Most AI hardware news is about data centers. Three announcements on November 9 were about the other end: the boards, joints and displays that put AI into machines that move. Teradyne launched a test system for edge AI circuit boards, MIPS previewed a chip platform built to sit inside a robot’s elbow or wrist, and Kopin said it will expand its Massachusetts site to make MicroLED displays for soldiers and pilots.
Two of the three are on show this week at electronica 2026 in Munich, which runs November 10 to 13.
Teradyne brings data center testing to the edge
Teradyne’s Omnyx line was built to test AI boards bound for data centers. Omnyx Edge takes the same idea to the boards inside cars, robots and factory equipment. Teradyne sorts them into three groups. Intelligence covers AI compute modules and robot or domain controllers. Sensing covers camera, radar, lidar and sensor fusion boards. Motion covers power conversion, motor control and the joint drives that move an arm.
The features say a lot about what makes these boards hard to test. They are dense, with little room for probes, so boundary scan and on-line programming do much of the work. A function called PowerSense checks DC-DC converters and power stages without touching them, and LEDSense extends optical checks to onboard LEDs. The system also plugs into factory line control and uses AI to predict its own maintenance. Teradyne is showing it in Hall A4, booth 431. It gave no price, throughput figure or ship date.
Regan Mills, who runs Teradyne’s product test group, said edge boards now carry more compute, more power and more responsibility than before. A bad board in a car’s central computer or a robot’s controller is a safety problem, not just a warranty claim. That is the market Teradyne is pricing.
MIPS goes for the last mile of the robot arm
MIPS, now part of GlobalFoundries, previewed Actus, a reference platform for compact robot joints. It puts two MIPS Atlas M8500 RISC-V microcontrollers with hardware multithreading next to a 512-bit vector unit for sensor fusion and predictive maintenance models. MIPS claims its trigonometry acceleration runs field-oriented motor control more than 16 times faster than standard software libraries. Each node gets Gigabit Ethernet with three-port Time-Sensitive Networking, CAN-FD, and a hardware security module with post-quantum cryptography.
The pitch is the stretch from elbow to fingertips, where humanoid and industrial robots run short of space, weight, power and cooling. Today that part of a robot often carries several separate chips per joint. Actus is built on GlobalFoundries’ FDX FD-SOI process with on-chip MRAM, and Green Hills Software is extending its safety-certified software stack to it. Developers can start on a virtual platform and move to an Actus-1 evaluation board. MIPS gave no silicon date or price.
Kopin builds MicroLED capacity at home
Kopin is moving its headquarters to 75 North Drive in Westborough, Massachusetts, next door to its existing site, so the old building can be turned over to manufacturing. It expects to add up to 80 jobs over five years. Massachusetts is chipping in an investment tax credit of about $1.46 million and an $800,000 manufacturing grant. Separately, a new $18.6 million award from the Pentagon’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program takes Kopin’s total from that program to $34 million.
The products are color MicroLED displays for soldier and pilot headgear, and a technology Kopin calls Neural I/o, which uses MicroLEDs to send data between AI processors as light. The display business is the near-term revenue. The interconnect is the long shot, and it puts a small Massachusetts company in a race with far bigger optical players.
Taken together, the three releases show where the money in physical AI is starting to flow: test and inspection, motion control silicon and displays, all of it built for machines that have to work safely every time.