Gemini Robotics 2 Controls Full-Body Humanoid Robots

Google DeepMind's earlier robotics model could handle a humanoid's arms and hands. It stopped there. The company said Thursday that its new Gemini Robotics 2 model goes further, controlling a robot from its feet up through its fingertips, what DeepMind calls "whole-body motions."

In practice that means a robot can now walk, crouch, and stretch rather than just reach and grip while standing in place. Google shared footage of Apptronik's Apollo 2 robot bending down to grab a watering can and pulling specific items off a shelf, tasks that need coordination between legs, torso, and hands rather than isolated arm movement.

DeepMind is upfront that the robots still need to move faster to be useful outside a demo. But the company frames this as groundwork for real-world tasks that require full-body coordination rather than scripted single-limb actions. The update also brings finer control of five-fingered hands, letting robots manage fiddly jobs like sealing a Ziploc bag or unscrewing a lightbulb, alongside a parallel upgrade to Gemini Robotics ER, the model that handles a robot's reasoning about its environment and instructions.