#automation · How Robots Are Reshaping Work

The Association for Advancing Automation says North American companies ordered 8,940 robots in Q2, with non-automotive buyers accounting for 56% of units as the customer base broadens beyond car plants.

Huntington Ingalls signed seven-year production agreements with Path Robotics and GrayMatter Robotics on August 6. The move is not putting robots into the shipyard. It is taking the work out.

SoftBank sold its last stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, then opened talks to buy a maker of autonomous excavators — the crowd-pleasing robot cashed out, the money moved to a machine nobody will livestream.

Xinhua's July 24 tour of China's factory humanoids: 97% fabric-separation on one material, an 18-month payback, and a robot that still can't finish a shirt without a human.

Robot.com launched R-noid, a rentable humanoid aimed at restaurant, warehouse and hotel jobs. The sales line isn't 'faster' or 'cheaper.' It's 'never resigns.'

The Netherlands opened its first Humanoid Application Centre near Rotterdam, a working floor to test robots for construction, logistics, and horticulture — not a showroom.

China's MIIT and SASAC ordered state-owned firms to put 10,000 humanoids into routine operation across 100-plus real scenarios by the end of 2026.

BMW is moving Figure's humanoid from the body shop to logistics at its Spartanburg plant, after the previous generation logged 11 months and 30,000 cars on the line.

At Automate in Chicago, perennial vaporware artist Faraday Future priced a 5-foot-8 humanoid at $89,900 — and the unsettling part is the spec sheet is real.

Humanoid production lines are scaling to one robot per hour while actual paid deployments remain in the single digits — supply is racing far ahead of demand.

At VivaTech, Foxconn showed a humanoid doing the pick-and-place and screw-fastening that defines its assembly lines — trained on simulation, not a salaried worker's months of practice.

Rivian's RJ Scaringe gave the first detailed look at Mind Robotics, a >$3B humanoid startup whose first customer and live testing ground is Rivian's own plant.