For a lot of people, the concept of AI-driven humanoid robots remains terrifying. Aside from the brief moments of hilarity when Tesla's Optimus falls over or turns out to be an actor dressed up, the prospect of robots becoming part of everyday life recalls dystopian sci-fi worlds, like those of Terminator or I, Robot.
Their physical designs don't help. Like the infamously impractical Cybertruck design, Optimus's appearance seems to be modelled on a sinister Blade Runner-inspired vision of the future. But a European startup has come along that thinks it can make robots more appealing. UMA might be a late comer to the space, but it's showing that a European AI robot would at least be more sartorially elegant, because of course it would.
Based in Paris, UMA was only founded last year. It's a relatively little-known name, but its leadership team is a veritable supergroup. The CEO is Rémi Cadène, who led AI on Tesla's Optimus. He's joined by Pierre Sermanet, formerly on the robotics team at Google DeepMind, Simon Alibert from the AI platform Hugging Face and the hardware designer Rob Knight.
They've recently revealed a 40kg humanoid robot called Northstar, which is being billed as a safer and more palatable addition to an increasingly competitive space. UMA, which stands for Universal Mechanical Assistant, builds and owns its whole stack, from hardware to software, which it says means it can ensure safety across every level.
It also says that Northstar has a key advantage in how it learns. Many industrial robots need to be specifically programmed for each new task, but Northstar will be capable of "real-time learning". It watches a human completing a task, attempts to replicate it, and gradually improves its performance through repetition, like humans themselves learn.
Cadène has compared it to how children learn to tie their shoelaces by watching, practicing, and then gradually refining the skill. Demos at the company's Paris lab show robotic arms using computer vision to sort objects by colour.
Unveiling our Northstar design @UMA_Robots A body that can navigate our spaceHands that can use our toolsApproachable, competent, calmA robot you feel at ease having at your workplace and home pic.twitter.com/qRulfeH0e1July 7, 2026
From Optimus to Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Figure AI's Figure 03, the expressionless black visors of many current robots serve several functions. They protect multiple cameras and sensors, and they help to avoid the uncanny valley effect that comes with artificial human visages while clearly framing the devices as functional equipment.
That's supposed to make them less unnerving for the humans that work alongside them, but it also makes them look cold and somewhat sinister. UMA seems to have put some thought into this. The video above is a CG imagining, but it's interesting to see that the company is already paying a lot of attention to Northstar's outfit in an aim to soften its appearance.
All the same same, I'm not quite convinced by Rémi's claims that this is a "robot you feel at ease having at your workplace and home". The motion-sensing security camera in the entrance to my building makes me feel nervous. How would I relax being shadowed by a robot that learns from me?
Microsoft and Nvidia-backed Figure AI appears to be currently leading the robotics race, with its devices at the BMW plant in Spartanburg providing a real working example of a humanoid robot doing human work at commercial scale. Boston Dynamics is now working with Hyundai on a similar collaboration.
As for Tesla, it claims to be targeting low-volume production of Optimus 3 this summer, but Elon Musk is notoriously flaky when it comes to forecasting product milestones. Tesla has announced no external customers. For its part, UMA has no shipping product yet, but it says it's in discussions with around 50 potential customers and plans to launch pilot programmes in manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare by the end of the year.
