Today in Robotics — Monday, October 19, 2026
Today leans hard into touch and trust: a founder's candid take on Digit 5, tactile-sensing startups, and artificial skin all argue that robots need to feel before they can work. We've also got the unglamorous plumbing of AI compute, safety red-teaming, and a paper-thin robot powered by actual muscle.
- 01 The Robot I Didn’t Expect to Build
Agility's cofounder reflects on Digit 5, pitched as the first humanoid that can safely and economically do genuinely useful work.
Read at source ↗ - 02 Unleash AI Innovation: The Power of NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition Fueled by PNY-Supplied GPUs
As robots lean harder on AI vision and control, this looks at the compute and humble interconnects quietly doing the heavy lifting.
Read at source ↗ - 03 Daimon Robotics building the infrastructure layer for tactile intelligence
Daimon ties together tactile sensing, real-world data, simulation, and AI models to make robot manipulation more reliable in the physical world.
Read at source ↗ - 04 Laplace Intelligence red-teams robots and self-driving cars before they hit the real world
This Michigan spinout stress-tests robots and self-driving cars in simulation before deployment—and it's reportedly already profitable while doing it.
Read at source ↗ - 05 Robotic arm mimics human touch with artificial skin that detects contact
HKUST researchers give a robotic arm artificial skin that senses contact, another step toward machines that register touch like we do.
Read at source ↗ - 06 beRobox unveils PALTZ palletizer with 3D Dynamic Safety at PACK EXPO 2026
beRobox pairs Sonair's ultrasonic sensing with its own engineering so palletizing arms can detect dynamically and work fast without compromising safety.
Read at source ↗ - 07 China builds second specialized mothership for underwater drones, satellite images show
Satellite imagery reveals a second Chinese vessel built to handle uncrewed underwater vehicles, signaling expanding ambitions below the waterline.
Read at source ↗ - 08 Powered by muscle cells, a paper-thin robot swims through watery maze
MIT's muscle-powered aquabot navigates a watery maze, pointing toward small, efficient biohybrid robots that blend living tissue with engineering.
Read at source ↗
The RobotCafe digest — five minutes, the whole field.