Technology Trends
Where robotics and AI technologies came from, which approaches now compete or converge, and what problems remain unresolved.
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Articles · 10Browser Labs · 0
Read the first step: Technology Trends in SLAM →Background and reading guide Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 7 min
Technology Trends in SLAM
From filter-based methods to graph optimization, and now to learning-based, AI-native approaches. Tracing the lineage of SLAM (simultaneous self-localization and mapping) and where current research stands.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 6 min
Technology Trends in LiDAR-SLAM
From the LOAM lineage to direct methods like FAST-LIO, and on to D-LIO, published in 2026. Surveying the evolution of LiDAR-and-IMU-based self-localization and mapping, set against newbot's own implementation.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 6 min
Technology Trends in Visual-SLAM
From classical feature-point methods to deep-learning-based end-to-end estimation, and on to a reinvention of map representation via 3D Gaussian Splatting/NeRF. Surveying where Visual-SLAM — self-localization and mapping from cameras alone — stands today.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 6 min
Technology Trends in Object Detection
The YOLO family moving toward NMS-free designs, and transformer-based detectors like RF-DETR, which broke 60 mAP on COCO. Surveying the state of object detection in 2026, all the way to open-vocabulary detection driven by nothing but a text prompt.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 6 min
Technology Trends in Semantic Segmentation
From transformer-based SegFormer and Mask2Former to the Segment Anything family, which can carve out any object from a prompt. Surveying where segmentation stands as it moves away from fixed classes.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 7 min
Technology Trends in Local LLMs
Ollama's monthly download count grew 520x in three years. Surveying how the rapid rise of open-weight models and maturing quantization techniques are turning large language models into something that runs on a home PC.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 8 min
Technology Trends in World Models
A 'World Model' learns the dynamics of an environment and simulates the future inside its own head. From Ha & Schmidhuber's VAE+RNN, through DreamerV3, Genie 3, and Sora, to the JEPA architecture championed by Yann LeCun — this piece maps the split between generative and non-generative approaches, and the shared wall of physical consistency both sides run into.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 9 min
Technology Trends in VLA (Vision-Language-Action)
Vision-Language-Action folds camera input and natural-language instructions into a single model that outputs robot actions directly. From RT-2 to OpenVLA to Physical Intelligence's π0 lineage, surveying the spread of a design philosophy that refuses to separate perception from control.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.
- Articles · Trends · 9 min
Technology Trends in Humanoid Robots
Tesla Optimus and Figure 03 have moved onto factory floors, and Boston Dynamics' Atlas has switched from hydraulic to fully electric. Unitree is driving a price war, while 1X's NEO is starting to teach itself in the home using a video world model. A look at the competitive landscape and the open problems that remain.
Background and reading guide
Basic terminology of the technology; consult the linked fundamentals as needed.