IEEE Spectrum
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.Humanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHCoRL 2026: 9–12 November 2026, AUSTINEnjoy today’s videos! NVIDIA just paid US$12.9 billion dollars for the company that acquired Pollen Robotics, and this must be why.Meet Microduck. 🦆 The 25 cm, 780 g robot that waddles, falls, gets back up, and learns new tricks.Packed inside: 15 degrees of freedom, a front camera, an 8x8 LiDAR, two IMUs, mics, a speaker, NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.Out of the box, Microduck already walks, sits, crouches, roller skates, picks up objects with its articulated beak, and recovers from falls on its own. Drive it with a game controller, plug in accessories and NFC tagged objects, run autonomous behaviors, or gather several Microducks for races and football. Software fully open source. Ready for whatever you throw at it. On pre-order for an astonishingly low $399, and ships before Christmas.[ Microduck ]Thanks, Matthieu!If you’ve chosen to ignore all of the earlier DARPA Lift Challenge videos that we’ve posted, now you can get all caught up in about five minutes.[ DARPA ]You had me at “54-gram robot that out jumps a kangaroo.”[ IEEE Transactions on Robotics ]Sometimes, you just need a video like this.Most fish-inspired robots are built for one size and one job, so scaling them up or down usually means starting from scratch. A team of engineers says it’s found a way to solve that problem. They’ve unveiled ScaFi, a robot modeled on fish like cod and mackerel.[ New York University ]Thanks, Leah!Martin writes, “We’re a small robotics team in Czechia, Europe building practical hardware around the Unitree G1. Here’s a short demo of our lightweight gripper picking up a strawberry; the gripper weighs under 200 g and is designed for simple, sensitive manipulation without adding a complex multi-finger hand.[ Sentio Robotix ]Thanks, Martin!Hybrid visual markers that are useful for both cameras and lidar is a neat idea.[ Hello Robot ]Thanks, Binit!EmoLo brings emotion-inspired expressive locomotion to Open Duck Mini V2, a low-cost open-source bipedal robot inspired by Disney’s BDX droids. With a single reinforcement learning policy, the robot can generate distinct walking styles associated with different emotional expressions, showing how characterful and expressive whole-body motion can be achieved on an accessible robotic platform.[ EmoLo ]Thanks, Masato!If it’s possible for a robot with a completely immobile face to look frustrated, this robot absolutely does starting at three minutes into this video.[ DLR RM ]Noble Machines deployed its first general-purpose robots to a Fortune Global 500 industrial customer within 18 months of the company’s launch and met its first delivery milestone, made possible by its AI-driven whole-body control and industry-leading end-to-end autonomy.[ Noble Machines ]We’ve reduced the time it takes to go from physical prompt → robot behavior. The faster anyone can teach a robot to do something new, the easier it becomes to scale physical work.[ Generalist ]I know this video is mostly a gimmick, but I would totally rent a moderately heavy lift quadruped for a couple of days to help with a move.[ DEEP Robotics ]Is taking two minutes to excellently fold a shirt too long, or do we even care how long it takes, as long as it’s a robot doing it?[ Tokyo Robotics ]TRON 2 × Wuji Hand 2 handles TCM pharmacy work: picking, weighing, grinding and packaging. The omnidirectional base frees the hands, while precise gripping and dual-arm force control enable mid-air operations.[ LimX Dynamics ]Person who genuinely knows things about robots, Christian Hubicki, explains everything about robots smashing into walls.[ Christian Hubicki ]
IEEE Spectrum
This article is brought to you by Ollobot.From about 2017, individuals began to truly connect with the initial wave of companion robots. These devices had personality, moved around, joked, and answered when you spoke to them. Most early companion robots, however, were still limited by simple voice-command interactions and narrow functionality. Once the novelty wore off, many ended up sitting unused on shelves. As some of those companies went out of business and turned off their servers, many owners likened it to losing a pet.What Ollobot describes as “gentle intelligence” is a useful way to think about where the serious work in this category is going. Not toward more powerful assistants, but toward more present ones.The problem companion robots were trying to solveLoneliness is not a niche issue. According to one study, nearly one out of three elderly adults resides alone, meaning they do not have daily companions. Research also shows that children whose parents have migrated for work, leaving them in the care of relatives, were 2.5 times more likely to experience loneliness than children whose parents remain with them. Among working adults living alone in urban environments, similar patterns of social isolation emerge, even if they are less visible.Over the years, technology has time and again attempted to solve this problem via video calls, smart speakers, and messaging apps without much success. Those tools are geared towards communication between people that already have relationships. They do not create presence. They schedule it. That is the gap that a new generation of AI companion robots is being engineered to fill.Today’s AI robots are differentToday’s companion robots are not just cute and cuddly. They are designed with psychological research, clinical insight and long-term interaction models to be truly useful in real homes.Three fundamental shifts define the current generation:From reactive to proactive response. Older robots relied on you speaking to them, but modern robots monitor a room with cameras, microphones, and surroundings sensors to initiate interactions without your input, and they can pick up on your emotions.From function-oriented to emotion-oriented design. The original pitch for companion robots was about what they could do. The question driving the serious work now is how they make you feel, which is a harder engineering problem and a more honest framing of what the product is actually for.From standalone hardware to connected ecosystems. Leading brands are creating platforms rather than devices with software included as a built-in layer and remote access from the beginning.The global AI companion market size was valued at US $36.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from $48 billion in 2026 to $318 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent from 2026 to 2033.Three household scenarios and interaction modelsOllobot’s advanced AI family companion robot OlloNi SS1 addresses a number of gaps in what existing technology offers.Elderly individuals living alone. The combination of proactive interaction, fall detection, and persistent presence addresses both safety and companionship without the social overhead of asking family members to check in more frequently.Children in households where parents work far from home. The SS1 functions as a consistent companion that already knows a child, their preferences, their moods, and their routines. The remote connection features allow parents to stay present without requiring a scheduled call, and the life recording system gives them a passive window into their child’s days that feels less clinical than a monitoring camera.Single professionals living alone in cities. The SS1 adapts to daily routines, builds up a preference model over time, and provides ambient social presence without demands. OlloNi SS1 adapts to daily routines over time.OllobotWhat OlloNi SS1 is doing differently?Ollobot’s goal in building intelligent companion robots is to address the gaps in technology and capability, using innovation not to automate tasks but to fill emotional voids.Much of the robotics industry has historically pursued human imitation — machines that speak, look, or behave like people. The SS1 is instead designed around familiarity and long-term coexistence rather than realism.The system integrates multiple subsystems operating in parallel, including visual perception, audio processing, mobility control, and interaction management. It is equipped with a multi-chip AI 4K vision module capable of facial recognition and motion tracking. One small but revealing detail is the inclusion of a physical privacy cover for the camera — a mechanical solution to concerns that software settings alone may not fully resolve. OlloNi SS1 can actively integrate into family activities, and it can autonomously move closer to capture memorable moments or reposition itself to remain engaged in ongoing interactions.OllobotThe robot supports advanced mobility across multiple indoor surfaces, including wooden floors, ceramic tiles, and low-pile carpets, with slope climbing capability up to 3.5 degrees. Rather than remaining in a fixed location, it can move naturally throughout the home to stay close to household members as daily activities unfold. For example, the OlloNi SS1 may greet family members when they arrive home, follow an older adult from the living room to the kitchen while continuing a conversation, remind a child to take a study break after a prolonged period of inactivity, or notice that someone appears unusually quiet and gently check in. During family activities, it can autonomously move closer to capture memorable moments or reposition itself to remain engaged in ongoing interactions.The robot continues to evolve over time, with over-the-air updates that deliver new features, performance improvements, and AI enhancementsIt also incorporates fall detection with optimized accuracy for safety monitoring scenarios. A 6-microphone array enables omnidirectional voice pickup with an effective voice capture range of up to 5 meters, supporting reliable wake-word detection and far-field interaction.To support continuous companionship, much of the robot’s AI processing takes place directly on the device through its “heart module” architecture, with 16 GB of memory and 64 GB of local storage. This enables the system to retain household memories, recognize familiar faces, and respond with lower latency, making interactions feel more natural even during everyday routines.Because companion robots are expected to remain available throughout the day rather than only during brief interactions, the SS1 is designed for extended operation, offering up to 12 hours of standby time and around 5 hours of active interaction on a single charge. This allows it to accompany users through meals, conversations, playtime, and other daily activities without frequent interruptions. To support engaging interactions, much of the robot’s AI processing takes place directly on the device through its “heart module” architecture.OllobotLike the relationships it is designed to build, the robot continues to evolve over time. Running on Android OS with over-the-air (OTA) updates, the system continuously receives new features, performance improvements, and AI enhancements, allowing its capabilities to grow alongside the household it serves.The robot’s behavioral model also improves over time. Rather than reacting to isolated commands, it attempts to establish a baseline understanding of household routines and individuals. Changes in behavior — prolonged quietness, unusual inactivity, or emotional cues — become triggers for interaction.Presence instead of utilitySeveral features in the OlloNi SS1 illustrate this emphasis on presence and continuity in its interactions.The system can identify different household members, including pets, and adapt responses accordingly. Remote communication features allow family members to connect through the device without treating every interaction like a scheduled call. Environmental sensors support contextual reminders tied to weather or room conditions.Its “2+1” multi-display configuration is also designed around emotional communication. Two circular side displays function as expressive “emotional eyes,” while a separate primary display handles information and structured interaction. The separation allows emotional signaling and functional communication to operate independently, creating more intuitive nonverbal interaction even when no dialogue is taking place. The robot’s behavioral model improves over time. Rather than reacting to isolated commands, it attempts to establish a baseline understanding of household routines and individuals.OllobotThe SS1 also includes an automated life-recording system built on facial recognition and behavioral-event detection that can capture moments such as laughter, physical closeness, or group interaction automatically. An integrated AI vlog engine can then organize those moments into edited short-form videos with automated sequencing and soundtrack generation. The design intent is to preserve spontaneous domestic moments without requiring active documentation behavior from users.An integrated AI vlog engine can organize recorded moments into edited short-form videos with automated sequencing and soundtrack generationVisual data is processed primarily on the device through the SS1’s on-device AI architecture, with household memories stored locally and managed within Ollobot’s proprietary ecosystem instead of being shared with third-party smart home platforms. Access to recordings and live feeds is restricted to authorized users through the companion app, while encrypted communication helps protect data during remote access. Users also retain direct control over recording preferences, and the physical camera privacy cover provides an additional hardware-level safeguard whenever visual monitoring is not desired. Learn more at ollobot.com.Remote communication is similarly structured around persistence rather than transaction. Traditional video calls are episodic and screen-bound; the SS1 instead acts as a continuously present interface embedded inside the household environment. Through autonomous mobility, environmental awareness, and persistent household memory, remote family members interact with an ongoing domestic context.The larger shift to “gentle intelligence”Ultimately, gentle intelligence is not about making robots behave more like humans — it is about helping them fit more naturally into human lives. Each OlloNi SS1 unit develops a unique behavioral profile based on its household. Two units running in different homes for a year will have become meaningfully different from each other, shaped by the specific people, habits, and rhythms of where they live.That kind of long-term personalization is what early companion robots never had. It is also what makes the difference between a product that ends up on a shelf and one that actually earns its place in a home.Learn more at ollobot.com.
IEEE Spectrum
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.Humanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHCoRL 2026: 9–12 November 2026, AUSTINEnjoy today’s videos! This is very, very cool. But I’m trying to think of what the commercial use case will be, you know? I guess, high speed, incredibly dangerous package delivery to second-floor windows or something...?[ Unitree ]Humans have a remarkable ability to perform new physical skills from only one or a few examples. Our latest robot foundation model, GEN-1.5, exhibits the beginnings of that same ability: It can learn a new task in seconds, from a single example, without gradient updates or fine-tuning. It displays broad capabilities across one-shot and few-shots learning from demonstration, as well as zero-shot physical generalization. Although the tasks are simple and short-horizon, this is the first model we know for which one-shot and few-shots learning of physical skills have emerged at scale. We view these results as a significant step toward our mission of building general intelligence for the physical world.I will make the cautionary point that for many of these “the model figured it out” tasks, the blog post can only say that there was no relevant pretraining data “to the best of our knowledge.”[ Generalist ]BeanBot is a robot inspired by Mexican jumping beans, and I need say no more.[ IIT ]As a professional bagpiper who definitely pays very close attention to whatever that annoying tapping noise is coming from the back of the band, I can attest to this group of robot drummers being absolutely top-notch.[ AgileX Robotics ]What does it take for an aerial robot to move through a sequence of arbitrary poses—fast, precisely, and continuously? Rather than teaching the robot a behavior from data, we asked how far a first-principles analytical model could take us. Through a collaboration between the AIMS Group at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and DRAGON Lab at the University of Tokyo, we developed the first sequential-convex-programming-based trajectory-optimization framework for generalized multirotors, covering both conventional and omnidirectional platforms.[ DRAGON Lab ]Thanks, Moju!This is a nifty idea that adapts a kind of interface frequently used for robot training and uses it for human training instead.[ MIT ]Gravis Robotics brings robotic intelligence to heavy construction machines. Our retrofit kit, the Gravis Rack, turns off-the-shelf hydraulic machines into robots. Cameras, lidar, and onboard compute lets your machine see and understand its surroundings, and learning-based control lets it work close to its limits, moving more dirt with full, fast cycles.[ Gravis Robotics ]Robust brachiation requires precise hand movements to grasp and release bars together with highly coordinated whole-body motion. To address this challenge, we propose a learning-based framework centered on waypoint-guided reinforcement learning (WGRL). WGRL guides the end effector through waypoints while allowing RL to explore and generate dynamic whole-body behaviors. With this approach, the learned policy demonstrated robust brachiation across diverse courses with different bar heights, spacings, and orientations in sim-to-sim experiments. In the real world, our life-size dual-arm robot successfully traversed four consecutive bars.[ EVARL ]Thanks, Ayumu!Well, here’s a different approach to welding in shipyards with robots.[ Kawasaki ]We should have a lot more robots in agriculture, if only they’d lettuce.[ Flexiv ]We’ve all had refs like these.[ PHYBOT ]I got stuck after the first 15 seconds of this video trying to imagine what any of these home humanoids would usefully do if they dropped a glass.[ Zhejiang Humanoid ]Shakey the Robot doesn’t get enough love.[ SRI ]This work introduces a novel approach to physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) by leveraging the joint torque sensors of standard collaborative robots. By mounting a passive, uninstrumented plexiglass touchpad to the robot’s flange, we transform the robot into a handwriting-based input interface.[ TS-Robotics ]
IEEE Spectrum
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.Microspines are one of many ways to enable robots to latch onto surfaces like walls and ceilings. Now roboticists in Canada are using the mini spikes to get drones to land on a more challenging, remote surface: icebergs.Like a spider, the Ice Dart can land on and latch onto steep, slippery surfaces such as icebergs and glaciers—an increasingly useful capability as activity in the Arctic increases. The drone can grip onto icy slopes of nearly 60 degrees, which is way beyond what most humans could manage without special equipment. In a recent study, researchers explained how they developed the Ice Dart drone with a special landing gear that absorbs the impact of a hard landing while holding the drone in place with tiny spines that penetrate and grip the ice. Published in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics, the study describes how the Ice Dart was able to land on icebergs and a glacier in southeast Iceland. Tests took place amid persistent winds and temperatures of 0 to 10 °C along the ruggedly breathtaking Fjallsjökull (pronounced “FYATLS-yuh-kuutl”) glacier, which empties into a lagoon filled with icebergs. The drone was able to successfully perch at speeds of up to three meters per second and slopes of up to 58 degrees, with a success rate of 100 percent even in wind speeds of 30 km/h.The researchers were motivated by a desire to allow drones to land almost anywhere in the world, since the availability of safe landing sites is one of the primary limitations on where and how drones can operate. The researchers already have a history of developing drones that can land on fast-moving trucks as well as trailers, boats, and steep roofs. Ice Perching“The ability to land rather than hover can fundamentally change how drones are used in the field,” says Alexis Lussier Desbiens, a professor of engineering at Université de Sherbrooke, in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, who coauthored the study. “Once a drone has landed, energy consumption drops dramatically, allowing much longer observation periods with a small aircraft. The drone also becomes completely silent and can even reduce or eliminate its thermal and RF signature by shutting down major onboard systems.”Landing on icebergs specifically allows drones to monitor them for days or months, producing more detailed observation than a quick aerial surveillance mission. This could simplify iceberg tracking compared to methods such as helicopter deployment, dropped instruments, or dart-like tracking devices, and provide another data layer to satellite and ship-based iceberg detection, according to the researchers. It could also provide a means of monitoring icebergs that are otherwise untrackable.With its carbon-fiber construction, the Ice Dart drone weighs just 2.65 kg and has four legs arranged in an X shape, attached to its body with a pivot joint. Used in the group’s previous drone research, this landing gear disperses energy to reduce impact and overcomes multiple engineering challenges. The friction shock absorbers consist of 38 disks that generate friction torque as the legs move up and down upon impact. This lowers the UAV’s center of mass and helps spread out the kinetic energy of landing, but the real trick comes in the form of two retractable spines on each foot—one for uphill and one for downhill grip. The larger spine engages on the more heavily loaded downhill feet, and the smaller, thinner spine engages more easily on the uphill feet, even under very low loads on steep slopes. The spines only penetrate the ice as the suspension compresses, generating grip and protecting them from high-impact forces. “The inspiration for the retractable spines in the feet came from looking at a cat’s claws and their ability to deploy only when needed,” says Isaac Tunney, a Université de Sherbrooke postdoc in mechanical and robotics engineering who was lead author of the paper. “I wanted to create feet that would naturally and passively engage their spines in the ice at the right moment, regardless of the drone’s orientation, the surface geometry, or the ice conditions.”Arctic SurveillanceWilliam D. Harcourt is a researcher at the University of Aberdeen, in Aberdeen, Scotland, focused on Arctic glaciers, snow, and sea ice, as well as the use of remote sensing and machine learning techniques. Harcourt was not involved in the study, but he sees several potentially interesting applications of the technology. “Near the front of tidewater glaciers, these systems could enable measurement of stress-strain and help us understand calving processes,” says Harcourt. “Drones can be used as a mobile GPS, literally acting as a receiver on the ice, but the system would need to solve tilting issues as 3D change measurements usually required the antenna to be horizontal. However, if these problems can be solved, it could be used to track iceberg movements.”The researchers want to continue developing the Ice Dart technology for real-world applications, including autonomous landing site selection and an emergency takeoff capability to be used if an iceberg rolls over or breaks apart. This August, the drone will be deployed during a Canadian Arctic mission to land on icebergs, collect data, and help validate ship-based iceberg-detection systems.
IEEE Spectrum
Humanoids desperately need to stop making YouTube videos and get a job already, and Persona AI is one of the few humanoid companies which seems to be entirely focused on making that happen. Persona’s approach has been to carefully select a job that is economically viable for robots right now, and they’ve found one that was also the job of one of the very first industrial robots ever sold: welding.IEEE Spectrum first spoke with Persona two years ago, shortly after it was founded by Nic Radford and Jerry Pratt. Radford led NASA JSC’s Valkyrie program back in the day and was also the founder of Nauticus Robotics, while Pratt led IHMC’s DARPA Robotics Challenge team before spending a couple of years as CTO of Figure. The Challenge of HumanoidsAs of our first conversation in 2024, Persona had committed to building an economically viable humanoid, but they hadn’t yet figured out where their focus was going to be. “We were all over the place,” Radford says. “Warehousing, automotive, we probably even mentioned the home.” These are the same environments with the same sorts of potential applications that basically every other humanoid robotics company is attempting to make economically viable, and despite an ever more exhaustive number of demonstrations, so far none have succeeded at any sort of useful scale. The challenge for Persona, and really for every robotics company, is that it’s not enough that you have a robot that is simply capable of doing a task. It’s also not enough that your robot can do that task in a way that is efficient and reliable and safe. What’s required is that your robot can make money for both you and your customer. Most humanoid companies seek to achieve this by targeting baseline “unskilled” human labor.Persona did not see economic viability in the unskilled labor approach, Radford says. “We started forming this thesis around skilled trades and tool usage.” Persona is targeting much more expensive skilled labor with its robots, and the reason why this is feasible is because their entry point focuses on the kind of skills that robots are especially good at. “I like to call it ‘last-mover advantage.’ We’ve seen everything that everybody’s doing, and we’ve decided that there’s a different way.” Persona AI/YouTube A Humanoid for Shipyard WeldingThe first task that Persona’s humanoid is focusing on is welding—using a handheld tool to connect one piece of metal to another. “Tool use is pretty difficult,” Pratt says. “And we want to use the same tools that humans do, which makes it more difficult.” That difficulty is offset somewhat by the fact that Persona’s humanoid will first focus on making long, linear welds that are relatively uncomplicated. “This is not the hardest style of weld,” Radford says, “but in shipbuilding you need a lot of them—hundreds of kilometers of linear welds per ship.”Currently, Persona has two public partnerships: one with HD Hyundai, which is the world’s largest shipbuilder, and the other with POSCO, the third-largest steel producer in the world, both in Korea. Persona declined to get into detail, but Radford says that broadly speaking, the company is interested in customers who can support ‘hundreds’ of robots per location.Shipyard welding is an enticing application for Persona because there is a deficit of skilled (and highly paid) workers, it’s taxing physical labor, and it’s a comparatively easy skill for a humanoid to learn.The welding process is skilled in a very robot-friendly way. Because you can only weld as fast as metal melts, the top speed for the task is an easily manageable centimeter per second. And making a high quality weld involves millimeter-scale repeated motions, which robots excel at, especially over long periods of time—whereas humans tend to get tired or bored. Pratt expects that for these uncomplicated welds, performing on-par with humans—if not eventually better—will be achievable soon.Shipyards make a compelling case for a humanoid with legs, as opposed to a more stable wheeled base. “These open-air shipyards are a couple hundred meters long, with horizontal and vertical spars you have to step over all the time,” says Radford. “You’ve got to work on the ground, overhead, and through portholes.” Persona considered other form factors, like four legs (or even more), but determined a two-legged robot would be the least disruptive to existing shipyard rhythms.The Economic Viability of HumanoidsDeploying their robots in shipyards specifically brings additional advantages for Persona. The safety concerns that come with bipedal robots—such as potentially falling over on a human worker—are lessened because a shipyard environment is staffed with workers who are trained to work around potentially dangerous industrial equipment. The company is also less sensitive to competitive pricing because no other company is pursuing the use case. “We’re now in an industry where the value added by our robot can be high enough that we don’t have to cut corners on quality and features in order to reduce the price,” says Pratt. “With a robot for the home, for example, there would be a lot of competition and a ton of price pressure.”The added value for shipbuilders, explains Radford, doesn’t come from replacing humans with robots. “Our current partnerships are running at a significant backlog, and they’re labor-constrained. So we want to help our customers’ top line, not necessarily their bottom line.” In other words, rather than trying to argue that their robots will lower shipbuilding costs, Persona is instead arguing that their robots will allow more ships to be built. “Even if our robot was more expensive than a human, that would still be valuable to these companies, because it could unlock additional revenue,” Radford says. And when the additional skilled labor does not exist, Persona’s robots could be the next-best option for shipbuilders who need to scale. Shipyards are environments where legs are necessary for a robot to be useful.CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty ImagesPersona’s Multipurpose FutureIn the current commercial humanoid climate where the emphasis seems to be on developing a “general purpose” (whatever that means) robot that will somehow justify itself through some undefined scale in some equally undefined and perpetually receding future, Persona stands out with their focus on a seemingly viable, near-term, and very specific business case. It hasn’t been easy, though. “It hurts us a little bit,” Radford says. “We’ve been told that we’re not thinking big enough.” But a tool-using heavy industrial humanoid has plenty of future applications, many of which can be expanded from the welding skill even within shipyards. “Shipbuilding is a great beachhead,” says Pratt. “There are tons of adjacent markets, like grinding, painting, and other kinds of fabrication.” Persona’s ambition, adds Radford, is to be “the largest repository of industrial skills.” It’s going to take time to get there. That time will be needed to collect tens of thousands of hours of expert demonstration data, create high-fidelity simulations, and conduct real-world testing. And however promising Persona’s approach may seem, the company still has to prove that its idea for an economically viable robotics company can be realized. It’s the same challenge that every humanoid robot company is facing. “A lot of the technical problems are the same no matter whether you’re in a house or a shipyard,” Pratt says. “Everybody’s got a great team and smart people, and we’re all knocking these problems out together.”
IEEE Spectrum
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.Actuate 2026: 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCOIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHHumanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULEnjoy today’s videos! Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the best part of any DARPA challenge is when things go horribly wrong. And after you enjoy all the crashes (followed by all of the battery fires), get caught up with the DARPA Lift Challenge with video recaps of the final few days. [ DARPA Lift Challenge ]Drone delivery: coming soon to a moving vehicle (or perhaps even through an open window) near you.[ HKUST Aerial Robotics Group ]This tiny little robot called STEMbot (as in stem, not STEM) can climb up and around plant stems to check for pests. It’s not very fast, but it sure is adorable.[ STEMbot ]Monumental’s robots delivered the brickwork for a semi-detached home, laying around 20,000 bricks in a new community.[ Monumental ]Meet the world’s most “truss’t-worthy” robot.[ Modlab University of Pennsylvania ]Stanford BDML and Honeybee Robotics propose a payload to test gecko-inspired adhesives in spaaace![ NASA ]How can a legged robot organize its own walking while maintaining a desired direction? In this work, we present a Differential Adaptive Steering (DAST) mechanism for directional adaptation in legged robots under decentralized adaptive control.[ BRAIN VISTEC ]I do not care even a little bit if a robot fails (safely, of course), as long as it recovers from that failure.[ Sanctuary AI ]Even for a robot that doesn’t drink champagne, those are some pretty light pours.[ Kawasaki Robotics ]If we as a society would just accept that the appropriate place to store clothing is in a pile on the floor, robots would have a much easier time of it.[ LimX Dynamics ]To be fair, this is also the speed at which I fold shirts.[ Sharpa ]Our DR02 humanoid robot takes on the stairs with stable, controlled movement—steady steps, steady progress.[ DEEP Robotics ]Two words: structural minifridge. Or is it mini fridge...? Whatever, THREE words.[ AgileX ]
IEEE Spectrum
Objects constructed by robots are ubiquitous. If you’ve used a car, household appliance, or smartphone today, you’ve used an object constructed at least in part by robots. The more products that manufacturers want to produce (and consumers want to consume) at lower costs, the more industrial robots will be needed.There are over 4 million industrial robots in use worldwide, according to the International Federation of Robotics. And researchers predict that number to grow to over 16 million by 2030, as manufacturing rapidly increases. But what’s going to happen when they start breaking down? A new system, designed by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany, can predict the defect in a broken robot and disassemble it, while protecting valuable parts from damage. To continue robotic development sustainably, the industry should prepare for the dismantling, recycling, and rebuilding of our robotic systems.The system consists of a predictive algorithm that guesses how a robot is broken, along with robotic manipulators that actually take the broken robot apart. At every stage of the process, the system checks to see if the results align with its predictions, and updates its methods if necessary. For example, in the video below, the system begins by unscrewing a broken component. To simulate a stuck screw, the researcher replaces the screw. When the system observes the screw still in place, it switches to milling away material to remove the part. Building a robot with new parts is easy, says Jan Baumgärtner, one of the designers of the system. Each step is clearly outlined, and there are no expected deviations. But taking apart something that’s broken is unpredictable. “We can imagine 100 ways that something can go wrong.” And if you start taking something apart without knowing how it broke, you might have to undo part of your work when you find the problem. For example, if you have to unscrew 100 screws holding two parts together, but the last screw is stuck, you’ll have wasted time unscrewing all those screws when you should have used a different method to remove the part in the first place.How to Take Apart a RobotKIT’s robotic disassembly system relies on a CAD model of the broken robot and of each part, so it can see the parts should behave and understand if anything is out of the ordinary. It also uses a mathematical model to predict the damage done to a broken part.When you give the system a broken device and a CAD model, it first guesses how each part of the broken device should move. The axes each part can move along are called degrees of freedom (for example, a screw should rotate, but not move side to side). The disassembler nudges each part to see if it moves as expected. Based on how the part actually moves, it then uses the mathematical model to predict what went wrong with the part: a corroded part might move less than you think it should, a loose screw may move more, and a deformed part might have different degrees of freedom than expected.At the beginning of disassembly, the system formulates a plan. It guesses what might be wrong with the device it’s taking apart, and then can change its guess based on observing each piece it takes apart. For example, if there was a screw loose in the part, that might be hard to guess from an initial photograph of the broken part. But when the system moves the screw, it will notice that it can move in more ways than a screw should move, and take that loose screw into account when deconstructing the device. You can also tell the disassembly system which parts are most important to salvage intact from a broken device, and it can adjust its strategy to preserve those specific parts.The Automated Circular EconomyBaumgärtner’s motivation behind the design of the robotic disassembler is to help create a circular economy, where old devices are repurposed to make new ones, reducing waste. “The big future is saving our planet,” he says.Baumgärtner envisions scaling up this one system, comprised of a few robotic arms, to have many robotic disassembler arms, each with different tools. These arms will specialize in a different part of the disassembly process, so that an entire factory could use different robotic limbs to disassemble a wide range of products. Think of an industrial robot factory that creates cars, but instead is specialized to take them apart. Or, as he puts it, “as a giant robot with 100 arms.”Ultimately, if this system works as intended, it would be a fully automated way of extracting a broken part from a system, replacing it, and rebuilding the device. Then the circular economy would really shine, as people replaced broken parts in old devices instead of buying new ones all the time. “That’s why we need to think about scaling this,” he says. “Because it means it becomes so cheap that it’s cheaper to repair this [electronic device] than to produce it. That’s the goal.”This research was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026 in Vienna.
IEEE Spectrum
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.Actuate 2026: 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCOIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHHumanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULEnjoy today’s videos! The DARPA Lift Challenge is taking place through this weekend. There are a couple of very brief overview videos from the past couple of days, which are only really interesting because they give you a quick look at some utterly bizarre heavy-lift drone designs. If you like what you see, DARPA has recorded livestreams of the entire event so far. We’ve posted one of those at the end of this section, and if you want to be impressed by some super weird drones, check out this and this. [ DARPA Lift Challenge ]When NASA’s SkyFall helicopters take to the Martian skies, one of their tasks will be to hunt for frozen water—a critical resource for future astronauts—using ground-penetrating radar. For that radar to work, the rotorcraft will carry a flexible, fabric-based antenna that extends below the aircraft without interfering with landings or breaking at touchdown.[ NASA ]Why would you even want a five-fingered humanoid hand when you could have something so much better?[ Flexiv ]We’ve improved how GEN-1 learns to adapt to new actuators and new robots at the lowest level, with up to 10-20x gains on internal benchmarks. This significantly boosts performance on high-precision tasks like disassembling parts from a NIST board.[ Generalist ]This is certainly one of the best looking humanoid robots out there.[ Generative Bionics ]A little on the technical side, but the concept here is important, I think: being able to control an assistive robot through touch.[ Tac-Nav ]We present SonicFly, a passive aeroacoustic perception framework that enables one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to estimate and follow another using only the leader’s intrinsic flight sound.[ General Robotics Lab ]Okay but... Get a job?[ ROBOTIS ]
IEEE Spectrum
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Covered List,” originally published in 2021, identifies communications equipment and services that it says pose a threat to national security. On 28 July, the FCC added mobile, communicating robots weighing more than 2 kilograms and power inverters commonly used in solar panels to the list, meaning that new products from any foreign country in these categories are no longer eligible for import.The move is a Department of Defense (DOD)-driven expansion of scattered federal efforts to further limit U.S. exposure to potentially sensitive Chinese technology, but it may impose major changes on the robotics industry in allied countries, too. The FCC’s announcement says that: All foreign-produced advanced robotic devices pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons… unless the [Department of Defense determines that] a given foreign-produced advanced robotic device, or a class of such devices, does not pose such risks.There are two important definitions here. The first is what an “advanced robotic device” is, and the second is what “unacceptable risk” means. Drones already went through their own round of this sort of regulation, so they’re exempt from this particular restriction, as are connected vehicles and medical devices. As far as the FCC is concerned, “advanced robotic devices” are mobile systems that incorporate on-board sensing and communications and have some amount of autonomy. There are a couple of loopholes, including systems weighing under 2 kg and any system that communicates at less than 200 kilobits per second, which opens up some creative possibilities. It’s important to note that this applies to new devices; those already certified are not restricted for sale or use.As to the risks, the U.S. government says that foreign advanced robotic devices represent: “a cybersecurity risk that threatens the security of critical infrastructure and thus the safety and security of U.S. persons.” There seem to be two main points to the justification, found in Appendix C. The first is that mobile robots are important to both the economy and the military, so the United States needs its own supply chain and industrial base rather than relying on foreign manufacturers. And second, mobile robots monitor critical infrastructure in sensitive locations, making them a security risk.The Country That Must Not Be NamedAs part of its justification for why foreign robots are a security risk, DOD cites IEEE Spectrum’s article on a critical vulnerability in robots from Unitree, based in Hangzhou, China, along with several other news articles and reports about Chinese robotics. And despite the FCC swearing up and down that this action is “country neutral” and “not targeted at any country or countries,” U.S. national security sources told Spectrum that the perceived threat is obviously China. That’s how China feels about it, too, per a Chinese Ministry of Commerce 29 July press conference (translation of the first quote here):On the surface, the FCC’s measures fly the banner of “non-discrimination,” but in substance they discriminate against and suppress Chinese enterprises and products…China firmly opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security and going after Chinese companies. Protectionism does not make the U.S. more competitive and will only hurt the interests of U.S. companies and consumers. China will continue to do what is necessary to firmly defend the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies.It’s unclear what China is going to do about this—but how about the rest of the world? How can foreign companies that make advanced robotic devices get them cleared for FCC authorization? Among many, many other things, you’ll need to provide “a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States for the advanced robotic device.” Because China also produces a large fraction of robot components, even for robots assembled in the United States, it will have strong leverage in any related negotiations until U.S. robotics companies further diversify their supply chains.RELATED: Proposed Chinese Robot Ban Is Latest U.S. Tech Sovereignty MoveApplicants must also submit their applications to the DOD and FCC by 1 January 2028, which is unfortunate for anyone who wants to develop an advanced robotic device after that point. Robotics Industry ReactionsThis is all very new, and reactions from the robotics community have been mixed. Some American robotics companies may benefit in the local market from the newfound lack of competition in the commercial market. Brendan Schulman, Boston Dynamics’ vice president of policy, wrote an enthusiastic endorsement of the ban on LinkedIn: “I sense that this is just the first round in a series of policies that will define the success and growth of the industry for decades to come.” On the other hand, third-country buyers may just stick to Chinese products, as they generally have for drones and electric cars. But not all companies expect major changes from the new regulation. American customers “need to know they can audit the technology, get support quickly, and keep the system operating without depending on a fragile overseas supply chain,” Nic Radford, the CEO of U.S. humanoid robotics company Persona, tells IEEE Spectrum. In other words, he figures some customers wouldn’t have wanted Chinese humanoids anyway.Philipp Frey, vice president of strategy for Swiss quadruped company ANYbotics, agrees. He says their enterprise customers in the United States “increasingly evaluate robots on long-term reliability, cybersecurity, software capability, safety certification, serviceability, and ecosystem integration, not on hardware cost alone.” ANYbotics also plans to apply for conditional approval of future products, Frey says. That will involve a national-security review by DOD or the Department of Homeland Security, disclosing company beneficial ownership, supply chain risks, and declaring a plan for establishing a significant manufacturing presence in the United States.U.S. quadruped company Ghost Robotic’s CEO Gavin Kenneally is more explicit about the risks Chinese robot strategy poses to the United States. “Active and purposeful spyware is deployed inside the U.S. on Chinese robots. Examples of predatory pricing abound. And this isn’t just a competition between U.S. and Chinese robotics companies; it’s between private U.S. companies and China’s coordinated national strategy,” Kenneally tells Spectrum. “If today’s announcement encourages stronger cybersecurity and a more level competitive environment, that’s good for customers and good for the robotics industry.”So is an industry-wide ban the best way to guard against threats? American approaches to Chinese technology security risks have been “ad hoc and fragmented,” wrote Brookings Institution sociologist Kyle Chan in a report published 9 July. Chan called for the Bureau of Industry and Security, part of the Department of Commerce, to centralize federal information gathering and decision-making on how to handle risky foreign devices. He also called for better public input mechanisms for these issues, and a continuous, proportionate process that tightened or relaxed targeted import restrictions in response to well-defined risks. That would allow American industry to continue benefiting from partnerships with Chinese manufacturers in less sensitive links of the supply chain, Chan argues. Those links will evolve over time, requiring continued assessment, but without those partnerships, crude bans “could make it more difficult for American startups and researchers to develop new software and end up slowing innovation across the U.S. robotics ecosystem,” he writes.
IEEE Spectrum
For a while there, it seemed as though robotics as a whole was stuck in a mad rush towards building humanoid robots mostly because it was very possible (and very lucrative) to do so, even without a near-term goals that were necessarily realistic. Some of the magic of those first couple of years of the humanoid explosion has stuck around, but there’s also been an industry-wide sobering leading to pointed questions about practicality and value. In other words, starting a commercial humanoid company now is a much different proposition than it would have been just a few years ago. On 15 July, Walden Robotics emerged from stealth with US $300 million in funding at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Walden is a spinout of Toyota Research Institute (TRI), and it’s spent the last 10 or so years working on hard problems in robotics with the goal of transitioning from research to real-world applications. That seems like the amount of time and experience that it might reasonably take to develop a practical and value-driven approach to deploying general-purpose humanoid robots, and Walden has chosen an excellent starting point by skipping the legs.“It’s ironic,” says Walden co-founder and CEO Russ Tedrake. “I thought about legs for 20 years; that’s the class I teach at MIT. There are many reasons to build a robot with legs. But the question is, what’s the addressable market? And what percentage of it is covered by a wheeled base?” It’s this focused, practical thinking that sets Walden somewhat apart from many (if not most) of the other companies in this space. Rather than developing a robot first and searching for a viable commercial use case second, Walden instead identified applications where robots can provide value now, and designed a robot that could safely and efficiently meet those needs. Walden Robotics Walden Robotics’ Manufacturing Focus Russ Tedrake is the CEO and co-founder of Walden Robotics.Walden RoboticsTedrake is light on the details about what specific applications Walden is targeting at this point (citing confidentiality with current commercial partners). Manufacturing and logistics environments where there are a lot of relatively simple and repetitive tasks that aren’t friendly to conveyor belts and pre-programmed robot arms are a good bet. Even in these environments, however, robots still have to find a useful niche, because they’re going up against human workers who are more flexible while also cheaper to employ. So the question is: how do you make an argument to a customer that a robot is actually a better solution than their existing human workers?“You need to find applications with high utilization—where the robot is used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Tedrake. “Manufacturing is a global imperative right now, and it makes the economics work.” Economic viability is a necessary condition, but it’s not a sufficient one for Walden, or for their partnership with Toyota. People are a big part of Walden’s plan, too.One of Walden’s major strengths is the company’s partnership with Toyota, which is not all that surprising given that Walden is a spinout from TRI, which is Toyota’s Silicon Valley-based R&D arm. “Toyota was very proud of the work we had done at TRI, and was ready to go big in this space,” says Tedrake. “Part of the excitement of having Toyota as a partner is that their culture is deeply people-first. When talking to Toyota’s leadership, I was never asked how much money this is going to make, but I was asked how it will improve the quality of life for all people.” The robot’s chonky design allows it to meet the high payload requirements of useful manufacturing work.Walden RoboticsIn this context, at least in the short term, Walden’s approach to improving the quality of life for people is to take over those aforementioned repetitive manufacturing tasks with robots. Tedrake hopes that this will lead to workplaces where skilled craftspeople are able to do even more with their hard-earned expertise, increasing their efficiency, productivity, and happiness all at the same time—a noble goal, although there’s only so much Walden itself can do to make this happen, and not all customers will share Toyota’s priorities.Wheeled Humanoid Robots in FactoriesMany other humanoid robotics companies are also targeting these logistics and manufacturing spaces with general-purpose robots, and they’re doing so by making robots that are as human-like as possible. The theory is that a humanoid form factor is necessary when operating in human environments. And there are certainly arguments in favor of a humanoid with legs—stairs exist, for one, and legged robots have a smaller footprint compared to wheels.But a large wheeled base offers some significant advantages, as Tedrake points out. You’re incentivized to cram the base full of batteries, since more weight near the floor keeps the robot stable, which also solves the problem of running out of power during the middle of the workday. More importantly, a statically stable robot that moves around on a wheeled base can bypass the safety challenges that are currently keeping legged humanoids physically separated from real humans—most prominently, the fact that legged robots can fall over. “Factories already have autonomous mobile [wheeled] robots,” explains Tedrake. “They already have safety cases built around AMRs. You can piggyback on that with a wheeled base.” Simple, rugged grippers make the robot suitable for commercial deployment.Walden RoboticsWalden’s perspective on manipulation is similar. Many humanoid companies are using five-fingered hands that are highly dexterous, but also highly complex, which Tedrake believes is not a pragmatic approach in the context of commercial deployments. “There’s a question of what you need to do the tasks, but the real question is just durability,” Tedrake says. “We have been deployed in a Toyota factory, and at the end of the week, the hands take a beating, so we built hands that can take that. I have not seen a more dexterous hand that could have done the work our hand has done.”Walden’s long-term plan is to build “general purpose robots.” It’s not always clear what a general purpose robot is, because (I would argue) nobody is quite sure what “general purpose” means. It’s certainly not referring to robots that can do everything; I think the closest we can get are robots that can be taught to do a useful number of different skills, which is why I prefer the term “multi-purpose.” It’s a little pedantic, I know, but I think the distinction is important because it moderates expectations in the near term.Part of where Walden’s optimism towards general purposeness comes from is TRI’s earlier research on diffusion policy, which helps robots learn new skills more quickly by leveraging previously learned skills as a foundation. “Fundamentally, multi-tasking is a way to get to a general purpose robot,” Tedrake says. “I believe there is a single platform that can do a lot of tasks that are of high value for real customers. That will give us the experience we need to give birth to this deployed general-purpose capability.”