It’s a bizarre sight: With a short burst of light, a sponge-shaped robot scoots across a tiled surface. Flipped on its back, it repeatedly twitches as if doing sit-ups. By tinkering with the light’s ...

Humanoid robots are edging closer to everyday life, and a new wave of US startups is betting that the real breakthrough will not be in metal and motors but in the “brains” that let machines understand ...