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Articles on “Robots”

How robots and humanoids are trained, where the data comes from and what already works.

• Mikhail Polyakov October 8, 2026

  Why startups pay people to record everyday chores: how data for training robots is collected

  Level: BeginnerReading time: 7 min

  Topics: AI, Robots

  

  On October 7, 2026, the startup Mecka AI announced $60 million from investors led by Sequoia. The company pays people to record themselves making coffee or fixing cars while wearing body sensors and, according to the company, supplies this data to robot developers. I look at why robots need such recordings, what is known about Mecka from verifiable sources and what the company claims itself, and which five questions to ask an integrator if they offer to record your employees at work.

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• Mikhail Polyakov October 8, 2026

  HiPHI: 617 hours of human movement for humanoid robots and what is behind that number

  Level: BeginnerReading time: 9 min

  Topics: Robots, AI, Science

  

  In early October 2026, IEEE Spectrum and Wiley released a white paper sponsored by Noitom Robotics about HiPHI, a dataset of recordings of human movement for training humanoid robots. I look at the research paper itself: how the dataset is built, why 617.5 hours means 308.7 hours of original recordings plus their mirrored copies, what the robot tests showed, where the dataset did not come out best, which limitations the authors themselves name, and which questions to ask about any "hours of data".

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