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. 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.