Miniaturized robots for precision tasks - Nature
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Key takeaways
The most recent humanoid‑robot developments are coming from several companies. Humanoid Global Holdings, which invests in the sector, reported on November 27 2025 that its portfolio company Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot Digit has now completed more than 100,000 tote movements in a live logistics setting, confirming sustained performance in commercial deployment. On the same day, 1X Technologies announced the commercial launch of its home‑humanoid robot “NEO,” marketed as a consumer‑ready assistant that can fold laundry, organize shelves, tidy rooms and manage scheduling through an integrated large‑language‑model interface, with a four‑hour runtime and IP68‑rated hands. Earlier in November, Chinese firm AgiBot set a Guinness World Record when its A2 humanoid walked 66 miles (106 km) over three days, demonstrating long‑distance endurance for a robot designed for customer‑service roles. In addition, Agile Robots introduced its first industrial humanoid, Agile ONE, featuring five‑fingered, sensor‑rich hands for fine manipulation tasks such as operating power tools, and announced the acquisition of thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering to expand its manufacturing capacity. All of these announcements were made in late November 2025, representing the latest news in the humanoid‑robot field.
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Sign up for alerts RSS feed To address these challenges, the team uses two-photon polymerization to fabricate both the robot’s structure and its actuators in a single process. They incorporate electrostatic actuators — which convert electrical energy into motion through electrostatic forces — offering advantages such as compact size, rapid response and good scalability at small scales. This combined printing approach removes the need for manual assembly and allows the creation of complex three-dimensional geometries that