NVIDIA GR00T N1 Generalist AI Pilots 5 Humanoid Robots ($5500 NOETIX N2)

And that brings us to tech advance number four, which is that Groot’s N1 is now open sourced. See, in 2024, Project Groot was NVIDIA-led, with partners like Boston Dynamics showing their closed setups. But now, in 2025, anyone can use it, because at GTC, they opened up access to all startups, researchers, and companies to adapt Groot N1 for their own factories, healthcare, and home environments. Number three, the addition of Mega to NVIDIA’s tool within Omniverse. See, while GTC 2024 owned individual robot training with Isaac Lab, Mega scales it up, testing fleets of robots together, like in a virtual Blackwell factory where humanoids coordinate and adapt in real time, or Shafler and Accenture used Mega to test agility robotics’ digit fleets for material handling, and Pegatron used it for their Metropolis video analytics to enhance factory safety.

And what’s even more important is that this addition of Mega shows NVIDIA is aiming for larger-scale deployments of humanoid robots. And these robots are now much faster as a result, thanks to tech advance number two, Isaac Groot Blueprint. See, with Blueprint, unlike 2024’s slower data methods, it now uses Omniverse and Cosmos to generate 780,000 synthetic motion trajectories in just 11 hours, which boosts Groot’s N1’s performance by 40 percent. And Hyundai is already simulating Atlas robots on their assembly lines using Blueprint, plus Mercedes-Benz is optimizing its Apollo robots in their vehicle assembly lines.

And NVIDIA has released these training data sets for Groot N1 on platforms like Hugging Face, completely open source for everyone to use for worldwide development. And all of this tech is combined, thanks to tech advance number one, NVIDIA’s Newton Physics Engine, which is a new open source physics engine built in collaboration with Google’s DeepMind and Disney’s research. Unlike 2024’s general simulation tools, Newton’s designed for robotics, handling fine-grained dynamics and tactile feedback in super real-time. This brings us to these humanoid robot updates coming out of China right now, starting with the Dubot humanoid robot for dexterous manipulation.

This thing features 28 degrees of freedom with 0.05 millimeters of precision, meaning that the robot can pick up something as small as a cherry without any problem at all. Then there’s its straight knee-walking setup, which saves up to 42 percent of its energy. And it walks with a relatively natural gait across all kinds of surfaces, whether it’s a cluttered factory or a rough patch in a forest. And as for this robot’s hardware, it’s running on-edge computing with its robot operator Model 1, which gives it 7.7 times the usual brain power to handle real-life chaos like a champ.

And as for the Dubot’s release, it’s still undetermined when it will begin selling and for what price. But there’s another humanoid robot that’s going even further with flips and much more. This is the Noetix N2, featuring AI computing power of 40 tera operations per second, power consumption of 15 watts, and video memory of 8 gigabytes, all thanks to its onboard Nvidia Jetson. And when it comes to hardware, it features two depth cameras for accurate 3D visual perception, plus 18 degrees of freedom throughout its body using pure electric drive, and 120 newton meters of power for a maximum speed of 3.2 meters per second, allowing this robot to walk with a natural anthropomorphic gait using deep reinforcement learning and autonomous obstacle avoidance, road adaptation, dynamic anti-interference, and much more.

And as for the robot’s size, it stands 110 centimeters tall and weighs 20 kilograms, giving it a light form factor to fit into small, tight spaces that even humans may not be able to address. But another brand new humanoid robot demo was also released from Kepler. This is the K2 humanoid robot standing at 178 centimeters and weighing 85 kilograms. This comes with a total of 52 degrees of freedom throughout its entire body with 12 degrees of freedom in ultra dexterous hands and the remaining 40 throughout the remaining limbs, and it can handle uneven terrains, dodge obstacles, and even lift heavy objects, as well as chat with humans.

It even features extremely precise hand-eye coordination, and it moves extremely realistically with planetary roller screws and rotary actuators to give it extremely realistic human-like smoothness and precision. But the Kepler K2’s nebula system is actually what’s responsible for its four main cognitive jobs, first of which is spotting things in the real world using its visual recognition. Second is mapping its surroundings with visual slam or simultaneous localization and mapping. Third is chatting through its multimodal interaction. And finally, fourth is nailing its hand-eye coordination. And Kepler is going to the next level by pairing its cloud-based multimodal large language model with a smaller fast response industry specific model right within the robot.

Plus, they’ve rolled out their Kepler open source system, which is a global developer platform that syncs up with multiple robots, and it offers online tools for coding and debugging, which allows other developers to use this nebula cognitive system. And finally, there’s Engine AI, which just released a new video of its PM01 robot doing some insane dance moves. Some people don’t even know whether or not this is real. Make sure to comment down below what you think. This robot is 138 centimeters tall, weighs 40 kilograms, and has 23 degrees of freedom with five in each arm and one in its neck, letting it pull off some moves just like you see here with 320 degrees of waist twist movement and 330 newton meters of joint torque force.

This humanoid robot can walk up to two meters per second and features six degrees of freedom in its legs with three in its hips and one in its knee, two in its ankles. As for onboard intelligence and hardware, it features a dual chip setup with the Intel N97 and Nvidia’s Jetson Oren, and it’s all powered by a 10,000 milliamp swappable battery that lasts up to two hours under use. And the robot is allegedly going to cost just $13,000. But tell me in the comments below whether or not you believe that this PM01 is actually dancing at this level, or if it’s just CGI effects and
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