One thing I’ve been struggling with lately: too many cool projects to fit into a single newsletter issue in the current format. Over the past couple of weeks, you might have noticed I’m paying way more attention to research articles; I found the details some researchers provide fascinating and started loving these deep dives, but with 7-8 projects to feature these days, I’m building quite a backlog. Some make it into the next editions, and some sit in my backlog forever (currently over 3.1k features).
FUSE: The Location Technology Conference for Physical AI [Sponsored]
Nov 19, The Foundry, San Francisco
FUSE is the location technology conference for robotics and autonomy engineers. Learn from leaders deploying Physical AI in production at scale. Register with code FUSEWEEKLYROBOTICS for 30% off the ticket price!
Roboto 01
Roboto 01 is an open-source humanoid robot from RoboParty. The humanoid is 1.35m tall and has 24 or 30 degrees of freedom total, depending on the version. This repository is an entry point to the project. There, you will find links to subsequent repos with BOM, CAD files, wiring, etc. I’m looking forward to hearing about someone making one of these.
Frontier Models for Every Robot: Announcing our API beta
Physical Intelligence has released what they call an API, where you send Pi your robot data, and they fine-tune it and adapt a Pi model to run it. On the website, you will find many interesting use cases from various companies. In a demo with an autonomous loader, I couldn’t help but notice the loader hitting the truck repeatedly with both wheels and the scoop; it made me a bit uneasy about the application.
MonoRace: Robust monocular AI for champion-level drone racing
This paper comes from a lab that won the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Drone Racing Competition in 2025 and uses only a monocular rolling-shutter camera and an IMU. The key design choice is to run guidance and control on a neural network (3 x 64 neurons) at 500 Hz on a 32-bit flight controller and send commands directly to the motors.
MicroManipulatorStepper
This is one of the higher-quality open-source projects I’ve seen in a long while. It’s a micro-manipulator motion control platform that achieves submicron precision. It’s a closed-loop kinematic chain designed for optical alignment, probing electronic components, and microscopy. I wish I had a use case for this, as it would make a very satisfying build.
SolidCraft
I’m very excited about this open-source 3D modeling software. The UI looks very similar to Autodesk’s, and it can run in the browser. Yes, it’s quite likely vibe-coded, so we will need to see how it’s maintained over time, but so far I like what I’m seeing.
Machine, Assemble, Repair: How We Build Atlas
This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Boston Dynamics builds Atlas with its prototype operations team. All built in-house.
Why robots still can’t pick strawberries
Tom Scott visits Wilkin & Sons, a UK jam-making company. I found this coverage of a state-of-the-art strawberry farm eye-opening; I had no idea these systems were so clever. As for strawberry-picking robots, they identify a ripe fruit, its position, and the stem attached to it.
Can I Build This Tiny Robot From Scratch in the Middle of China?
Visiting Shenzhen is definitely on my bucket list. Watching Dorian Todd coverage from the visit reinforced that dream. During his trip, Dorian planned to build a robot, sourcing components from the Huaqiangbei market, which seems to have every electronic component ever made.
Our Sponsors
- Card79 helps robotics companies accelerate deployment and adoption by designing every human touchpoint between people and autonomous systems—from industrial design and interfaces to human-robot interaction.
- Foxglove is a purpose-built, modular platform for robotics teams to collect, organize, and learn from vast quantities of multimodal data, creating the data flywheel to safely scale from development to distributed fleets
- Jiga connects hardware teams directly with vetted manufacturers for reliable capacity from prototype to production, combining the speed of digital manufacturing with the trust of a long-term supplier relationship
- Point One Navigation delivers centimeter-accurate positioning to robots and autonomous systems — powered by the world’s densest fully-owned RTK corrections network.
Events
- ROSCon UK 2026: Oct 21 - Oct 23, 2026. Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Bots & Brews Houston: Oct 22, 2026. Houston, Texas, United States of America
- ROSCon Spain 2026: Oct 27 - Oct 28, 2026. Valencia, Spain
- Robot Hackathon: Harnessing Physical AI & Data: Oct 29 - Oct 30, 2026. San Francisco, California, United States of America
- ROSCon IT 2026: Nov 03, 2026. Bologna, Italy
- Humanoid Europe 2026: Nov 05 - Nov 06, 2026. Munich, Germany
- FUSE San Francisco 2026: Nov 19, 2026. San Francisco, California, United States of America
- ROSCon BE 2026: Nov 25 - Nov 26, 2026. Nivelles, Belgium
- Humanoids 2026: Dec 06 - Dec 09, 2026. Santa Clara, California, United States of America
For more robotic events, check out our event page.
Want to promote your product or service in Weekly Robotics? Check out our advertising options.