The Top 6 Robotics Stories of 2025
Humanoid robots are hard, and they’re hard in lots of different ways. For some of those ways, we at least understand the problems and what the solutions will likely involve.
Key takeaways
- The most recent developments show humanoid robots moving from prototypes to large‑scale industrial use and public demonstrations.
- In December 2025 European chipmaker STMicroelectronics announced a partnership with Italy’s Oversonic Robotics to roll out its cognitive humanoid, RoBee, across its global semiconductor plants, marking what is believed to be the first integration of humanoid robots directly into semiconductor manufacturing.
- At the same time, Chinese battery giant CATL has become the world’s first battery producer to deploy humanoid robots at scale in its Luoyang factory, where the “Xiaomo” units now handle complex tasks such as battery connector insertion and adaptive force control, reportedly delivering three times the workload of a human worker.
- Chinese companies are also scaling production: UBTech plans to ship 500 industrial robots this year and increase its humanoid output to 5,000 units in 2026, while AgiBot celebrated the rollout of its 5,000th humanoid robot from its Shanghai line.
- Xpeng unveiled a second‑generation humanoid called “Iron” at the IAA auto show in Munich and said mass production will start next year.
Humanoid robots are hard, and they’re hard in lots of different ways. For some of those ways, we at least understand the problems and what the solutions will likely involve. But there are other problems that have no clear solutions, and most humanoid companies, especially the well-funded ones, seem quite happy to wave those problems away while continuing to raise extraordinary amounts of money. We’re going to keep calling this out whenever we see it, and expect even more skepticism in 2026. IEEE.orgSign InJoin IEEE
Robotics
The Top 6 Robotics Stories of 2025
Humanoids are hard, the end of iRobot, and robots for cows
Evan Ackerman
24 Dec 2025
Source image: Alamy Boston Dynamics
Did I mention that humanoids robots are hard? Whether or not anyone can deliver on the promises being made about them (and personally, I’m leaning more and more strongly towards not), progress is being made towards humanoids that are much more capable and versatile than they ever have been. The collaboration between Toyota Research and Boston Dynamics on large behavior models is just one example of how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go.
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