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Hey folks!
Welcome to another episode of Ready For Tomorrow!
Poland’s biggest national celebration, the May long weekend, is already behind us, so it’s time to get back to work. And honestly, there is no better comeback than coming back with some robo-news.
And the world of robotics did not take a break.
Not even for a moment.
A lot happened.
So there is no time to wait. Let’s get started!
1X opens its NEO Factory. Now the real game starts.
1X has opened its new NEO Factory in Hayward, California, and this is where humanoid talk starts becoming very real.
The factory has around 5,400 m², 200+ employees, and is already producing NEO, the company’s home humanoid robot. 1X says it booked its full first-year production capacity in just 5 days after preorder launch. That means 10,000 robots. Not bad for something that is supposed to help at home, not just look cool in a promo video.
But the bigger story is manufacturing.
1X is building many key parts in-house, including motors, batteries, sensors, structures and transmission systems. That matters, because humanoids are not only an AI challenge. They are also a production, cost, quality and service challenge. And that part is usually much less sexy than a robot folding laundry.
The company wants to reach 100,000+ units per year by the end of 2027. NEO robots are also already helping inside the factory with basic logistics tasks. So yes, we are slowly entering the “robots building robots” chapter.
That’s where this whole humanoid race gets really interesting.
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Figure is ramping Figure 03 production. The humanoid race is moving to the factory floor.
Humanoid companies are no longer fighting only for the best demo video. They are now fighting for production capacity, quality control and speed.
Figure says it has already built 350+ Figure 03 humanoids at BotQ, its high-volume production facility. The company also increased output from 1 robot per day to 1 robot per hour in under 120 days. That is a 24x jump. Nice little factory glow-up.
But the more interesting part is the process behind it.
Figure has over 150 networked workstations, more than 50 in-process inspection points, and each robot goes through 80+ functional tests before sign-off. They even run burn-in sessions where robots do squats, shoulder presses and jogging.
Basically, robot CrossFit, but with less protein powder and more torque checks.
This is the real test for humanoids now.
Who can build faster?
Who can control quality?
Who can lower cost?
Who can collect real-world data at scale?
Cool videos still matter.
But production is where the real pain starts.
Appetronix buys Cibotica. Kitchen robots are getting less fancy and more useful.
After humanoid factories, let’s move to another place where robots need to prove they can work without drama.
The kitchen.
Appetronix has acquired Cibotica, a Canadian startup focused on automated ingredient dispensing and portioning. Appetronix already works on robotic kitchens, including automated pizza concepts with Donatos. Now, with Cibotica, it wants to move faster into bowls, noodles, burrito bowls and coffee.
Restaurant automation is not only about a robot flipping burgers for a nice LinkedIn video.
The real value is in boring things… stable portions, less food waste, speed, repeatability, and surviving peak hours without the whole kitchen turning into a small war zone.
Cibotica’s system can assemble up to 300 bowls per hour. It can also reduce labor costs by up to 30% and cut food waste by 50%, according to Appetronix.
This is where food robotics gets interesting.
Not because robots will suddenly replace every chef.
But because many restaurant tasks are repetitive, messy and easy to mess up when the rush starts.
And if a robot can keep portions stable, work fast and not panic during lunch hour, then yes.
That robot may deserve a place in the kitchen.
SquareMind raises $18M. Robots are entering the doctor’s office.
We had humanoid production and kitchen automation.
Now we have a robot checking your skin.
SquareMind, a Paris-based AI and robotics company, has raised $18M to bring its Swan robotic skin imaging platform to the US and Europe.
Swan is built for dermatology.
The patient stands in a private room, follows visual and audio instructions, and the robotic arm captures full-body dermoscopic images in just a few minutes.
The AI helps doctors track new or changing moles over time. But the doctor still makes the final decision, which is exactly how this should work.
And that is the point.
Not every healthcare robot needs to hold a scalpel.
Sometimes it just needs to collect better data.
FingerEye gives robots a better feeling for the job.
This one is small, but very important.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore and RoboScience developed FingerEye, a sensor that combines vision and touch for robot manipulation.
Most tactile sensors are a bit late to the party.
They start helping only after the robot touches the object.
FingerEye works before, during and after contact.
It uses two small RGB cameras to see objects up close and estimate depth. Then, when the robot touches something, a soft ring deforms and helps estimate forces. So the robot gets a smoother flow of information instead of going in half-blind and hoping for the best.
This matters for tasks like picking chips, standing coins, retrieving thin letters or handling syringes. Basically, the kind of jobs where “just grab it” is a very bad engineering plan.
And this connects nicely with the whole episode.
Robots are moving into homes, kitchens and healthcare.
But to really work there, they need better hands.
Because the world is full of weird objects, soft objects, slippery objects and tiny annoying objects that were clearly designed to ruin a robot’s day.
May is here, days are getting longer, and even robots look like they want to go outside for a bit of sun.
This week we had humanoids moving into production, kitchen robots fighting food chaos, medical robots checking skin, and robotic fingers learning how not to destroy tiny objects.
Beautiful season, really.
People start grilling, flowers start blooming, and somewhere in a factory, a humanoid is probably doing squats for quality testing.
Cheers, Jacek
