Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦

Innovation Awards Judge #CES2026
Marketing & Comms #Robotics #Drones
Ex @NAOrobot @AldebaranRobots @SBREurope @united_robotics @Parrot @BusinessObjects

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

12.45 pm news @m6info : how can we analyse & demystify AI-generated videos of humanoids? I was interviewed as an expert in #humanoid robotics to discuss their potential & limitations, as well as the role of ‘mule’ robots in operational contexts, cf #Ukraine. #Defence #Défense

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

@metrox_eth Premier vol du @Parrot Disco aux USA, janvier 2016 : quel bel oiseau !

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

@metrox_eth En effet, magnifique aile-volante ! Vous devez avoir de belles images embarquées en souvenir.

[metr0x @metrox_eth]

First roadside drive for MOSS, the 3D printed open source litter picking robot.

Tarmac, slopes, dry grass, fresh grass, the tracks go through all of it like a small bulldozer, nothing jams. Driven from the pad, straight from the battery switch, no laptop in the loop.

Numbers from the onboard log: over 8 min of driving, over 70 m on each track by the encoders. Pack at 11.68 V at the start, 11.34 V at the stop, roughly 9% of the pack by the resting voltage afterwards. And only about half of the pack is usable before the tracks start stalling in pivots.

The motors and the hardware in general held very well. Zero stall guard trips, zero dead pivots. The battery is the weak part, a $20 3S4P pack, 12 cells, sold as 40 Ah and clearly not. Charger and pack get replaced next. Rough estimate with proper high capacity cells: about 50 min and 430 m per charge.

[Jason Shuman @JasonrShuman]

Coming to a city near you

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

@midy_paul @NicolasMetzdorf @denis_Masseglia @MoeraniFrebault @DeputesEnsemble Vous êtes des députés remarquables mais cela ne fait aucun sens d'étudier autant d'amendements (4000...) si tard. C'est source de mauvaises décisions.
Que penseriez-vous de limiter le nombre d'amendements possibles par député ?

[Asimov @asimovinc]

You can build your own humanoid robot.

[Marwa ElDiwiny @MarwaEldiwiny]

An excellent report on humanoid robot hands, and most importantly, on where they fail and where their moat lies. Durability, not dexterity, gates the market.

The industry target is 10,000 hours MTBF. The best humanoid hands today reach only about 200 to 1,250 hours before failure.

What fails?

- The skin is a consumable.
- The contact material every hand ends in… wears out long before the drivetrain.

- The elastomer quietly wearing out underneath the touch sensors.
- Fingertip sensor prices have collapsed. So why does so much real work still happen without touch?

- The predictive-maintenance business nobody has built yet.

Also interesting: can a company selling only hand parts build a lasting business? Customers have started buying their suppliers. And emerging safety standards are moving toward certified force limiting.

I am curious to hear from people who are already deploying robotic hands.

Article: https://t.co/7Gu6DHwNc6

[Le Média Positif 🍀 @LMPositif]

Ouverte il y a seulement un an, la boutique d’optique familiale @‌lamaisonyea a tout perdu. Samedi, Souleymane, un jeune homme de 22 ans, est tombé sur la mère de famille, désemparée. Il a décidé de la filmer, de publier la vidéo sur TikTok et d’ouvrir une cagnotte pour leur venir en aide.
Résultat : trois jours plus tard, la vidéo cumule 2 millions de vues et la cagnotte dépasse les 6 000 euros. Ce lundi, il est repassé les voir pour leur annoncer la nouvelle. Un élan de solidarité qui a profondément touché la famille.
Si vous souhaitez aider La Maison Yé Optique à se relever, la cagnotte est disponible dans les commentaires.

[Jean-Michel Jarre @jeanmicheljarre]

OXYGENE & BEYOND – TOUR 2027 🌍

Jean-Michel announces the first European dates of his new immersive live tour, celebrating 50 years of OXYGENE.

Artist pre-sales begin 22 October, with further dates opening 28 October.

Sign up for exclusive access: https://t.co/ccMIfVBBcg

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

L'espoir d'une jeunesse éclairée. Merci @UNESCO

[Jean-Noël Barrot @jnbarrot]

La voix de la jeunesse compte. Elle doit être entendue.

Cet été, 145 jeunes venus de 135 pays se sont réunis autour d’une même ambition à Paris : lancer un appel à une nouvelle culture de la paix, pour que leurs préoccupations, leurs idées, leurs aspirations soient prises en compte.

Aujourd’hui, à Paris, l’UNESCO vient d’adopter formellement leur « Appel pour une nouvelle culture de la paix au XXIeme siècle ».

Que chacun s'en saisisse !

La paix entre les Nations comme la paix civique résident dans la capacité des femmes et des hommes éclairés à trancher leurs différents respectueusement, reconnaissant qu'ils partagent un avenir commun.

➜ https://t.co/6BDuZ7asCm

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

I'm speechless.

[Ros Shinkle @make_robot_go]

Introducing Voxel, a droid butler made by Tuesday Labs.

[Pulkit Agrawal @pulkitology]

Safe human-robot interaction with Eka's force-first approach to robotics: Vision-Force-Action Models (VFA).

[Little Think Tank @L_ThinkTank]

❗️ [ 🇺🇦 UKRAINE | 🇷🇺 RUSSIE ]

🔸 Pour la toute première fois dans le monde, l’Ukraine a évacué un blessé du champ de bataille à l’aide d’un drone aérien.

Dans ces images impressionnantes, nous voyons la 30e brigade mécanisée sauver un soldat coincé dans un champ de mines.

[Edouard Philippe @EPhilippe_LH]

À Paris, aux abords de la place de la République, pour rencontrer les commerçants et les habitants du quartier.

Les violences et les dégradations qu'ils ont subies les ont profondément marqués.

De mémoire d'habitant, le quartier n'avait jamais connu un tel déchaînement de violence.

Je suis venu les écouter et leur dire tout mon soutien. Ils ont le droit de vivre et de travailler en sécurité.

L'ordre doit vite revenir.

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

The Boss: "There's nothing to regulate if the industry doesn't thrive." #Nvidia

[Clash Report @clashreport]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to Chancellor Merz:

I've also heard you say that you want to find that balance between innovation and regulation.

There's nothing to regulate if the industry doesn't thrive.

[Interesting Engineering @IntEngineering]

Song Xingyu, a self-taught Gen Z vlogger from Badong in China's Hubei province who posts as Shenqi Ayu, has built a rideable hoverboard inspired by the Green Goblin's glider in Spider-Man and flown it across the Yangtze River. After his first five-turbojet prototype caught fire, he rebuilt it around ten brushless electric units with more than 30 kg of thrust each, and trained on it with an AI posture coach made from two phones.

[Nicolas Halftermeyer 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦 @halftermeyer]

Very interesting review. Teleoperated humanoids for now.

[Michelle Sun @michellelsun]

Just another Sunday afternoon in SF: I paid $60 for 2 humanoid robots to clean for an hour.

Here's how it went:
(1) What happened: Sergey and Chelsea (the names of the two robots) finished about 80% of one floor in an hour: tidying, wiping down surfaces, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the toilet.

- They came with a staff engineer at the company, who dropped them off and picked them up after an hour.

- They were controlled by 1 human operator each, in the Mission where the company office is at.

- The engineer gave me a number to text them, I texted a request to wipe the mirror. They did it.

(2) Performance and dexterity: Chelsea dropped a toy, struggled with a pillow, and had trouble balancing on the playmat. But overall, for all the tasks they did, grippers were enough. 5 fingers were not needed.

- The engineer told me the hardest task for them was making bed.

- They were quite loud, stomping around the house. Took a bit of time to get used to. They both wore gripper socks which protected the floors and helped them not slip.

- Interaction: I didn't know they can respond via voice. In the end they were conversing with us in voice which was nice.

(3) Unexpected observation: Their pants and shirts have holes in them. It's because they were dragged on and off the vans that transported them.

(4) Other user feedback: I shared my experience with some friends afterwards.
A user told me that unloading dishwasher was an "advanced task". They didn't attempt at mine since it was running at the time they were working. Another user said they scratched their hardwood floor. That's probably why they now wear gripper socks.

(5) Did they do as well as human cleaners? In terms of the tasks they did, I think so. In terms of speed, they were ~80% speed of humans when it comes to the more delicate tasks, but I would say they are quite smooth. They didn't finish the whole place, so it wasn't a full service.

(6) How does the math work out?
Each booking was only for 1 hour, since their batteries need to be swapped after 1 hour. So they didn't finish the place.

For a user: In SF, it's ~$200-220 to clean a full home around my neighborhood, with two human cleaners. Usually it takes around 2.5 hours. So around $40/manhour. This is $30/robot hour. Slightly cheaper, but again it's not fully finished with the 1 hour they were available.

For the company: It took 2 robots, 2 human operators, 1 staff member to dropoff/pickup, and 1 driver of the van to transport the robot. Definitely labor intensive. But they also retain the data they collect for training purposes.

(7) My biggest takeaway as a user: interaction / hospitality mattered. One of the humanoids was more friendly (Sergey), he waved at us when he came in. It'd have been great if they both introduced themselves in the beginning.

Beyond that, being able to do 2 hour slots (instead of one) would be great to finish the cleaning.

Overall, I appreciated their work and the fact that they got the robots out in people's homes. Deployment is not easy and so much learning from it each time

[Robocurve PBC @robocurve]

Dream-1 by @dreamlabs_ai is the first model to complete "Stand Up Bottles", a difficult robotics task that frontier LLMs struggle with.