The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren’t holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI […]

Register now to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass and get a second ticket at 50% off. This offer ends next week on January 30, or once the first 500 tickets are claimed — whichever comes first.

Anduril on Thursday announced its plans to expand its Southern California presence with a major campus in Long Beach, the town where founder Palmer Luckey grew up.

AI robot prompt injection is no longer just a screen-level problem. Researchers demonstrate that a robot can be steered off-task by text placed in the physical world, the kind of message a human might walk past without a second thought. The attack doesn’t rely on breaking into the robot’s software or spoofing sensors. It instead […]

The post Your robot could obey a sign, not you, thanks to AI robot prompt injection appeared first on Digital Trends.

Researchers at Princeton University have built a swarm of interconnected mini-robots that "bloom" like flowers in response to changing light levels in an office. According to their new paper published in the journal Science Robotics, such robotic swarms could one day be used as dynamic facades in architectural designs, enabling buildings to adapt to changing climate conditions as well as interact with humans in creative ways.

The authors drew inspiration from so-called "living architectures," such as beehives. Fire ants provide a textbook example of this kind of collective behavior. A few ants spaced well apart behave like individual ants. But pack enough of them closely together, and they behave more like a single unit, exhibiting both solid and liquid properties. You can pour them from a teapot like ants, as Goldman’s lab demonstrated several years ago, or they can link together to build towers or floating rafts—a handy survival skill when, say, a hurricane floods Houston. They also excel at regulating their own traffic flow. You almost never see an ant traffic jam.

Naturally scientists are keen to mimic such systems. For instance, in 2018, Georgia Tech researchers built ant-like robots and programmed them to dig through 3D-printed magnetic plastic balls designed to simulate moist soil. Robot swarms capable of efficiently digging underground without jamming would be super beneficial for mining or disaster recovery efforts, where using human beings might not be feasible.

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Diligent Robotics is a startup that builds robots designed to assist in hospitals by delivering lab samples, supplies, and other tasks. The deal values Diligent's common stock at $29 million.

As farmers grapple with extreme weather, supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, Washington state is betting that artificial intelligence could help secure the future of agriculture.

A new initiative called Growing with AI will bring together the state’s tech giants and diverse farming community to tackle the industry’s most pressing challenges. Supporters say this is the perfect place to launch such an effort: uniting the region’s robust agricultural economy with hundreds of different high-value crops in Eastern Washington, with its world-class tech and AI companies on the western side of the state.

“Our farmers are dealing with so many different external forces, mostly beyond their control,” said Melanie Roberts, executive director of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. “So what if Washington can get ahead of this and be intentional about how we use AI in agriculture?”

The initiative, led by the publicly funded Academy of Sciences, kicked off earlier this month with the first of six free informational webinars. The next session is Jan. 23. The effort will culminate in April with an invitation-only workshop where past participants will strategize action items.

There are already a number of AI-driven, ag tech companies based in Washington, including Carbon Robotics, which manufactures autonomous farming machines that zap weeds with lasers. Carbon is based in Seattle but also runs a manufacturing facility on the other side of the state in Richland, Wash.

While geography might separate the state’s tech and ag communities, Carbon CEO and founder Paul Mikesell said the two are natural collaborators.

“Farmers and technologists see the world in similar ways,” Mikesell said. “We can get things done. We tackle problems head on, put in a lot of hard work …. So in a lot of ways, farmers act a lot like engineers because they’re trying to design solutions.”

To be successful in this space, he emphasized the importance of genuinely partnering with farmers to learn their specific challenges rather than coming in with predetermined solutions. Mikesell said entrepreneurs need to develop their technology in the literal field to see firsthand how it performs.

Ananth Kalyanaraman, a computer science professor at Washington State University and expert in ag tech applications, highlighted several potential AI applications:

• weather and climate data analysis and modeling to provide guidance on planting and harvesting schedules and selection of which varietals to use;
• insights into the amount and timing of irrigation, fertilizing and pest control;
• robotics to support tree pruning and crop harvesting;
• automated devices like those provided by Carbon Robotics to remove weeds, damaging insects and rocks.

This is the first time the Academy of Sciences, which educates public leaders on scientific matters, has created a series focused on one issue and incorporated a call to action.

Kalyanaraman noted that federal support of AI in the ag sector has been limited, particularly given the importance of building a more robust food-supply system. Farming hasn’t been made a priority compared to other areas, he added, but the need is urgent and Washington can help lead.

“We should be able to provide an exemplar to the rest of the nation,” Kalyanaraman said, “in terms of how to most effectively and responsibly embrace AI into a complex, decision-driven system like agriculture.”

One of CES 2026's big robotics releases is a new robotic control suit from Daimon Robotics.

The post Daimon Robotics’ new data acquisition system brings haptic intelligence to robot teleoperation appeared first on Digital Trends.

Now, the startup is turning its attention to building the business, fundraising and striking commercial deals.

Oshen has signed contracts with multiple government agencies for its C-Star robots to collect ocean data autonomously.

AI assistants move from hype to habit as Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, and LG roll out tools that automate work, healthcare, and home chores.

The post Daily Tech Insider Unpacks AI Assistants’ Leap From Code to Chores appeared first on TechRepublic.

AI assistants move from hype to habit as Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, and LG roll out tools that automate work, healthcare, and home chores.

The post Daily Tech Insider Unpacks AI Assistants’ Leap From Code to Chores appeared first on TechRepublic.

A space startup founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is recruiting partners in its quest to build robotic arms powered by artificial intelligence.

Founded in late 2024, Puyallup, Wash.-based Orbital Robotics is still in its infancy — but it has already raised about $310,000 in funding. Orbital Robotics CEO Aaron Borger told GeekWire that the company is working with a stealthy space venture on an orbital rendezvous project for the U.S. Space Force, with a series of missions scheduled in the next year and a half.

And that’s just the start: Borger and his teammates are trying to get traction for a plan that could give NASA’s aging Hubble Space Telescope a much-needed boost.

“We worked to get to the right people to talk to, both on the servicing side and on the mission side, and we’re in conversations now on how we could work together on a collaborative mission,” said Doug Kohl, Orbital Robotics’ chief operating officer.

Borger and Kohl both worked at Blue Origin until 2024, and then went on to create Orbital Robotics with fellow co-founders Riley Mark and Sohil Pokharna. Their advisers include Chris Sembroski, an engineer who went into orbit in 2021 for a privately funded philanthropic space mission known as Inspiration4 and later spent two and a half years at Blue Origin.

Orbital Robotics aims to focus on a key challenge looming for the next stage of the new space age: how to build spacecraft that can interact with other orbiting objects safely.

That’s not as easy as it may sound, especially when you’re trying to manipulate objects in space while obeying Newton’s Third Law of Motion. When a robotic arm on a free-flying spacecraft moves around, the spacecraft itself reacts with an equal and opposite motion. The arm has to compensate for those movements as it reaches out to grab its target.

“That is exactly one of the hardest parts about putting robotic arms on spacecraft,” Borger said. “When you move the arm, your spacecraft is going to move as well.”

To address the challenge, Orbital Robotics is developing a suite of AI-based software tools designed to track targets in space, plan out orbital maneuvers and interact with other spacecraft. It’s also laying the groundwork for robotic arms and spacecraft that make use of its technology. “A lot of NASA engineers will say you can’t use AI because you can’t really predict what it’s going to do, but with our method, we can,” Borger said.

Earlier in their careers, Borger and Mark were involved in efforts to put small AI-controlled robotic arms through suborbital testing. Now Orbital Robotics has built a larger prototype arm with seven degrees of freedom. For the next few months, the company will be putting that hardware through its paces in its lab.

“Those smaller arms were designed to catch, like, a ball or a cube. We had a small 3D-printed wrench that we were focused on,” Borger said. “This one is more focused on how you dock with space debris, for example.”

The ability to inspect or link up with objects in space has obvious implications for national security in space, which is why the Pentagon is so interested in the technology. Borger declined to discuss that side of Orbital Robotics’ business plan, but he noted that there are commercial applications as well.

“Now that there’s the ability to put so much mass up there, it’s come to the point where, OK, you have all this stuff up there. How do you actually continue to use it, rather than just letting it come down or die up there?” he said. “If you want to refuel something, if you want to repair something, the first step is, how do you capture it? That’s what we’re really focused on right now. … Then we can start focusing on using our robotic arms to manipulate things, start refilling it, repairing it, all sorts of stuff.”

Orbital Robotics recently tested its tracking software using video footage that was captured during an earlier suborbital test mission. Now the team is collaborating with a stealth partner on a series of space missions. The first mission would test Orbital Robotics’ flight software. Later missions would test the company’s robotic arm and demonstrate its ability to capture a spacecraft in orbit. Borger said it would be premature to disclose the partner’s identity, but he mentioned a 2026-2027 time frame for the missions.

There’s a growing interest in orbital rendezvous, proximity operations and capture, or RPOC for short — and Orbital Robotics isn’t the only space company targeting that market. Starfish Space and Portal Space Systems are among other Seattle-area ventures on the RPOC frontier.

Borger said he prefers to think of such companies as potential partners rather than rivals.

“I think they could use our arms,” he said. “They could use some of our software.” The company has already announced partnerships with Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud and Texas-based Space Ocean.

Orbital Robotics is also recruiting partners for an effort to save the 35-year-old Hubble Space Telescope from a fiery, mission-ending descent. Kohl said he and his collaborators are working on a white paper about the project that would be reviewed by NASA experts as well as astronauts who participated in previous Hubble servicing missions.

The plan calls for building a robotic spacecraft that could attach itself to the telescope, install a star tracker package on its exterior, boost Hubble to a more stable orbit, and then undock.

Several years ago, tech billionaire Jared Isaacman was trying to get NASA interested in a crewed Hubble reboost mission. In 2024, the space agency decided not to take him up on his proposal — but now that Isaacman is NASA’s administrator, Kohl is hoping that the public-private consortium he’s trying to assemble, known as the “Save the Hubble Space Telescope Alliance,” will get a warmer reception.

“Jared is as interested in Hubble as we are, and so we’re hoping to take an unsolicited proposal to him with the white paper on helping to recover Hubble,” he said.

The clock is ticking: Last week, a team of scientists reported that Hubble could fall to its doom in as little as three or four years, due to increased atmospheric drag caused by heightened solar activity. “Even though it would come in around 2030, we actually need to save it before that,” Borger said. “The longer you wait, the more difficult it is.”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for Orbital Robotics as well. Borger acknowledged that it’s going to take more funding to fuel the venture’s grand ambitions. “We’re OK with where we’re at on funding for now, and then we’ll go for a much larger round in a couple of months,” he said.

Correction: Orbital Robotics has raised a total of $310,000 to date, including $110,000 from a friends-and-family funding round that was completed in November. An earlier version of this report didn’t reflect earlier investments.

Skild AI, which is building general-purpose robotic software, just raised a $1.4 billion funding round led by SoftBank.

1X released a new world model that it says is a solid step toward its robots being able to teach themselves new tasks.

Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) deployed robotic quadruped drones during a January 2026 airborne assault exercise conducted by the 1st Airborne Brigade, marking the first time the unit integrated unmanned ground vehicles into its annual new-year descent training. According to the training footage broadcast in Japan, the exercise featured an assault element inserting from two […]

If the robots don't always give a totally accurate representation of where commercial deployment is at the moment, they do give visitors a peek at where their parent companies might be headed.

Jan. 5–9 recap: From stair-climbing vacuums to blue-collar humanoids, this week proves the machines aren't just coming — they've clocked in.

The post Daily Tech Insider Explores the New Era of Physical Intelligence appeared first on TechRepublic.

Jan. 5–9 recap: From stair-climbing vacuums to blue-collar humanoids, this week proves the machines aren't just coming — they've clocked in.

The post Daily Tech Insider Explores the New Era of Physical Intelligence appeared first on TechRepublic.