Unitree Pursues Self-Evolving Robots as Tesla, Figure Report Humanoid Advances

Unitree founder Wang Xingxing said humans would still provide feedback and assess performance, but the goal is to automate the upgrade process as much as possible. 'In the past, every robotics engineer had to write code and debug manually, which is relatively inefficient,' Wang said at an AI conference hosted by his company, according to TechRadar, which cited the South China Morning Post. 'As AI models improve, we expect them to take on more of the planning and iteration, reducing the need for human intervention.' Wang said the approach would accelerate development of algorithms controlling robots in the real world and that Unitree robots could be cleaning rooms as early as next year. Some Reddit commenters were less optimistic, describing the prospect as 'the beginning of The Matrix,' where robots run code that humans do not understand.

At Tesla, Elon Musk said Optimus production lines are now running in Fremont, California, after an electric vehicle factory was repurposed, TechRadar reported, citing Interesting Engineering. Musk said production could be ramped up to about 20,000 robots per week by 2027, though that would require further engineering work. The disclosure came as part of Tesla's third-quarter 2026 shareholder update. Musk acknowledged that engineers are still working on the robot's design to improve safety and reliability. He also said Optimus robots struggle to complete varied tasks independently, requiring careful coordination between assessing environments, planning movements and carrying out those movements and associated tasks.

Figure CEO Brett Adcock shared a recording of the company's latest all-hands meeting online and said the roadmap had 'completely changed' over the past year. Work is progressing toward Figure's fourth-generation humanoid, while the production run of Figure 03 is now in four figures. Adcock said some of the biggest changes will come in fingertip tracking, which is now down to millimeter-level precision and brings the robots closer to human dexterity. Figure is continuing to collect data through an app called Index, which records human activities to train robots; about 37.5 million videos have been uploaded to the platform. A Figure 03 robot recently walked for nine days straight on a treadmill at Figure headquarters, the company said, the latest evidence that stability is improving and that the humanoids can work without human input.