Minerva Humanoids raises ~$10M to build Roger, a VR-piloted bomb-disposal robot
San Francisco–based Minerva Humanoids left stealth this week with roughly $10M in pre-seed funding led by General Catalyst and including Hugging Face, unveiling Roger, a VR-piloted humanoid aimed at bomb disposal, hazmat calls and offshore rigs. A specialist wearing a VR headset sees through Roger's eyes and handles fine manipulation, while in-house AI runs balance, navigation and fall recovery; the company says it went from idea to a walking prototype in five months, with paid pilots in energy and explosive ordnance disposal starting this fall. The same newsletter also covered Agilink's OmniHand 3 Ultra performing Suzhou embroidery, MIT's SANDO trajectory planner, and a Fudan University microrobot that harvests power from the metal it walks on.
Most bomb-disposal robots are tracked platforms with a single arm; if two-handed dexterity can be done remotely, technicians may not have to approach a device in a bomb suit.