TechCapsules

A viral video series showing robots repeatedly falling over has sparked widespread amusement online. The clips, produced by a robotics startup, were intended as a lighthearted demonstration of the machines’ limited balance capabilities. Viewers initially praised the humor, but the company later clarified that the falls are deliberate safety tests designed to expose weaknesses before deployment in hazardous environments. The initiative aims to improve autonomous navigation and reduce injury risk in industrial settings. The company plans to [...]

Bangalore‑based start‑up xSpecies AI, founded in 2025, is focusing on robotic manipulation before full mobility. Its flagship DexteraX hand offers 15 degrees of freedom, cable‑driven actuation, and tactile, force, and joint‑angle sensors to perform pinching, tripod, power, lateral, and in‑hand repositioning grips. The hand is paired with AIWare, a software stack that blends reinforcement learning, imitation learning, vision‑language models, and teleoperation to accelerate task learning. xSpecies also develops HANDY, a 15‑kg payload wheeled manipulator with dual 7‑DOF [...]

German AI startup Black Forest Labs, led by 33‑year‑old CEO Robin Rombach, urged European policymakers to adopt a more optimistic stance toward artificial intelligence, warning that fear could leave the continent behind the United States and China. The Freiburg‑based company, valued at roughly $3.25 billion, has developed the FLUX image‑generation models and is expanding into physical AI, partnering with Audi to test robots on production lines. Rombach highlighted the lack of a robust European deep‑tech ecosystem and the [...]

The Delhi High Court ordered Meta Platforms to remove an obscene deep‑fake image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a woman’s face within 24 hours, following a petition alleging the image was circulated on social media and protest banners at Jantar Mantar. Justice Girish Kathpalia described the case as extraordinary, noting its national significance. The court also issued notices to Meta and four individuals linked to the Cockroach Janta Party, who are accused of creating and sharing [...]

Meta unveiled its new AI personal assistant, Muse, at the Connect conference, positioning it as a consumer‑focused counterpart to the enterprise‑oriented tools rolled out by OpenAI and Anthropic. The Tamagotchi‑style agent, marketed for adult users, can perform tasks such as locating unclaimed funds, but reviewers described it as a novelty rather than a habit‑forming service. Host Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that AI features will be integrated across Meta’s product suite, leveraging the company’s massive user base on Facebook, [...]

Apple is poised to refresh the iPad mini after a year of anticipation, with a leak from Aaron Perris revealing an A20 Pro processor, thinner bezels, OLED display, and water‑resistant construction. The reporter notes that while these hardware upgrades are significant, the device’s software multitasking remains lacking compared to the iPhone Duo’s split‑screen and picture‑in‑picture (PiP) implementation. The author argues that the current iPad mini cannot expand a PiP window to full portrait width without obscuring the [...]

Apple unveiled upgraded health‑sensing hardware for its latest Watch, expanding electrode coverage, adding more sensors and a refined photodiode array that samples heart activity every five seconds. The new “Readiness” score offers a simple daily gauge of fitness and stress capacity, while the Health app on iPhone and iPad integrates Apple Intelligence to present metrics such as Health Age. Concurrently, rumors suggest Apple is prototyping a screen‑free, sensor‑only wearable that streams data to an iPhone, resembling third‑party [...]

Google announced that its Gemini app will replace Gems with “skills” on November 17, 2026. Gems, introduced in 2024, were custom Gemini versions allowing users to set default tools and attach files, and could be shared via links. Skills, first seen with Gemini Spark, perform similar functions but are invoked directly with a slash in the chat box and can be used simultaneously. The migration will occur automatically, and users can create skills through the Gemini Spark tab if [...]