Forterra, a US builder of autonomous vehicles, revealed today that more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs have been deployed in conflict zones in Ukraine for the past nine months, in what the company believes is the largest deployment of autonomous ground vehicles in combat by any US defense tech company.

“I believe this to be true of every defense technology that’s ever been created—until you hit the realities of combat, you’re just not going to know,” Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer and a former US Marine officer, told TechCrunch.

Funded by US defense dollars, the mission is part of growing effort to transform the US military through its support of Ukrainian resistance to Russian invaders. While aerial drones have garnered much of the attention in the fight, the dynamics they’ve created — extensive no-go zones where surveillance can lead to death from above — have led Ukrainian strategists to seek ground-based autonomy as well.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens, who leads a program developing autonomous vehicles and tactics for the US Army, explained. “You become very, very vulnerable to be able to be attacked by [first-person view drones], other sorts of drones dropping munitions, artillery, mortar, the full range of things that they have.”

Ukraine is already building its own uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) to help move supplies and munitions, or evacuate wounded soldiers, but they are typically battery-powered and can only carry up to 250 kilograms, according to a soldier in the Ukrainian army who has worked with the vehicles and who TechCrunch won’t identify for security reasons.

Forterra’s Lancer vehicles, based on Polaris ATVs and equipped with a custom-built sensor and compute stack, are gas-powered and can carry 750 kilograms of cargo, making them more versatile and useful. “The bottom line is that this UGV for logistics and just maintaining our defense is the most important UGV in Ukraine,” the soldier said. “It’s fucking fantastic, and we are dying to get more.”

They didn’t feel that way at first. The Ukranian Armed Forces have had have mixed experiences with Western contractors bringing new tech to the battle, and at first Forterra’s offerings felt a little too geared for the high-end requirements of the US Army. Modifying the vehicle for the situation—particularly, by adding a Starlink satellite internet antenna—made it a huge value add.

Since arriving in Ukraine last October, the vehicles have driven more than 2,500 miles across more than 1,100 missions, carrying 777,440 pounds of total weight and completing 52 casualty evacuations. Some has been lost in combat, particularly if they get stuck in deep mud or other terrain where Russian forces can target them at leisure.

Forterra has learned some useful lessons — about electronic warfare, updating their software from afar, how to maneuver in challenging conditions, and ensuring their vehicles don’t break down. The company, which has raised more than $500 million in venture funding from funds like XYZ Venture Cpaital and Moore Strategic Partners, is now better positioned to compete for lucrative national security contracts.

They’ve also seen the limits of autonomy: For now, Ukranian soldiers have mainly been teleoperating the vehicles in combat zones, in part because they’re too valuable to lose and in part because autonomous vehicles aren’t quite ready for the realities of war.

While, for example, the vehicles can navigate autonomously across diverse terrain, they’re not quite at the point where they can identify unexpected enemy forces and react appropriately. “We actually need to be able to respond to the enemy threats, live, while it’s in front of the enemy, which the autonomy doesn’t know how to do yet,” the Ukrainian soldier explained.

Forterra, which began work on autonomous vehicles 20 years ago, is working on how to combine the kinds of algorithms that gave us self-driving cars with newer generative AI software that allows machines to react to their surroundings in a generalized way. As with other autonomous systems, one of the key obstacles is gathering the right data.

“There’s a lot of things you have to do that aren’t available in an open source model because they’re not things that humans do, whether that’s figuring out how to navigate a minefield or [operating] a weapon system,” Sanders told TechCrunch. “You need to be able to turn the dials and some things more of a classical robotics approach, and then leverage AI where you need to.”

Competitors in this space are solving similar challenges, like Scout AI, which raised $100 million earlier this year to train foundation models and develop a suite of autonomous platforms for the military that includes UGVs. Other startups like Field AI and Overland AI are trialling UGVs with the US military.

Even with the limitations on UGVs, American military experts are convinced that its time to invest in these tools. “Ground autonomy is achievable now and we’ve seen it,” Wilkens said.

Scott Philips, the chief innovation officer at Forterra, visited a Ukranian unit’s operations center to see the vehicles in action first-hand, winning respect from the unit for visiting an area in range of Russian attacks.

“What struck me most was seeing exactly where the seams are: which steps are still manual, where data has to be re-entered or re-verified by hand, and where the team has already found ways to automate or speed things up,” Philips told TechCrunch. “That’s the kind of ground truth you can’t get from a slide deck because it shows you precisely where better tooling could take pressure off the people doing this work in real time.”

One challenge issued by the Ukrainians: Make it cheaper. Forterra’s Lancers aren’t expensive for their category, thanks to relying on Polaris’ commercial supply chain for the vehicle itself, but they are still too valuable to be deployed as freely as UAVs can be.

“Attrition is just a fact of this battlefield, and we have lost a few at this point, and it hurt, and we need more, and therefore we need them cheaper,” the Ukranian soldier told TechCrunch.

Under the new agreement, the companies will partner on chips that will reportedly be used for ‘multiple generations of Apple products’.

Semiconductor and infrastructure manufacturer Broadcom has extended its partnership with tech giant Apple, in a deal that will see both organisations collaborate on custom-made chips through to 2031.

According to Bloomberg, as part of the new arrangement, Broadcom and Apple will work on Asic silicon, which is short for application-specific integrated circuit. Going forward, these types of chips will be found in “multiple generations of Apple products”. 

Asic chips are becoming increasingly useful in the development of components for processing artificial intelligence-related tasks and Apple is said to be working on more advanced AI servers set to deploy as early as 2027. 

Broadcom has been part of a partnership with Apple for years, providing the organisation with key components such as the radio frequency chips that are used in iPhones for connecting to cellular ​networks, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity chips and other networking semiconductors. 

The renewal of the deal however, will likely reduce fears that Apple plans to focus primarily on its own N1 chip, which is a combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth component found in modern iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Apple is currently working on AI server chips, named Baltra, which are larger versions of the M5Ultra chip the organisation is set to debut later this year. The future AI servers aim to be more powerful, capable and reliable.

With the AI boom resulting in the significantly increased demand for chips, companies have found themselves struggling to secure resource pipelines and Apple have had to up the price of several of their products, as reported in June of this year. Increases were shown to be as little as €40 for the HomePod Mini, to nearly €1,000 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra. 

Earlier in the year Anthropic announced an expanded agreement that would allow the company to tap 3.5GW of Google’s tensor processing unit (TPU) capacity from Broadcom.

Similar to other companies, it was reported that Anthropic is seriously considering manufacturing its own chips, as a means of securing the supply chain and outpacing rivals. Though not confirmed, it has been suggested that the platform is currently in talks with Samsung regarding the development of custom made AI chips. 

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Apple has now moved to the third round for the developer betas of iOS 27, macOS 27, and others of the 27 generation. Expect more to come before the eventual fall releases.

The developer beta program for the 27-gen operating systems is continuing with its third round of builds. All to make sure that the versions that ship in the fall are in top working order for the general public.

The third developer builds arrive after the second, which arrived on June 22 for most of the operating systems. The watchOS 27 counterparts landed later, on June 23 and June 25.

The third builds are:

• iOS 27 beta 3 is 24A5380h, replacing 24A5370h
• iPadOS 27 beta 3 is 24A5380h, replacing 24A5370h,
• macOS 27 beta 3 is 26A5378j, replacing 26A5368g,
• tvOS 27 beta 3 is 24J5315i, replacing 24J5305f,
• watchOS 27 beta 3 is 24R5315i, replacing 24R5305g,
• visionOS 27 beta 3 is 24M5316k, replacing 24M5306i

The first developer builds of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, visionOS 27, and watchOS 27 were made available on June 8.

The initial changes included tweaks to Liquid Glass, the long-awaited overhaul of Siri, child-protective features, and many other smaller changes.

The second iOS 27 developer beta included an update to Apple TV in the Home app, showing it like a connected HomePod or HomePod mini. The Apple Wallet also added a new insights option, albeit in a non-functional fashion.

At your own risk

While AppleInsider regularly warns readers that people trying out beta software should do so on secondary, spare hardware instead of their mission-critical or daily driver devices, it’s something that actually matters more this time around.

It’s because Apple’s early developer betas are for an operating system that is still under active development. There’s a higher chance of buggy, broken, and potentially harmful elements being distributed.

The initial builds are also intended to help developers learn about the operating system changes before the final public release later in 2026. It’s not meant to be used by consumers.

Unless you have a vested interest in using them, such as app development, don’t install the early betas.

Members of the public wanting to try out iOS 27 on their iPhone should wait until the inevitable public beta. At that point, most of the major issues will have been found and fixed.

At a minimum, wait for a few developer betas to pass by.

The AppleInsider editorial team has experienced when things have gone wrong. We’ve also heard countless stories from others when the same happened to them.

Don’t be like us.

Before Atlas the humanoid robot strode onto the pitch to hand the ball to the referee during Norway and Brazil’s World Cup match on Sunday, it hinted at its own soccer skills on the sidelines.

At the end of halftime, Atlas emerged from the players’ tunnel and replicated a series of iconic goal celebrations before passing the ball. But it seems the robot was being shy, because it’s actually capable of far more.

In a series of videos published to YouTube, Boston Dynamics shows how it trained the humanoid robot to perform a number of soccer tricks, including its own version of the rabona — a complex move in which the kicking leg crosses behind the standing leg to strike the ball — that the company calls the ghost rabona.

When I met the latest version of Atlas at CES back in January, I had no idea that by summer it would be capable of World Cup-worthy moves. But I shouldn’t have underestimated it — after all, this robot, and many like it, are designed to constantly learn new things. 

These humanoid robots will first be deployed in industry before moving into service and entertainment settings, and eventually into our homes. That’s still a way off, but the learning they do along the way is crucial to getting there.

In the interim, it’s important for Boston Dynamics to share Atlas’ skills with the world — and not just for entertainment purposes, says the company’s director of robot behavior Alberto Rodriguez.

“It’s a public service to show that the technology is getting to a certain level of capability,” he says. 

Not only does it spark debate of how this technology will fit into society, but it also raises public awareness of how close we are to humanoid robots becoming commonplace.

Getting Atlas World Cup-ready

I’m curious about why, of all the things Atlas could learn, Boston Dynamics wanted to teach the robot soccer skills. 

“We’ve always taken inspiration from high-strength or high agility-physical behavior,” says Rodriguez. “It motivates us to squeeze more performance that we know is possible out of the robots we build.”

Training Atlas to be World Cup-ready started by using motion capture to record the moves and skills that Boston Dynamics wanted the robot to perform. These were then put into a simulation, and “through massive trial and error,” Atlas then learned to imitate these moves as much as it could within its physical constraints, explains Rodriguez.

There were two levels to the robot mastering the skills, he adds. The first part of this involved the robot’s limbic system — its balancing and counterbalancing, agility and movement. It needed to develop lightning-fast muscle memory, which is also what it needs for athletic performances in the fields of dance or gymnastics.

The second level was trickier, going beyond athleticism. It involved the robot’s manipulation of objects and its ability to exert the appropriate amount of force to engage with the world around it. 

Teaching Atlas to spontaneously adapt to friction and slip, as well as being precise with how close it stepped to the ball, really pushed the robot out of its comfort zone. It was much trickier to model than, say, a backflip, says Rodriguez. “All of that is in the air, where the dynamics are much more well understood and much easier to represent in simulation.”

Atlas might not boast an exact replica of the human physiology, but it was designed in a way that made it capable of replicating human “fluidity and dynamism.” But that doesn’t mean its soccer schooling was without growing pains. 

In Boston Dynamics’ School of Football video series, it’s clear that Atlas took a whole bunch of tumbles on its way to mastering skills. It’s especially challenging to teach Atlas athletic skills because that process inevitably involves contorting its body into positions that put it at risk of “catastrophic falls,” says Rodriguez.

In spite of this, breaking and repairing is all part of training the robots, and there’s a “well-oiled process” for fixing them up, he adds. By the time we see them — stepping out onto a soccer pitch, for example — it’s highly unlikely we’ll see them fall. 

“When we deploy robots, they tend to do things that have already been well tested, and we’re confident that they’re not going to get into awkward situations,” says Rodriguez.

When will Atlas make its professional soccer debut?

Atlas is already more adept than many of us less athletic, creaky-boned humans when it comes to soccer, but I asked Rodriguez whether there are any skills he wishes Atlas could learn that he hadn’t been able to teach the robot by the World Cup. 

“Kicking a ball is not hard to learn, and we’ve definitely done that,” he says. “But kicking it really well, that’s really hard to do.” He referenced the way legendary soccer players such as David Beckham and Roberto Carlos were capable of dramatically bending the ball towards their intended targets.

“That’s the kind of thing that you probably have to end up learning by practicing in the real world. That’s just very, very hard to learn in simulation,” he says. “You probably have to learn through practice and error with a real soccer ball.”

Fortunately, Atlas has another four years to master the skill before the next World Cup. Should we expect that by the time the 2030 tournament rolls around, Atlas might have been recruited by one of the teams? 

In spite of its fast-evolving soccer skills, it’s unlikely that we’ll see humanoid robots play on human-robot teams, says Rodriguez. What’s more likely is seeing teams of robots play against one another.

Robots can move in ways that human players can’t — rotating their joints or inverting their limbs, allowing them to turn without having to take any steps, for example. This wouldn’t make them better players, but would undoubtedly change how the game is played in a way that would be tricky for a mixed group of robots and humans to navigate.

In the meantime, Atlas has learned an enormous amount from its foray into the world of soccer. Its newfound footwork, precision and speed might not see it taking home a World Cup trophy anytime soon, but the robot has leveled up overall. 

“Forcing ourselves to go through those behaviors had this indirect effect of improving, just in general, the way that Atlas works,” says Rodriguez. 

B&H is clearing out M4 Pro MacBook Pro inventory, offering discounts of up to $500 off and prices as low as $1,799. But inventory is limited, and the deals may sell out quickly.

Kicking off the sale is Apple’s last-gen M4 Pro 14-inch laptop that’s marked down to $1,799. This configuration in Apple’s silver finish has a 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU, along with 24GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage.

Buy M4 Pro MacBook Pro for $1,799

To put the deal in perspective, the cheapest M5 Pro 14-inch MacBook Pro rings in at $2,354.

B&H also has the Space Black 1TB configuration with an upgraded M4 Pro chip on sale for $2,299 after a $400 discount.

Save $400 on 1TB M4 Pro model

With Apple’s recent price hikes, we’ve seen blowout savings like this sell out quickly, so you’ll want to act fast if you’re interested in the offers. B&H is also throwing in free 2-day shipping on the laptops when shipped within the contiguous U.S., so you can begin using your new device right away.