Nvidia's plug-and-play humanoid

PLUS: Waymo's new purpose-built minivan

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Jennifer Mossalgue, Joey Liu, Rowan Cheung, Shubham Sharma & Zach Mink
June 01, 2026

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Nvidia wants to do for humanoids what it did for AI: turn a frontier science project into a platform — with its silicon at the center.

Its new Isaac Gr00t reference design pairs a nearly 6 ft. Unitree body, tactile five-fingered hands, and Blackwell-powered Jetson Thor compute into an open-ish stack for researchers chasing the general-purpose machine. The catch, naturally, is pure Nvidia: the future of robotics may be open, but it still runs on its chips.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • Nvidia, Unitree debut plug-and-play humanoid

  • Meet the Ojai, Waymo’s new minivan robotaxi

  • UK self-driving startup Wayve launches robotics lab

  • This robotic suit fakes weightlessness on Earth

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NVIDIA

Image source: Nvidia

The Rundown: Nvidia is teaming up with China’s Unitree and Singapore's Sharpa to launch the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid — a nearly six-foot research robot with an onboard Blackwell GPU, tactile hands, and a full open-source AI stack.

The details:

  • The H2 Plus body pairs with Nvidia’s Jetson Thor compute module and Sharpa’s tactile hands, all unified under the open Isaac GR00T software stack.

  • Stanford, ETH Zurich, Ai2, and UC San Diego have already signed on as launch partners; units ship from Unitree in late 2026.

  • The same Isaac GR00T software stack will also support Unitree’s more widely used G1 robot, with workflows expected on GitHub and Hugging Face soon.

  • The deal lands as Unitree pursues a ~$620M IPO on Shanghai’s STAR board, with 40% of revenue from international markets.

Why it matters: A shared reference design means researchers finally stop reinventing the same hardware stack and start comparing results on equal footing. By open-sourcing the software and anchoring it to accessible hardware, Nvidia is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for physical AI research, as it did for cloud AI training.

WAYMO

Image source: Waymo

The Rundown: Waymo just started giving select riders free access to its newest robotaxi — a purpose-built, Chinese-made electric minivan called the Ojai — as it looks to cut costs and scale its fleet across U.S. cities.

The details:

  • Built in partnership with Chinese EV maker Zeekr, the Ojai is manufactured in China and imported with all Chinese-connected software removed.

  • The large, light blue electric van offers a low step-in height, flat floor, sliding doors, and more interior space than its Jaguar I-PACE fleet.

  • The Ojai runs on Waymo’s sixth‑gen self-driving stack, with 13 cameras, four lidar units, six radar sensors, and a ring of external audio receivers.

  • Public rides are starting free for select users in San Francisco, LA, and Phoenix, with plans to expand to more cities and eventually start charging fares this year.

Why it matters: The Ojai arrives just as Waymo’s freeway service remains suspended across multiple cities over construction zone concerns and major flooding problems. A purpose-built platform that performs in tougher conditions is exactly what it needs to make the economics work, and close the gap between robotaxi promise and reality.

WAYVE

Image source: Wayve

The Rundown: Wayve, the UK autonomous driving startup backed by Microsoft, is spinning up Wayve Labs — a dedicated research unit aimed at stretching its embodied AI well beyond the car, Business Insider reports.

The details:

  • The new lab will focus on frontier embodied AI, including spatial reasoning, causality, and risk-aware decision-making in the physical world.

  • Former Microsoft researcher Jamie Shotton, Wayve’s chief scientist, will lead the unit and is actively building out a dedicated team of AI researchers.

  • No near-term commercialization is planned — this is pure research — though the lab already has staffers in place and hiring is underway.

  • Earlier this year, Wayve closed a $1.5B round from Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber, and Mercedes-Benz, pushing its valuation to $8.6B.

Why it matters: Waymo and Tesla are building closed systems. Wayve is making a different move, where its embodied-AI stack can become infrastructure that other companies build robots on top of. Wayve Labs gives that logic room to breathe: years of real-world driving data, serious compute, and a funding base few rivals can match.

SPACE ROBOTICS

image source: Novespace

The Rundown: A German research team is testing an AI-driven robotic exoskeleton that cancels out the weight of a wearer’s arm to mimic microgravity on Earth and train astronauts’ fine motor skills for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

The details:

  • Built by DFKI and the University of Duisburg-Essen, the suit uses AI to estimate arm weight and apply counterforces that feel like weightlessness.

  • Volunteers flew two weeks of Airbus Zero-G parabolas, tapping on hidden touchscreens during 22-second microgravity arcs.

  • Half of the volunteers trained in the exoskeleton for a month, letting researchers see how simulated weightlessness stacks up against the real thing.

  • The same tech could double as a low-cost neurotech tool to help stroke patients relearn grasping and other fine motor skills.

Why it matters: Training astronauts for precision work in true microgravity is expensive, so a wearable system that can fake weightlessness on Earth could make mission prep more accessible. It also hints at a second life as rehab gear, turning an astronaut training rig into a tool for rebuilding fine motor control after a stroke.

QUICK HITS

Nvidia said it plans to work with humanoid makers in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, beyond its partnership with Unitree to develop research-focused humanoids.

Nvidia also unveiled Cosmos 3, an open multimodal world model trained on 20T tokens to help physical AI better predict and understand real-world environments.

Berlin-based defense drone startup Stark, backed by Peter Thiel, is raising $330M at a potential $2.75B valuation to scale its Virtus single-use autonomous strike drones.

Shenzhen-based Astribot launched the T1, a $13K wheeled humanoid aimed at practical, real-world manipulation tasks like cooking, lab work, and light chores.

JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong pledged that the e‑commerce giant will do everything possible to protect its 900K workers from layoffs as it adopts AI and robots.

AGIBOT’s new AGILE model fuses vision and motion control into a single real-time system, letting its humanoids read terrain and adjust their gait on the fly.

The Pentagon is fast-tracking a sweeping drone initiative, backed by Pete Hegseth, aimed at accelerating autonomous warfare capabilities to counter China’s advances.

Tesla’s Texas robotaxi rollout is reportedly one-tenth the size of Waymo’s, with filings showing 42 Tesla robotaxis versus 577 Waymos in the state.

China Post began using humanoids at its high-volume Guangzhou logistics hub to autonomously sort up to 1,200 parcels per hour alongside existing automated systems.

Researchers developed a tiny underwater antenna that lets robots communicate more effectively in dark, murky conditions, improving coordination for marine missions.

USC built a robotic hand that teaches itself to play piano pieces by ear after just two minutes of exploration, a capability that could translate into new therapies.

San Francisco startup The Bot Company is accused in a lawsuit of secretly using an Airbnb to test a household robot and causing thousands of dollars in damage.

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team