Human noise dominates 2025’s top robotics stories

Normally, I start these annual feature posts by saying that it’s been the best year ever for robotics. But this year, I’m not so sure. At the end of 2024, it looked as if artificial intelligence and humanoid robots were on the verge of making a transformative amount of progress toward some kind of practical application. While progress has certainly been made, it’s hard to justify what’s actually happened in 2025 with the amount of money and hype that has flooded robots over the course of the year. For better or worse, humanoid robots overshadow everything else, raising questions about what will happen if the companies that make them ultimately don’t succeed.

We will enter 2026 with both optimism and skepticism, and we will continue to do what we always do: talk to experts, ask as many tough questions as we can, and make sure we participate. everyone Cool robots, even (or especially) ones you won’t see anywhere else.

Thanks so much for reading, and to all the wonderful robotics people out there, thanks for sharing your work with us! IEEE Spectrum We’ve got a bunch of exciting new things planned for 2026, and as we head into 2025, here’s a quick look at some of our best robotics stories of the year.

Eddie Jay

Humanoid robots are hard, and they’re hard in many different ways. For some of these approaches, we at least understand the problems and what the solutions will likely involve. But there are other problems that have no obvious solutions, and most human-powered companies, especially those that are well-funded, seem quite happy to sidestep these problems while continuing to raise extraordinary amounts of money. We will continue to point this out whenever we see it, and expect more uncertainty in 2026.

CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Security is one of those annoying little things that is hugely important in robotics, but early-stage robotics companies usually treat it as an afterthought because it doesn’t drive investment. Chinese manufacturer unitary It’s really the only company that has humanoid robots available enough and affordable enough for smart people to run a security audit on them. To no one’s surprise, Unitree’s bots had serious vulnerabilities, not all of which have been patched yet.

Amazon

The thing I appreciate in people Amazon robots It is how ruthless they are at finding creative solutions to problems on a large scale. Amazon simply doesn’t have time to idle around, and they’re designing robots to do what robots do best: specific repetitive tasks in structured environments. In the current climate of hype around robots, this is refreshing, frankly.

Boston Dynamics

Did I mention that humanoid robots are hard? Whether or not anyone can deliver on the promises made about them (and personally, I lean more strongly toward not doing so), progress He is We are creating human beings who are more capable and diverse than ever before. Cooperation between Toyota Research and Boston Dynamics On Big Behavior Models is just one example of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go.

Lindsay Nicholson/Universal Image Collection/Getty Images

The least favorite story to write about occurred at the end of the year, as iRobot filed for bankruptcy. This wasn’t a complete surprise. Regulators shutting down Amazon’s acquisition in 2024 essentially destroyed the company, and it has been heading toward the inevitable ever since. Immediately after the news was announced, we spoke with iRobot co-founder and former CEO Colin Angle, who had a lot to share about what went wrong, and what we can learn from them.

Ivan Ackerman

My favorite story of 2025 was as much about cows as it was about robots. I was amazed to learn how many fully autonomous robots are hard at work on dairy farms around the world, and thrilled to also learn that these robots are actively improving the lives of both dairy farmers and the cows themselves. Dairy farming is endless hard work, but thanks to these robots, small family farms are able to stay sustainable (and sane). Everyone wins, thanks to the robots.