Today in Robotics — Saturday, August 29, 2026
Humanoids keep pulling in capital and attention: China's automakers are now openly treating them as the next profit engine, and RoboCup fielded its first full eleven-a-side humanoid match. Elsewhere the thread is power and self-direction at the edges — how a swarm should manage its own electricity, and what it takes to trust a fleet that plans its own paths. Tap any item to read it at the source.
- 01 The differences between decentralized and centralized power in swarm robotics
A clear look at how robot swarms manage power, and why a hybrid of centralized and decentralized schemes may beat either on its own.
Read at source ↗ - 02 Chinese automakers are following Tesla’s bet that robots are the next big profit machine
Carmakers with assembly lines already running are betting humanoids are the next profit engine — and for now that batch is entirely Chinese.
Read at source ↗ - 03 San Francisco firm that makes automated drone swarm killer system secures $7M funding
Counter-swarm is becoming its own category: Mara raised $7 million to build out its automated drone-defense system.
Read at source ↗ - 04 ShadowfaxUAS Launches SF45: An ITAR-Free, Non-Chinese Group 3 Fixed-Wing VTOL
Pitched squarely at buyers who need a long-endurance Group 3 VTOL with neither ITAR paperwork nor Chinese supply-chain exposure.
Read at source ↗ - 05 From teach and repeat to SelfPath AI: The next robotics leap
A chief technology officer on what has to change before operators will trust fleets that plan their own paths instead of repeating taught ones.
Read at source ↗ - 06 This Library Needs to Be At Least… Three Times Bigger
A build that runs headlong into the recent surge in computer component prices, and what that means for hobbyists.
Read at source ↗ - 07 A humanoid robot's social expressiveness may backfire when it makes mistakes
Researchers find an expressive humanoid may lose more trust than a neutral one at exactly the moment it slips up.
Read at source ↗ - 08 First 11 vs 11 humanoid soccer game played at RoboCup 2026
RoboCup 2026 put a full eleven-a-side humanoid match on the pitch for the first time.
Read at source ↗
The RobotCafe digest — five minutes, the whole field.