After January’s Southern California wildfires, the question of burying energy infrastructure to prevent future fires has gained renewed urgency in the state. While the exact cause of the fires remains under investigation, California utilities have spent years undergrounding power lines to mitigate fire risks. Pacific Gas & Electric, which has installed over 1,287 kilometers of underground power lines since 2021, estimates the method is 98 percent effective in reducing ignition threats. Southern California Edison has buried over 40 percent of its high-risk distribution lines, and 63 percent of San Diego Gas & Electric’s regional distribution system is now underground. Still, the exorbitant cost of underground construction leaves much of the U.S. power grid’s 8.8 million kilometers of distribution lines and 180 million utility poles exposed to tree strikes, flying debris, and other opportunities for sparks to cascade into a multi-acre blaze. Recognizing the need for cost-effective undergrounding solutions, the U.S. Department of Energy launched GOPHURRS in January 2024. The three-year program pours $34 million into 12 projects to develop more efficient undergrounding technologies that minimize surface disruptions while supporting medium-voltage power lines. One recipient, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is building a self-propelled robotic sleeve that mimics earthworms’ characteristic peristaltic movement to advance through soil. Awarded $2 million, Case’s “peristaltic conduit” concept hopes to more precisely navigate underground and reduce the risk of unintended damage, such as breaking an existing pipe. Why Is Undergrounding So Expensive? Despite its benefits, undergrounding remains cost-prohibitive at US $1.1 to $3.7 million per kilometer ($1.8 to $6 million per mile) for distribution lines and $3.7 to $62 million per kilometer for transmission lines, according to estimates from California’s three largest utilities. That’s significantly more than overhead infrastructure, which costs $394,000 to $472,000 per kilometer for distribution lines and $621,000 to $6.83 million per kilometer for transmission lines. The most popular method of undergrounding power lines, called open trenching, requires extensive excavation, conduit installation, and backfilling, making it expensive and logistically complicated. And it’s often impractical in dense urban areas where underground infrastructure is already congested with plumbing, fiber optics, and other utilities. Trenchless methods like horizontal directional drilling (HDD) provide a less invasive way to get power lines under roads and railways by creating a controlled, curved bore path that starts at a shallow entry angle, deepens to pass obstacles, and resurfaces at a precise exit point. But HDD is even more expensive than open trenching due to specialized equipment, complex workflows, and the risk of damaging existing infrastructure. Given the steep costs, utilities often prioritize cheaper fire mitigation strategies like trimming back nearby trees and other plants, using insulated conductors, and stepping up routine inspections and repairs. While not as effective as undergrounding, these measures have been the go-to option, largely because faster, cheaper underground construction methods don’t yet exist. Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, who has extensively studied the costs and benefits of undergrounding, says technologies implementing directional drilling improvements “could make undergrounding more practical in urban or densely populated areas where open trenching, and its attendant disruptions to the surrounding infrastructure, could result in untenable costs.” Earthworm-Inspired Robotics for Power Lines In Case’s worm-inspired robot, alternating sections are designed to expand and retract to anchor and advance the machine. This flexible force increases precision and reduces the risk of impacting and breaking pipes. Conventional methods require large turning radii exceeding 300 meters, but Case’s 1.5-meter turning radius will enable the device to flexibly maneuver around existing infrastructure. “We use actuators to change the length and diameter of each segment,” says Kathryn Daltorio, an associate engineering professor and co-director of Case’s Biologically-Inspired Robotics Lab. “The short and fat segments press against the walls of the burrow, then they anchor so the thin segments can advance forward. If two segments aren’t touching the ground but they’re changing length at the same time, your anchors don’t slip and you advance forward.” Daltorio and her colleagues have studied earthworm-inspired robotics for over a decade, originally envisioning the technology for surgical and confined-space applications before recognizing its potential for undergrounding power lines. Case Western Reserve University’s worm-like digging robot can turn faster than other drilling techniques to avoid obstacles.Kathryn Daltorio/Case School of Engineering Traditional HDD relies on pushing a drill head through soil, requiring more force as the bore length grows. Case’s drilling concept generates the force needed for the tip from the peristaltic segments within the borehole. As the path gets longer, only the front segments dig deeper. “If the robot hits something, operators can pull back and change directions, burrowing along the way to complete the circuit by changing the depth,” Daltorio says. Another key difference from HDD is integrated conduit installation. In HDD, the drill goes through the entire length first, and then the power conduit is pulled through. Case’s peristaltic robot lays the conduit while traveling, reducing the overall installation time. Advancements in Burrowing Precision “The peristaltic conduit approach is fascinating [and] certainly seems to be addressing concerns regarding the sheer variety of underground obstacles,” says the University of Florida’s Kury. However, he highlights a larger concern with undergrounding innovations—not just Case’s—in meeting a constantly evolving environment. Today’s underground will look very different in 10 years, as soil profiles shift, trees grow, animals tunnel, and people dig and build. “Underground cables will live for decades, and the sustainability of these technologies depends on how they adapt to this changing structure,” Kury added. Daltorio notes that current undergrounding practices involve pouring concrete around the lines before backfilling to protect them from future excavation, a challenge for existing trenchless methods. But Case’s project brings two major benefits. First, by better understanding borehole design, engineers have more flexibility in choosing conduit materials to match the standards for particular environments. Also, advancements in burrowing precision could minimize the likelihood of future disruptions from human activities. The research team is exploring different ways to reinforce the digging robot’s exterior while it’s underground.Olivia Gatchall Daltorio’s team is collaborating with several partners, with Auburn University in Alabama contributing geotechnical expertise, Stony Brook University in New York running the modeling, and the University of Texas at Austin studying sediment interactions. The project aims to halve undergrounding costs, though Daltorio cautions that it’s too early to commit to a specific cost model. Still, the time-saving potential appears promising. “With conventional approaches, planning, permitting and scheduling can take months,” Daltorio says. “By simplifying the process, it might be a few inspections at the endpoints, a few days of autonomous burrowing with minimal disruption to traffic above, followed by a few days of cleaning, splicing, and inspection.”

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 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! Last year, we unveiled the new Atlas—faster, stronger, more compact, and less messy. We’re designing the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot to do anything and everything, but we get there one step at a time. Our first task is part sequencing, a common logistics task in automotive manufacturing. Discover why we started with sequencing, how we are solving hard problems, and how we’re delivering a humanoid robot with real value. My favorite part is 1:40, where Atlas squats down to pick a part up off the ground. [ Boston Dynamics ] I’m mostly impressed that making contact with that stick doesn’t cause the robot to fall over. [ Unitree ] Professor Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is studying authenticity of artworks co-created by an artist and a robot. Her research lab, Robot Studio, is developing methods to authenticate artwork by analyzing their entire creative process. This is accomplished by using the artist’s biometrics as well as the process of artwork creation, from the first brushstroke to the final painting. This work aims to bring ownership back to artists in the age of generative AI. [ Robot Studio ] at [ University of Michigan ] Hard to believe that RoMeLa has been developing humanoid robots for 20 (!) years. Here’s to 20 more! [ RoMeLa ] at [ University of California Los Angeles ] In this demo, Reachy 2 autonomously sorts healthy and unhealthy foods. No machine learning, no pre-trained AI—just real-time object detection! [ Pollen ] Biological snakes achieve high mobility with numerous joints, inspiring snake-like robots for rescue and inspection. However, conventional designs feature a limited number of joints. This paper presents an underactuated snake robot consisting of many passive links that can dynamically change its joint coupling configuration by repositioning motor-driven joint units along internal rack gears. Furthermore, a soft robot skin wirelessly powers the units, eliminating wire tangling and disconnection risks. [ Paper ] Thanks, Ayato! Tech United Eindhoven is working on quadrupedal soccer robots, which should be fun. [ Tech United ] Autonomous manipulation in everyday tasks requires flexible action generation to handle complex, diverse real-world environments, such as objects with varying hardness and softness. Imitation Learning (IL) enables robots to learn complex tasks from expert demonstrations. However, a lot of existing methods rely on position/unilateral control, leaving challenges in tasks that require force information/control, like carefully grasping fragile or varying-hardness objects. To address these challenges, we introduce Bilateral Control-Based Imitation Learning via Action Chunking with Transformers(Bi-ACT) and”A” “L”ow-cost “P”hysical “Ha”rdware Considering Diverse Motor Control Modes for Research in Everyday Bimanual Robotic Manipulation (ALPHA-α). [ Alpha-Biact ] Thanks, Masato! Powered by UBTECH’s revolutionary framework “BrainNet”, a team of Walker S1 humanoid robots work together to master complex tasks at Zeekr’s Smart Factory! Teamwork makes the dream of robots work. [ UBTECH ] Personal mobile robotic assistants are expected to find wide applications in industry and healthcare. However, manually steering a robot while in motion requires significant concentration from the operator, especially in tight or crowded spaces. This work presents a virtual leash with which a robot can naturally follow an operator. We successfully validate on the ANYmal platform the robustness and performance of our entire pipeline in real-world experiments. [ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ] I do not ever want to inspect a wind turbine blade from the inside. [ Flyability ] Sometimes you can learn more about a robot from an instructional unboxing video than from a fancy demo. [ DEEP Robotics ] Researchers at Penn Engineering have discovered that certain features of AI-governed robots carry security vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were previously unidentified and unknown. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Laboratory, the research aims to address the emerging vulnerability for ensuring the safe deployment of large language models (LLMs) in robotics. [ RoboPAIR ] ReachBot is a joint project between Stanford and NASA to explore a new approach to mobility in challenging environments such as martian caves. It consists of a compact robot body with very long extending arms, based on booms used for extendable antennas. The booms unroll from a coil and can extend many meters in low gravity. In this talk I will introduce the ReachBot design and motion planning considerations, report on a field test with a single ReachBot arm in a lava tube in the Mojave Desert, and discuss future plans, which include the possibility of mounting one or more ReachBot arms equipped with wrists and grippers on a mobile platform – such as ANYMal. [ ReachBot ]

Although they’re a staple of sci-fi movies and conspiracy theories, in real life, tiny flying microbots—weighed down by batteries and electronics—have struggled to get very far. But a new combination of circuits and lightweight solid-state batteries called a “flying batteries” topology could let these bots really take off, potentially powering microbots for hours from a system that weighs milligrams. Microbots could be an important technology to find people buried in rubble or scout ahead in other dangerous situations. But they’re a difficult engineering challenge, says Patrick Mercier, an electrical and computer engineering professor at University of California San Diego. Mercier’s student Zixiao Lin described the new circuit last month at IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). “You have these really tiny robots, and you want them to last as long as possible in the field,” Mercier says. “The best way to do that is to use lithium-ion batteries, because they have the best energy density. But there’s this fundamental problem, where the actuators need much higher voltage than what the battery is capable of providing.” A lithium cell can provide about 4 volts, but piezoelectric actuators for microbots need tens to hundreds of volts, explains Mercier. Researchers, including Mercier’s own group, have developed circuits such as boost converters to pump up the voltage. But because they need relatively large inductors or a bunch of capacitors, these add too much mass and volume, typically taking up about as much room as the battery itself. A new kind of solid-state battery, developed at the French national electronics laboratory CEA-Leti, offered a potential solution. The batteries are a thin-film stack of material, including lithium cobalt oxide and lithium phosphorus oxynitride, made using semiconductor processing technology, and they can be diced up into tiny cells. A 0.33-cubic-millimeter, 0.8-milligram cell can store 20 microampere-hours of charge, or about 60 ampere-hours per liter. (Lithium-ion earbud batteries provide more than 100 A-h/L, but are about 1000 times as large.) A CEA-Leti spinoff based on the technology, Inject Power, in Grenoble, France, is gearing up to begin volume manufacturing in late 2026. Stacking Batteries on the Fly The solid-state battery’s ability to be diced up into tiny cells suggested that researchers could achieve high-voltages using a circuit that needs no capacitors or inductors. Instead, the circuit actively rearranges the connections among many tiny batteries moving them from parallel to serial and back again. Imagine a microdrone that moves by flapping wings attached to a piezoelectric actuator. On its circuit board are a dozen or so of the solid-state microbatteries. Each battery is part of a circuit consisting of four transistors. These act as switches that can dynamically change the connection to that battery’s neighbor so that it is either parallel, so they share the same voltage, or serial, so their voltages are added. At the start, all the batteries are in parallel, delivering a voltage that is nowhere near enough to trigger the actuator. The 2-mm2 IC the UCSD team built then begins opening and closing the transistor switches. This rearranges the connections between the cells so that first two cells are connected serially, then three, then four, and so on. In a few hundredths of a second, the batteries are all connected in series, and the voltage has piled so much charge onto the actuator that it snaps the microbot’s wings down. The IC then unwinds the process, making the batteries parallel again, one at a time. The integrated circuit in the “flying battery” has a total area of 2 square millimeters.Patrick Mercier Adiabatic Charging Why not just connect every battery in series at once instead of going through this ramping up and down scheme? In a word, efficiency. As long as the battery serialization and parallelization is done at a low-enough frequency, the system is charging adiabatically. That is, its power losses are minimized. But it’s what happens after the actuator triggers “where the real magic comes in,” says Mercier. The piezoelectric actuator in the circuit acts like a capacitor, storing energy. “Just like you have regenerative breaking in a car, we can recover some of the energy that we stored in this actuator.” As each battery is unstacked, the remaining energy storage system has a lower voltage than the actuator, so some charge flows back into the batteries. The UCSD team actually tested two varieties of solid-state microbatteries—1.5-volt ceramic version from Tokyo-based TDK (CeraCharge 1704-SSB) and a 4-volt custom design from CEA-Leti. With 1.6 grams of TDK cells, the circuit reached 56.1 volts and delivered a power density of 79 milliwatts per gram, but with 0.014 grams of the custom storage, it maxed out at 68 volts, and demonstrated a power density of 4,500 mW/g. Mercier plans to test the system with robotics partners while his team and CEA-Leti work to improved the flying batteries system’s packaging, miniaturization, and other properties. One important characteristic that needs work is the internal resistance of the microbatteries. “The challenge there is that the more you stack, the higher the series resistance is, and therefore the lower the frequency we can operate the system,” he says. Nevertheless, Mercier seems bullish on flying batteries’ chances of keeping microbots aloft. “Adiabatic charging with charge recovery and no passives: Those are two wins that help increase flight time.”

Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project out of Ron Fearing’s lab at UC Berkeley. The palm-sized spring-loaded jumping robot has gone from barely being able to chain together a few open-loop jumps to mastering landings, bouncing around outside, powering through obstacle courses, and occasionally exploding. What’s quite unusual about Salto is that it’s still an active research project—nine years is an astonishingly long life time for any robot, especially one without any immediately obvious practical applications. But one of Salto’s original creators, Justin Yim (who is now a professor at the University of Illinois), has found a niche where Salto might be able to do what no other robot can: mid-air sampling of the water geysering out of the frigid surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. What makes Enceladus so interesting is that it’s completely covered in a 40 kilometer thick sheet of ice, and underneath that ice is a 10 km-deep global ocean. And within that ocean can be found—we know not what. Diving in that buried ocean is a problem that robots may be able to solve at some point, but in the near(er) term, Enceladus’ south pole is home to over a hundred cryovolcanoes that spew plumes of water vapor and all kinds of other stuff right out into space, offering a sampling opportunity to any robot that can get close enough for a sip. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” —Justin Yim, University of Illinois Yim, along with another Salto veteran Ethan Schaler (now at JPL), have been awarded funding through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to turn Salto into a robot that can perform “Legged Exploration Across the Plume,” or in an only moderately strained backronym, LEAP. LEAP would be a space-ified version of Salto with a couple of major modifications allowing it to operate in a freezing, airless, low-gravity environment. Exploring Enceladus’ Challenging Terrain As best as we can make out from images taken during Cassini flybys, the surface of Enceladus is unfriendly to traditional rovers, covered in ridges and fissures, although we don’t have very much information on the exact properties of the terrain. There’s also essentially no atmosphere, meaning that you can’t fly using aerodynamics, and if you use rockets to fly instead, you run the risk of your exhaust contaminating any samples that you take. “This doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of options for getting around, but one that seems like it might be particularly suitable is jumping,” Yim tells us. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” And with Enceladus’ gravity being just 1/80th that of Earth, Salto’s meter-high jump on Earth would enable it to travel a hundred meters or so on Enceladus, taking samples as it soars through cryovolcano plumes. The current version of Salto does require an atmosphere, because it uses a pair of propellers as tiny thrusters to control yaw and roll. On LEAP, those thrusters would be replaced with an angled pair of reaction wheels instead. To deal with the terrain, the robot will also likely need a foot that can handle jumping from (and landing on) surfaces composed of granular ice particles. LEAP is designed to jump through Enceladus’ many plumes to collect samples, and use the moon’s terrain to direct subsequent jumps.NASA/Justin Yim While the vision is for LEAP to jump continuously, bouncing over the surface and through plumes in a controlled series of hops, sooner or later it’s going to have a bad landing, and the robot has to be prepared for that. “I think one of the biggest new technological developments is going to be multimodal locomotion,” explains Yim. “Specifically, we’d like to have a robust ability to handle falls.” The reaction wheels can help with this in two ways: they offer some protection by acting like a shell around the robot, and they can also operate as a regular pair of wheels, allowing the robot to roll around on the ground a little bit. “With some maneuvers that we’re experimenting with now, the reaction wheels might also be able to help the robot to pop itself back upright so that it can start jumping again after it falls over,” Yim says. A NIAC project like this is about as early-stage as it gets for something like LEAP, and an Enceladus mission is very far away as measured by almost every metric—space, time, funding, policy, you name it. Long term, the idea with LEAP is that it could be an add-on to a mission concept called the Enceladus Orbilander. This US $2.5 billion spacecraft would launch sometime in the 2030s, and spend about a dozen years getting to Saturn and entering orbit around Enceladus. After 1.5 years in orbit, the spacecraft would land on the surface, and spend a further 2 years looking for biosignatures. The Orbilander itself would be stationary, Yim explains, “so having this robotic mobility solution would be a great way to do expanded exploration of Enceladus, getting really long distance coverage to collect water samples from plumes on different areas of the surface.” LEAP has been funded through a nine-month Phase 1 study that begins this April. While the JPL team investigates ice-foot interactions and tries to figure out how to keep the robot from freezing to death, at the University of Illinois Yim will be upgrading Salto with self-righting capability. Honestly, it’s exciting to think that after so many years, Salto may have finally found an application where it offers the actual best solution for solving this particular problem of low-gravity mobility for science.

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 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! A bioinspired robot developed at EPFL can change shape to alter its own physical properties in response to its environment, resulting in a robust and efficient autonomous vehicle as well as a fresh approach to robotic locomotion. [ Science Robotics ] via [ EPFL ] A robot CAN get up this way, but SHOULD a robot get up this way? [ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ] I’m impressed with the capabilities here, but not the use case. There are already automated systems that do this much faster, much more reliably, and almost certainly much more cheaply. So, probably best to think of this as more of a technology demo than anything with commercial potential. [ Figure ] NEO Gamma is the next generation of home humanoids designed and engineered by 1X Technologies. The Gamma series includes improvements across NEO’s hardware and AI, featuring a new design that is deeply considerate of life at home. The future of Home Humanoids is here. You all know by now not to take this video too seriously, but I will say that an advantage of building a robot like this for the home is that realistically it can spend most of its time sitting down and (presumably) charging. [ 1X Technologies ] This video compilation showcases novel aerial and underwater drone platforms and an ultra-quiet electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) propeller. These technologies were developed by the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory (AVFL) at Texas A&M University and Harmony Aeronautics, an AVFL spin-off company. [ AVFL ] Yes! More research like this please; legged robots (of all sizes) are TOO STOMPY. [ ETH Zurich ] Robosquirrel! [ BBC ] via [ Laughing Squid ] By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study from researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies. [ Columbia University, School of Engineering and Applied Science ] If I was asking my robot to do a front flip for the first(ish) time, my face would probably look like the poor guy at 0:25. But it worked! [ EngineAI ] *We kindly request that all users refrain from making any dangerous modifications or using the robots in a hazardous manner. A hazardous manner? Like teaching it martial arts...? [ Unitree ] Explore SLAMSpoof—a cutting-edge project by Keio-CSG that demonstrates how LiDAR spoofing attacks can compromise SLAM systems. In this video, we explore how spoofing attacks can compromise the integrity of SLAM systems, review the underlying methodology, and discuss the potential security implications for robotics and autonomous navigation. Whether you’re a robotics enthusiast, a security researcher, or simply curious about emerging technologies, this video offers valuable insights into both the risks and the innovations in the field. [ SLAMSpoof ] Thanks, Kentaro! Sanctuary AI, a company developing physical AI for general purpose robots, announced the integration of new tactile sensor technology into its Phoenix general purpose robots. The integration enables teleoperation pilots to more effectively leverage the dexterity capabilities of general purpose robots to achieve complex, touch-driven tasks with precision and accuracy. [ Sanctuary AI ] I don’t know whether it’s the shape or the noise or what, but this robot pleases me. [ University of Pennsylvania, Sung Robotics Lab ] Check out the top features of the new Husky A300 - the next evolution of our rugged and customizable mobile robotic platform. Husky A300 offers superior performance, durability, and flexibility, empowering robotics researchers and innovators to tackle the most complex challenges in demanding environments. [ Clearpath Robotics ] The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will drill deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two meters deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures. [ European Space Agency ] AI has been improving by leaps and bounds in recent years, and a string of new models can generate answers that almost feel as if they came from a person reasoning through a problem. But is AI actually close to reasoning like humans can? IBM distinguished scientist Murray Campbell chats with IBM Fellow Francesca Rossi about her time as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). They discuss the state of AI, what modern reasoning models are actually doing, and whether we’ll see models that reason like we do. [ IBM Research ]