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.

ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA

RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY

Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE

Actuate 2026: 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO

Enjoy today’s videos!

Introducing GENE-26.5—the first AI brain to give robots human-level physical manipulation capabilities. Cooking a full meal. Cracking an egg one-handed. Conducting lab experiments. Wire harnessing. Even playing the piano. Tasks that were impossible for robots. Until now.

[ Genesis AI ] via [ TechCrunch ]

This is Labububot—one of the rarest monsters on Earth. Twelve Labubu heads are reconstituted into a single spherical form: a Frankenstein’s Monster of pop culture iconography. Labububot is a playful critique of social robots, and a question made physical—what do the monsters we make reveal about the monsters we are?

[ MIT Media Lab ]

Watch Spot crouch, jump, climb boxes, and leap across gaps, controlled by a neural network trained with reinforcement learning (RL) and multi-expert distillation.

[ Robotics and AI Institute ]

Good, now there is a robot that can take over exercise for me.

[ Kepler ]

Additive manufacturing has become an enabling technology, but existing techniques are not capable of directly 3D printing high-current electromagnetic actuators due to material and design limitations. In this work, a novel 3D-printable, multilayer, wave-winding topology is created for high-efficiency electric motors.

[ Sensing Technologies Laboratory ]

NASA is pushing the limits of flight on Mars—by spinning helicopter rotor blades so fast, they’re breaking the sound barrier. During recent tests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers accelerated the tips of next-generation rotor blades beyond Mach 1 inside a special chamber that simulates the atmospheric conditions of the Red Planet.

[ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory ]

Balancing commercial goals and robotics research can be tricky, but with Atlas, we’re making it work.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Open Duck Mini is an open-source version of Disney’s BDX droids, and you can play with it in your browser.

[ Open Duck Mini Viewer ]

Thanks, Masato!

Automated inspection of steel structures using magnetic climbing robots can reduce costs and improve safety, but many such structures feature interior corners that are challenging for wheeled or tracked robots to traverse. We present the first magnetic-wheeled robot to use X-ray fluorescence for steel structure inspection, Sally, capable of overcoming all interior corner transition types, traversing small obstacles, and maneuvering in tight spaces.

[ Robomechanics Lab ]

I don’t know what this is, but it’s coming soon from SwitchBot.

[ SwitchBot ]

You probably know the answers to these questions already, but this ELI5 from Aaron Ames is still fun.

[ Wired ]

Jim Fan, who leads the embodied autonomous research group at Nvidia, returns to AI Ascent to argue that robotics is entering its endgame—and that the playbook is already written.

[ Sequoia ]

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.

ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA

RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY

Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE

Enjoy today’s videos!

Sony AI’s latest research, published on the cover of Nature, addresses a long-standing challenge in physical AI: Can a high-speed autonomous system master the complex perception and dynamic control required to compete against professional athletes?

[ Sony AI ]

In this video, we present Ringbot Quad, a novel monocycle robot with four legs that combines wheeled and legged locomotion on a single platform. Ringbot Quad is designed as a unique monocycle mechanism that replaces the traditional drivetrain with four individually actuated driving modules, each integrated with an articulated leg.
Ringbot Quad aims to provide versatile and efficient mobility through two distinct locomotion modes. In driving mode, the four legs assist with balance and steering, while in walking mode, they fully support the body for quadruped locomotion. By switching between these modes, Ringbot Quad can navigate diverse terrains and overcome obstacles that are difficult for either wheeled or legged systems alone.

[ Kinetic Intelligent Machine Lab ]

Humanoid robots have beaten human runners in a Beijing half-marathon, marking a breakthrough in China’s rapidly advancing robotics industry. More than 100 robots competed alongside 12,000 people in the 21-kilometer race, with three crossing the finish line ahead of any human.

[ Al Jazeera ]

Watch AthenaZero juggle barehanded using on-board sensory feedback only. No motion capture. No funnels. No help adding the third ball. The robot learns to adapt to the uncertainties from contact and the appropriate hand-eye coordination.

[ Robotics and AI Institute ]

From the look of this, it’s based on data capture from humans. What I want to know is, what this will look like when it’s not based on data capture from humans.

[ Unitree ]

Looks like Sphero would like to fill that sad gap in educational robotics left by LEGO Mindstorms.

[ Sphero ]

I am pretty sure that this is not how the shell game is played.

[ Generalist ]

At this point, real value from robots in warehouses much more commonly comes from systems like these, not humanoids.

[ Berkshire Grey ]

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems propose a method to measure the efficiency of soft electrostatic actuators, enabling systematic evaluation of electrical-to-mechanical energy conversion. Using Peano-HASEL actuators, they demonstrate efficiencies up to 63.6%, over three times higher than previously reported, and validate the approach across other actuator types, paving the way for more energy-efficient soft electrostatic robotic systems.

[ Max Planck Institute ]

Already deployed in North America, quadruped robots provide continuous patrol, real-time monitoring, and faster incident detection across residential communities—day and night.

Um, thanks, but no thanks.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

Catching drones with what looks like a UR20 robot arm is a neat trick.

[ Skydio ]

Overactuated drones performing aerial maneuvers will always look just a little bit wrong to me.

[ Paper ] from [ ETH Zurich ]

Need a rugged and reliable mobile manipulator? Please consider a not-humanoid.

[ Clearpath ]

This CMU Robotics Institute talk is from CMU’s Raj Reddy, on “The Future of AI : Doomers vs. Abundance.”

The last decade has seen extraordinary advances in AI. The potential arrival of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has profound implications for future of our society. We anticipate a world where AI assistants and humanoid robots will perform most of the tasks requiring human expertise and skill at 10% of current costs. In this paradigm, essential services—including food, housing, energy, education, healthcare, and transportation—will be provided via Universal Basic Services, signaling a historic shift from a society of scarcity to one of abundance. This transformation raises a critical concern: widespread displacement of traditional labor. What is the human role when AI can do everything? This talk presents an alternative scenario: a “Human-in-the-Loop” evolution. In this model, humans transition into high-level supervisory roles, collaborating with AGI to train robots in novel skills and adapt them to unforeseen tasks.
We explore this as the “Maharaja Model” where technology serves humanity so comprehensively that work will be optional for humans. Finally, we will discuss how institutions like the Robotics Institute must lead this transition, developing the hybrid technologies and ethical frameworks necessary to bridge the gap between our current economy and a robot-assisted future.

[ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ]