Robot Videos: Cargo Robots, Robot Marathons, and More

Video Friday is your weekly choice of superior robotics movies, collected by your mates at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We additionally put up a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics occasions for the following few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ICUAS 2025: 14–17 Might 2025, CHARLOTTE, NC

ICRA 2025: 19–23 Might 2025, ATLANTA

London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 Might 2025, LONDON

IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN

2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON

RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES

ETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA

IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY

ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL

IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA

IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS

RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

RO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS

CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN

CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL

World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Take pleasure in right this moment’s movies!

All through the course of the previous 12 months, LEVA has been designed from the bottom up as a novel robotic to move payloads. Though the usage of robotics is widespread in logistics, few options provide the aptitude to effectively transport payloads each in managed and unstructured environments. 4-legged robots are perfect for navigating any atmosphere a human can, but few have the options to autonomously transfer payloads. That is the place LEVA shines. By combining each wheels (a way of locomotion ideally suited to quick and exact movement on flat surfaces) and legs (that are excellent for traversing any terrain that people can), LEVA strikes a steadiness that makes it extremely versatile.

[ LEVA ]

You’ve in all probability heard about this humanoid robotic half-marathon in China, as a result of it acquired quite a lot of media consideration, which I presume was the purpose. And for these of us who keep in mind when Asimo working was an enormous deal, marathon working continues to be spectacular in some sense. It’s simply arduous to attach that to those robots doing something sensible, you realize?

[ NBC ]

A robotic navigating an out of doors atmosphere with no prior data of the house should depend on its native sensing to understand its environment and plan. This could come within the type of a neighborhood metric map or native coverage with some fastened horizon. Past that, there’s a fog of unknown house marked with some fastened price. On this work, we make a key statement that long-range navigation solely necessitates figuring out good frontier instructions for planning as an alternative of full-map data. To this finish, we suggest the Lengthy Vary Navigator (LRN), which learns an intermediate affordance illustration mapping high-dimensional digital camera photographs to inexpensive frontiers for planning, after which optimizing for optimum alignment with the specified purpose. By means of in depth off-road experiments on Spot and a Huge Car, we discover that augmenting present navigation stacks with LRN reduces human interventions at take a look at time and results in sooner choice making indicating the relevance of LRN.

[ LRN ]

Goby is a compact, succesful, programmable, and low-cost robotic that allows you to uncover miniature worlds from its tiny perspective.

On Kickstarter now, for an absurdly low-cost US $80.

[ Kickstarter ]

Thanks, Wealthy!

HEBI robots demonstrated inchworm mobility throughout the Innovation Faire of the FIRST Robotics World Championships in Houston.

[ HEBI ]

Thanks, Andrew!

Comfortable Easter from Flexiv!

[ Flexiv ]

We’re excited to current our proprietary reinforcement learning algorithm, refined via in depth simulations and huge coaching knowledge, enabling our full-scale humanoid robotic, Adam, to grasp humanlike locomotion. Not like model-based gait control, our RL-driven method grants Adam distinctive adaptability. On difficult terrains like uneven surfaces, Adam seamlessly adjusts stride, tempo, and steadiness in actual time, making certain steady, pure motion whereas boosting effectivity and security. The algorithm additionally delivers fluid, sleek movement with clean joint coordination, minimizing mechanical put on, extending operational life, and considerably lowering vitality use for enhanced endurance.

[ PNDbotics ]

Contained in the GRASP Lab—Dr. Michael Posa and DAIR Lab. Our research centers on management, studying, planning, and evaluation of robots as they work together with the world. Whether or not a robotic is helping throughout the house or working in a producing plant, the basic promise of robotics requires touching and affecting a posh atmosphere in a protected and managed trend. We’re centered on creating computationally tractable and knowledge environment friendly algorithms that allow robots to function each dynamically and safely as they shortly maneuver via and work together with their environments.

[ DAIR Lab ]

I’ll by no means perceive why robotics companies really feel the necessity to add the sounds of sick actuators when their robots transfer.

[ Kepler ]

Be part of Matt Trossen, founding father of Trossen Robotics, on a time-traveling teardown via the evolution of our robotic arms! On this deep dive, Matt unboxes the ghosts of robots previous—sharing behind-the-scenes tales, daring design choices, classes discovered, and the way the business itself has shifted gears.

[ Trossen ]

This week’s Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute (CMU RI) seminar is a retro version (2008!) from Charlie Kemp, beforehand of the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech and now at Hello Robot.

[ CMU RI ]

This week’s precise CMU RI seminar is from a way more fashionable model of Charlie Kemp.

Once I began in robotics, my purpose was to assist robots emulate people. But as my lab labored with individuals with mobility impairments, my notions of success modified. For assistive functions, emulation of people is much less necessary than ease of use and usefulness. Serving to with seemingly easy duties, akin to scratching an itch or choosing up a dropped object, could make a significant distinction in an individual’s life. Even full autonomy may be undesirable, since actively directing a robotic can present a way of independence and company. Total, many advantages of robotic help derive from nonhuman elements of robots, akin to being tireless, instantly controllable, and freed from social traits that may inhibit use.

Whereas technical challenges abound for home robots that try and emulate people, I’ll present proof that human-scale mobile manipulators may benefit individuals with mobility impairments at house within the close to future. I’ll describe work from my lab and Howdy Robotic that illustrates alternatives for valued help at house, together with supporting actions of every day residing, main train video games, and strengthening social connections. I will even current current progress by Howdy Robotic towards unsupervised, every day in-home use by an individual with extreme mobility impairments.

[ CMU RI ]