Cable-driven home robot Stringman is priced at $795

IEEE Spectrum's Video Friday roundup of 6 November 2026 carries two items of real news. The first is Stringman, a household robot that moves on cables across a room instead of rolling on wheels or walking on legs, and is built to tidy up. The roundup lists its price as US $795. The second is that Agility Robotics, which builds humanoid robots, has become a publicly traded company under the ticker AGLT, starting the day before the column was written.

The rest of the column is lighter. It has Halloween clips from Flexiv Robotics, HEBI Robotics and Dusty Robotics, a snack-stealing character robot from the KIMLAB research group, a robotic floor lamp called Lume, and a one-minute explainer from Toyota Research Institute on the sounds, lights and gestures robots can use to signal people nearby.

Why it matters

A price of $795 is a low entry point for a robot meant to work across a whole room, and a cable layout is a different approach from the humanoids and wheeled helpers that dominate home robotics. The report gives no detail on how Stringman is installed, what it can carry or how well it handles real clutter, and it says nothing about when buyers would receive one. It also gives no listing details for Agility, such as the share price or the amount raised. Watch for independent tests of Stringman and for Agility's first results as a listed company.