'Putin lookalike' robot face-plants

PLUS: Waymo hits the highway

AuthorAuthor

Jennifer Mossalgue & Rowan Cheung
November 13, 2025

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Russia’s new “Putin lookalike” humanoid, AIdol, made its grand debut to the ‘Rocky’ theme — only to wobble like a drunk guy stumbling home before face-planting on stage.

The flagship robot’s big moment turned into viral gold. But let’s not forget, Elon Musk’s first “Tesla Bot” reveal was literally just a guy in a spandex suit.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • Putin’s robot doppelgänger takes a dive

  • Waymo launches service on highways

  • Anthropic tests Claude as a robot coding coach

  • Android creator’s stealth robotics startup

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

HUMANOIDS

Image source: Idol Robotics

The Rundown: Russia’s new humanoid, AIdol, strutted onto the stage to the ‘Rocky’ theme — and promptly face-planted. Handlers nervously flanked the country’s “first anthropomorphic robot” as it took a few shaky steps before collapsing mid-debut.

The details:

  • The humanoid collapsed during its Moscow unveiling on Tuesday, with journalists watching as the country's robotics ambitions hit the floor in real time.

  • Staff scrambled with a black cloth cover to block cameras and dragged the robot off stage.

  • Organizers blamed the robot’s malfunction on lighting and calibration issues, with its developers saying the bot was still in the stages of learning.

  • Vladimir Vitukhin’s Russian firm Idol claims that AIdol integrates movement, object manipulation, and human-like interaction through embodied AI.

Why it matters: To be fair, AIdol joins a long blooper reel — Atlas, Optimus, and Figure have all seen their share of glitches. But while U.S. and Chinese rivals iterate past their stumbles toward autonomy, Russia’s comically bad display suggests it's still solving problems competitors cracked years ago, and for Moscow, that’s a problem.

WAYMO

Image source: Waymo

The Rundown: Waymo’s robotaxis are hitting the highway. Starting now, the company’s autonomous fleet will gradually weave freeway driving into its routes across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The details:

  • In the Bay Area, the service map now stretches down the Peninsula to San Jose and adds 24/7 curbside pickup and drop-off at San Jose’s international airport.

  • Highway segments kick in when they’re meaningfully faster, with Waymo claiming travel times could drop up to 50% as freeway coverage scales.

  • Launch coverage targets defined stretches like US-60, I-10, I-17, and Loop 202, with the real test being transitions between surface streets and freeways.

  • Waymo is coordinating with the California Highway Patrol and other safety agencies as it scales freeway operation.

Why it matters: Waymo execs call freeway autonomy “easy to learn, hard to master” — higher speeds and aggressive lane changes demand split-second decisions that separate cautious robots from confident ones. If this works, it unlocks faster, cheaper rides and a path to Austin and Atlanta expansions.

ANTHROPIC

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic turned its office into a robot proving ground with "Project Fetch," a one-day experiment where two teams of non-roboticists raced to program quadruped robots to fetch beach balls — with one using Claude as their coding coach.

The details:

  • Teams started from zero robotics experience, with one relying on Claude to translate English instructions into code and the other going “Claude-less”.

  • The project was designed as a real-world stress test of whether language models can actually bridge the expertise gap in physical AI applications.

  • The AI-assisted team connected to sensors quickly, iterated smoothly, and built a natural-language controller that let them command the robot.

  • The unassisted team got their robot moving, but spent precious hours debugging basics while their Claude-equipped rivals were teaching tricks.

Why it matters: If non-experts can program functional robots through conversation alone, it could radically expand who gets to build physical AI beyond the small circle of trained roboticists. But one day of beach ball retrieval is a proof of concept. The real test is whether this works beyond controlled demos in the messy real world.

ROBOTICS STARTUPS

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Android creator Andy Rubin quietly launched Genki Robotics, a Tokyo-based stealth startup building humanoids — marking his return to hands-on hardware after years out of the spotlight.

The details:

  • While the company has no public site or job listings, it is already prototyping from a Tokyo office and quietly recruiting to build out the team.

  • Rubin confirmed the humanoid venture to The Information but offered zero product specifics, timelines, or clues about what Genki’s bots will actually do.

  • The name “Genki” means “vibrant and healthy” in Japanese, which hints at something agile, designed for everyday use-cases.

  • Rubin’s track record includes creating Google’s robotics division and leading acquisitions on both sides of the Pacific, including a Tokyo humanoid startup.

Why it matters: Rubin’s an avid robotics enthusiast who led Google’s acquisition of eight robotics and AI companies in 2013, including Schaft, a humanoid startup from the University of Tokyo. His choice to launch Genki in Japan isn't likely coincidental but strategic, tapping into the country's robotics talent and manufacturing infrastructure.

QUICK HITS

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter says home robots won't arrive until costs drop and safety tech improves, predicting that to be in about 5 to 10 years.

Self-driving trucking company Einride plans to go public via a SPAC merger at a $1.8B valuation just six weeks after raising $100M.

French IT giant Capgemini and nuclear fuel operator Orano unveiled Hoxo, an AI-powered humanoid now deployed at a nuclear site in France to handle high-risk tasks.

Foxglove, a San Francisco-based startup building a data platform for robotics, raised $40M in Series B funding, taking its total capital raised to $58M since its 2021 founding.

Doctors in Scotland and the U.S. carried out what is believed to be the first remote, robot‑assisted stroke thrombectomy, removing a blood clot from a cadaver’s brain.

Switzerland’s CircuBAT unveiled an AI‑guided robotic line that identifies mixed EV battery packs, safely tears them down, and recovers materials to reduce waste.

Polish YouTuber Nikodem Bartnik built a real-time conversational robot head, whose PC‑hosted “brain” answers like an ancient Greek philosopher.

King’s College London and Carnegie Mellon research finds that robots powered by today’s popular foundation models are unsafe for general‑purpose, real‑world use.

UCLA launched a fully automated AI‑driven robotic system from Molecular Devices to grow, monitor, and analyze cells and tissues, funded by a $1.9M NIH grant.

COMMUNITY

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