Latest from 42HOW
42HOW Robotics · IndustryDream Labs Raises USD 90 Million in Seed Funding, Debuts Robot Foundation Model Dream-1
On October 19, robotics AI startup Dream Labs announced the close of a USD 90 million seed round alongside the launch of its robot foundation model, Dream-1, and a public API.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchFudan Team Bridges Active Perception and Vision-Language-Action Models to Overcome Viewpoint Shifts
Two papers from Fudan University introduce ActiveAlign and AWAM, which align training data and representations with active camera movements to prevent distribution shifts in vision-language-action models when robots adjust their viewpoints to overcome occlusions.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchRobots Can Run Marathons, So Why Is It Still So Hard to Reach the Front Desk?
Vita Dynamics introduces VbotNav-0, an asynchronous cloud-edge navigation framework that enables robots to seamlessly transition from outdoor streets to indoor environments using unified route tokens and a three-tier decision architecture.
42HOW Robotics · RoboticsACE Robotics Releases ACE-Brain-0.6, Outperforming GPT-6 Astra in Six Spatial Anchoring Tests
ACE Robotics has released the 9B embodied AI model ACE-Brain-0.6, which scored higher than GPT-6 Astra in six of eight visual spatial anchoring benchmarks. The team attributes performance gains to data expansion from 260,000 to approximately one million training samples.
42HOW Auto · New Cars & Market SignalsPorsche Is Cool, but Tesla Can Fly!
Tesla unveiled the second-generation Roadster with cold-gas thrusters, fan-generated downforce and a 2028 production target, positioning its flight-capable Rocket variant against Porsche’s conventional supercar design philosophy.
42HOW Robotics · IndustryAGIBOT X2 Provides Patient Guidance at Peking University People's Hospital, Logging Over 46,000 Interactions
AgiBot's patient guidance project with Ant A-Fu is operating at Peking University People's Hospital. By September 30, AGIBOT X2 had completed 46,686 interactions over 66 working days.
42HOW Robotics · IndustryLi Auto's Chip Unit MHX Technology Signs RMB 1.625 Billion Financing Deal to Expand Beyond Automotive
Shanghai Mahe Xin Technology Co., Ltd., a chip subsidiary of Li Auto, has signed its first-round equity financing agreement worth RMB 1.625 billion. The deal aims to support the external supply of chips and domain controllers, targeting non-automotive markets.
42HOW Robotics · IndustryNVIDIA and Semiconductor Leaders Use CUDA-X Libraries to Advance AI-Defined Fabs
At SEMICON West 2026, NVIDIA announced that leading semiconductor companies are adopting its CUDA-X libraries, including the new cuPotential, to build AI agents for atomic simulation and digital twin modeling. These tools aim to optimize manufacturing processes and improve efficiency in the development of AI-defined fabs.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchRobota-Embed: Joint Action and Visual Encoding for Robot In-Context Learning
A joint team from NVIDIA, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxford, and CMU introduces Robota-Embed, a unified VLA embedding that incorporates action data into experience retrieval. The model significantly improves robot in-context learning by matching future behavior logic rather than just visual similarity.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchNVIDIA and MIT Researchers Show Long-Context Robotics Requires Autoregressive World Models
A joint paper from NVIDIA, MIT, HKU and UCSD demonstrates that simply extending visual history does not improve robot control; the model must first learn autoregressive prediction to effectively use long contexts. On the RoboCasa GR-1 platform, task success rates rose from 63.3% to 78.7% when context was extended to 19.2 seconds.
42HOW Robotics · AI HardwareHesai Launches AI Camera Kosmo to Monetize the Real World as Data
Hesai launched the Kosmo One handheld scanner and Kosmo World platform, enabling robot companies like Sharpa to build high-fidelity simulation environments from real-world scans. The move signals a shift from selling sensors to providing 3D data assets and cloud processing services.
42HOW Robotics · InterviewsPrimeBot’s Hao Dong: Lowering Post-Training Costs for Home Robots
At IROS 2026, PrimeBot and Peking University hosted a dual-arm manipulation challenge. Chief Scientist Hao Dong discusses how post-training improves reliability in home environments and introduces HIL-UMI to lower data collection costs.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchI-BFM: Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning Enables Robust Humanoid Interaction After Falls
Researchers from Tongji University and Tsinghua University introduce I-BFM, a behavior foundation model that uses forward-backward representation to allow humanoid robots to recover from falls and adapt to disturbances without re-planning trajectories.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchOmniDex Dataset Scales Dexterous Grasping to 2.6 Million Cluttered Scenes
A team led by Xiaogang Wang and Hongsheng Li publishes OmniDex, a dataset of 2.6 million cluttered scenes and 400 million grasp annotations for dexterous hands, using offline pre-computation and soft winner-take-all learning to enable high-precision grasping without post-inference optimization.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchKui Jia Team's New Work: Enabling World Action Models to Truly Understand 3D Space
A joint team led by Kui Jia has published UNITAS, a world action model that unifies observation, action, and scene changes in a shared metric 3D coordinate system. The 1.7B-parameter model achieves 99.8% task success on the LIBERO benchmark and reduces displacement prediction error by 35% compared to PointWorld.
42HOW Robotics · IndustryDeepSeek Reportedly Eyes Embodied AI as Chinese and U.S. Foundation-Model Firms Signal Moves
Reports indicate DeepSeek is assessing a move into embodied AI through team building or investment, with plans to lead the seed round for Winverse AI at a post-money valuation of approximately USD 400 million.
42HOW Robotics · IndustryTactile Sensor Startups Expand Beyond Hardware Into Data and Embodied AI
At IROS 2026, companies like PaXini and Sharpa unveiled full-stack solutions combining tactile sensors with dexterous hands and data platforms, signaling a shift from component suppliers to providers of embodied AI training data.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchYann LeCun’s Latest JEPA Paper: Where Does End-to-End Planning Go Next?
A new paper from Yann LeCun’s team introduces H-JEPA, a hierarchical world model that improves long-horizon planning success rates from approximately 18% to 73%. The architecture separates temporal scales to enhance stability and reduce computational costs in embodied AI tasks.
42HOW Auto · New Cars & Market Signals5:13Li i6 Gets a “Major” Update: Can It Have It All?
A first-look static review of the 2026 Li i6, asking whether its “major” update can deliver it all.
42HOW Robotics · ResearchZongqing Lu’s Team at BeingBeyond Introduces Being-M0.7 for Humanoid Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation
Being-M0.7 learns joint visual and motion priors from over 10,000 hours of human egocentric video and motion data, then adapts them to robot control. It achieved a 71.1% success rate on the SIMPLE simulation benchmark and matched the strongest baseline in real-world Unitree G1 tests.