Google releases Gemini Robotics ER 2 (preview) + announces ER 1.6 shutdown
Google’s Gemini API changelog announces Gemini Robotics ER 2 preview endpoints (including a streaming variant) and says the older Gemini Robotics ER 1.6 preview model will shut down on August 31, 2026.
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In an entry dated July 30, 2026, Google’s Gemini API changelog says Gemini Robotics ER 2 is now in public preview, with two new model endpoints for embodied reasoning in robotics.
New ER 2 preview model IDs
According to the changelog, Google introduced:
gemini-robotics-er-2-previewgemini-robotics-er-2-streaming-preview— which Google describes as "optimized for real-time text streaming using the Live API, enabling low-latency robot agents with bidirectional audio and video input"
Google says these endpoints accept text, image, video, and audio inputs and "support function calling with blocking behavior for physical robot actions" — the blocking semantics matter when a tool call maps to a movement that has to finish before the next step begins.
What ER 2 adds
Google lists the preview’s capabilities as advanced spatial reasoning, agentic code execution, multi-step tool orchestration, video moment finding, progress classification, and multi-robot coordination.
Two of those — agentic code execution and multi-step tool orchestration — are the same primitives that drive non-robotics coding agents, which makes ER 2 a useful reference point for how Google is converging its agent tooling across domains.
Deprecation / shutdown
Google also announces that gemini-robotics-er-1.6-preview will be shut down on August 31, 2026. That continues a steady cadence in this family: gemini-robotics-er-1.5-preview was retired on April 30, 2026 (covered in our Gemini API April 2026 update). If you have preview robotics traffic in production, plan the migration now rather than on the shutdown date.
Source
- Google AI for Developers — “Gemini API: Release notes” (July 30, 2026 entry): https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/changelog
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