June 2026 Robotics Recap

Hello again, everybody, and welcome back to “Robotics Recap,” a monthly breakdown of all the news from Robotics 24/7 at Peerless Media. I'm your host, Tim Culverhouse, Editorial Director of Robotics 24/7, and it's time to look back at all the robotics and automation news from June 2026.

Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on whatever medium you listen to it, and also get the latest episode of "Robotics Recap" as soon as it's released. Our release cadence is the last Wednesday of each month.

We’ve reached the midway point of 2026, so don’t forget to catch up on our first five editions of the "Robotics Recap" podcast from:

• January
• February
• March
• April
• And May

May’s “Robotics Recap” kicked off our Automate 2026 coverage with previews about the show in Chicago. This episode will review all the major news and notes from the show, which you can follow along here.

We also had some interesting mergers, acquisitions, integrations and deployments from around the robotics and automation world in June 2026. So, without any further ado, let's get into our podcast, starting with a recap of Automate 2026 from McCormick Place in Chicago.

Major headlines from Automate 2026

Let's start our recap of Automate 2026 with some of the major headlines that took place in Chicago. First, NVIDIA announced Halos for Robotics. Now the company says it's the industry's first full-stack safety system for physical AI, and it’s also an extension of the company's Halos for autonomous vehicles platform.

InOrbit.AI demonstrated the future of multi-vendor robot orchestration and physical AI. And on the Automate show floor, InOrbit demonstrated its Space Intelligence platform serving as the orchestration layer for the “sentient enterprise.” Now at McCormick Place, InOrbit Space Intelligence coordinated eight different types of robots, from AMRs and humanoids, and also manual pallet jacks, as part of a demonstration showcasing orchestration with multiple types of automation.

Robot.com launched the R-noid humanoid robot. The company says that its new humanoid is built to fill the shifts no one wants to work. The company has multiple deployments in the service sector right now and plans to have more shipped by the end of 2026.

Dexterity and Kawasaki Robotics expanded their collaboration to scale physical AI for warehouse logistics. Kawasaki's RL030N robot arm platform combines the company's industrial robot engineering with the Dexterity Mech “superhumanoid” and also Dexterity's Foresight World Model.

NEURA Robotics showcased its full-stack robotics platform in Chicago, offering demos of the company's cognitive robot portfolio, the Neuraverse platform and also NEURA Gym environments.

Doosan Robotics unveiled PalletizHD+, an AI palletizing system. Now Doosan says it integrates AI, robotics and the PalletizOS platform to help manufacturers increase throughput and simplicity for palletizing operations.

Teradyne Robotics unveiled a wide range of production-ready physical AI applications. The company's booth in Chicago showcased deployable physical AI offerings ranging from electronics manufacturing to the logistics space.

Also with Teradyne, Vention announced collaborations with the organization alongside FANUC. Now, Vention’s platform expands access to software-defined automation across collaborative and industrial robotics.

And lastly, Rockwell Automation launched the FactoryTalk orchestration software platform. The company says that FactoryTalk orchestration coordinates end-to-end material flow, production processes to improve throughput and operational responsiveness across factory floors. That serves as a very small sample of Robotics 24/7’s coverage of Automate 2026. You can catch up on all the latest news and notes from everything that happened before, during and after the show here.

Five observations from Automate 2026

Some observations that I had while walking around the show floor in Chicago last week. The first one was that physical AI was everywhere, regardless of whether it was the manufacturing sector, logistics or somewhere in the supply chain.

Physical AI has been a buzzword on the site for months and months now, and Automate even more so than I would say MODEX a couple of months ago really showed the real-world embodiment of what physical AI means for the workforce and what it means as a deployable solution across industries.

Whichever booth you were at, especially some of the bigger ones and the larger robotics and automation organizations from around the world, physical AI was really taking that next step and turning the term into a tangible hardware-focused and hardware-forward platform.

Another thing I saw from walking the show floor, cobots were everywhere as well. We saw multiple organizations release new cobots, new cobot lines or expand cobot payload capabilities. There was a myriad of different headlines related to the cobot space. And I took this to mean that collaborative capabilities are really expanding, again, across industries.

And it wasn't just some of the larger global robot organizations that were developing these cobots. There were some smaller to midsize North American-based or European-based organizations that came out with new cobots at Automate 2026. Interact Analysis has research that shows cobot shipments are growing and projected to grow for the next handful of years. It seems like the marketplace is following suit.

Another observation from Automate 2026 was the expansion of edge technologies. Whichever booth I was at, I saw sensors and components, all related to data collection at the edge, and also data analysis at the edge. That ties into the next observation I have, which is that components are shrinking in size but growing in power.

I'll stick with NVIDIA as a specific example with this. NVIDIA GPUs continue shrinking in size, and when they're working alongside processors and other edge components at the physical edge, these organizations are harnessing this data and converting it into analysis that they can use immediately in production, again, regardless of the application. I noticed at a lot of the booths at McCormick Place, these organizations were developing or utilizing edge elements and harnessing the power of that data right where the application takes place and turning that into tangible benefits.

Lastly, I want to say that general-purpose robots and humanoids were pretty prevalent on the show floor at McCormick Place. I saw different organizations with their long-standing humanoids or their newly released ones, and while there was that usual split of the visual appeal and plenty of crowding around booths with humanoid robots, there was a larger push toward humanoids in general service, or I guess I would say general-purpose applications.

You've got the long-standing ones in warehouse and logistics and handling these tasks in replacement of humans, but there seems to be a shift, and I'll continue keeping my eyes on this for the site, that these humanoid robots are transitioning into more of a service application in the hospitality sector, restaurants, consumer usage and home usage. It's an interesting trend.

This carries over from an observation I had at MODEX, where humanoids really weren't very prominent, but at Automate, in conjunction with the Humanoid Robot Forum that took place there. Humanoids are still here. There's still plenty of news around humanoids and while their viability can still be up in the air regardless of the industrial application, organizations are still powering forward with these sorts of technologies.

So that's just a brief overview of Automate 2026 on Robotics 24/7. Again, we have a full list of coverage on the site, taking a look at the major deployment news, new products, funding, new components and anything that happened from Chicago. You can read about it on here.

Funding and acquisition news from June 2026

Now let's take a look at some news and notes not from Automate this month.

In the funding and acquisition sector, Generalist raised $400 million, which the company says it will use to scale its physical AI platform.

Standard Bots, the Long Island-based robotics organization, announced a Series C of $200 million, which values the company at $1 billion.

NEURA Robotics announced its own Series C for up to $1.4 billion.

This news came out right at the end of the month during Automate, Agility Robotics announced it was going public via its merger with Churchill Capital Corp. XI. This gives Agility Robotics a $2.5 billion valuation, and to the best of my knowledge, represents the first humanoid-focused organization to enter the public sector, and also enter public trading.

And lastly, FORT Robotics acquired Mapless AI, adding remote supervision and active safety capabilities to FORT’s portfolio.

Robotics and automation partnership news from June 2026

On the partnership news segment, three headlines that I saw, especially at the end of this month, caught my attention.

Serve Robotics expanded its autonomous robot portfolio with its partnership with NoScrubs. Now, Serve will now enter the autonomous laundry delivery space.

Brightpick and Trew Automation partnered to expand their robotic fulfillment portfolio.

And Ambi Robotics announced an integration with Pickle Robot. The companies said that this technological integration will deliver physical AI systems for inbound logistics automation, specifically trailer unloading and inside warehouse conveyance and palletizing.

Looking ahead for Robotics 24/7

That will wrap up our June 2026 “Robotics Recap” podcast. But before we sign off, I want to turn our attention to the calendar and some exciting news coming out from Robotics 24/7.

We'll be releasing our next Special Focus Issue on July 15th. This one is titled, “The inner workings of robots: Components and sensors.” We'll have a bunch of stories related to motors, gears, sensors, safety systems, grippers and more. We’re covering all those inner workings and the critical components that make these robots tick.

In August, Robotics 24/7 will host our next roundtable webinar, which will be on August 12th, and is titled “Robots in dull, dirty and dangerous environments.”

And on September 16th, Robotics 24/7 will host the fifth annual Robotics Applications Conference, also known as RAC. We’ll have more details on RAC 26 soon.

Thank you once again for tuning in to our June 2026 “Robotics Recap” podcast. Don't forget you can download and subscribe to “Robotics Recap” on the podcast platform of your choosing. We look forward to seeing you again at the end of July as we take a look at more news and notes from around the robotics and automation space, especially as innovation continues at such a breakneck pace.

This is Tim Culverhouse, Editorial Director of Robotics 24/7. Thank you again for listening, and we look forward to seeing you in July for the next episode of “Robotics Recap.”