Frontier & Open Problems

Frontier problems are the open questions that keep robot demos from becoming products: reliability, dexterity, generalization and safety. About 7,000 full-size humanoids were sold in 2025 International Federation of Robotics 2026Global Sales of Professional Service Robots Surge 24%. International Federation of Robotics, IFR press release, 2026-09-30 (World Robotics 2026, Service Robots)..

Domain overview: 6 articles. The reliability gap comes first, then ways to close it.

The Reliability Gap
80% task success is a demo; 99.9% is a product.
Dexterity
Contact-rich manipulation, touch sensing, in-hand reorientation and deformables.
Generalization
From pi0.5's three unseen homes to Helix 2.5's 30.
Competing Theses
Six bets on how robot intelligence gets built.
The Bear Case
Why this could be another robotics winter.
Safety and Assurance
What ships is a verifiable safety layer around the learned policy.