Video Friday: Albatross Falls, Spins, Self-Rights, and Sails Away
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.CoRL 2026: 9–12 November 2026, AUSTINHumanoids 2026: 6–9 December 2026, SANTA CLARA, CAEnjoy today’s videos! We’ve…
Atlas Robot’s New Hand May Outperform Humanlike Designs
Today, Boston Dynamics is announcing a redesigned hand for its Atlas robot. The previous generation could do some crazy superhuman things with its three fingers, but it was never intended for mass production in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Switching from research hardware to a scalable product makes previously ignorable questions suddenly paramount: How…
A Day in the Life of a Roboticist: Charlie Kemp
Building useful robots starts with understanding the people who use them. For Charlie Kemp, cofounder and chief technology officer of Hello Robot, that means developing assistive robots that can help people with everyday tasks and support greater independence.In this Robots Guide profile, Kemp shares his path from studying artificial intelligence at MIT to building Stretch,…
Video Friday: Life’s Better With a Little Robot Goose
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.IROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHCoRL 2026: 9–12 November 2026, AUSTIN, TEXASHumanoids 2026: 6–9 December…
Mexican EPICS in IEEE Team Builds Portable Educational Platform
In Guadalajara, Mexico, many high schools have motivated teachers and talented students with an interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but they lack access to advanced tools such as robotics laboratories. The resources shortfall limits the students’ opportunities for hands-on learning on cutting-edge applications.A team from ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, is working to…
Barbara Mazzolai Wants to Build a New Field of Robotics
Throughout her career, roboticist Barbara Mazzolai has turned to nature for inspiration. Now she wants to ensure the technology she builds gives back to the environment, too.After starting her career as a biologist, a chance opportunity saw Mazzolai switch streams to engineering and become an early pioneer of bioinspired robotics. Building on her knowledge of…
Video Friday: Two Birotors Make a Quadrotor
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…
Rethinking Robot Safety in the Age of AI
This article is brought to you by VicOne.Robot safety has traditionally asked: Can a machine remain safe when something goes wrong? Physical AI raises a harder question: Can a machine remain safe when an attacker changes what it sees, decides, or does even when nothing appears to have failed?As AI and robotics continue to advance…
Digit 5 May Be the First Humanoid Robot Worker That’s Truly Safe
Despite the recent deluge of videos of humanoid robots doing backflips and kung-fu, the actual pace of progress towards humanoids that can do economically viable jobs at scale has at times seemed a bit plodding. There are some good reasons for this: a humanoid robot needs to be powerful enough to do useful work, safe…
Video Friday: Humanoid Robot Takes On Monkey Bars
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…