EP.66 A NEW UNICORN IN THE ROBOTICS INDUSTRY
The quickest humanoid to recover from falling, new AI model from 1X & much more...
Gecko Robotics hits $1.25B valuation and becomes a unicorn 🦄
Gecko Robotics has reached unicorn status following a $125 million Series D funding round that brings the company’s valuation to $1.25 billion. Known for its fleet of wall-climbing and environment-adaptive inspection robots, the Pittsburgh-based company is doubling down on efforts to transform high-stakes sectors like defense, energy, and industrial manufacturing.
The new investment—led by Cox Enterprises alongside existing backers such as Founders Fund, USIT, XN, and YCombinator—will fuel further development of Gecko’s core technologies and operating platform, Cantilever. Built to enable AI-powered diagnostics and decision-making, Cantilever supports everything from identifying structural flaws in Navy warships to optimizing power plant operations.
The company is positioning itself at the intersection of robotics, AI, and physical infrastructure, providing data-driven solutions that reduce unplanned outages and increase operational efficiency across mission-critical assets.
Founded out of a college dorm room, Gecko Robotics now operates across sectors where accurate, real-time data is vital to safety, uptime, and modernization. Its robots are already inspecting missile silos, navigating complex piping systems, and delivering insights that previously required lengthy shutdowns or manual intervention.
ABB and BurgerBots launch robotic burger station 🍔
In a move to redefine quick-service restaurant operations, ABB Robotics has teamed up with startup BurgerBots to unveil a fully automated burger-making cell at a new concept restaurant in Los Gatos, California. The system blends ABB’s high-speed IRB 360 FlexPicker® and dual-arm YuMi® collaborative robot into a compact, hygienic food-prep line designed to assemble made-to-order burgers in just 27 seconds.
The robotic cell integrates intelligent inventory monitoring with real-time order fulfillment. Once an order is placed, a cooked patty is dropped onto a bun and loaded into a burger box, which rides a QR-coded conveyor. The IRB 360 performs rapid, precise topping selection based on the QR data, followed by YuMi handling final assembly and boxing.
The system also tracks ingredient levels across the kitchen, improving operational efficiency and minimizing waste. This type of automated solution addresses ongoing labor challenges in the food service industry, including high turnover, rising wages, and staff shortages.
According to a recent ABB survey, 89% of hospitality managers and 67% of workers are open to robotics in food service, especially when it comes to automating dull or repetitive tasks. ABB positions the BurgerBots concept as a scalable solution that enhances speed and quality while enabling staff to focus on guest experience.
🦾 Feature sponsorship with ABB Robotics
Lumos Robotics showcases rapid-recovery humanoid 🤯
Lumos Robotics, a young but ambitious entrant in the humanoid robotics race, has unveiled new capabilities of its flagship platform, LUS1. The latest demo shows the robot standing up from a fall in just one second—one of the fastest recovery performances seen in the field.
The bipedal robot is designed to operate in unstructured environments, with ongoing development focused on disaster response, hazardous inspection, logistics, and healthcare.
Built with high-precision actuators, vision-based perception, and reinforcement learning-based control, LUS1 adapts dynamically to its surroundings. Its performance in recent stress tests highlights rapid fall recovery, uphill and downhill locomotion, and fine-tuned balance on uneven surfaces. According to Lumos, the robot’s modular architecture and compute-efficient learning make it suitable for both industrial and research deployments.
As more startups target the intersection of AI, mobility, and human-robot interaction, Lumos Robotics is quickly carving out a place among them with bold demos and a clear focus on physical resilience.
automatica 2025 is next week! 🚨
One of the largest automation and robotics fairs in the world will take place from June 24 to 27. Lots of interesting companies, brilliant lectures and great people who make up the robotics community.
Some of my recommendations:
I will also be there, let's get to know each other!
Voliro Raises $23M to expand inspection aerial robotics 🦅
Swiss robotics company Voliro has secured $23 million in an extended Series A round to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous aerial inspection robots.
Voliro’s core platform, the Voliro T, features a patented tiltable-rotor design and interchangeable sensor payloads, enabling the drone to conduct high-precision, contact-based inspections on complex industrial structures. This capability allows a single system to be deployed across a range of assets—from wind turbines and flare stacks to storage tanks and transmission towers—enhancing safety while reducing inspection time and cost.
Designed to address two critical challenges—aging infrastructure and a shrinking skilled workforce—Voliro’s technology offers a scalable, data-centric approach to industrial maintenance. The platform is already delivering measurable impact in sectors like energy and renewables, including 5x faster lightning protection system inspections on wind turbines and up to 50% reductions in both downtime and cost.
As industries grapple with climate adaptation, energy transition goals, and rising maintenance demands, Voliro’s aerial robotics are helping usher in a smarter, safer, and more resilient approach to infrastructure management.
A new model for autonomous household robots 🧹
1X has unveiled Redwood, a new AI model that gives its NEO humanoid robot the autonomy to handle everyday household tasks. Trained on real-world data from their robot platforms, Redwood enables the robot to perform actions like folding laundry, opening doors, and navigating familiar home environments without teleoperation.
Redwood’s architecture allows NEO to generalize across variable scenarios, adapting to changes in objects, layouts, or workflows. It uses learned behaviors such as hand selection and retry attempts after failed grasps, enhancing reliability in unstructured settings.
Key to the system is whole-body, multi-contact manipulation. Redwood coordinates locomotion and manipulation in a unified model, enabling behaviors like bracing against surfaces for leverage or adjusting body posture while completing tasks. NEO can perform mobile bi-manual manipulation, repositioning itself while manipulating objects with both arms—a capability critical for real-world utility in domestic spaces.
By combining real-world generalization, whole-body coordination, and language integration, Redwood marks a major step forward in bringing practical, AI-powered humanoid assistance to home environments.
