It’s a bizarre sight: With a short burst of light, a sponge-shaped robot scoots across a tiled surface. Flipped on its back, it repeatedly twitches as if doing sit-ups. By tinkering with the light’s ...

A few short months ago, almost every robot made by the hundreds of companies working on humanoid robots could charitably be described as slow, topping out at around three mph. Walking was on the edge ...