Attack drones are coming to schools

PLUS: Google's Gemini gets a whole-body update

Jennifer Mossalgue

August 3, 2026

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. America’s school-security arms race is moving from cameras to combat drones. A new system puts pepper-spraying, shooter-ramming quadcopters in hallways — flown by private operators piloting them from Austin.

The company is pitching lightning-fast intervention; the debate is whether armed drones belong in schools at all.

In today’s robotics rundown:

Armed drones are coming to U.S. schools
Gemini now runs humanoids, legs included
This demon centaur robot wants to save you
Zoox starts charging for robotaxi rides
Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

DRONES

🏫 Armed drones are coming to U.S. schools

Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Some U.S. schools are getting fleets of remotely piloted “attack drones” that can fire pepper rounds, disorient, and even ram an active shooter in the halls — controlled by a private response team hundreds of miles away in Austin.

The details:

Nine schools in Florida, Georgia, and Colorado are joining Mithril Defense’s rollout, with quadcopters stationed in secure boxes around each campus.
The drones launch within seconds and can spray pepper gel, fire strobes, and sound sirens to slow a shooter down, or ram into them at up to 70 mph.
Human operators fly the drones remotely from Mithril’s Austin headquarters and relay the shooter’s position to responding police.
Florida allocated $557K for a three-school pilot, Georgia approved $500K for five schools, and a new Colorado charter is paying its own way.

Why it matters: The $4B a year U.S. schools spend on physical security buys hardware that reports; these drones act on a judgment call made by a contractor in Austin. Officials are uneasy — Omnilert’s AI gun detector once flagged a teenager’s Doritos bag, yet failed to see the handgun used in a fatal Tennessee school shooting.

GOOGLE DEEPMIND

🧠 Gemini now runs humanoids, legs included

Image source: Google DeepMind / Images 2.0

The Rundown: Google DeepMind just updated its Gemini model to drive whole robot bodies for the first time — humanoids included, feet to fingertips — through fiddly work like threading a lightbulb into a socket or knotting a trash bag shut.

The details:

Earlier models controlled only the humanoid’s arms. Now, told to put a watering can in the bottom-shelf bin, Apollo 2 walks over, crouches, and places it.
Bending is still where it breaks down: Apollo picks objects off a shelf 76.3% of the time, off the floor 45.7%.
The 22-DoF SharpaWave hand unscrews a bulb 92% of the time and screws one in 36%. Ziplock: 40%. DeepMind calls multi-finger manipulation unsolved.
ER 2 acts as the high-level brain — it watches the room, plans, tracks progress, self-corrects, and now splits work across different robot types on the same job.

Why it matters: Gemini gives robot makers a potential shortcut to a sophisticated control stack, but the most important control models remain limited to early-access partners. The launch also happened the same week the government cut off the low-cost Chinese platforms most U.S. researchers learn on.

SATYRESS

😈 This demon centaur robot wants to save you

Image source: Satyress

The Rundown: A California startup called Satyress built an over-six-foot-tall goat-headed robotic centaur that wears chainsaws where its hands should be, designed for wildfire fronts, toxic industrial zones, mudslides, and rubble searches.

The details:

Threehalves combines a humanoid torso and arms with a four‑legged, friction‑braked base while operators drive it via joystick through disasters.
Its arms end in a rugged quick‑connect socket that feeds 12v/18v/48v power and compressed air straight into tools like chainsaws and drills.
The robot is deliberately too big to pass through an 81cm door and can be fitted with longer horns to block pedestrian entrances.
Acknowledging how dangerous the machine could be, the company published “how to stop it” guidance, including how to immobilize it with a firearm.

Why it matters: It’s not the first centaur robot: NASA and European researchers have been tinkering with human‑torso‑on‑legged‑base concepts for years, but Satyress’s Threehalves pushes the idea into viral, chainsaw‑wielding nightmare fuel built for real‑world disaster work.

ZOOX

🚕 Zoox starts charging for robotaxi rides

Image source: Zoox

The Rundown: Amazon's Zoox became the first purpose-built robotaxi cleared by federal regulators to charge fares — its pod with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no side mirrors will start taking money in Las Vegas as soon as this month.

The details:

The NHTSA granted Zoox a temporary exemption to deploy up to 2,500 steering-wheel-free vehicles a year for two years under enhanced oversight.
Zoox says it will begin paid rides in Las Vegas as soon as this month, after 500K+ passengers have already taken free trips in its autonomous shuttles.
California, where the company is headquartered and gives free rides, still needs deployment permits from the Public Utilities Commission and the DMV.
Last month, Zoox recalled the driving software in 105 robotaxis after one unoccupied vehicle entered an active fire scene obscured by heavy smoke.

Why it matters: This is the first time U.S. regulators have greenlit commercial service for a fully driverless, nontraditional vehicle platform. Waymo already operates ~4K vehicles and delivers half a million paid rides a week. Zoox is far behind, and its exemption permits only 2,500 new vehicles per year, but it is out of its free demo phase.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Tau Robotics is renting teleoperated humanoids to clean San Francisco homes at $30 an hour — invite-only, one hour a visit — and every session is recorded to train its AI.

German robotics startup Agile Robots, backed by about $1.5B in funding led by SoftBank, expects to double its revenue from last year’s $345M in 2026.

Procore is buying DroneDeploy for $845M, folding the drone-and-robot capture platform’s data from 3M-plus construction job sites into its management software.

A U.S. veterans group is pitching a “digital DNA” concept, a haptic suit that copies your movements, vitals, and skills into a humanoid so you outlive yourself.

German drone startup Quantum Systems pushed its experimental Apex Recordhunter quadcopter to 434 mph, the fastest ever for a battery-powered drone.

Northeastern University researchers built a tracked, all-terrain robot that sprays liquid nitrogen to snuff out localized wildfire hotspots.

BYD will debut its first functional humanoids this month at Di Space, its own showroom, in an interactive exhibit where visitors can engage with the machines.

A humanoid running Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ10 fell face-first onstage at Computex 2026 in Taiwan, with Qualcomm blaming a communication glitch.

COMMUNITY