New robots, new capabilities. Tracking what's coming for the workforce.
Robotics A 21st Century Business Herald report of October 19 details the auto-parts feeding cell Leju Robotics and Zhaofeng launched on October 15: 15 humanoids at a Hangzhou plant, about 1,000 hours logged, 60,000+ parts handled, a 98% feed success rate, one engineer per four robots.
Robotics On October 13 Korea's trade ministry sandbox committee granted Robros a demonstration exemption to put 20 AI humanoids to work at a chip plant, an auto parts maker, a shipyard and a logistics firm, under conditions set by the labor ministry.
Robotics Nvidia's October 2 blog post and Taiwan press reports on October 4 and 5 give the first quantified results for robots assembling the GB300 NVL72 tester tray at Foxconn: more than 95% success on the busbar, 90% to 95% on connector insertion, and a busbar cycle of about 160 seconds against a 124-second target.
Robotics Tesla has taken Optimus from a few dozen units a week in Q2 to several hundred by August, roughly a tenfold jump, The Information reports. None of those units are doing paid work yet, and the hand still needs a redesign Tesla isn't shipping until next year.
Robotics Toyota named a number on September 18: 400,000 in-house robots across 60 plants worldwide, starting in 2028, at an estimated ¥1 trillion a year. The stated goal isn't fewer workers. It's saving skills held by 18,000 aging takumi that Toyota has no other way to record.
Robotics Tesla's robotics team landed in Ningbo on September 16 and opened a new production audit the next day, aimed at moving Optimus manufacturing capability from Tesla's U.S. plants to Chinese suppliers. Orders are already placed against a 50,000-unit target for 2026.
Robotics Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5 on September 15. The new legs lift 50 lb repeatedly, a band Jonathan Hurst says covers single-person lift tasks in OSHA-regulated facilities, and the robot no longer needs a physical barrier to work near people.
Robotics Universal Robots launched its seventh-generation platform at IMTS in Chicago on September 14: three higher-payload arms, a controller with 40% more compute in a 30% smaller box, and a tool flange that carries data, power and safety signals all the way to the wrist.
Robotics XPeng started its humanoid robot line on September 8, with IRON walking off it after assembly. The load-bearing number is 80: the share of core processes on that line that run without a person.
Robotics A KOSDAQ disclosure on September 7 does what almost no automation contract does: it names the work. Busbar feeding, heat-staking, laser welding, electrical test, weld vision inspection, chained into one line.
Robotics The ARM Institute booked close to $90M from a Department of War modernization challenge, covering 10 projects at 12 military manufacturing sites. The named automation targets are energetics production, drone readiness and line bottlenecks. The people running those lines got named too.
Robotics 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.