaxis in snowy, icy Norway (arstechnica.com)
A taxi service that only operates in good weather isn't a good taxi service.

Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, Norway, Winter Testing

5 points by AndrewDucker 28 days ago | 0 comments

Show HN: WebRTC Video v1.0, low-latency video streaming from robots (transitiverobotics.com)
Provides low-latency video streaming over an end-to-end encrypted WebRTC connection. Once installed you can use the provided embedding instructions to embed the video widget for that robot in your own web application.

WebRTC, Robotics, Video Streaming, Real-time Communication

9 points by chfritz 29 days ago | 0 comments

Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics (businesskorea.co.kr)
On Feb. 6, during the Lunar New Year festival in Tianjin, a humanoid robot from China's Unitree Robotics unexpectedly displayed aggressive behavior, raising significant concerns about public safety and the deployment of robots in public spaces.