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

    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

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Enterprise AI Agents Scale Up Through Partnerships and Funding, But Data Readiness Lags Ambition
A wave of vertical AI-agent startups (Swarm, Veridox, Avallon AI, DA2, F2, Earthian, Meanwhile, Covecta, Penguin AI, Maisa AI) is being funded and profiled just as major infrastructure players — Microsoft/Mistral, Siemens/NVIDIA, and Manulife/Microsoft — cement enterprise AI governance and compute partnerships. Yet a Google Cloud report shows AI agents still lack access to the majority of company data (only 45% on average), and insider selling at incumbent C3.ai signals investor caution even as adoption intent (100% planned agentic AI use within two years) races ahead of actual data infrastructure.
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Berkshire Hathaway
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