Automation & Robotics

Akron – November 10, 2026 -- Harmoni's HAL, the Harmoni AI Lieutenant, has been named a CES Innovation Awards 2027 Honoree in the Enterprise Tech category, the company announced. Harmoni says customers of its underlying Factory Orchestration system gain more than 200 productive hours per operator per year.

HAL answers operators' questions using live production context

HAL runs on Harmoni's live orchestration layer. It draws on the job, part, machine, operator and production status behind each question. Operators can ask by multilingual voice or text, including through an illuminated push-to-talk control on the Harmoni device.

HAL executes tasks, including changes to machine code

The software acts as well as answers. It can clock operators into jobs, open maintenance requests, and propose and make changes to machine code.

LOS ANGELES – November 08, 2026 -- FF EAI Robotics Ecosystem Inc. (NASDAQ: FFR) said its OmniMind embodied AI model ranked No. 1 overall on RoboColiseum's global leaderboard as of November 6, scoring 0.8698 out of 1 in simulation-based testing.

According to FFR, the score is ahead of NVIDIA GR00T N1.7, GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5, among other models. The disclosure came in the 80th weekly business update from YT Jia, Founder and Global CEO of FFR and Faraday Future.

OmniMind posts 0.99 in instruction following on a layered architecture

FFR reported sub-scores of about 0.99 for instruction following, 0.92 for spatial reasoning and 0.96 for robustness to disturbances. The company attributes the result to a layered architecture with programmatic execution rather than a typical vision-language-action (VLA) approach, in which one model generates actions directly.

Wasquehal, France – November 05, 2026 -- Exotec, a warehouse robotics provider, has appointed Clémence Munier, formerly Vice President of New Business Acquisition at Ocado Group, to the newly created post of Global Vice President, Grocery.

Munier will shape grocery strategy across three regions

The role covers grocery markets in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Exotec describes it as an investment in vertical-specific expertise as demand for grocery automation grows.

Munier brings more than 10 years of experience in grocery retail and grocery e-commerce automation. At Ocado she built and led the global team that won new partners for the Ocado Smart Platform, growing its portfolio to 15 retailers worldwide. Earlier, she led a team of vendor managers at Amazon UK, where she owned the commercial strategy and P&L for the grocery category.

ATLANTA – November 05, 2026 -- Greenzie's autonomy platform has logged more than 255,000 cumulative autonomous mowing miles. Equipment running on it has covered over 9 billion square feet of turf for more than 200 commercial customers in 45 U.S. states and four countries.

Greenzie-powered fleets accumulate more than 65,000 equivalent operator days

Greenzie was founded in 2018 and has supported commercial field deployments since 2021. Its platform lets commercial mowing equipment navigate and operate autonomously, helping crews manage labor availability and productivity.

Beijing – September 18, 2026 -- A 4-meter hydraulic-electric hybrid humanoid robot capable of carrying a 500 kg dual-arm payload while maintaining fingertip repeatability of ±0.05 mm has been unveiled by Beijing-based NeodraDynamics Robotics at the World Robot Conference (WRC) in Beijing. The machine, named Neo1, combines digital hydraulics with electric actuation, a pairing the company says eliminates the industry's long-standing trade-off between raw force and fine motor precision.

Neo1's core cylinder drives 1,000 kg at 1-micrometer precision

At the center of the robot's design is a micro digital hydraulic cylinder weighing 1.1 kg that can drive a 1,000 kg load with repeatability down to 1 micrometer. The company states the component withstands nuclear radiation, deep-sea pressure, extreme temperatures, heavy dust and intense vibration, conditions that typically degrade pure-electric actuators.

Stockholm – September 17, 2026 -- Husqvarna Group has become the first robotics company to secure Conditional Approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for foreign-manufactured advanced robotic devices, clearing a key regulatory hurdle for its U.S. expansion.

FCC exempts four Husqvarna mower platforms from national security covered list

The FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau announced the approval on September 17, 2026, covering four Automower platforms: the 305V iQ, 310V iQ, 420V iQ and 440V iQ. The decision follows the FCC's August 2026 publication of a covered list identifying communications equipment deemed a national security risk; the Conditional Approval exempts these specific Husqvarna platforms, along with models already sold in the U.S., from that list.

Boca Raton, Fla. – September 16, 2026 -- deviceWISE, a Telit Cinterion company, will run three live production demonstrations at IMTS 2026 in Chicago, September 14-19, showing agentic AI that detects faults on a live robotic cell and guides automated recovery.

Three live demonstrations show layered factory automation at Booth 236475

Visitors will see visual inspection, robotic sorting and automated assembly running on the deviceWISE platform. A visual inspection station using deviceWISE Visual Intelligence will check circuit boards and other objects for defects or missing components. A robot will sort colored cubes in an agentic AI and digital twin demonstration, while a second robot performs a FANUC AI auto assembly of industrial parts.

Port Clinton, Ohio – September 16, 2026 -- LogistiQ has launched FlowLogiQ L11, a large package singulator that achieves a 1.5% error rate while processing 15,000 packages per hour, targeting parcel distribution centers under pressure to boost pre-sort throughput.

System handles packages up to 70 pounds using triple the drive motor density of rival solutions

FlowLogiQ L11 converts disorganized bulk flows of cartons and bags into a single-file, gapped line ready for induction to automated sorters. The system processes items up to 70 pounds and 30 inches long, and in test applications with an average parcel length of 27 inches and a 12-inch product gap, it delivered the 1.5% error rate at 15,000 packages per hour. LogistiQ uses three drive motors per 10 feet of belt, compared with one per 10 feet in alternative systems, giving operators finer speed control during singulating and gapping and simplifying restarts after jams or maintenance.

Birmingham, Ala. – September 15, 2026 -- SJE Inc. has appointed Andrew Baines as Senior Vice President of Sales & Commercial Operations for its Engineered Control Solutions (ECS) Division, tasking him with accelerating growth across water and wastewater, OEM, and industrial markets.

Baines takes charge of a multichannel commercial organization spanning direct sales, manufacturers' representatives, and channel partners

He will work with Operations, Engineering, Marketing, and Product teams to strengthen pipeline management and forecasting, advance strategic pricing and quoting practices, and improve quote-to-order velocity.

Chicago – September 14, 2026 -- Copia Automation has extended its OT code management and recovery platform to support Omron Sysmac Studio, enabling automated backup, version control, and rapid recovery for manufacturers running Omron NJ and NX-series controllers.

Copia DeviceLink now covers Omron NJ and NX-series devices

The integration allows Copia customers to bring the same code management discipline already applied to Rockwell and Siemens environments to Omron-based operations. Copia DeviceLink automatically backs up Sysmac Studio projects so OT teams retain a verified last known version for restoration.