Manus Late last week, a new Chinese AI debuted to massive buzz: Manus, a general-purpose AI agent.

In the last months, the practice of getting a LLM to build your entire program for you (via Cursor, or Copilot, or just asking ChatGPT) has…

Machine learning for software engineers 3-14-25

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. European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, 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 London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDON IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX 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 Enjoy today’s videos! In 2026, a JAXA spacecraft is heading to the Martian moon Phobos to chuck a little rover at it. [ DLR ] Happy International Women’s Day! UBTECH humanoid robots Walker S1 deliver flowers to incredible women and wish all women a day filled with love, joy and empowerment. [ UBTECH ] TRON 1 demonstrates Multi-Terrain Mobility as a versatile biped mobility platform, empowering innovators to push the boundaries of robotic locomotion, unlocking limitless possibilities in algorithm validation and advanced application development. [ LimX Dynamics ] This is indeed a very fluid running gait, and the flip is also impressive, but I’m wondering what sort of actual value these skills add, you know? Or even what kind of potential value they’re leading up to. [ EngineAI ] Designing trajectories for manipulation through contact is challenging as it requires reasoning of object & robot trajectories as well as complex contact sequences simultaneously. In this paper, we present a novel framework for simultaneously designing trajectories of robots, objects, and contacts efficiently for contact-rich manipulation. [ Paper ] via [ Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories ] Thanks, Yuki! Running robot, you say? I’m thinking it might actually be a power walking robot. [ MagicLab ] Wake up, Reachy! [ Pollen ] Robot vacuum docks have gotten large enough that we’re now all supposed to pretend that we’re happy they’ve become pieces of furniture. [ Roborock ] The SeaPerch underwater robot, a “do-it-yourself” maker project, is a popular educational tool for middle and high school students. Developed by MIT Sea Grant, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) teaches hand fabrication processes, electronics techniques, and STEM concepts, while encouraging exploration of structures, electronics, and underwater dynamics. [ MIT Sea Grant ] I was at this RoboGames match! In 2010! And now I feel old! [ Hardcore Robotics ] Daniel Simu with a detailed breakdown of his circus acrobat partner robot. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, make sure and check out 3:30. [ Daniel Simu ]