AI in robotics & automation: 49 real deployments

Launching Cybercab, a driverless two-passenger robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, for commercial operation in Austin

Deploying up to 1,000 autonomous robotaxis for commercial operation in Clark County, Nevada via Motional

Deploying up to 5,000 autonomous Cybercab robotaxis for commercial operation in Clark County, Nevada

Building an overseas autonomous robotaxi pipeline exceeding 4,000 vehicles across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including a 2,000-vehicle Europe deployment with Uber; targeting 3,500 domestic vehicles by year-end

Deploying more than 2,000 Level 4 autonomous robotaxis across four additional European cities plus Middle East markets, supplying the autonomous stack and operations

Operating paid driverless robotaxi service across 18 California counties including freeways, highways, rural roads and rail crossings day or night in rain, fog and hail

Reported: completed 20M+ trips with ~3,000 vehicles

operating a fleet of AI-powered autonomous robotaxis across multiple US cities

Reported: fleet grew from 700 to nearly 4,000 vehicles; sixth recall to date; 3,871-vehicle recall triggered by construction-zone incursions near Phoenix and Bay Area; additional incidents include a robotaxi swept into flooded Salado Creek in San Antonio and a San Francisco power-outage failure

Transport for London licensed Wayve's autonomous Ford Mustang Mach-Es for supervised robotaxi trials through Uber.

Reported: More than 100,000 Londoners registered interest; trial rides are scheduled to begin with a licensed human driver onboard.

Uber plans to deploy driverless vehicles across more than 15 cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Dubai and Munich.

Reported: Uber committed more than $10 billion over the coming years and targets 120,000 driverless vehicles.

Zoox is launching paid rides in its purpose-built, steering-wheel-free robotaxis in Las Vegas after two years of free testing.

Reported: Paid service starts August 10 under an NHTSA commercial exemption covering up to 2,500 vehicles.

Waymo opened its fully driverless robotaxi service to all Dallas residents after an invite-only launch.

Reported: Waymo says it served nearly 150,000 Dallas riders from the waitlist before opening access.

Baidu, Lyft and Freenow began supervised robotaxi testing in London's Brent borough using purpose-built Apollo Go RT6 vehicles.

Reported: Dozens of vehicles are planned for testing, with public service targeted for 2027 subject to approval.

Tesla launched fully unsupervised robotaxi rides in a 10-14 square mile geofenced zone of western Miami-Dade, its fifth market, with no human safety monitor in the front seat.

Reported: Unsupervised fleet has shrunk from a peak of ~25 vehicles to ~14 active cars as safety validation remains the limiting factor; Tesla targets a dozen US states by end of 2026.

Tesla operates a small robotaxi program, with 31 robotaxis active across all markets in the past seven days, of which only 14 run unsupervised.

Reported: No at-fault robotaxi crash in the latest NHTSA autonomous-vehicle data.

Mobileye will launch its own robotaxi service in an unnamed US city in 2027 with an initial fleet of 100 vehicles phased in through the year, scaling to about 17,000 robotaxis over the following five years.

Uber, Foxconn and VinFast are among the first announced deployers of NVIDIA's DRIVE Hyperion Level 4 robotaxi platform, with Uber deploying NVIDIA DRIVE-powered AVs in Munich later in 2026, Foxconn targeting a 2028 airport-to-city robotaxi service in Taiwan, and VinFast partnering with Autobrains for Southeast Asian Level 4 operations.

Waymo suspended robotaxi service in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, and Houston after multiple vehicles drove into flooded roads despite a late-April software recall covering all 3,791 vehicles.

Reported: Service paused in four cities; one robotaxi stuck in Atlanta floodwater for over an hour; company acknowledged it had not deployed a final fix when the recall was issued

Waymo filed a voluntary NHTSA recall covering 3,791 robotaxis across six cities after a vehicle drove into a flooded San Antonio road instead of stopping, deploying an OTA fix tightening weather restrictions and updating flood maps.

Reported: First major safety recall for Waymo's commercial fleet; interim patch pushed to all 3,791 units

Waymo expanded its robotaxi coverage to 1,400 square miles across 11 US cities.

Reported: doing a million rides a week

Japan Airlines started a two-year humanoid robot trial at Haneda airport covering baggage, cargo, and aircraft towing.

Waymo began autonomous driving in London with ~100 I-Pace vehicles across roughly 100 square miles, its first European pilot, with trained specialists behind the wheel pending UK regulatory sign-off.

Deploying CLOi wheel-based robots at Tennessee washing-machine factory under new Nvidia partnership MOU

Amazon, GXO, Schaeffler and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada operate Agility Robotics' Digit humanoids in live deployments.

Reported: Agility reports more than $300 million in multi-year Digit v5 orders and discussions with over 30 additional customers.

China is deploying humanoid robots into factories, logistics hubs and stores to collect real-world training data through government-backed centers.

Reported: Sixty-four data-collection centers are operating, 20 more are under construction, and the ministry targets 10,000 humanoids on factory floors by year-end.

Hexagon and Fill Maschinenbau deployed the AEON humanoid robot for machine tending and inspection in Fill's Austrian factory, with Hexagon's metrology stack providing a closed perception-feedback loop.

Auto-parts maker Schaeffler signed a binding contract with UK startup Humanoid to deploy thousands of wheeled humanoid robots for autonomous shop-floor operations across its global manufacturing plants by 2032.

Siemens and Humanoid Ltd. deployed the HMND 01 Alpha humanoid in a live logistics trial at Siemens' Erlangen factory, the first European humanoid trial with a credible throughput number.

Reported: 60 container moves/hour and >90% pick success in live logistics

AI-guided fully autonomous drone deployed in combat strike on civilian infrastructure

Reported: killed three civilians; Kyiv frames as first confirmed lethal use of a fully autonomous AI weapon in the war

NATO, the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Navy deploy Kraken Technology's autonomous uncrewed subsurface and surface maritime platforms.

Ukraine's First Corps Azov deploys modified US-made Hornet and Darts kamikaze drones with AI terminal guidance and autonomous vehicle-type recognition against Russian supply lines up to 250 km behind the front, with operators retaining final strike authorization under a man-in-the-loop model.

Reported: Over 270 cargo trucks and fuel tankers destroyed since early May; reported fuel shortages in Crimea.

Northrop's YFQ-48A Talon Blue uncrewed fighter completed autonomous taxi tests with independent steering, braking and throttle, the last ground milestone before first autonomous flight in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

Ukrainian military units are fielding autonomous unmanned warfare systems at scale, with units reportedly seizing territory using only unmanned platforms for the first time in warfare history.

Trialed humanoid robot on its own automotive production lines for nut-tightening and folding center-console covers

Reported: robot raised nut-tightening precision from 90.2% to 98% during factory trials and hit ~90% on folding center-console covers

BYD plans to introduce humanoid robots at its Di Space experience centers and later deploy them across dealerships.

Reported: BYD floated deploying two to three robots per dealership within one to two years.

Automakers including Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BYD, GM and Audi ship Momenta's urban Navigate-on-Autopilot assisted-driving software in production vehicles in China.

Reported: Software deployed in 680,000-900,000+ vehicles; Momenta claims 65%+ of China's third-party urban Navigate-on-Autopilot market.

Stellantis signed a binding contract to ship Wayve's map-free, end-to-end neural self-driving stack in US consumer vehicles, with production targeted for 2028.

Reported: A prototype was running across Stellantis' platforms in under two months.

Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy more than 25,000 Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoid robots across its US manufacturing plants, starting at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant America in 2028 followed by Kia's Georgia plant in 2029.

Deploying X30 quadruped and Lynx M20 wheeled-legged robots into high-rise fires, tunnel emergencies and hazmat scenes ahead of human crews, equipped with water cannon, 3D LiDAR, dual-spectrum cameras and multi-gas sensors

China's MIIT launched a nationwide programme requiring local governments and state-owned enterprises to move humanoid robots from demonstrations into active industrial and service deployment across manufacturing, healthcare and disaster relief, targeting 10,000 deployed units and 100+ high-value applications by year-end 2026.

Deploying retrofit Gravis Rack units on excavators to enable autonomous operation, including under an $8M UK contract to retrofit existing fleets

Monumental deploys autonomous bricklaying robots on residential construction projects.

Reported: The company reports more than 150 robots deployed and over 100 homes completed, nearly half in the prior three months.

Piloting humanoid robots rented at $30/hour for household cleaning tasks including vacuuming, wiping counters and taking out trash, with remote VR-goggled technician supervision, targeting 1,000 San Francisco households

Tau Robotics operates an invite-only San Francisco home-cleaning service jointly controlled by remote human operators and AI.

Reported: The service launched at $30 per hour and uses supervised work in real homes to collect training video.

humanoid robots deployed to sort parcels at China Post Group facilities in Shenzhen

DHL Supply Chain runs Locus Robotics' Array system, mobile robots plus picking arms, in production (not piloting), handling pick, putaway, induction, and replenishment in one fleet for end-to-end warehouse fulfillment.

Reported: a claimed 90% reduction in manual labor

Defense contractor Vantor (formerly Maxar Intelligence) is deploying Niantic Spatial's Visual Positioning System, built from approximately 30 billion Pokemon Go player scans, to enable GPS-denied military drone navigation.

China's lights-out 'dark factory' uses AI-driven process control and robotics to sustain continuous production of J-20 stealth fighter jets without floor workers.

Reported: Reportedly more than doubled production efficiency for J-20 stealth jets

Wonder is deploying an automated bowl-making robotic system, acquired from Sweetgreen, in its first kitchen to produce salads, Tex-Mex and poke bowls, with companion machines for sauces and beverages in development.

Reported: System produces 500 bowls per hour versus roughly 45 for a human worker; Sweetgreen currently runs it across 32 locations; Lore claims it produces bowls with 'no errors'.

Greek coffee producer KAFEA TERRA plans an industrial deployment this summer of Axl Imperial's MARK One dual-arm humanoid robot for palletizing, machine feeding, quality control, and material handling alongside human workers.