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. 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 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 Enjoy today’s videos! Today I learned that “hippotherapy” is not quite what I wanted it to be. The integration of KUKA robots into robotic physiotherapy equipment offers numerous advantages, such as precise motion planning and control of robot-assisted therapy, individualized training, reduced therapist workload and patient progress monitoring. As a result, these robotic therapies can be superior to many conventional physical therapies in restabilizing patients’ limbs. [ Kuka ] MIT engineers are getting in on the robotic ping pong game with a powerful, lightweight design that returns shots with high-speed precision. The new table tennis bot comprises a multijointed robotic arm that is fixed to one end of a ping pong table and wields a standard ping pong paddle. Aided by several high-speed cameras and a high-bandwidth predictive control system, the robot quickly estimates the speed and trajectory of an incoming ball and executes one of several swing types — loop, drive, or chop — to precisely hit the ball to a desired location on the table with various types of spin. [ MIT News ] Pan flipping involves dynamically flipping various objects, such as eggs, burger buns, and meat patties. This demonstrates precision, agility, and the ability to adapt to different challenges in motion control. Our framework enables robots to learn highly dynamic movements. [ GitHub ] via [ Human Centered Autonomy Lab ] Thanks, Haonan! An edible robot made by EPFL scientists leverages a combination of biodegradable fuel and surface tension to zip around the water’s surface, creating a safe – and nutritious – alternative to environmental monitoring devices made from artificial polymers and electronics. [ EPFL ] Traditional quadcopters excel in flight agility and maneuverability, but often face limitations in hovering efficiency and horizontal field of view. Nature-inspired rotary wings, while offering a broader perspective and enhanced hovering efficiency, are hampered by substantial angular momentum restrictions. In this study, we introduce QuadRotary, a novel vehicle that integrates the strengths of both flight characteristics through a reconfigurable design. [ Paper ] via [ Singapore University of Technology and Design ] I like the idea of a humanoid that uses jumping as a primary locomotion mode not because it has to, but because it’s fun. [ PAL Robotics ] I had not realized how much nuance there is to digging stuff up with a shovel. [ Intelligent Motion Laboratory ] A new 10,000 gallon water tank at the University of Michigan will help researchers design, build, and test a variety of autonomous underwater systems that could help robots map lakes and oceans and conduct inspections of ships and bridges. The tank, funded by the Office of Naval Research, allows roboticists to further test projects on robot control and behavior, marine sensing and perception, and multi-vehicle coordination. “The lore is that this helps to jumpstart research, as each testing tank is a living reservoir for all of the knowledge gained from within it,” said Jason Bundoff, Lead Engineer in Research at U-M’s Friedman Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory. “You mix the waters from other tanks to imbue the newly founded tank with all of that living knowledge from the other tanks, which helps to keep the knowledge from being lost.” [ Michigan Robotics ] If you have a humanoid robot and you’re wondering how it should communicate, here’s the answer. [ Pollen ] Whose side are you on, Dusty? Even construction robots should be mindful about siding with the Empire, though- there can be consequences! - YouTube [ Dusty Robotics ] This Michigan Robotics Seminar is by Danfei Xu from Georgia Tech, on “Generative Task and Motion Planning.” Long-horizon planning is fundamental to our ability to solve complex physical problems, from using tools to cooking dinners. Despite recent progress in commonsense-rich foundation models, the ability to do the same is still lacking in robots, particularly with learning-based approaches. In this talk, I will present a body of work that aims to transform Task and Motion Planning—one of the most powerful computational frameworks in robot planning—into a fully generative model framework, enabling compositional generalization in a largely data-driven approach. [ Michigan Robotics ]

May 9, 2025.

Cheaters.

Society is once again left holding the bag

Unpacking OpenAI's latest acquisition of Windsurf.