Google DeepMind releases Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6; Boston Dynamics' Spot uses it to read gauges

2026-04-14★★roboticsGoogle DeepMindBoston Dynamicsconfidence: high

On 2026-04-14 Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 (gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview), an embodied-reasoning model for robot perception, planning and success detection, in the Gemini API and AI Studio. Its new instrument-reading skill, built with Boston Dynamics for Spot's facility inspections, scored 86% (93% with agentic vision), up from 23% for ER 1.5 and 67% for Gemini 3 Flash.

Key facts

Released 2026-04-14 in the Gemini API / Google AI Studio as gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview (shut down 2026-08-31, replaced by ER 2)
Instrument reading (pressure gauges, thermometers, sight glasses, digital readouts): ER 1.5 23%, Gemini 3 Flash 67%, ER 1.6 86%, ER 1.6 + agentic vision 93%
Improved pointing, counting and multi-view success detection over ER 1.5 and Gemini 3 Flash
Deployed in Boston Dynamics Spot for autonomous industrial inspection rounds
DeepMind reports better adherence to physical safety constraints (e.g. gripper/material limits)

What happened

ER 1.6 is the "thinking" layer of the Gemini Robotics stack. It looks at camera feeds, points at and counts objects, plans steps and judges whether a task succeeded, then hands off to a VLA or to a robot's own controllers. The headline new skill, reading analog instruments, came from work with Boston Dynamics, whose Spot robots use it on inspection rounds.

Why it matters

It is a concrete, measurable commercial use of a frontier multimodal model inside a deployed robot fleet. ER 1.6 was superseded about four months later by Gemini Robotics-ER 2.

Changelog

2026-09-29: created

Models

Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 / 1.6 Google DeepMind · retired

Related events

2026-07-30Google DeepMind launches Gemini Robotics 2 family with whole-body humanoid control ★★★★

Sources (4)

id: 2026-04-14-gemini-robotics-er-1-6 · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline