Video Friday: Agile Upgrade

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY

German Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY

RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND

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

ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA

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

RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES

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

Enjoy today’s videos!

Unitree rolls out frequent updates nearly every month. This time, we present to you the smoothest walking and humanoid running in the world. We hope you like it.]

[ Unitree ]

This is just lovely.

[ Mimus CNK ]

There’s a lot to like about Grain Weevil as an effective unitasking robot, but what I really appreciate here is that the control system is just a remote and a camera slapped onto the top of the bin.

[ Grain Weevil ]

This video, “Robot arm picking your groceries like a real person,” has taught me that I am not a real person.

[ Extend Robotics ]

A robot walking like a human walking like what humans think a robot walking like a robot walks like.

And that was my favorite sentence of the week.

[ Engineai ]

For us, robots are tools to simplify life. But they should look friendly too, right? That’s why we added motorized antennas to Reachy, so it can show simple emotions—without a full personality. Plus, they match those expressive eyes O_o!

[ Pollen Robotics ]

So a thing that I have come to understand about ships with sails (thanks, Jack Aubrey!) is that sailing in the direction that the wind is coming from can be tricky. Turns out that having a boat with two fronts and no back makes this a lot easier.

[ Paper ] from [ 2023 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics ] via [ IEEE Xplore ]

I’m Kento Kawaharazuka from JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. I’m writing to introduce our human-mimetic binaural hearing system on the musculoskeletal humanoid Musashi. The robot can perform 3D sound source localization using a human-like outer ear structure and an FPGA-based hearing system embedded within it.

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Kento!

The third CYBATHLON took place in Zurich on 25-27 October 2024. The CYBATHLON is a competition for people with impairments using novel robotic technologies to perform activities of daily living. It was invented and initiated by Prof. Robert Riener at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Races were held in eight disciplines including arm and leg prostheses, exoskeletons, powered wheelchairs, brain computer interfaces, robot assistance, vision assistance, and functional electrical stimulation bikes.

[ Cybathlon ]

Thanks, Robert!

If you’re going to work on robot dogs, I’m honestly not sure whether Purina would be the most or least appropriate place to do that.

[ Michigan Robotics ]