In Episode 221 of The Robot Report Podcast, hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman recap the major robotics news of the week. This week on the show, we also welcome Fareed Aljawhari, founder and CEO of Micropolis Robotics, for a conversation about building a robotics company in Dubai.
Fareed Aljawhari is the founder and CEO of Micropolis Robotics.
Fareed Aljawhari founded Micropolis Robotics in 2014. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2025, trading under the symbol MCRP.
Micropolis’ goal is to make functional transportation safer, cleaner, and more usable. To achieve that, it is creating an autonomous platform that can be easily configured for new use cases.
The company plans to provide mobility-as-a-service offerings in dense urban environments. Micropolis said it will handle the autonomous control, charging, maintenance, and upgrades for the fleet of vehicles.
In 2020, Micropolis joined forces with Dubai Police. And in the process, it solidified the future of the autonomous rover industry. Aljawhari said the company is focused on testing on private and public roads as it moves towards launching the first fleet.
The Micropolis Robotics M Platform is designed as a generic, road-ready autonomous platform. | Credit: Micropolis Robotics
Show timeline
- 6:57 – News of the week
- 23:00 – Interview with Fareed Aljawhari, founder and CEO, Micropolis Robotics
News of the week
Waymo’s highway driving sets the stage for wider robotaxi expansion
Waymo is driving on freeways now. It announced this week that its robotaxis will begin offering rides on freeways across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
The company is starting with a select number of public riders, which it expects to grow in the coming months. Waymo has also expanded its service area in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its robotaxis now go down to San Jose, Calif., including curbside service at San Jose Mineta International Airport.
Check out the service area in the map below.
Waymo’s new service map in the San Francisco Bay Area. | Source: Waymo
Waymo said it will begin serving riders in San Diego and Las Vegas next year. The company didn’t share a timeline for when it will begin serving riders in Detroit.
The news came just a few weeks after Waymo said it will will bring robotaxi services to London in 2026. The company’s other international plans include Tokyo. In addition, Waymo has said it intends to launch in Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, and Nashville in the coming years.
Locus Robotics ships first Array unit to DHL
The first units of the new Locus Array mobile manipulator arrived at DHL this week for testing. The system expands the company’s fleet of picking-assistance systems with robot-to-goods (R2G) workflows, said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics.
The Array can pull a tote from a shelf and remove an item from the tote for a specific customer order. There is no product video of the robot in action yet.
The new Locus Array robot at DHL. Source: Locus Robotics
Objectways new business model to create and label data for humanoids
Objectways team members are recording real human demonstrations, annotating every motion, and reviewing thousands of clips to teach robots how to perform tasks like folding towels, packing boxes, or sorting items. Each correction and label ultimately becomes part of the robot’s experience and supports retraining AI models.
This is a modern, humanoid robot version of the “mechanical turk” problem of a decade ago with image labeling, said the company, which was founded in 2014. According to The Los Angeles Times, Objectways has more than 2,000 employees; about half of them label sensor data from autonomous cars and robotics, and the rest work on generative AI.
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