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 ship us your occasions for inclusion.

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

Take pleasure in immediately’s movies!

One 12 months after mass manufacturing kicked off, Unitree’s B2-W Industrial Wheel has been upgraded with extra thrilling capabilities. Please all the time use robots safely and pleasant.

Yours for US $100,000.

[ Unitree ]

Sure I do know we’re sharing a few of these vacation movies are somewhat late, however I deserve somewhat little bit of day off, don’t I? No, you’re proper, and I really feel disgrace. However please get pleasure from these further vacation movies anyway, beginning with Santa’s Little Helper from ETHZ RSL.

Okay however critically the place do I get a type of little plush Anymals!

[ RSL ]

Merry Christmas from the Kepler humanoid robotic!

[ Kepler Robotics ]

This 12 months, Rizon has joined the festive enjoyable by adorning the Flexiv workplace with vacation cheer!

[ Flexiv ]

The Eva exoskeleton, developed by IHMC, takes its first steps out of the lab and thru quite a lot of new modes in October 2024. For greater than a decade, IHMC has designed and developed wearable robotic exoskeletons to rehabilitate these with spinal twine accidents. With classes discovered from these previous developments, our focus has shifted to augmenting the efficiency of able-bodied employees in hazardous environments. We’re working to advance these applied sciences to the actual world with hope of constructing actual variations in peoples’ lives.

[ IHMC ]

Thanks, Robert!

TIAGo Professional – a revolutionary robotic with Collection Elastic Actuators arms and enhanced non-verbal communication. This enhances the manipulation capabilities and allows state-of-the-art Human-Robotic Interplay. Designed for agile manufacturing and future healthcare purposes.

[ PAL Robotics ]

Do you know that cameras immediately wrestle to precisely measure distance? It is because present methods depend on restricted knowledge. DARPA’s CIDAR Problem explores combining spatial, spectral, and temporal imaging knowledge to unlock unprecedented accuracy. Advances made by way of the CIDAR problem might revolutionize all the pieces from battlefield consciousness, to robotics, to environmental analysis.

[ DARPA ]

Innate is creating innately clever teachable general-purpose robots. Our platforms are easy, accessible, in order to decrease the barrier to entry into robotics for everybody.

[ Innate ]

Drone-level autonomy, now underwater! In The final couple of years, we now have invested within the idea of constructing a unified autonomy answer that may function nearly universally throughout robotic configurations. As a primary main step to that finish was to exhibit that so long as confined or cluttered environments are involved, we will have aerial robot-level autonomy underwater that may be a) completely pushed by imaginative and prescient by way of notion (e.g., no sonars), and b) makes use of “generalist” answer for path planning and security (primarily an identical to these in our analysis for flying robots!).

[ Norwegian University of Science and Technology post on LinkedIn ]

Thanks, Kostas!

ERA-42 is the world’s first really end-to-end native robotic massive mannequin matched to a five-finger dexterous hand, able to performing over 100 intricate duties utilizing numerous instruments. These embody tightening screws with a screwdriver, hammering nails, righting overturned cups, and pouring water—duties that spotlight its outstanding adaptability and precision.

[ Robot Era ]

Thanks, Ni Tao!

Even when an android’s look is so reasonable that it might be mistaken for a human in {a photograph}, watching it transfer in individual can really feel a bit unsettling. It will probably smile, frown, or show different numerous, acquainted expressions, however discovering a constant emotional state behind these expressions might be troublesome, leaving you uncertain of what it’s really feeling and creating a way of unease. On this examine, lead creator Hisashi Ishihara and his analysis group developed a dynamic facial features synthesis expertise utilizing “waveform actions,” which represents numerous gestures that represent facial actions, akin to “respiratory,” “blinking,” and “yawning,” as particular person waves. These waves are propagated to the associated facial areas and are overlaid to generate advanced facial actions in actual time.

[ Osaka University ]

Suzumori Endo Lab, Science Tokyo has developed a self-excited vibration robotic that may adapt its atmosphere. This robotic can transfer straight forward and self-steer round a nook and not using a management system.

[ Paper via IEEE Robotics and Automation magazine in IEEE Xplore ]

PlayBot is an unofficial, experimental accent for Panic Inc.’s Playdate handheld console, which transforms your console into a beautiful little desktop robotic.

[ Guillaume Loquin ] through [ Engadget ]

This can be a massive deal.

[ Ekso Bionics ]

Sanctuary AI introduces new tactile sensors for basic objective robots.

[ Sanctuary AI ]

Developed by the Pudu X-Lab, the PUDU D9 is designed with a human-centric philosophy that embodies the precept of “Born to Serve”. Its totally anthropomorphic design carefully mirrors human capabilities, permitting it to supply sensible help throughout a variety of purposes.

[ Pudu Robotics ]

EngineAI proudly unveils the PM01, our next-gen light-weight, high-dynamic, open-source humanoid robotic platform. With its interactive show, agile movement, and sturdy help for secondary improvement, PM01 is designed to be probably the most versatile instrument for builders worldwide. PM01 is now out there for buy! We invite builders, researchers, and companies to discover the way forward for robotics with PM01. Let’s push the boundaries of what robotics can obtain throughout completely different industries and use instances.

[ EngineAI ]

The third version of CYBATHLON is now a part of historical past. Held from October 25–27, 2024, on the SWISS Enviornment in Zürich, the occasion introduced collectively 67 groups from 24 nations to compete in eight disciplines, showcasing state-of-the-art assistive applied sciences designed to assist full on a regular basis duties.Whereas the profitable groups celebrated their well-deserved victories, the occasion’s true highlight was on the technological breakthroughs and their potential to remodel lives. Equally outstanding was CYBATHLON’s emphasis on fostering social inclusion and empowering individuals with disabilities to beat challenges by way of innovation.

[ Cybathlon ]

[ Aibo ]