Boston Dynamics' robotic quadruped Spot has already found work doing routine factory inspections and patrolling the ruins of Pompeii, but what about deliveries? The company is testing a new conveyor belt accessory that allows Spot to carry packages from a vehicle and autonomously unload them on a customer's doorstep in an effort to reduce a delivery driver's workload.

While attempts have already been made to expedite and automate deliveries using wheeled robots or aerial drones, humans are still the most efficient way to navigate obstacles like stairs or cluttered pathways in order to get packages from a truck to a doorstep. A demo video s …

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iRobot just announced its first-ever non-robotic floor cleaner. The $399 Roomba Electro Plus is a 5-in-1 hard-floor cleaner that combines vacuuming, mopping, and disinfecting, but you have to operate it yourself. The company also announced updates to its line of Roomba robot vacuums, launching five new models with higher suction power, smaller footprints, and lower prices. These largely replace the line that arrived in 2025.

Designed exclusively for hard floors, the new Electro Plus is similar to the new breed of manual wet-dry floor cleaners available from Dreame, Roborock, and others. iRobot's distinguishing feature is Electro's ability …

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The next humanoid robot might not have a head. It might not have legs. It might even sit on a wheeled base and fold down like a deck chair. But, as Genesis AI puts it, "humanoid robots don't need to look human."

That explains the look of Eno, the new robot from the French startup backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Genesis says Eno is designed "around human capability" rather than human appearance and is intended as a fully "general-purpose" robot rather than a machine built around a single task, like folding laundry. One part is still very human though: its hands, which the company says are designed to "exactly match the form and fu …

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This week, an AI training startup called Shift said it would clean New Yorkers' homes for free. It has plans to expand into other cities as well, including London, and looking around my flat, I get the appeal.

But there's a catch. There's always a catch.

In exchange for the cleaning, Shift wants footage of its cleaners at work: scrubbing dishes, wiping counters, dusting tables, mopping floors. It wants everything. Video of all the boring domestic labor we'd happily outsource if we could - and that robotics companies are racing to teach machines to do so they can sell us something to do it for us.

That's harder than it sounds. Unlike cha …

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AI training startup Shift wants to clean your home for free. The catch - because, despite what its website says, there's always a catch - is that it will record cleaners as they scrub, vacuum, dust, tidy, and wash, and use that footage to train robots.

Shift announced the unusual offer on social media on Thursday, explaining that the value of the training data generated from the cleanings is more than enough to fund the service. As its website puts it: "You get a spotless apartment. We get training data. Everyone wins."

A promotional video shows a cleaner in a crisp white uniform and awkward-looking hat (more on that later) washing windows …

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