Let’s talk about robot videos — the good, the bad, and the uncanny. Mostly the good, though. In fact, let’s talk about the best. What were the top robotics videos of the year? You can use whatever metric you want, though I tend to go with technology over production quality. That said, I’m a longtime blogger with a soft spot for a well-made viral video.
We’re rounding up the year’s top videos for the Automated podcast’s first-ever year-end episode, and we need your help. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to ask you to vote for your top pick from 10 finalists.
For now, we’d love you to help us build up that finalist pool. To submit a video for contention, simply comment on this LinkedIn post with the title and link to the YouTube video. Deadline to submit is 11/22. The Automated team will whittle that list down to 10 finalists, and we’ll need you to help pick one winner (more info soon).
It's been a blast bringing you the newsletter and podcast week in, week out, so we figured we would repay you with a bit of fun to cap off the year, when you're hiding out in your childhood bedroom for a few precious moments of alone time from the family. We'll also be bringing in a special cohost for the week to help curate videos and make me sound slightly more hinged than I would just monologuing on my own.
Ken Goldberg certainly isn’t the first roboticist I’ve spoken to who’s expressed a kind of pleasant surprise reflecting on generative AI breakthroughs over the last couple of years. Toward the end of our recent podcast interview however, the Berkeley professor turned startup co-founder expresses an even more fundamental shift in his thinking spurred on by these technologies.
“I didn't see any evidence of [creativity in machines] for many years,” he notes. “It seemed to me that machines couldn't do that. You need humans to be creative, to identify what was new, what was interesting. But I am changing my view, and I have admitted that I'm wrong in the terms of images. We now have systems that you can describe an image and it will generate an image that will often surprise you. And that I did not predict.”
You can view a wide cross section of Goldberg’s own multimedia work via an online portfolio hosted on his U.C. Berkeley site. The works all incorporate technology to varying degrees — some more subtly than others. There’s a 1/1 millionth scale model of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most iconic buildings and colorful spheres generated from seismic data derived from the Hayward Fault. There are paintings by robots dating back to the late 80s and a project in a greenhouse we toured a few years back, wherein a system is “learning how to garden.”
Next month, SOSV will host the latest in a series of VC-founder matchups. Previous events have focused on women’s health, bio-manufacturing, climate, and other topics central to the deep tech investment firm’s portfolio. Despite SOSV’s numerous investments in the space, however, robots have not yet been a focus.
The firm’s December Robotics Matchup arrives amid an unprecedent fever pitch of investing excitement for the space. Year-to-date funding for robotics ventures hit $10.4B as of last week, besting the whole of 2024 ($7.5B), 2023 ($7B), 2022 ($8.7B), and 2020 ($5.7B).
“There's a lot of excitement about robotics at the moment,” SOSV general partner Duncan Turner noted on a call earlier this week, “mostly driven by the humanoid robots, but that's definitely having a filtered down effect generally into the robotics ecosystem.”
SOSV has thus far taken a broad approach to robotics funding. Investments include widely deployed inventory robotics maker, Simbe; well-funded ship hull Roomba, Neptune; age-tech assistive tech, Labrador; dry cleaning kiosk, Presso; and clothing cut and sew “micro factory,” Silana. What you won’t find on the list — at least for now — are humanoids.
iRobot's Q3 earnings went from worse to worser. The Roomba maker is still experiencing the fallout from Amazon's failed acquisition, which led to the January 2024 exit of longtime CEO, Colin Angle. The deal, which ultimately collapsed under regulatory scrutiny, came as the Bedford, Massachusetts firm was grappling with a market flooded by inexpensive robot vacuums. On-going manufacturing issues have compounded those issues, forcing the company to use what's left of its cash reserves. "As of September 27, 2025," it notes in this week's report, "[it] had an additional $5.0 million in restricted cash, which was fully drawn on September 30, 2025. At this time, Company has no sources upon which it can draw for additional capital." Earlier in September, iRobot filed a notice with the SEC, stating that it may have to declare bankruptcy if it is unable to secure additional funding soon.
The statement reads, in part,
If we are in default under the Credit Agreement and the Lenders accelerate the repayment obligations with respect to the outstanding loans, we would be unable to repay our obligations under the Credit Agreement. In such circumstances, or if in advance of the end of the Extended Waiver Period the Lenders inform us that they will not further extend the waiver, we may be forced to significantly curtail or cease operations and would likely seek bankruptcy protection. In such proceedings, it is unlikely that any proceeds would remain for distribution to stockholders and, as a result, stockholders would likely lose all of their investment in our company.
Current CEO, Gary Cohen, kept his comments short in a release issued around the latest earnings, stating, "Our third-quarter revenue fell well below our internal expectations due to continuing market headwinds, ongoing production delays, and unforeseen shipping disruptions. This shortfall increased cash usage and pressured profitability, as we were unable to fully leverage our fixed cost base." Over the years, iRobot has become much more than a robot vacuum maker, serving as one of the country's top robotics employers, with many of the industry's best and brightest passing through its Bedford HQ.
Coming off what looked to be a successful Actuate conference back in September (we were doing our own conferencing on-stage roughly 800 miles north that week), Foxglove has announced a sizable $40 million raise. The Series B follows 2022’s $15 million funding round — a healthy chunk of change for a robotics AI firm that had only been founded a year prior. No doubt CEO Adrian Macneil’s recent half-decade stint running infrastructure engineering for GM’s self-driving car division, Cruise, supplied a good deal of investor confidence. Autonomous infrastructure is, after all, a key to the Bay Area firm’s platform, which is designed to speed up time to market for robotics companies.
Macneil refers to the product as “a modern data engine for Physical AI,” in a post announcing the round. “The ability to efficiently capture, ingest, search, visualize, and evaluate multimodal data is critical to the Physical AI development workflow, something we experienced firsthand in the autonomous vehicle industry before founding Foxglove,” the CEO adds. “But this stack was previously only available to those willing to invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars building it in-house.”
DHL this week became the first company to receive Locus Array, the latest robotic system from the United States' leading third-party warehouse robotics firm. The units were the subject of a kind of soft launch behind-the-scenes at Germany’s LogiMat, back in March, as Locus showed them off for select parties. In a post announcing the partnership, CEO Rick Faulk positions Array as a kind of fourth way alternative to exciting logistics automation, which largely falls into three categories: Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS), Goods-to-Person (G2P), and Person-to-Goods (P2G). Locus made a name for itself developing AMR systems in the final.
Array, on the other hand is Robots-to-Goods (R2G). (You knew full well you were going to have to memorize a bunch of different acronyms when you signed up for this whole robotics thing.) The system offers a far more brownfield approach than traditional AS/RS, cruising down aisles to pick and replenish inventory from shelves. Locus isn’t revealing the number of Array units it has shipped to the logistics giant, only that they’ve recently arrived at a Columbus, Ohio facility.
Good robots never die. They just kind of slump over lifelessly, waiting until someone buys up their IP. As noted back in July, Aldebaran, the French firm once known as Softbank Robotics, powered down, only to have its assets auctioned off to Shenzhen-based Maxvision Technology Corp. The two big draws in that portfolio are hospitality robot Pepper and its diminutive predecessor, Nao, which has become something of a mainstay in research facilities. The latter is the first to be rebooted, courtesy of the newly formed Maxvision subsidiary, Maxtronics. Nao6 spent a bit of time at Hangzhou’s IROS2025 conference last month.
“Nao’s return marks not only the rebirth of a classic brand but also the beginning of a renaissance in the field of humanoid robotics,” Maxtronics writes. “This veteran in the robotics field is embarking on a second journey, continuing to serve as a partner for learning, assistance, and exploration, working hand in hand with global community partners to build an ecosystem and achieve a shared future.” The first step in that journey is the revamping of the robot into Nao7, which the company promises will “maintain its iconic design and personality while achieving breakthroughs in performance, reliability, and artificial intelligence."
How soft is your soft robot? Odds are it relies on traditional, rigid components to achieve actuation. You can create a mostly compliant form, but there are still going to be bits and pieces in there that restrict a full range of movement. Sensors are among those parts lending a bit of hard to the world of soft robots, but a team EPFL in Zurich has developed a system that incorporates far more compliance. In fact, it retains its function when stretched out more than 10x its idle state.
The system adopts thermal drawing, a process mostly used to create fiber optics. By utilizing the technique, the team can arrange electronic fiber with liquid metal components into 3D patterns that retain their shape when the object is stretched. The team tested the tech out by constructing a smart knee brace, which was able to track bending angles and reconstruct a runner’s gait. Beyond soft robots and rehab wearables, researchers suggest the technology could eventually be integrated into future smart textures.
Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots parent, Teradyne, has laid off an addition 14% of its global staff. The news was confirmed in a statement by the company sent to The Robot Report, which opened by noting the recent growth of the above sub-brands. “Around the same time,” it adds, “the global automation market slowed, particularly in Europe following the start of the war in Ukraine and widespread market uncertainty. As a result, revenue growth has not matched our expectations. Resizing is a strategic response to align our cost structure with current realities and refocus on our most impactful priorities.”
The layoffs follow a 10% global downsizing in late-January. In October, Teradyne announced plans to replace CFO, Sanjay Mehta, after six years with the company. Michelle Turner, who stepped into the role on November 3, cited future growth plans in her on-boarding message, stating, “I am thrilled to join the company during such an exciting time of growth and strategic opportunity. I look forward to joining the leadership team and leading the finance organization as we build on the company’s success and drive long-term shareholder returns.” AI, in particular, appears to be a key focus for the company, moving forward.
Ken Goldberg (UC Berkley/Ambi) - Longtime U.C. Berkeley professor and Ambi cofounder, Goldberg is familiar with robotics' promise and what it will take to get there.
Helen Grenier- A crush on a fictional droid set Helen Grenier down a path toward cofounding iRobot and leading startups, Tertill, and Cyphy Works.
Aadeel Ahktar (Psyonic) - Psyonic CEO Aadeel Ahktar discusses the company’s journey from human prosthesis to humanoid manipulation.
The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) is North America’s largest automation trade association representing more than 1,400 organizations involved in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine vision & imaging, motion control & motors, and related automation technologies.
.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Untitled%20design%20(6).jpg)
.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Untitled%20design%20(4).jpg)
.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Untitled%20design%20(3).jpg)
