DePAI Digest: August 2025

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This month showed how quickly robotics is moving on two fronts at once. Smarter control systems are making it possible for one brain to power many different machines, while bigger, more capable humanoids are stepping into the spotlight.

From the first Robot Olympics in Beijing to new operating systems and AI chips built for real time reasoning, the pieces are starting to come together. Humanoids are beginning to interact, compete, and learn across platforms — a sign of how fast this shift is accelerating.

Here’s a look at what happened in August.

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1. Skild AI Introduces its Omni Brain

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Skild AI revealed a new control system built to operate across different kinds of robots, from humanoids to industrial arms. It uses a layered design that turns high level goals into precise low level actions.

The company is aiming for robotics that are not tied to a single machine. One brain that can move into many bodies opens the door to truly general purpose robots.

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2. OpenMind develops OM1 for humanoids

OpenMind is working on an open operating system for humanoid robots called OM1. It is hardware neutral and designed for collaboration between people and machines.

The company also launched FABRIC, a protocol that lets robots identify each other, share context, and pass skills across platforms. The approach is closer to what Android did for phones, creating a shared base for a wider robotics ecosystem.

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3. Unitree teases its next humanoid

Unitree showed early details of a new full size humanoid. The robot stands 180 centimeters tall with 31 degrees of freedom, giving it more lifelike agility and motion.

There is no release date yet, but the reveal shows how fast China is moving to bring advanced bipedal robots into production.

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4. Beijing hosts the first World Humanoid Robot Games

Beijing staged the first global competition for humanoid robots, with 500 machines from 16 countries. Events ranged from soccer and martial arts to live music and dance.

It was both a showcase and a stress test. Bringing so many platforms together in one place offered a rare look at where humanoid capabilities stand today, and where they may be headed next.

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5. NVIDIA launches Jetson Thor

NVIDIA released Jetson Thor, a robotics platform built on its new Blackwell chips. Thor offers over seven times more compute and more than triple the efficiency of the previous Orin platform.

Robotics companies like Apptronik and Skild AI are already using it to power humanoids and service robots, giving them faster on board reasoning and more autonomy in real environments.

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6. South Korea unveils ALLEX

WIRobotics introduced ALLEX, its first general purpose humanoid. The company says ALLEX is built to go beyond copying human motion and is designed to sense and respond to the real world in real time.

For South Korea, ALLEX marks an entry into the growing field of advanced humanoids, joining the United States and China in the push to scale Physical AI.

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