IEEE Honors Robotics Pioneer Toshio Fukuda

Toshio Fukuda has been blazing trails for most of his career. He is considered to be one of the most prolific scholars in robotics, writing more than 2,000 research papers and authoring several books on the field. He’s an influential figure thanks to his pioneering work developing biomedical robotic systems, industrial robots, micro-nano robotics, mechatronics,…

Japan Pioneered Humanoid Robots—Can It Now Catch China?

“In the future, the relationship between humans and robots will deepen, and the distinction between them will probably disappear.” This prediction, from one of the attendees at the recent Humanoids Summit in Tokyo, might have been unremarkable had it not come directly from an android that was first introduced to the world 20 years ago.…

Video Friday: Do Robots Even Need Legs?

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.RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEYSummer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUEActuate 2026:…

Visual Language Models Train Robots to Read Human Emotions

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. As robots advance in terms of dexterity and other physical capabilities, it becomes more likely that humans may find themselves working alongside them. If that happens, how will robots’ emotional capabilities need to advance for them to successfully work…

Award-Winning Researcher Trains Robots to Make Educated Guesses

Yen-Ling Kuo always wanted to understand how things worked. When she was growing up in Taiwan, reading the story of Michael Faraday in elementary school piqued her curiosity about the natural world. During that time, she was introduced to Logo, a computer program with a turtle cursor to help children learn basic coding through hands-on…

MIT’s AI Robotics Lab Director Is Building People-Centered Robots

Daniela Rus has spent her career breaking barriers—scientific, social, and material—in her quest to build machines that amplify rather than replace human capability. She made robotics her life’s work, she says, because she understood it was a way to expand the possibilities of computing while enhancing human capabilities.“I like to think of robotics as a…

Video Friday: Disney’s Robotic Olaf Makes His Debut

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.SOSV Robotics Matchup: 1–5 December 2025, ONLINEICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! Step behind…