Google DeepMind launches Gemini Robotics 2 family with whole-body humanoid control
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra91 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.530 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen121 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.760 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 30 days before it.
Key facts
- Three models: Gemini Robotics 2 (vision-language-action), Gemini Robotics ER 2 (embodied reasoning), Gemini Robotics On-Device 2
- Whole-body control: walking, crouching and manipulating; multi-fingered hands and grippers; multi-robot collaboration; tasks lasting several minutes
- ER 2 adds real-time video understanding, task-progress tracking, tool calls and low-latency orchestration via the Live API
- ER 2 moment-finding accuracy 91.3% (mean abs. error 0.96 s) at ~4x the speed of the previous generation (per third-party summary of Google’s numbers)
- API IDs: gemini-robotics-er-2-preview and gemini-robotics-er-2-streaming-preview; ER 1.6 preview shut down 2026-08-31
- Partners: Apptronik (Apollo 2), Franka Duo, Boston Dynamics, Agile Robots; VLA and On-Device via early-access program
What happened
Google DeepMind announced its second-generation robotics foundation models. Gemini Robotics 2 converts vision and language into motor control for humanoids and bi-arm robots, now including whole-body control; ER 2 plans multi-step tasks, talks to humans and coordinates several robots; On-Device 2 runs locally and adapts to new embodiments quickly. ER 2 is publicly available to developers in the Gemini API/AI Studio; the VLA models are limited to partners.
Why it matters
It moves Google’s robotics stack from tabletop arm manipulation to general-purpose humanoid bodies, with a hosted “robot brain” API developers can use today — a key piece in the 2026 race for physical AI.
Sources
6 sources from 5 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
6 sources: 3 primary, 2 press, 1 reaction
Primary
- Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots (DeepMind blog)deepmind.google, official
- Introducing Gemini Robotics ER 2 (Google blog)blog.google, official
- Gemini Robotics ER 2 model carddeepmind.google, official
Press
- SiliconANGLE: DeepMind debuts Gemini Robotics 2 for humanoid robotssiliconangle.com, press
- MarkTechPost: three physical AI modelsmarktechpost.com, press
Reactions
- Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots (video)youtube.com, video
Changes
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