AI & Automation in Industry, Retail and the home

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Pneumatic-suction robot clears 75,000 lb of cargo an hour
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
December 09, 2025

It'll likely be a while before we have humanoid robots taking over our household chores, but what you can count on sooner is seeing more robots in industrial settings, like factories and warehouses.

Robots already move pallets and bins of goods across warehouse floors, replacing forklifts. There are also articulated arms involved in packaging tasks, and even assembly operations.

A startup founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni wants these bots to do some heavy lifting, literally. Pickle Robot Company's robot systems feature AI smarts, cameras, sensors, and enormous single-armed machines to unload shipping containers filled with cases weighing up to 50 lb (22.5 kg) each.

https://newatlas.com/robotics/mit-pickl ... unloading/

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[Yuli Ban]

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Physical AI humanoids get to work at BMW factory
By Michael Franco
March 07, 2026

BMW is expanding its investigation of humanoid robotic workers at its factories. The automaker has just announced that it will trial a set of physical AI bots made by Hexagon for the first time at one of its European plants.

After about a year of training, BMW unleashed a fleet of robots made by Figure AI in its plant at Spartanburg, South Carolina, last year as part of a pilot program to see how the automatons would do in real-world manufacturing conditions. According to the company, that experiment went really well. The Figure 02 robots contributed to the production of over 30,000 BMW X3s by handling the precise positioning of sheet metal that needed to be welded. The bots executed this repetitive and physically demanding job for 10 hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the pilot program, which encompassed 1,250 operating hours, the humanoid work crew had moved a total of 90,000 components and taken 1.2 million steps.

Now, BMW is bringing humanoids from a different manufacturer to its Leipzig, Germany plant. The AEON bots are made by Zurich-based Hexagon, and were unveiled in June of last year. The machines are considered "physical AI" because they are equipped with AI-based motion control and sensors that can evaluate their environment and make independent decisions based on what's around. They can also learn as they conduct various tasks and update their programming based on what they encounter. You can get a good look at them in the following slickly produced video released by the automaker.

https://newatlas.com/ai-humanoids/physi ... noids-bmw/

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What Can History Tell Us About A&I
Interview With Louis Hyman and Angus Burgin
April 10, 2026

Introduction:

(Futurity) In an essay posted to X on February 10, artificial intelligence entrepreneur Matt Shumer put it bluntly: “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job.”

Shumer’s words, which have racked up 86 million views to date, rattled the nerves of an already-rattled public—and fueled fear for what the future may hold as the AI revolution threatens to disrupt work and ignite or topple the economy.

According to historians, anxieties like these have surfaced during all previous technological revolutions, from the assembly line that altered manufacturing to the trains, cars, and airplanes that shortened travel times to the internet that put information at our fingertips.

One notable difference with AI is the unprecedented speed at which the technology is advancing, with newer tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 enabling users to write complex computer code, analyze data, or generate reports in a matter of seconds, or even engage in several tasks at once through a process called multi-agent teaming.

Below, two political economy historians, Louis Hyman and Angus Burgin, offer perspective on the AI-fueled shift we are experiencing and the concerns it sparks. (See link provided below for Q&A interview).

Read more here: https://www.futurity.org/what-can-hist ... -3328532

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[firestar464]

It's worth noting that the sample is from those organizations that have stuck with AI after trying it; they're naturally going to have a better opinion of it if they've stuck with it. The rest have just not bothered with it at all, having failed to leverage it for productivity in the same way as those who have stuck with it.

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