Watch: Cyborg Beetles, Open Source Humanoids, More

Video Friday is your weekly collection of superior robotics movies, collected by your folks at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We additionally put up a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics occasions for the following few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, SOUTH 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, CHINA

ACTUATE 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO

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

Get pleasure from at this time’s movies!

Frequent beetles geared up with microchip backpacks might at some point be used to assist search and rescue crews find survivors inside hours as a substitute of days following disasters resembling constructing and mine collapses. The College of Queensland’s Dr. Thang Vo-Doan and Analysis Assistant Lachlan Fitzgerald have demonstrated they’ll remotely information darkling beetles (Zophobas morio) fitted with the packs through online game controllers.

[ Paper ] through [ University of Queensland ]

Thanks, Thang!

That is our newest work about six-doF hand-based teleoperation for omnidirectional aerial robots, which exhibits an intuitive teleoperation system for superior aerial robotic. This work has been introduced in 2025 IEEE/RSJ Worldwide Convention on Clever Robots and Programs (IROS 2025).

[ DRAGON Lab ]

Thanks, Moju!

Fairly certain we’ve seen this LimX humanoid earlier than, and we’re seeing it once more proper now, however hey, the primary reveal is simply forward!

[ LimX Dynamics ]

Thanks, Jinyan!

Soft robot arms use tender supplies and constructions to imitate the passive compliance of organic arms that bend and lengthen. Right here, we present how counting on patterning constructions as a substitute of inherent materials properties permits tender robotic arms to stay compliant whereas constantly transmitting torque to their setting. We display a soft robotic arm constructed from a pair of mechanical metamaterials that act as compliant constant-velocity joints.

[ Paper ] through [ Transformative Robotics Lab ]

Promoting a platform is actually laborious, however I hope Ok-Scale can succeed with their open source humanoid.

[ K-Scale ]

MIT CSAIL researchers mixed GenAI and a physics simulation engine to refine robot designs. The outcome: a machine that out-jumped a robotic designed by people.

[ MIT News ]

ARMstrong Dex is a human-scale dual-arm hydraulic robotic below growth on the Korea Atomic Power Analysis Institute (KAERI) for disaster response purposes. Designed with dimensions much like an grownup human, it combines human-equivalent attain and dexterity with pressure output that exceeds human bodily capabilities, enabling it to carry out excessive heavy-duty duties in hazardous environments.

[ Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute ]

This can be a demonstration of in-hand object rotation with Torobo Hand. Torobo Hand is modeled in simulation, and a management coverage is skilled inside a number of hours utilizing large-scale parallel reinforcement learning in Isaac Sim. The skilled coverage could be executed with none extra coaching in each a special simulator (MuJoCo) and on the actual Torobo Hand.

[ Tokyo Robotics ]

Since 2005, Ekso Bionics has been creating and manufacturing exoskeleton bionic devices that may be strapped on as wearable robots to boost the power, mobility, and endurance of troopers, sufferers, and employees. These robots have quite a lot of purposes within the medical, navy, industrial, and client markets, serving to rehabilitation sufferers stroll once more and employees protect their power.

[ Ekso Bionics ]

Sponsored by Raytheon, an RTX enterprise, the 2025 east coast Autonomous Automobile Competitors was held at XElevate in Northern Virginia. Scholar Engineering Groups from 5 universities participated in a two-semester challenge to design, develop, combine, and compete two autonomous vehicles that would determine, talk, and ship a medical equipment with the very best accuracy and time.

[ RTX ]

This panel is from the Humanoids Summit in London: “Investing within the Humanoids Robotics Ecosystem—a VC Perspective.”

[ Humanoids Summit ]