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News articleIEEE Spectrum

Video Friday: Robot Collective Stays Alive Even When Parts Die

View original at spectrum.ieee.org
IEEE Spectrum - Technical Title: Video Friday: Robot Collective Stays Alive Even When Parts Die Date: 2026-02-13 16:30 Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-robot-collective <img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/robot-collective-crawls-under-a-bridge-of-rocks-with-glowing-lights-video-speed-increas…
Opening lines of the source · IEEE Spectrum · short snapshot — read the full document at the original

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  • Elephant trunk whiskers exhibit a form of material intelligence more sophisticated than the well-studied whiskers of rats and mice, with potential to inspire new physically intelligent robotic sensing approaches

    80% confidence

  • Atlas research platform receives final testing push for full-body control and mobility limits as enterprise platform deploys

    80% confidence

  • Modular robots demonstrate a tradeoff where the number of modules dictates both possible functions and odds of failure, but this trend can be reversed by exploiting redundant resources and sharing them locally to improve reliability with increased module count

    80% confidence

  • Mentee Robotics designs humanoid robots with deep vertical integration across hardware, embedded software, and AI to close the Sim2Real gap and enable continuous, around-the-clock operation in real-world industrial environments

    80% confidence

  • FastUMI Pro is designed to power a truly end-to-end closed loop for embodied intelligence, transforming real-world data into genuine robotic capability

    80% confidence

  • Rotational multimaterial 3D printing innovation could someday accelerate production of components for surgical robotics and assistive devices, advancing medical technology

    80% confidence

  • The quiet-rotor electric rotorcraft achieves noise level around 74 dBA in hover at 50 feet, making it probably the quietest rotorcraft at this scale

    80% confidence

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Vertical AI Agents Attract a Funding Wave Across Fintech-Adjacent Industries
A cluster of AI-native startups applying autonomous agents to narrow, operational problems — hotel front-desk staffing (Dextr AI), identity/fraud risk for financial institutions (Baselayer), insurance distribution (Napo, Connie Health, MGT Insurance) — closed seed-to-Series A rounds within days of each other in September 2026, with CB Insights running a coordinated CEO interview series to spotlight them. The pattern points to agentic AI maturing from generic chat tools into vertical, revenue-generating products, with identity verification for AI agents themselves (Baselayer) emerging as a new fintech infrastructure category responding directly to AI-driven fraud risk.
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Satellite-Terrestrial Network Integration Acceleration
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ING Group
Both facts record the same metric (shares_outstanding) for ING Group at the identical observation date (2025-12-31). FACT A states 2,902,437,688 shares; FACT B states 2,902 million shares (2,902,000,000). The difference is 437,688 shares (~0.015%). This is a genuine value conflict, though the discrepancy appears to result from FACT B rounding to the nearest million while FACT A provides the precise count.
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