Stories

Robotics, one question at a time

How do robots move from research into the world? Who builds them, and who works together? We follow companies, papers and patents to investigate the questions behind the machines. Each story takes one question and shows what we found.

Air out, grains locked: the bag holds.

01 · Story

What happened to the robot hand with no fingers?

A soft bag filled with grains can grip an object when air is drawn out. Researchers made it work. Turning that idea into a product brought a different set of problems. We follow the experiment and the attempt to commercialise it.

One paper, its authors’ own account of their company, and the patents and trade-show lists in our record. One case: it shows what commercialising one soft gripper took, not how often research reaches a product.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

The share of robotics papers naming a learning method, by year.

02 · Story

Did robotics become an AI field?

This year Google and Physical Intelligence released models that let one robot learn many tasks. So has robotics turned into AI? In the papers we collected, no field called AI took over. Something stranger happened: learning spread into every field of robotics at once.

The robotics papers we gathered by following citations, 2000–2025, their titles and abstracts (a paper with no abstract is left out, and the share left out is stated), grouped by the research area their citations place them in. A paper counts as using learning when its title or abstract names a learning method; that is a word rule, not a reading of the paper.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

The six forms organisations most often describe, the humanoid among them.

03 · Story

Everyone talks about humanoids. What do robotics companies actually build?

Tesla is preparing to build humanoids on a large scale, and Chinese makers ship them by the thousand. Yet the Uber founder just raised $1.7 billion for robots that are deliberately not humanoid. We looked at what robotics companies say they build, what they patent and what researchers publish — and the humanoid is a small part of each.

Organisations whose own description a language model filed by robot form (not checked one by one), the US patents granted in five robotics classes, the worldwide patent families of the humanoid makers the press and our list of Chinese makers name, and the papers we gathered; press facts are quoted from their pages. A company can build several forms; a patent can sit in several classes.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Three topics’ share of papers with a company author, by year.

04 · Story

What do companies study in robotics?

Google, BMW and China Southern Power Grid appear in the robotics papers we collected. Their researchers work on different problems, from learning and driving to inspecting power lines. We open a few of those papers, then look at the larger patterns of company participation in the research.

The papers we gathered by following citations, grouped by those citations into research topics, and the institutions their authors name. A company author shows a company taking part in research, not a product; only papers whose authors name an institution can be counted, and the share that do is stated on every figure.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Companies with both, CEA-LIST only, the CNRS only, neither.

05 · Story

Do French robotics startups share the same research partners?

A laboratory can appear beside several robotics companies in publicly funded projects. Are those companies part of the same research circle, or working with different teams on different problems? We follow the project memberships and read what the teams set out to investigate.

The 89 French robotics companies we follow and the research organisations listed beside them in publicly funded projects, EU and French, each organisation counted at one level — a parent and its laboratories as one, a company typed as a company. Being partners in one project is what the record establishes; not who worked with whom inside it.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

China and the United States in the papers, then in US patents, by window.

06 · Story

Why do China and the US change places between these charts?

China has the larger share of the recent robotics papers in our collection. US owners have the larger share of robotics patents granted in the United States. The contrast looks dramatic. We examine how the choice of records, countries and counting rules shapes the result — and what remains unexplained.

Two collections read whole: the papers we gathered by following citations, with the countries of their authors’ institutions, and every US patent granted in five robotics classes, with the country of its first-named owner. Equal five-year windows to 2024; 2025 apart. Neither is a census of where robotics is invented.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Two patents, their recorded owners.

07 · Story

When a university patent becomes a company patent: what do the documents establish?

In 2013 the University of Nebraska filed a patent for a small surgical robot. In 2017 it assigned that patent to Virtual Incision, a company its inventor had founded. We follow the one patent through its recorded owners, and ask what the documents establish — and what they do not.

One patent’s recorded history, from the public patent register, a faculty page and a regulator’s notice; then the wider pattern in our record — inventor ids that appear on a research body’s patents and later on a company’s — counted with its limits and never as people changing jobs.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Understanding the map

These two explain how the map is built and what it leaves out; the map and the data atlas link to them where that matters.

Pairs left with no path when one organisation is taken out: SICK, the European Commission, one at random.

08 · Story

Who holds this map together?

SICK makes sensors. On our map it also connects groups of organisations: more of the shortest routes between two others run through it than through anyone else. How much of that depends on SICK alone? We erase its dot, keep everyone else, and count who can still reach whom.

The map’s default view — 6,476 organisations, 8,739 tied pairs, every kind of tie together — and a removal test on it. It describes the routes in our record, not anyone’s dependence in the industry; the data page measures each kind of tie on its own.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Every tie in our record: hidden, kept but faint, kept and plain.

09 · Story

What does this map leave out?

Our records hold 1,082 ties for the CNRS, France’s national research organisation. The default map draws 21 of them, all faintly. Where did the other 1,061 go? A map that drew everything would be unreadable, so two rules cut it. We show the rules, and what even the complete graph cannot see.

The ties in our record and the rules the map applies when it draws them. A filter can be explained exactly; what was never collected cannot be drawn by removing one.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the story

Research notes

A note publishes what the evidence supports, compactly; it does not lead with a question we cannot yet answer.

The twelve, one dot each, by the outcome their latest notice establishes.

10 · Research note

Twelve robotics companies in financial trouble: what do the notices say?

We found twelve French robotics companies with court proceedings beginning in 2022 or later. Their public notices tell us when the proceedings began, what came next, and which earlier research and financial events we can document. A court date is a clear endpoint; it is not a warning signal.

The 89 French robotics companies we follow, searched in BODACC, the register of legal notices; 70 had at least one notice of any kind and 12 a collective procedure opened since 2022. Selected from our own list; a company with no notice is absent by construction, not healthy by evidence.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the research note

The earlier research’s claims about the school: documented, partly documented, not found.

11 · Research note

What does Arts et Métiers do in robotics?

Arts et Métiers is France’s engineering school of the workshop: fourteen campuses, sixteen laboratories, an incubator. We looked for it in every record we hold — papers, projects, patents, startups — and checked what our earlier research said about it against the evidence.

The school, its campuses, laboratories and incubator as the registers and the school’s own pages describe them, and the records that name them: papers by its authors, public projects, patents, and companies linked to it. Claims from our earlier deep research are marked as leads unless a record documents them.

MeasuredCollected 12 October 2026

Read the research note

Back to the homepage