Commercial robot incidents, Q4 2026
Q4 2026: 1 documented incidents involving commercial robots so far (provisional, verification backlog), 1 with a person hurt and 0 fatal. 0 reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Most involved Unitree Robotics (1). Largest class: humanoid (1).
Provisional. 938 reports published in or just after this quarter are still in the verification queue, so the count will rise as they clear and the comparison with Q3 2026 is withheld until then. A lower figure here means a slower queue, not fewer incidents.
Incidents are counted by the date they happened, 2026-10-01 to 2026-12-31, so this quarter is still filling in. 11 cases were published to the register during the quarter, including older events documented for the first time. Counts measure what was reported in English and cleared verification; fleet sizes are not public, so nothing here is a rate. Rules on the methodology page. Previous quarter for comparison: Q3 2026.
By kind of machine
- Humanoid1
By company
- Unitree Robotics1
By outcome
- minor injury1
The cases that reached furthest
Ordered by severity, then by how many independent sources the case rests on.
Whose incidents reach consequences
Share of a company's recorded incidents, across the whole register, that reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Companies with fewer than the threshold of cases are left out. Register total: 284 cases, 44 escalated.
- Zoox6/11 · 55%
- Cruise4/9 · 44%
- Tesla4/17 · 24%
- Starship Technologies1/9 · 11%
- Waymo5/72 · 7%
- Unitree Robotics0/12 · 0%
What the operators wrote in their own crash reports
1551 crash reports filed with NHTSA by 19 operators under the Standing General Order, read by theme. The federal file has one structured column for what was struck; these counts exist nowhere else.
- Emergency responders on scene, most often Zoox, Inc.144
- Stopped or blocking traffic, most often Waymo LLC140
- A pedestrian involved, most often Waymo LLC65
- A cyclist or scooter rider, most often Waymo LLC46
- Rear-ended by another vehicle, most often Zoox, Inc.42
- Roadworks, cones or a closure, most often Waymo LLC24
All 1 incidents dated Q4 2026
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on. Case metadata is CC BY 4.0; cite the register by its DOI, 10.5281/zenodo.22925531.