Brain surgery, Pato's first steps and new allies in defense

Quick update from the UB Robotics team. After Berlin and Dia do Exército, we spent this week back in Portugal, and it ended up being one of our busiest yet.

The second phase of EUDIS kicked off, and with it came a group of mentors with deep experience in defense and dual use. Our key mentor is Tõnu Niilo, Head of Concept Development and Experimentation at Milrem Robotics, one of Europe’s leading builders of unmanned ground vehicles.

In the lab, it was brain surgery week. We’re neurologists now. We opened up our G1 humanoid, scanned its torso, and started working out how to protect it, with kevlar on the table.

We also got our hands dirty outside the lab. A customer had already put real money into a broken forklift, and we fixed it in 2 hours (should have called the UBR team before!). Now this small forklift is getting a UBR brain surgery of its own.

Pato, our duck robot, took its first steps. Balance still needs work, but it’s on track, and you’ll see it at Physical AI: Demo or Die on 10 November.

We’ll start accepting reservations very soon, so join the waitlist to be first in line.

On the partner side, PLMJ came on board, and we kept building relationships with industry around Leiria.

Filipe also took the stage at Lisbon Tech Deep Dive, on the “AI in the Physical World” panel, to share what we’re building.