# AI News Digest - 2026-04-18

1. Technology Review reported that companies and investors put $6.1 billion into humanoid robots in 2025, four times the 2024 figure, and documented industry progress including OpenAI restarting its robotics division to focus on humanoids, Covariant deploying its RFM-1 model in warehouses, and Agility Robotics' Digit being used by Amazon, Toyota, and GXO.

2. Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, which improved robots' planning and perception capabilities and added reported ability to read measuring instruments.

3. Alibaba released the open-source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, which activated three of its 35 billion parameters at a time and outperformed Google's Gemma 4-31B on agentic coding and reasoning benchmarks.

# References

1. [https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/17/1135416/how-robots-learn-brief-contemporary-history/](https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/17/1135416/how-robots-learn-brief-contemporary-history/)

[How robots learn: A brief, contemporary history](https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/17/1135416/how-robots-learn-brief-contemporary-history/)

1. [https://the-decoder.com/google-deepminds-gemini-robotics-er-1-6-gives-robots-a-sharper-brain-for-planning-and-perception/](https://the-decoder.com/google-deepminds-gemini-robotics-er-1-6-gives-robots-a-sharper-brain-for-planning-and-perception/)

[Google Deepmind's Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 gives robots a sharper brain for planning and perception](https://the-decoder.com/google-deepminds-gemini-robotics-er-1-6-gives-robots-a-sharper-brain-for-planning-and-perception/)

1. [https://the-decoder.com/alibabas-open-model-qwen3-6-leads-googles-gemma-4-across-agentic-coding-benchmarks/](https://the-decoder.com/alibabas-open-model-qwen3-6-leads-googles-gemma-4-across-agentic-coding-benchmarks/)

[Alibaba's open model Qwen3.6 leads Google's Gemma 4 across agentic coding benchmarks](https://the-decoder.com/alibabas-open-model-qwen3-6-leads-googles-gemma-4-across-agentic-coding-benchmarks/)

For the site tree, see the [root Markdown](https://slashpage.com/ixtj-dev.md).