February 21, 2024.

OpenAI made major revisions to their Model Spec.

AI Engineering resources 02-21-25

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. 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! We’re introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics. This is moderately impressive; my favorite part is probably the hand-offs and that extra little bit of HRI with what we’d call eye contact if these robots had faces. But keep in mind that you’re looking at close to best case for robotic manipulation, and that if the robots had been given the bag instead of well-spaced objects on a single color background, or if the fridge had a normal human amount of stuff in it, they might be having a much different time of it. Also, is it just me, or is the sound on this video very weird? Like, some things make noise, some things don’t, and the robots themselves occasionally sound more like someone just added in some ‘soft actuator sound’ or something. Also also, I’m of a suspicious nature, and when there is an abrupt cut between ‘robot grasps door’ and ‘robot opens door,’ I assume the worst. [ Figure ] Researchers at EPFL have developed a highly agile flat swimming robot. This robot is smaller than a credit card, and propels on the water surface using a pair of undulating soft fins. The fins are driven at resonance by artificial muscles, allowing the robot to perform complex maneuvers. In the future, this robot can be used for monitoring water quality or help with measuring fertilizer concentrations in rice fields [ Paper ] via [ Science Robotics ] I don’t know about you, but I always dance better when getting beaten with a stick. [ Unitree Robotics ] This is big news, people: Sweet Bite Ham Ham, one of the greatest and most useless robots of all time, has a new treat. All yours for about $100, overseas shipping included. [ Ham Ham ] via [ Robotstart ] MagicLab has announced the launch of its first generation self-developed dexterous hand product, the MagicHand S01. The MagicHand S01 has 11 degrees of freedom in a single hand. The MagicHand S01 has a hand load capacity of up to 5 kilograms, and in work environments, can carry loads of over 20 kilograms. [ MagicLab ] Thanks, Ni Tao! No, I’m not creeped out at all, why? [ Clone Robotics ] Happy 40th Birthday to the MIT Media Lab! Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has provided a home for interdisciplinary research, transformative technologies, and innovative approaches to solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary year, we’re looking ahead to decades more of imagining, designing, and inventing a future in which everyone has the opportunity to flourish. [ MIT Media Lab ] While most soft pneumatic grippers that operate with a single control parameter (such as pressure or airflow) are limited to a single grasping modality, this article introduces a new method for incorporating multiple grasping modalities into vacuum-driven soft grippers. This is achieved by combining stiffness manipulation with a bistable mechanism. Adjusting the airflow tunes the energy barrier of the bistable mechanism, enabling changes in triggering sensitivity and allowing swift transitions between grasping modes. This results in an exceptional versatile gripper, capable of handling a diverse range of objects with varying sizes, shapes, stiffness, and roughness, controlled by a single parameter, airflow, and its interaction with objects. [ Paper ] via [ BruBotics ] Thanks, Bram! In this article, we present a design concept, in which a monolithic soft body is incorporated with a vibration-driven mechanism, called Leafbot. This proposed investigation aims to build a foundation for further terradynamics study of vibration-driven soft robots in a more complicated and confined environment, with potential applications in inspection tasks. [ Paper ] via [ IEEE Transactions on Robots ] We present a hybrid aerial-ground robot that combines the versatility of a quadcopter with enhanced terrestrial mobility. The vehicle features a passive, reconfigurable single wheeled leg, enabling seamless transitions between flight and two ground modes: a stable stance and a dynamic cruising configuration. [ Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory ] I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this trick performed by a robot with soft fingers before. [ Paper ] There are a lot of robots involved in car manufacturing. Like, a lot. [ Kawasaki Robotics ] Steve Willits shows us some recent autonomous drone work being done at the AirLab at CMU’s Robotics Institute. [ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ] Somebody’s got to test all those luxury handbags and purses. And by somebody, I mean somerobot. [ Qb Robotics ] Do not trust people named Evan. [ Tufts University Human-Robot Interaction Lab ] Meet the Mind: MIT Professor Andreea Bobu. [ MIT ]

When people talk about using language models effectively they mainly talk about prompting: sharing great prompts, or lists of tips for…