DePAI Digest: May 2025

May saw Physical AI take another leap into public view. Major players across AI and robotics showed off real-world systems, shared predictions, and advanced partnerships aimed at scaling embodied intelligence.

As robots move further into labor, simulation, and healthcare, the world gets a clearer view of what the post-automation economy might look like.

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1. Reborn × Unitree Partnership

Reborn AGI has teamed up with Unitree Robotics to co-develop cutting-edge Physical AI models and immersive “Roboverse” simulations.

Reborn, known for its work in advanced AI agents, is joining forces with Unitree—a leader in affordable quadrupeds and humanoid platforms like H1—to bring cognition and embodiment closer together. These Roboverse simulations aim to replicate physical environments for training and testing agents virtually, before deployment into the real world.

This partnership could bridge the gap between virtual AI models and physical machines, making development cycles faster and more scalable.

2. Meet Amazon’s Vulcan

Amazon debuted Vulcan, a new robot designed to handle tricky and repetitive warehouse tasks. While Vulcan isn’t humanoid in form, it’s highly functional, optimized for real-world logistics challenges like lifting awkward packages and navigating dense shelf layouts.

What’s especially notable is what's happening on the human side. Some warehouse workers are now being retrained as robot technicians, learning how to operate and maintain the systems they used to manually work alongside. It’s a small but telling window into what the labor market might look like in a post-automation future where physical strain is replaced by supervisory roles.

3. Tesla's Dancing Humanoid

Elon Musk shared a new video of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot dancing, noting that the clip was recorded in real-time and is unedited.

Optimus, first announced in 2021, is Tesla’s bold attempt to create a general-purpose humanoid capable of doing household, factory, and logistics tasks. While dancing may seem like a gimmick, it’s a proxy for demonstrating balance, motion control, and smooth coordination, skills that are essential in unstructured environments.

Tesla continues to position Optimus as a central part of its long-term AI and robotics vision. Every public demo is both a technical milestone and a branding signal.

4. Tsinghua University Launches AI-Run Hospital

Tsinghua University announced the world’s first fully AI-run hospital, operated by 14 AI “doctors” designed to treat simulated patients in a research and training setting.

The system achieved 93% diagnostic accuracy while processing over 10,000 patients in just a few days, numbers that rival, and in some cases exceed, what human clinicians can manage. While this deployment is still experimental, it hints at a healthcare future where Physical AI and autonomous diagnostics play a central role, especially in under-resourced or high-volume environments.

China continues to be a global frontrunner in AI adoption at scale and this development shows just how far the country is willing to go in integrating automation into public infrastructure.

5. Musk on the Scale of Humanoid Robotics

Elon Musk told CNBC that humanoid robots will become the “biggest product of all time,” predicting demand across every major sector from manufacturing and logistics to homes and elder care.

He described a learning paradigm where robots evolve like human children using self-play and video to generalize knowledge and transfer skills across environments. That kind of capability, if achieved at scale, could allow humanoid platforms to move rapidly between tasks without needing full retraining or custom code.

For Tesla and others, this is the thesis behind general-purpose robotics: not one robot for one job, but one adaptable platform for many.

6. First-Ever Humanoid Boxing Match

In a global first, Unitree Robotics humanoid bots competed in a live kickboxing match at the CMG World Robot Competition in Hangzhou.

While choreographed to a degree, the match showcased the agility, balance, and control of Unitree’s latest generation of humanoids. Boxing, an activity with constant movement, reaction, and unpredictability serves as a high-stakes testbed for real-time locomotion and motor control.

7. Altman: Robots Are Closer Than You Think

Open AI's CEO Sam Altman shared a sobering message: the world isn’t ready for what’s coming. In a recent interview, he said humanoid robots will soon become part of everyday life, and that their arrival will “feel very sci-fi.”

Altman’s perspective is deep in OpenAI’s work on large foundation models and multimodal systems like GPT-5 and Gemini-class AIs. As those models are increasingly paired with physical embodiments, the line between digital intelligence and Physical AI begins to blur.

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