DARPA Triage Challenge, Humanoid Safety Standard and the Physical Turing Test

Diligent Robotics celebrates 1,000,000 deliveries and Kiwibot becomes Robot.com

May 10, 2025

Congratulations to Diligent Robotics, Andrea Thomaz, Vivian Chu and team, quietly doing collaborative mobile manipulation in a human friendly robot form factor in healthcare applications. The panel discussion at SxSW "From Cages to the Real World: The Dawn of Physical AI" is worth watching.

"We have Physical AI working in hospitals today. And we will see the skills of Physical AI upskilled more and more.” Dr Andrea Thomaz

And lest we forget about AMRs in this new humanoid robot world, Kiwibot has upped their marketing strategy by claiming the domain Robot.com - not just campus food delivery any more! As Felipe Chavez Cortes, CEO, says:

We recently acquired the robot.com url
Here's why—and what's behind it.

We've been quietly building one of the most
active real-world robot fleets on Earth.

What took us 7 years to achieve (300K robotic tasks),
we've now quadrupled in just 7 months (>1 million tasks completed).

We didn't build humanoids with legs.
We built bots with jobs.
- Deliveries
- Advertising
- Warehouse logistics
- Food service

And this is just the beginning.
We'll soon reveal a growing family of robots,
each designed for a real-world role.

We've always believed robots shouldn't be
overdesigned for imaginary futures.
They should be designed for now.

Wheeled. Delightful. Purpose-built.

So yes—we acquired robot.com
Not because of the name, but because of the timing.

Robots aren't coming.
They're here.

And we're giving them work to do.

Nvidia's Director of AI Jim Fan introduces the concept of the Physical Turing Test and explains how simulation at scale will unlock the future of robotics. Learn about digital twins, digital cousins, and digital nomads in this groundbreaking talk from AI Ascent 2025.

The DARPA Triage Challenge (DTC) will use a series of challenge events to spur development of novel physiological features for medical triage. The DARPA Triage Challenge aims to drive breakthrough innovations in identification of “signatures” of injury that will help medical responders perform scalable, timely, and accurate triage. Of particular interest are mass casualty incidents (MCIs), in both civilian and military settings, when medical resources are limited relative to the need.

Vision

A primary stage of MCI triage supported by sensors on stand-off platforms, such as uncrewed aircraft vehicles (UAVs) or robots, and algorithms that analyze sensor data in real-time to identify casualties for urgent hands-on evaluation by medical personnel.
A secondary stage, after the most urgent casualties have been treated, supported by non-invasive contact sensors placed on casualties and algorithms that analyze sensor data in real-time to predict need for life-saving interventions.

From Agility Robotics - Today marks a significant milestone for the humanoid robot industry. An official workgroup was approved to develop a new international safety standard - ISO 25785-1.

This will be THE safety standard for industrial mobile robots with actively controlled stability (biped, wheeled, quadruped, etc..). It will address the rapidly growing and changing field of dynamically stable robots and ensure that safety evolves with them.

Climate Robotics Summit

Welcome to the first-ever study on Climate Robotics!

We draw on real-world examples to investigate the opportunities, limitations, and risks of using robotics in Climate Action. This is an Open and Community-driven White Paper, which has been fully revised and updated for 2025! We welcome all feedback across all disciplines.

COMMUNITY NEWS

Here is your ROS and robotics news for the week of May 5th, 2025!

🌞 ROS Meetup at Automate Show in Detroit
🌞 ROS Pub Crawl in Edinburgh with Open Source Hardware Association
🌞 OpenCV's first conference Monday
🌞 20 ROS events in May
🌞 $5k open software / hardware from University of California, Berkeley
🌞 Pollen Robotics Reachy robot animation with Blender
🌞 6DoF Robot ROS Control Tutorial
🌞 OSU OSL finds funding!!!
🌞 Kilted Kaiju testing continues
🌞 New TurtleBot3 tutorials from ROBOTIS (Robot is ...)
🌞 Videos from ROSCon China
🌞 All nodes are lifecycle nodes?
🌞 ROS packages for Unitree Robotics robot dogs
🌞 Energy efficient ROS communications
🌞 Kinova Gen3 Sim2Real Tutorial
🌞 Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAM in Dynamic Environments
🌞 MicroROS for motor control
🌞 Franka Robotics robot plays whack-a-model
🌞 Compliant controllers for Kinova Gen3
🌞 A whole lot more!

Get all the details on ROS Discourse:
🔗 https://lnkd.in/gkuYDvQT

Ready to build something massive?

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is now accepting applications for all 2025/26 program streams across our global sites.

If you’re a founder developing a science- or technology-based venture with the potential for massive scale, this is your opportunity to work with world-class mentors, serial entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, and operators who’ve built and backed industry-defining companies.

Apply now and accelerate your path to success.

What You’ll Get

Focused mentorship from accomplished entrepreneurs and investors
Technical guidance from leading scientists and engineers
Objective-setting to sharpen your strategy and drive execution
Zero equity fees to participate
Access to CDL’s global network of founders, funders, and researchers

How to Apply

Select the stream(s) and site(s) that best match your venture and vision. You can apply to multiple streams.

Application Deadlines

Early Deadlines:

CDL Quantum: June 9, 2025 @ 11:59PM ET
CDL Web3: June 15, 2025 @ 11:59PM ET
CDL-Atlantic Prime: July 4, 2025 @ 11:59PM ET

All other CDL Sites and Streams:

Final Deadline: July 25, 2025 @ 11:59PM ET

Start your application by filling out the form here:

IERA AWARD

The IERA Award is calling for submissions, deadline May 31st, if you are world class in robotics innovation and commercialization. The award is hosted by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Industry Activities Board. Previous winners include many famous names.

Silicon Valley Robotics Startup & Investor Database

Are you a startup fundraising atm? Fill out our "For Investors Eyes Only" sheet.

Are you an accredited investor interested in seeing robotics startups? Sign up here!

Thank you for reading Robots & Startups. This post is public so feel free to share it.Robot Events

Paulina’s Substack

The world doesn’t fix itself. These startups are trying 🌍🛠️🚀

Some people find it boring, but I can’t imagine a more exciting job than interacting with hardtech founders and watching them build our future—bit by bit, atom by atom, day by day—as they fix what’s broken across industries. Especially now, in a time when so much of our world feels fragile—climate, energy, manufacturing, security, even space—there’s a c…

2 months ago · Paulina Szyzdek / HardTech VC

It Can Think!

The Limits of Reinforcement Learning

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen increasing concerns about the fact that we’re, well, running out of data to train on, something occasionally referred to as the “data wall.” One suggested solution to this is that AI systems can “generate their own …

2 months ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Chris Paxton

Robotics News

Collaborative Robotics CEO on the impact of tariffs on automation and manufacturing - CNBC

Here’s a good summary by Robert Little

“This Isn’t Going to Come Back by Shifting Labor—It’s Going to Come Back With Automation” — Brad Porter on the Future of Manufacturing

Brad Porter, CEO of Cobot - Collaborative Robotics, Inc, recently spoke with CNBC about tariffs, reshoring, and what it’s really going to take to rebuild manufacturing. https://lnkd.in/ewmpdJUQ
Before founding Cobots, Brad spent 13.5 years at Amazon, including as Vice President of Robotics, where he led the deployment of hundreds of thousands of robots. He brings deep experience in high-volume, advanced robotics systems.

Here’s what stood out:

➤ “There’s a capacity bottleneck… Can we manufacture the factories?”
Even if the money is ready, integrators and construction firms are likely going to be overloaded. The system’s under strain.

➤ “Instability and lack of clarity will cause people to delay—but the imperative to reshore is clear.”
Companies are hesitant to invest with economic uncertainty—but waiting too long isn’t an option.

➤ “Automation allows us to produce higher quality more predictably at higher throughput.”
It’s not just cost savings—it’s performance-enhancing. This is about better, not just cheaper.

➤ “We didn’t see a robot out there that could move your carts, pick up your totes, and work safely alongside people.”
That’s why Cobots built Proxie—a practical, collaborative robot designed to work now and improve with AI over time.

The bottom line:
This rebuilding effort will be expensive, time-consuming, and complex. But it is necessary. And the future of manufacturing won’t look like the past—it’ll be smarter, leaner, and more resilient.

We loved doing a Le Robot hackathon so much that we’re going to be hosting more at Circuit Launch Mountain View, Circuit Launch Oakland and Frontier Tower SF on June 14 and 15. Stay tuned for details about these specific locations and sign up here:

🚀 Join the LeRobot Worldwide Hackathon - AI Robotics Global Challenge! 🌍 Are you ready to discover robotics with AI? 🌟 Join us for a global hackathon to learn, train, and solve real-world problems using open-source tech!

📅 Date: June 2025, 14-15
📍 Worldwide: Online & Local Hackathons
🚀 Register Now: https://forms.gle/NP22nZ9knKCB2KS18

Deep Tech Week and Hard Tech Venture Summit and USS Hornet Party

PLUS Deep Tech Week is back in SF from June 14 to June 22 and we’re ready to bring robots to the party! Are you interested in taking part? andra@svrobo.org
And don’t forget the Hard Tech Venture Summit in SF on June 18 with Robotics / Hard Tech Manufacturing Workshop on June 19 - in our event calendar below.