When you see a squirrel jump to a branch, you might think (and I myself thought, up until just now) that they’re doing what birds and primates would do to stick the landing: just grabbing the branch and hanging on. But it turns out that squirrels, being squirrels, don’t actually have prehensile hands or feet, meaning that they can’t grasp things with any significant amount of strength. Instead, they manage to land on branches using a “palmar” grasp, which isn’t really a grasp at all, in the sense that there’s not much grabbing going on. It’s more accurate to say that the squirrel is mostly landing on its palms and then balancing, which is very impressive.

This kind of dynamic stability is a trait that squirrels share with one of our favorite robots: Salto. Salto is a jumper too, and it’s about as non-prehensile as it’s possible to get, having just one limb with basically no grip strength at all. The robot is great at bouncing around on the ground, but if it could move vertically, that’s an entire new mobility dimension that could lead to some potentially interesting applications, including environmental scouting, search and rescue, and disaster relief.

In a paper published today in Science Robotics, roboticists have now taught Salto to leap from one branch to another like squirrels do, using a low torque gripper and relying on its balancing skills instead.

Squirrel Landing Techniques in Robotics

While we’re going to be mostly talking about robots here (because that’s what we do), there’s an entire paper by many of the same robotics researchers that was published in late February in the Journal of Experimental Biology about how squirrels land on branches this way. While you’d think that the researchers might have found some domesticated squirrels for this, they actually spent about a month bribing wild squirrels on the UC Berkeley campus to bounce around some instrumented perches while high speed cameras were rolling.

Squirrels aim for perfectly balanced landings, which allow them to immediately jump again. They don’t always get it quite right, of course, and they’re excellent at recovering from branch landings where they go a little bit over or under where they want to be. The research showed how squirrels use their musculoskeletal system to adjust their body position, dynamically absorbing the impact of landing with their forelimbs and altering their mass distribution to turn near misses into successful perches.

It’s these kinds of skills that Salto really needs to be able to usefully make jumps in the real world. When everything goes exactly the way it’s supposed to, jumping and perching is easy, but that almost never happens and the squirrel research shows how important it is to be able to adapt when things go wonky. It’s not like the little robot has a lot of degrees of freedom to work with—it’s got just one leg, just one foot, a couple of thrusters, and that spinning component which, believe it or not, functions as a tail. And yet, Salto manages to (sometimes!) make it work.

Those balanced upright landings are super impressive, although we should mention that Salto only achieved that level of success with two out of 30 trials. It only actually fell off the perch five times, and the rest of the time, it did manage a landing but then didn’t quite balance and either overshot or undershot the branch. There are some mechanical reasons why this is particularly difficult for Salto—for example, having just one leg to use for both jumping and landing means that the robot’s leg has to be rotated mid-jump. This takes time, and causes Salto to jump more vertically than squirrels do, since squirrels jump with their back legs and land with their front legs.

Based on these tests, the researchers identified four key features for balanced landings that apply to robots (and squirrels):

1. Power and accuracy are important!
2. It’s easier to land a shallower jump with a more horizontal trajectory.
3. Being able to squish down close to the branch helps with balancing.
4. Responsive actuation is also important!

Of these, Salto is great at the first one, very much not great at the second one, and also not great at the third and fourth ones. So in some sense, it’s amazing that the roboticists have been able to get it to do this branch-to-branch jumping as well as they have. There’s plenty more to do, though. Squirrels aren’t the only arboreal jumpers out there, and there’s likely more to learn from other animals—Salto was originally inspired by the galago (also known as bush babies), although those are more difficult to find on the UC Berkeley campus. And while the researchers don’t mention it, the obvious extension to this work is to chain together multiple jumps, and eventually to combine branch jumping with the ground jumping and wall jumping that Salto can do already to really give those squirrels a jump for their nuts.

When you see a squirrel jump to a branch, you might think (and I myself thought, up until just now) that they’re doing what birds and primates would do to stick the landing: just grabbing the branch and hanging on. But it turns out that squirrels, being squirrels, don’t actually have prehensile hands or feet, meaning that they can’t grasp things with any significant amount of strength. Instead, they manage to land on branches using a “palmar” grasp, which isn’t really a grasp at all, in the sense that there’s not much grabbing going on. It’s more accurate to say that the squirrel is mostly landing on its palms and then balancing, which is very impressive.

This kind of dynamic stability is a trait that squirrels share with one of our favorite robots: Salto. Salto is a jumper too, and it’s about as non-prehensile as it’s possible to get, having just one limb with basically no grip strength at all. The robot is great at bouncing around on the ground, but if it could move vertically, that’s an entire new mobility dimension that could lead to some potentially interesting applications, including environmental scouting, search and rescue, and disaster relief.

In a paper published today in Science Robotics, roboticists have now taught Salto to leap from one branch to another like squirrels do, using a low torque gripper and relying on its balancing skills instead.

Squirrel Landing Techniques in Robotics

While we’re going to be mostly talking about robots here (because that’s what we do), there’s an entire paper by many of the same robotics researchers that was published in late February in the Journal of Experimental Biology about how squirrels land on branches this way. While you’d think that the researchers might have found some domesticated squirrels for this, they actually spent about a month bribing wild squirrels on the UC Berkeley campus to bounce around some instrumented perches while high speed cameras were rolling.

Squirrels aim for perfectly balanced landings, which allow them to immediately jump again. They don’t always get it quite right, of course, and they’re excellent at recovering from branch landings where they go a little bit over or under where they want to be. The research showed how squirrels use their musculoskeletal system to adjust their body position, dynamically absorbing the impact of landing with their forelimbs and altering their mass distribution to turn near misses into successful perches.

It’s these kinds of skills that Salto really needs to be able to usefully make jumps in the real world. When everything goes exactly the way it’s supposed to, jumping and perching is easy, but that almost never happens and the squirrel research shows how important it is to be able to adapt when things go wonky. It’s not like the little robot has a lot of degrees of freedom to work with—it’s got just one leg, just one foot, a couple of thrusters, and that spinning component which, believe it or not, functions as a tail. And yet, Salto manages to (sometimes!) make it work.

Those balanced upright landings are super impressive, although we should mention that Salto only achieved that level of success with two out of 30 trials. It only actually fell off the perch five times, and the rest of the time, it did manage a landing but then didn’t quite balance and either overshot or undershot the branch. There are some mechanical reasons why this is particularly difficult for Salto—for example, having just one leg to use for both jumping and landing means that the robot’s leg has to be rotated mid-jump. This takes time, and causes Salto to jump more vertically than squirrels do, since squirrels jump with their back legs and land with their front legs.

Based on these tests, the researchers identified four key features for balanced landings that apply to robots (and squirrels):

1. Power and accuracy are important!
2. It’s easier to land a shallower jump with a more horizontal trajectory.
3. Being able to squish down close to the branch helps with balancing.
4. Responsive actuation is also important!

Of these, Salto is great at the first one, very much not great at the second one, and also not great at the third and fourth ones. So in some sense, it’s amazing that the roboticists have been able to get it to do this branch-to-branch jumping as well as they have. There’s plenty more to do, though. Squirrels aren’t the only arboreal jumpers out there, and there’s likely more to learn from other animals—Salto was originally inspired by the galago (also known as bush babies), although those are more difficult to find on the UC Berkeley campus. And while the researchers don’t mention it, the obvious extension to this work is to chain together multiple jumps, and eventually to combine branch jumping with the ground jumping and wall jumping that Salto can do already to really give those squirrels a jump for their nuts.

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.

European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

In 2026, a JAXA spacecraft is heading to the Martian moon Phobos to chuck a little rover at it.

[ DLR ]

Happy International Women’s Day! UBTECH humanoid robots Walker S1 deliver flowers to incredible women and wish all women a day filled with love, joy and empowerment.

[ UBTECH ]

TRON 1 demonstrates Multi-Terrain Mobility as a versatile biped mobility platform, empowering innovators to push the boundaries of robotic locomotion, unlocking limitless possibilities in algorithm validation and advanced application development.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

This is indeed a very fluid running gait, and the flip is also impressive, but I’m wondering what sort of actual value these skills add, you know? Or even what kind of potential value they’re leading up to.

[ EngineAI ]

Designing trajectories for manipulation through contact is challenging as it requires reasoning of object & robot trajectories as well as complex contact sequences simultaneously. In this paper, we present a novel framework for simultaneously designing trajectories of robots, objects, and contacts efficiently for contact-rich manipulation.

[ Paper ] via [ Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories ]

Thanks, Yuki!

Running robot, you say? I’m thinking it might actually be a power walking robot.

[ MagicLab ]

Wake up, Reachy!

[ Pollen ]

Robot vacuum docks have gotten large enough that we’re now all supposed to pretend that we’re happy they’ve become pieces of furniture.

[ Roborock ]

The SeaPerch underwater robot, a “do-it-yourself” maker project, is a popular educational tool for middle and high school students. Developed by MIT Sea Grant, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) teaches hand fabrication processes, electronics techniques, and STEM concepts, while encouraging exploration of structures, electronics, and underwater dynamics.

[ MIT Sea Grant ]

I was at this RoboGames match! In 2010! And now I feel old!

[ Hardcore Robotics ]

Daniel Simu with a detailed breakdown of his circus acrobat partner robot. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, make sure and check out 3:30.

[ Daniel Simu ]

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.

European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

In 2026, a JAXA spacecraft is heading to the Martian moon Phobos to chuck a little rover at it.

[ DLR ]

Happy International Women’s Day! UBTECH humanoid robots Walker S1 deliver flowers to incredible women and wish all women a day filled with love, joy and empowerment.

[ UBTECH ]

TRON 1 demonstrates Multi-Terrain Mobility as a versatile biped mobility platform, empowering innovators to push the boundaries of robotic locomotion, unlocking limitless possibilities in algorithm validation and advanced application development.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

This is indeed a very fluid running gait, and the flip is also impressive, but I’m wondering what sort of actual value these skills add, you know? Or even what kind of potential value they’re leading up to.

[ EngineAI ]

Designing trajectories for manipulation through contact is challenging as it requires reasoning of object & robot trajectories as well as complex contact sequences simultaneously. In this paper, we present a novel framework for simultaneously designing trajectories of robots, objects, and contacts efficiently for contact-rich manipulation.

[ Paper ] via [ Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories ]

Thanks, Yuki!

Running robot, you say? I’m thinking it might actually be a power walking robot.

[ MagicLab ]

Wake up, Reachy!

[ Pollen ]

Robot vacuum docks have gotten large enough that we’re now all supposed to pretend that we’re happy they’ve become pieces of furniture.

[ Roborock ]

The SeaPerch underwater robot, a “do-it-yourself” maker project, is a popular educational tool for middle and high school students. Developed by MIT Sea Grant, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) teaches hand fabrication processes, electronics techniques, and STEM concepts, while encouraging exploration of structures, electronics, and underwater dynamics.

[ MIT Sea Grant ]

I was at this RoboGames match! In 2010! And now I feel old!

[ Hardcore Robotics ]

Daniel Simu with a detailed breakdown of his circus acrobat partner robot. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, make sure and check out 3:30.

[ Daniel Simu ]

Ukraine’s young tech entrepreneurs think that a combination of robots and lessons from war-gaming could turn the tide in the war against Russia. They are developing an intelligent operating system to enable a single controller to remotely operate swarms of interconnected drones and cannon-equipped land robots. The tech, they say, could help Ukraine cope with Russia’s numerical advantage.

Kyiv-based start-up Ark Robotics is conducting trials on an embryo of such a system in cooperation with one of the brigades of Ukraine’s ground forces. The company emerged about a year ago, when a group of young roboticists heard a speech by one of the Ukrainian commanders detailing challenges on the frontline.

“At that time, we were building unmanned ground vehicles [UGVs],” Andryi Udovychenko, Ark Robotics’s operations lead, told IEEE Spectrum on the sidelines of the Brave 1 Defense Tech Innovations Forum held in Kyiv last month. “But we heard that what we had [to offer] wasn’t enough. They said they needed something more.”

Since the war began, a vibrant defense tech innovation ecosystem has emerged in Ukraine, having started from modest beginnings of modifying China-made DJI MAVIC drones to make up for the lack of artillery. Today, Ukraine is a drone-making powerhouse. Dozens of startup companies are churning out newer and better tech and rapidly refining it to improve the effectiveness of the beleaguered nation’s troops. First-person-view drones have become a symbol of this war, but since last year they have begun to be complemented by UGVs, which help on the ground with logistics, evacuation of the wounded and also act as a new means of attack.

The new approach allows the Ukrainians to keep their soldiers away from the battle ground for longer periods but doesn’t erase the fact that Ukraine has far fewer soldiers than Russia does.

“Every single drone needs one operator, complicated drones need two or three operators, and we don’t have that many people,” Serhii Kupriienko, the CEO and founder of Swarmer, said during a panel at the Kyiv event. Swarmer is a Kyiv-based start-up developing technologies to allow groups of drones to operate as one self-coordinated swarm.

Ark Robotics are trying to take that idea yet another step. The company’s Frontier OS aspires to become a unifying interface that would allow drones and UGVs made by various makers to work together under the control of operators seated in control rooms miles away from the action.

One Controller for Many Drones and Robots

“We have many types of drones that are using different controls, different interfaces and it’s really hard to build cohesion,” Udovychenko says. “To move forward, we need a system where we can control multiple different types of vehicles in a cohesive manner in complex operations.”

Udovychenko, a gaming enthusiast, is excited about the progress Ark Robotics has made. It could be a game-changer, he says, a new foundational technology for defense. It would make Ukraine “like Protoss,” the fictional technologically advanced nation in the military science fiction strategy game StarCraft.

But what powers him is much more than youthful geekiness. Building up Ukraine’s technological dominance is a mission fueled by grief and outrage.

“I don’t want to lose any more friends,” he remarks at one point, becoming visibly emotional. “We don’t want to be dying in the trenches, but we need to be able to defend our country and given that the societal math doesn’t favor us, we need to make our own math to win.”

Soldiers at an undisclosed location used laptops to test software from Ark Robotics.Ark Robotics

The scope of the challenge isn’t lost on him. The company has so far built a vehicle computing unit that serves as a central hub and control board for various unmanned vehicles including flying drones, UGVs and even marine vehicles.

“We are building this as a solution that enables the integration of various team developers and software, allowing us to extract the best components and rapidly scale them,” Udovychenko says. “This system pairs a high-performance computing module with an interface board that provides multiple connections for vehicle systems.

The platform allows a single operator to remotely guide a flock of robots but will in the future also incorporate autonomous navigation and task execution, according to Udovychenko. So far, the team has tested the technology in simple logistics exercises. For the grand vision to work, though, the biggest challenge will be maintaining reliable communication links between the controller and the robotic fleet, but also between the robots and drones.

Tests on Ukraine Battlefields to Begin Soon

“We’re not talking about communications in a relatively safe environment when you have an LTE network that has enough bandwidth to accommodate thousands of phones,” Udovychenko notes. “At the frontline, everything is affected by electronic warfare, so you need to be able to switch between different solutions including satellite, digital radio and radio mesh so that even if you lose connection to the server, you still have connection between the drones and robots so that they can move together and maintain some level of control between them.”

Udovychenko expects Ark Robotics’s partner brigade in the Ukraine armed forces to test the early version of the tech in a real-life situation within the next couple of months. His young drone operator friends are excited, he says. And how could they not be? The technology promises to turn warfighting into a kind of real-life video game. The new class of multi-drone operators will likely be recruited from the ranks of gaming aficionados.

“If we can take the best pilots and give them tools to combine the operations, we might see a tremendous advantage,” Udovychenko says. “It’s like in StarCraft. Some people are simply able to play the game right and obliterate their opponents within minutes even if they’re starting from the same basic conditions.”

Speaking at the Brave 1 Defense Tech Innovations Forum, Colonel Andrii Lebedenko, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, acknowledged that land battles have so far been Ukraine’s weakest area. He said that replacing “humans with robots as much as possible” is Ukraine’s near-term goal and he expressed confidence that upcoming technologies will give greater autonomy to the robot swarms.

Some roboticists, however, are more skeptical that swarms of autonomous robots will crawl en-masse across the battlefields of Eastern Ukraine any time soon. “Swarming is certainly a goal we should reach but it’s much easier with FPV drones than with ground-based robots,” Ivan Movchan, CEO of the Ukrainian Scale Company, a Kharkiv-based robot maker, told Spectrum.

“Navigation on the ground is more challenging simply because of the obstacles,” he adds. “But I do expect UGVs to become very common in Ukraine over the next year.”

Ukraine’s young tech entrepreneurs think that a combination of robots and lessons from war-gaming could turn the tide in the war against Russia. They are developing an intelligent operating system to enable a single controller to remotely operate swarms of interconnected drones and cannon-equipped land robots. The tech, they say, could help Ukraine cope with Russia’s numerical advantage.

Kyiv-based start-up Ark Robotics is conducting trials on an embryo of such a system in cooperation with one of the brigades of Ukraine’s ground forces. The company emerged about a year ago, when a group of young roboticists heard a speech by one of the Ukrainian commanders detailing challenges on the frontline.

“At that time, we were building unmanned ground vehicles [UGVs],” Andryi Udovychenko, Ark Robotics’s operations lead, told IEEE Spectrum on the sidelines of the Brave 1 Defense Tech Innovations Forum held in Kyiv last month. “But we heard that what we had [to offer] wasn’t enough. They said they needed something more.”

Since the war began, a vibrant defense tech innovation ecosystem has emerged in Ukraine, having started from modest beginnings of modifying China-made DJI MAVIC drones to make up for the lack of artillery. Today, Ukraine is a drone-making powerhouse. Dozens of startup companies are churning out newer and better tech and rapidly refining it to improve the effectiveness of the beleaguered nation’s troops. First-person-view drones have become a symbol of this war, but since last year they have begun to be complemented by UGVs, which help on the ground with logistics, evacuation of the wounded and also act as a new means of attack.

The new approach allows the Ukrainians to keep their soldiers away from the battle ground for longer periods but doesn’t erase the fact that Ukraine has far fewer soldiers than Russia does.

“Every single drone needs one operator, complicated drones need two or three operators, and we don’t have that many people,” Serhii Kupriienko, the CEO and founder of Swarmer, said during a panel at the Kyiv event. Swarmer is a Kyiv-based start-up developing technologies to allow groups of drones to operate as one self-coordinated swarm.

Ark Robotics are trying to take that idea yet another step. The company’s Frontier OS aspires to become a unifying interface that would allow drones and UGVs made by various makers to work together under the control of operators seated in control rooms miles away from the action.

One Controller for Many Drones and Robots

“We have many types of drones that are using different controls, different interfaces and it’s really hard to build cohesion,” Udovychenko says. “To move forward, we need a system where we can control multiple different types of vehicles in a cohesive manner in complex operations.”

Udovychenko, a gaming enthusiast, is excited about the progress Ark Robotics has made. It could be a game-changer, he says, a new foundational technology for defense. It would make Ukraine “like Protoss,” the fictional technologically advanced nation in the military science fiction strategy game StarCraft.

But what powers him is much more than youthful geekiness. Building up Ukraine’s technological dominance is a mission fueled by grief and outrage.

“I don’t want to lose any more friends,” he remarks at one point, becoming visibly emotional. “We don’t want to be dying in the trenches, but we need to be able to defend our country and given that the societal math doesn’t favor us, we need to make our own math to win.”

Soldiers at an undisclosed location used laptops to test software from Ark Robotics.Ark Robotics

The scope of the challenge isn’t lost on him. The company has so far built a vehicle computing unit that serves as a central hub and control board for various unmanned vehicles including flying drones, UGVs and even marine vehicles.

“We are building this as a solution that enables the integration of various team developers and software, allowing us to extract the best components and rapidly scale them,” Udovychenko says. “This system pairs a high-performance computing module with an interface board that provides multiple connections for vehicle systems.

The platform allows a single operator to remotely guide a flock of robots but will in the future also incorporate autonomous navigation and task execution, according to Udovychenko. So far, the team has tested the technology in simple logistics exercises. For the grand vision to work, though, the biggest challenge will be maintaining reliable communication links between the controller and the robotic fleet, but also between the robots and drones.

Tests on Ukraine Battlefields to Begin Soon

“We’re not talking about communications in a relatively safe environment when you have an LTE network that has enough bandwidth to accommodate thousands of phones,” Udovychenko notes. “At the frontline, everything is affected by electronic warfare, so you need to be able to switch between different solutions including satellite, digital radio and radio mesh so that even if you lose connection to the server, you still have connection between the drones and robots so that they can move together and maintain some level of control between them.”

Udovychenko expects Ark Robotics’s partner brigade in the Ukraine armed forces to test the early version of the tech in a real-life situation within the next couple of months. His young drone operator friends are excited, he says. And how could they not be? The technology promises to turn warfighting into a kind of real-life video game. The new class of multi-drone operators will likely be recruited from the ranks of gaming aficionados.

“If we can take the best pilots and give them tools to combine the operations, we might see a tremendous advantage,” Udovychenko says. “It’s like in StarCraft. Some people are simply able to play the game right and obliterate their opponents within minutes even if they’re starting from the same basic conditions.”

Speaking at the Brave 1 Defense Tech Innovations Forum, Colonel Andrii Lebedenko, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, acknowledged that land battles have so far been Ukraine’s weakest area. He said that replacing “humans with robots as much as possible” is Ukraine’s near-term goal and he expressed confidence that upcoming technologies will give greater autonomy to the robot swarms.

Some roboticists, however, are more skeptical that swarms of autonomous robots will crawl en-masse across the battlefields of Eastern Ukraine any time soon. “Swarming is certainly a goal we should reach but it’s much easier with FPV drones than with ground-based robots,” Ivan Movchan, CEO of the Ukrainian Scale Company, a Kharkiv-based robot maker, told Spectrum.

“Navigation on the ground is more challenging simply because of the obstacles,” he adds. “But I do expect UGVs to become very common in Ukraine over the next year.”

Generative AI models are getting closer to taking action in the real world. Already, the big AI companies are introducing AI agents that can take care of web-based busywork for you, ordering your groceries or making your dinner reservation. Today, Google DeepMind announced two generative AI models designed to power tomorrow’s robots.

The models are both built on Google Gemini, a multimodal foundation model that can process text, voice, and image data to answer questions, give advice, and generally help out. DeepMind calls the first of the new models, Gemini Robotics, an “advanced vision-language-action model,” meaning that it can take all those same inputs and then output instructions for a robot’s physical actions. The models are designed to work with any hardware system, but were mostly tested on the two-armed Aloha 2 system that DeepMind introduced last year.

In a demonstration video, a voice says: “Pick up the basketball and slam dunk it” (at 2:27 in the video below). Then a robot arm carefully picks up a miniature basketball and drops it into a miniature net—and while it wasn’t a NBA-level dunk, it was enough to get the DeepMind researchers excited.

Google DeepMind released this demo video showing off the capabilities of its Gemini Robotics foundation model to control robots. Gemini Robotics

“This basketball example is one of my favorites,” said Kanishka Rao, the principal software engineer for the project, in a press briefing. He explains that the robot had “never, ever seen anything related to basketball,” but that its underlying foundation model had a general understanding of the game, knew what a basketball net looks like, and understood what the term “slam dunk” meant. The robot was therefore “able to connect those [concepts] to actually accomplish the task in the physical world,” says Rao.

What are the advances of Gemini Robotics?

Carolina Parada, head of robotics at Google DeepMind, said in the briefing that the new models improve over the company’s prior robots in three dimensions: generalization, adaptability, and dexterity. All of these advances are necessary, she said, to create “a new generation of helpful robots.”

Generalization means that a robot can apply a concept that it has learned in one context to another situation, and the researchers looked at visual generalization (for example, does it get confused if the color of an object or background changed), instruction generalization (can it interpret commands that are worded in different ways), and action generalization (can it perform an action it had never done before).

Parada also says that robots powered by Gemini can better adapt to changing instructions and circumstances. To demonstrate that point in a video, a researcher told a robot arm to put a bunch of plastic grapes into a clear Tupperware container, then proceeded to shift three containers around on the table in an approximation of a shyster’s shell game. The robot arm dutifully followed the clear container around until it could fulfill its directive.

Google DeepMind says Gemini Robotics is better than previous models at adapting to changing instructions and circumstances. Google DeepMind

As for dexterity, demo videos showed the robotic arms folding a piece of paper into an origami fox and performing other delicate tasks. However, it’s important to note that the impressive performance here is in the context of a narrow set of high-quality data that the robot was trained on for these specific tasks, so the level of dexterity that these tasks represent is not being generalized.

What is embodied reasoning?

The second model introduced today is Gemini Robotics-ER, with the ER standing for “embodied reasoning,” which is the sort of intuitive physical world understanding that humans develop with experience over time. We’re able to do clever things like look at an object we’ve never seen before and make an educated guess about the best way to interact with it, and this is what DeepMind seeks to emulate with Gemini Robotics-ER.

Parada gave an example of Gemini Robotics-ER’s ability to identify an appropriate grasping point for picking up a coffee cup. The model correctly identifies the handle, because that’s where humans tend to grasp coffee mugs. However, this illustrates a potential weakness of relying on human-centric training data: for a robot, especially a robot that might be able to comfortably handle a mug of hot coffee, a thin handle might be a much less reliable grasping point than a more enveloping grasp of the mug itself.

DeepMind’s Approach to Robotic Safety

Vikas Sindhwani, DeepMind’s head of robotic safety for the project, says the team took a layered approach to safety. It starts with classic physical safety controls that manage things like collision avoidance and stability, but also includes “semantic safety” systems that evaluate both its instructions and the consequences of following them. These systems are most sophisticated in the Gemini Robotics-ER model, says Sindhwani, which is “trained to evaluate whether or not a potential action is safe to perform in a given scenario.”

And because “safety is not a competitive endeavor,” Sindhwani says, DeepMind is releasing a new data set and what it calls the Asimov benchmark, which is intended to measure a model’s ability to understand common-sense rules of life. The benchmark contains both questions about visual scenes and text scenarios, asking models’ opinions on things like the desirability of mixing bleach and vinegar (a combination that make chlorine gas) and putting a soft toy on a hot stove. In the press briefing, Sindhwani said that the Gemini models had “strong performance” on that benchmark, and the technical report showed that the models got more than 80 percent of questions correct.

DeepMind’s Robotic Partnerships

Back in December, DeepMind and the humanoid robotics company Apptronik announced a partnership, and Parada says that the two companies are working together “to build the next generation of humanoid robots with Gemini at its core.” DeepMind is also making its models available to an elite group of “trusted testers”: Agile Robots, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Enchanted Tools.

Generative AI models are getting closer to taking action in the real world. Already, the big AI companies are introducing AI agents that can take care of web-based busywork for you, ordering your groceries or making your dinner reservation. Today, Google DeepMind announced two generative AI models designed to power tomorrow’s robots.

The models are both built on Google Gemini, a multimodal foundation model that can process text, voice, and image data to answer questions, give advice, and generally help out. DeepMind calls the first of the new models, Gemini Robotics, an “advanced vision-language-action model,” meaning that it can take all those same inputs and then output instructions for a robot’s physical actions. The models are designed to work with any hardware system, but were mostly tested on the two-armed Aloha 2 system that DeepMind introduced last year.

In a demonstration video, a voice says: “Pick up the basketball and slam dunk it” (at 2:27 in the video below). Then a robot arm carefully picks up a miniature basketball and drops it into a miniature net—and while it wasn’t a NBA-level dunk, it was enough to get the DeepMind researchers excited.

Google DeepMind released this demo video showing off the capabilities of its Gemini Robotics foundation model to control robots. Gemini Robotics

“This basketball example is one of my favorites,” said Kanishka Rao, the principal software engineer for the project, in a press briefing. He explains that the robot had “never, ever seen anything related to basketball,” but that its underlying foundation model had a general understanding of the game, knew what a basketball net looks like, and understood what the term “slam dunk” meant. The robot was therefore “able to connect those [concepts] to actually accomplish the task in the physical world,” says Rao.

What are the advances of Gemini Robotics?

Carolina Parada, head of robotics at Google DeepMind, said in the briefing that the new models improve over the company’s prior robots in three dimensions: generalization, adaptability, and dexterity. All of these advances are necessary, she said, to create “a new generation of helpful robots.”

Generalization means that a robot can apply a concept that it has learned in one context to another situation, and the researchers looked at visual generalization (for example, does it get confused if the color of an object or background changed), instruction generalization (can it interpret commands that are worded in different ways), and action generalization (can it perform an action it had never done before).

Parada also says that robots powered by Gemini can better adapt to changing instructions and circumstances. To demonstrate that point in a video, a researcher told a robot arm to put a bunch of plastic grapes into a clear Tupperware container, then proceeded to shift three containers around on the table in an approximation of a shyster’s shell game. The robot arm dutifully followed the clear container around until it could fulfill its directive.

Google DeepMind says Gemini Robotics is better than previous models at adapting to changing instructions and circumstances. Google DeepMind

As for dexterity, demo videos showed the robotic arms folding a piece of paper into an origami fox and performing other delicate tasks. However, it’s important to note that the impressive performance here is in the context of a narrow set of high-quality data that the robot was trained on for these specific tasks, so the level of dexterity that these tasks represent is not being generalized.

What is embodied reasoning?

The second model introduced today is Gemini Robotics-ER, with the ER standing for “embodied reasoning,” which is the sort of intuitive physical world understanding that humans develop with experience over time. We’re able to do clever things like look at an object we’ve never seen before and make an educated guess about the best way to interact with it, and this is what DeepMind seeks to emulate with Gemini Robotics-ER.

Parada gave an example of Gemini Robotics-ER’s ability to identify an appropriate grasping point for picking up a coffee cup. The model correctly identifies the handle, because that’s where humans tend to grasp coffee mugs. However, this illustrates a potential weakness of relying on human-centric training data: for a robot, especially a robot that might be able to comfortably handle a mug of hot coffee, a thin handle might be a much less reliable grasping point than a more enveloping grasp of the mug itself.

DeepMind’s Approach to Robotic Safety

Vikas Sindhwani, DeepMind’s head of robotic safety for the project, says the team took a layered approach to safety. It starts with classic physical safety controls that manage things like collision avoidance and stability, but also includes “semantic safety” systems that evaluate both its instructions and the consequences of following them. These systems are most sophisticated in the Gemini Robotics-ER model, says Sindhwani, which is “trained to evaluate whether or not a potential action is safe to perform in a given scenario.”

And because “safety is not a competitive endeavor,” Sindhwani says, DeepMind is releasing a new data set and what it calls the Asimov benchmark, which is intended to measure a model’s ability to understand common-sense rules of life. The benchmark contains both questions about visual scenes and text scenarios, asking models’ opinions on things like the desirability of mixing bleach and vinegar (a combination that make chlorine gas) and putting a soft toy on a hot stove. In the press briefing, Sindhwani said that the Gemini models had “strong performance” on that benchmark, and the technical report showed that the models got more than 80 percent of questions correct.

DeepMind’s Robotic Partnerships

Back in December, DeepMind and the humanoid robotics company Apptronik announced a partnership, and Parada says that the two companies are working together “to build the next generation of humanoid robots with Gemini at its core.” DeepMind is also making its models available to an elite group of “trusted testers”: Agile Robots, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Enchanted Tools.

After January’s Southern California wildfires, the question of burying energy infrastructure to prevent future fires has gained renewed urgency in the state. While the exact cause of the fires remains under investigation, California utilities have spent years undergrounding power lines to mitigate fire risks. Pacific Gas & Electric, which has installed over 1,287 kilometers of underground power lines since 2021, estimates the method is 98 percent effective in reducing ignition threats. Southern California Edison has buried over 40 percent of its high-risk distribution lines, and 63 percent of San Diego Gas & Electric’s regional distribution system is now underground.

Still, the exorbitant cost of underground construction leaves much of the U.S. power grid’s 8.8 million kilometers of distribution lines and 180 million utility poles exposed to tree strikes, flying debris, and other opportunities for sparks to cascade into a multi-acre blaze. Recognizing the need for cost-effective undergrounding solutions, the U.S. Department of Energy launched GOPHURRS in January 2024. The three-year program pours $34 million into 12 projects to develop more efficient undergrounding technologies that minimize surface disruptions while supporting medium-voltage power lines.

One recipient, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is building a self-propelled robotic sleeve that mimics earthworms’ characteristic peristaltic movement to advance through soil. Awarded $2 million, Case’s “peristaltic conduit” concept hopes to more precisely navigate underground and reduce the risk of unintended damage, such as breaking an existing pipe.

Why Is Undergrounding So Expensive?

Despite its benefits, undergrounding remains cost-prohibitive at US $1.1 to $3.7 million per kilometer ($1.8 to $6 million per mile) for distribution lines and $3.7 to $62 million per kilometer for transmission lines, according to estimates from California’s three largest utilities. That’s significantly more than overhead infrastructure, which costs $394,000 to $472,000 per kilometer for distribution lines and $621,000 to $6.83 million per kilometer for transmission lines.

The most popular method of undergrounding power lines, called open trenching, requires extensive excavation, conduit installation, and backfilling, making it expensive and logistically complicated. And it’s often impractical in dense urban areas where underground infrastructure is already congested with plumbing, fiber optics, and other utilities.

Trenchless methods like horizontal directional drilling (HDD) provide a less invasive way to get power lines under roads and railways by creating a controlled, curved bore path that starts at a shallow entry angle, deepens to pass obstacles, and resurfaces at a precise exit point. But HDD is even more expensive than open trenching due to specialized equipment, complex workflows, and the risk of damaging existing infrastructure.

Given the steep costs, utilities often prioritize cheaper fire mitigation strategies like trimming back nearby trees and other plants, using insulated conductors, and stepping up routine inspections and repairs. While not as effective as undergrounding, these measures have been the go-to option, largely because faster, cheaper underground construction methods don’t yet exist.

Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, who has extensively studied the costs and benefits of undergrounding, says technologies implementing directional drilling improvements “could make undergrounding more practical in urban or densely populated areas where open trenching, and its attendant disruptions to the surrounding infrastructure, could result in untenable costs.”

Earthworm-Inspired Robotics for Power Lines

In Case’s worm-inspired robot, alternating sections are designed to expand and retract to anchor and advance the machine. This flexible force increases precision and reduces the risk of impacting and breaking pipes. Conventional methods require large turning radii exceeding 300 meters, but Case’s 1.5-meter turning radius will enable the device to flexibly maneuver around existing infrastructure.

“We use actuators to change the length and diameter of each segment,” says Kathryn Daltorio, an associate engineering professor and co-director of Case’s Biologically-Inspired Robotics Lab. “The short and fat segments press against the walls of the burrow, then they anchor so the thin segments can advance forward. If two segments aren’t touching the ground but they’re changing length at the same time, your anchors don’t slip and you advance forward.”

Daltorio and her colleagues have studied earthworm-inspired robotics for over a decade, originally envisioning the technology for surgical and confined-space applications before recognizing its potential for undergrounding power lines.

Case Western Reserve University’s worm-like digging robot can turn faster than other drilling techniques to avoid obstacles.Kathryn Daltorio/Case School of Engineering

Traditional HDD relies on pushing a drill head through soil, requiring more force as the bore length grows. Case’s drilling concept generates the force needed for the tip from the peristaltic segments within the borehole. As the path gets longer, only the front segments dig deeper. “If the robot hits something, operators can pull back and change directions, burrowing along the way to complete the circuit by changing the depth,” Daltorio says.

Another key difference from HDD is integrated conduit installation. In HDD, the drill goes through the entire length first, and then the power conduit is pulled through. Case’s peristaltic robot lays the conduit while traveling, reducing the overall installation time.

Advancements in Burrowing Precision

“The peristaltic conduit approach is fascinating [and] certainly seems to be addressing concerns regarding the sheer variety of underground obstacles,” says the University of Florida’s Kury. However, he highlights a larger concern with undergrounding innovations—not just Case’s—in meeting a constantly evolving environment. Today’s underground will look very different in 10 years, as soil profiles shift, trees grow, animals tunnel, and people dig and build. “Underground cables will live for decades, and the sustainability of these technologies depends on how they adapt to this changing structure,” Kury added.

Daltorio notes that current undergrounding practices involve pouring concrete around the lines before backfilling to protect them from future excavation, a challenge for existing trenchless methods. But Case’s project brings two major benefits. First, by better understanding borehole design, engineers have more flexibility in choosing conduit materials to match the standards for particular environments. Also, advancements in burrowing precision could minimize the likelihood of future disruptions from human activities.

The research team is exploring different ways to reinforce the digging robot’s exterior while it’s underground.Olivia Gatchall

Daltorio’s team is collaborating with several partners, with Auburn University in Alabama contributing geotechnical expertise, Stony Brook University in New York running the modeling, and the University of Texas at Austin studying sediment interactions.

The project aims to halve undergrounding costs, though Daltorio cautions that it’s too early to commit to a specific cost model. Still, the time-saving potential appears promising. “With conventional approaches, planning, permitting and scheduling can take months,” Daltorio says. “By simplifying the process, it might be a few inspections at the endpoints, a few days of autonomous burrowing with minimal disruption to traffic above, followed by a few days of cleaning, splicing, and inspection.”

After January’s Southern California wildfires, the question of burying energy infrastructure to prevent future fires has gained renewed urgency in the state. While the exact cause of the fires remains under investigation, California utilities have spent years undergrounding power lines to mitigate fire risks. Pacific Gas & Electric, which has installed over 1,287 kilometers of underground power lines since 2021, estimates the method is 98 percent effective in reducing ignition threats. Southern California Edison has buried over 40 percent of its high-risk distribution lines, and 63 percent of San Diego Gas & Electric’s regional distribution system is now underground.

Still, the exorbitant cost of underground construction leaves much of the U.S. power grid’s 8.8 million kilometers of distribution lines and 180 million utility poles exposed to tree strikes, flying debris, and other opportunities for sparks to cascade into a multi-acre blaze. Recognizing the need for cost-effective undergrounding solutions, the U.S. Department of Energy launched GOPHURRS in January 2024. The three-year program pours $34 million into 12 projects to develop more efficient undergrounding technologies that minimize surface disruptions while supporting medium-voltage power lines.

One recipient, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is building a self-propelled robotic sleeve that mimics earthworms’ characteristic peristaltic movement to advance through soil. Awarded $2 million, Case’s “peristaltic conduit” concept hopes to more precisely navigate underground and reduce the risk of unintended damage, such as breaking an existing pipe.

Why Is Undergrounding So Expensive?

Despite its benefits, undergrounding remains cost-prohibitive at US $1.1 to $3.7 million per kilometer ($1.8 to $6 million per mile) for distribution lines and $3.7 to $62 million per kilometer for transmission lines, according to estimates from California’s three largest utilities. That’s significantly more than overhead infrastructure, which costs $394,000 to $472,000 per kilometer for distribution lines and $621,000 to $6.83 million per kilometer for transmission lines.

The most popular method of undergrounding power lines, called open trenching, requires extensive excavation, conduit installation, and backfilling, making it expensive and logistically complicated. And it’s often impractical in dense urban areas where underground infrastructure is already congested with plumbing, fiber optics, and other utilities.

Trenchless methods like horizontal directional drilling (HDD) provide a less invasive way to get power lines under roads and railways by creating a controlled, curved bore path that starts at a shallow entry angle, deepens to pass obstacles, and resurfaces at a precise exit point. But HDD is even more expensive than open trenching due to specialized equipment, complex workflows, and the risk of damaging existing infrastructure.

Given the steep costs, utilities often prioritize cheaper fire mitigation strategies like trimming back nearby trees and other plants, using insulated conductors, and stepping up routine inspections and repairs. While not as effective as undergrounding, these measures have been the go-to option, largely because faster, cheaper underground construction methods don’t yet exist.

Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, who has extensively studied the costs and benefits of undergrounding, says technologies implementing directional drilling improvements “could make undergrounding more practical in urban or densely populated areas where open trenching, and its attendant disruptions to the surrounding infrastructure, could result in untenable costs.”

Earthworm-Inspired Robotics for Power Lines

In Case’s worm-inspired robot, alternating sections are designed to expand and retract to anchor and advance the machine. This flexible force increases precision and reduces the risk of impacting and breaking pipes. Conventional methods require large turning radii exceeding 300 meters, but Case’s 1.5-meter turning radius will enable the device to flexibly maneuver around existing infrastructure.

“We use actuators to change the length and diameter of each segment,” says Kathryn Daltorio, an associate engineering professor and co-director of Case’s Biologically-Inspired Robotics Lab. “The short and fat segments press against the walls of the burrow, then they anchor so the thin segments can advance forward. If two segments aren’t touching the ground but they’re changing length at the same time, your anchors don’t slip and you advance forward.”

Daltorio and her colleagues have studied earthworm-inspired robotics for over a decade, originally envisioning the technology for surgical and confined-space applications before recognizing its potential for undergrounding power lines.

Case Western Reserve University’s worm-like digging robot can turn faster than other drilling techniques to avoid obstacles.Kathryn Daltorio/Case School of Engineering

Traditional HDD relies on pushing a drill head through soil, requiring more force as the bore length grows. Case’s drilling concept generates the force needed for the tip from the peristaltic segments within the borehole. As the path gets longer, only the front segments dig deeper. “If the robot hits something, operators can pull back and change directions, burrowing along the way to complete the circuit by changing the depth,” Daltorio says.

Another key difference from HDD is integrated conduit installation. In HDD, the drill goes through the entire length first, and then the power conduit is pulled through. Case’s peristaltic robot lays the conduit while traveling, reducing the overall installation time.

Advancements in Burrowing Precision

“The peristaltic conduit approach is fascinating [and] certainly seems to be addressing concerns regarding the sheer variety of underground obstacles,” says the University of Florida’s Kury. However, he highlights a larger concern with undergrounding innovations—not just Case’s—in meeting a constantly evolving environment. Today’s underground will look very different in 10 years, as soil profiles shift, trees grow, animals tunnel, and people dig and build. “Underground cables will live for decades, and the sustainability of these technologies depends on how they adapt to this changing structure,” Kury added.

Daltorio notes that current undergrounding practices involve pouring concrete around the lines before backfilling to protect them from future excavation, a challenge for existing trenchless methods. But Case’s project brings two major benefits. First, by better understanding borehole design, engineers have more flexibility in choosing conduit materials to match the standards for particular environments. Also, advancements in burrowing precision could minimize the likelihood of future disruptions from human activities.

The research team is exploring different ways to reinforce the digging robot’s exterior while it’s underground.Olivia Gatchall

Daltorio’s team is collaborating with several partners, with Auburn University in Alabama contributing geotechnical expertise, Stony Brook University in New York running the modeling, and the University of Texas at Austin studying sediment interactions.

The project aims to halve undergrounding costs, though Daltorio cautions that it’s too early to commit to a specific cost model. Still, the time-saving potential appears promising. “With conventional approaches, planning, permitting and scheduling can take months,” Daltorio says. “By simplifying the process, it might be a few inspections at the endpoints, a few days of autonomous burrowing with minimal disruption to traffic above, followed by a few days of cleaning, splicing, and inspection.”

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

Last year, we unveiled the new Atlas—faster, stronger, more compact, and less messy. We’re designing the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot to do anything and everything, but we get there one step at a time. Our first task is part sequencing, a common logistics task in automotive manufacturing. Discover why we started with sequencing, how we are solving hard problems, and how we’re delivering a humanoid robot with real value.

My favorite part is 1:40, where Atlas squats down to pick a part up off the ground.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

I’m mostly impressed that making contact with that stick doesn’t cause the robot to fall over.

[ Unitree ]

Professor Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is studying authenticity of artworks co-created by an artist and a robot. Her research lab, Robot Studio, is developing methods to authenticate artwork by analyzing their entire creative process. This is accomplished by using the artist’s biometrics as well as the process of artwork creation, from the first brushstroke to the final painting. This work aims to bring ownership back to artists in the age of generative AI.

[ Robot Studio ] at [ University of Michigan ]

Hard to believe that RoMeLa has been developing humanoid robots for 20 (!) years. Here’s to 20 more!

[ RoMeLa ] at [ University of California Los Angeles ]

In this demo, Reachy 2 autonomously sorts healthy and unhealthy foods. No machine learning, no pre-trained AI—just real-time object detection!

[ Pollen ]

Biological snakes achieve high mobility with numerous joints, inspiring snake-like robots for rescue and inspection. However, conventional designs feature a limited number of joints. This paper presents an underactuated snake robot consisting of many passive links that can dynamically change its joint coupling configuration by repositioning motor-driven joint units along internal rack gears. Furthermore, a soft robot skin wirelessly powers the units, eliminating wire tangling and disconnection risks.

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Ayato!

Tech United Eindhoven is working on quadrupedal soccer robots, which should be fun.

[ Tech United ]

Autonomous manipulation in everyday tasks requires flexible action generation to handle complex, diverse real-world environments, such as objects with varying hardness and softness. Imitation Learning (IL) enables robots to learn complex tasks from expert demonstrations. However, a lot of existing methods rely on position/unilateral control, leaving challenges in tasks that require force information/control, like carefully grasping fragile or varying-hardness objects. To address these challenges, we introduce Bilateral Control-Based Imitation Learning via Action Chunking with Transformers(Bi-ACT) and”A” “L”ow-cost “P”hysical “Ha”rdware Considering Diverse Motor Control Modes for Research in Everyday Bimanual Robotic Manipulation (ALPHA-α).

[ Alpha-Biact ]

Thanks, Masato!

Powered by UBTECH’s revolutionary framework “BrainNet”, a team of Walker S1 humanoid robots work together to master complex tasks at Zeekr’s Smart Factory! Teamwork makes the dream of robots work.

[ UBTECH ]

Personal mobile robotic assistants are expected to find wide applications in industry and healthcare. However, manually steering a robot while in motion requires significant concentration from the operator, especially in tight or crowded spaces. This work presents a virtual leash with which a robot can naturally follow an operator. We successfully validate on the ANYmal platform the robustness and performance of our entire pipeline in real-world experiments.

[ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

I do not ever want to inspect a wind turbine blade from the inside.

[ Flyability ]

Sometimes you can learn more about a robot from an instructional unboxing video than from a fancy demo.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

Researchers at Penn Engineering have discovered that certain features of AI-governed robots carry security vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were previously unidentified and unknown. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Laboratory, the research aims to address the emerging vulnerability for ensuring the safe deployment of large language models (LLMs) in robotics.

[ RoboPAIR ]

ReachBot is a joint project between Stanford and NASA to explore a new approach to mobility in challenging environments such as martian caves. It consists of a compact robot body with very long extending arms, based on booms used for extendable antennas. The booms unroll from a coil and can extend many meters in low gravity. In this talk I will introduce the ReachBot design and motion planning considerations, report on a field test with a single ReachBot arm in a lava tube in the Mojave Desert, and discuss future plans, which include the possibility of mounting one or more ReachBot arms equipped with wrists and grippers on a mobile platform – such as ANYMal.

[ ReachBot ]

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

Last year, we unveiled the new Atlas—faster, stronger, more compact, and less messy. We’re designing the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot to do anything and everything, but we get there one step at a time. Our first task is part sequencing, a common logistics task in automotive manufacturing. Discover why we started with sequencing, how we are solving hard problems, and how we’re delivering a humanoid robot with real value.

My favorite part is 1:40, where Atlas squats down to pick a part up off the ground.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

I’m mostly impressed that making contact with that stick doesn’t cause the robot to fall over.

[ Unitree ]

Professor Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is studying authenticity of artworks co-created by an artist and a robot. Her research lab, Robot Studio, is developing methods to authenticate artwork by analyzing their entire creative process. This is accomplished by using the artist’s biometrics as well as the process of artwork creation, from the first brushstroke to the final painting. This work aims to bring ownership back to artists in the age of generative AI.

[ Robot Studio ] at [ University of Michigan ]

Hard to believe that RoMeLa has been developing humanoid robots for 20 (!) years. Here’s to 20 more!

[ RoMeLa ] at [ University of California Los Angeles ]

In this demo, Reachy 2 autonomously sorts healthy and unhealthy foods. No machine learning, no pre-trained AI—just real-time object detection!

[ Pollen ]

Biological snakes achieve high mobility with numerous joints, inspiring snake-like robots for rescue and inspection. However, conventional designs feature a limited number of joints. This paper presents an underactuated snake robot consisting of many passive links that can dynamically change its joint coupling configuration by repositioning motor-driven joint units along internal rack gears. Furthermore, a soft robot skin wirelessly powers the units, eliminating wire tangling and disconnection risks.

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Ayato!

Tech United Eindhoven is working on quadrupedal soccer robots, which should be fun.

[ Tech United ]

Autonomous manipulation in everyday tasks requires flexible action generation to handle complex, diverse real-world environments, such as objects with varying hardness and softness. Imitation Learning (IL) enables robots to learn complex tasks from expert demonstrations. However, a lot of existing methods rely on position/unilateral control, leaving challenges in tasks that require force information/control, like carefully grasping fragile or varying-hardness objects. To address these challenges, we introduce Bilateral Control-Based Imitation Learning via Action Chunking with Transformers(Bi-ACT) and”A” “L”ow-cost “P”hysical “Ha”rdware Considering Diverse Motor Control Modes for Research in Everyday Bimanual Robotic Manipulation (ALPHA-α).

[ Alpha-Biact ]

Thanks, Masato!

Powered by UBTECH’s revolutionary framework “BrainNet”, a team of Walker S1 humanoid robots work together to master complex tasks at Zeekr’s Smart Factory! Teamwork makes the dream of robots work.

[ UBTECH ]

Personal mobile robotic assistants are expected to find wide applications in industry and healthcare. However, manually steering a robot while in motion requires significant concentration from the operator, especially in tight or crowded spaces. This work presents a virtual leash with which a robot can naturally follow an operator. We successfully validate on the ANYmal platform the robustness and performance of our entire pipeline in real-world experiments.

[ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

I do not ever want to inspect a wind turbine blade from the inside.

[ Flyability ]

Sometimes you can learn more about a robot from an instructional unboxing video than from a fancy demo.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

Researchers at Penn Engineering have discovered that certain features of AI-governed robots carry security vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were previously unidentified and unknown. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Laboratory, the research aims to address the emerging vulnerability for ensuring the safe deployment of large language models (LLMs) in robotics.

[ RoboPAIR ]

ReachBot is a joint project between Stanford and NASA to explore a new approach to mobility in challenging environments such as martian caves. It consists of a compact robot body with very long extending arms, based on booms used for extendable antennas. The booms unroll from a coil and can extend many meters in low gravity. In this talk I will introduce the ReachBot design and motion planning considerations, report on a field test with a single ReachBot arm in a lava tube in the Mojave Desert, and discuss future plans, which include the possibility of mounting one or more ReachBot arms equipped with wrists and grippers on a mobile platform – such as ANYMal.

[ ReachBot ]

Although they’re a staple of sci-fi movies and conspiracy theories, in real life, tiny flying microbots—weighed down by batteries and electronics—have struggled to get very far. But a new combination of circuits and lightweight solid-state batteries called a “flying batteries” topology could let these bots really take off, potentially powering microbots for hours from a system that weighs milligrams.

Microbots could be an important technology to find people buried in rubble or scout ahead in other dangerous situations. But they’re a difficult engineering challenge, says Patrick Mercier, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. Mercier’s student Zixiao Lin described the new circuit last month at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). “You have these really tiny robots, and you want them to last as long as possible in the field,” Mercier says. “The best way to do that is to use lithium-ion batteries, because they have the best energy density. But there’s this fundamental problem, where the actuators need much higher voltage than what the battery is capable of providing.”

A lithium cell can provide about 4 volts, but piezoelectric actuators for microbots need tens to hundreds of volts, explains Mercier. Researchers, including Mercier’s own group, have developed circuits such as boost converters to pump up the voltage. But because they need relatively large inductors or a bunch of capacitors, these add too much mass and volume, typically taking up about as much room as the battery itself.

A new kind of solid-state battery, developed at the French national electronics laboratory CEA-Leti, offered a potential solution. The batteries are a thin-film stack of material, including lithium cobalt oxide and lithium phosphorus oxynitride, made using semiconductor processing technology, and they can be diced up into tiny cells. A 0.33-cubic-millimeter, 0.8-milligram cell can store 20 microampere-hours of charge, or about 60 ampere-hours per liter. (Lithium-ion earbud batteries provide more than 100 Ah/L, but are about 1,000 times as large.) A CEA-Leti spinoff based on the technology, Inject Power, in Grenoble, France, is gearing up to begin volume manufacturing in late 2026.

Stacking Batteries on the Fly

Because a solid-state battery can be diced up into tiny cells, researchers thought that they could achieve high voltages using a circuit that needs no capacitors or inductors. Instead, the circuit actively rearranges the connections among many tiny batteries moving them from parallel to serial and back again.

Imagine a microdrone that moves by flapping wings attached to a piezoelectric actuator. On its circuit board are a dozen or so of the solid-state microbatteries. Each battery is part of a circuit consisting of four transistors. These act as switches that can dynamically change the connection to that battery’s neighbor so that it is either parallel, so they share the same voltage, or serial, so their voltages are added.

At the start, all the batteries are in parallel, delivering a voltage that is nowhere near enough to trigger the actuator. The 2-square-millimeter IC the UCSD team built then begins opening and closing the transistor switches. This rearranges the connections between the cells so that first two cells are connected serially, then three, then four, and so on. In a few hundredths of a second, the batteries are all connected in series, and the voltage has piled so much charge onto the actuator that it snaps the microbot’s wings down. The IC then unwinds the process, making the batteries parallel again, one at a time.

The integrated circuit in the “flying battery” has a total area of 2 square millimeters.Patrick Mercier

Adiabatic Charging

Why not just connect every battery in series at once instead of going through this ramping up and down scheme? In a word, efficiency.

As long as the battery serialization and parallelization is done at a low-enough frequency, the system is charging adiabatically. That is, its power losses are minimized.

But it’s what happens after the actuator triggers “where the real magic comes in,” says Mercier. The piezoelectric actuator in the circuit acts like a capacitor, storing energy. “Just like you have regenerative breaking in a car, we can recover some of the energy that we stored in this actuator.” As each battery is unstacked, the remaining energy storage system has a lower voltage than the actuator, so some charge flows back into the batteries.

The UCSD team actually tested two varieties of solid-state microbatteries—1.5-volt ceramic version from Tokyo-based TDK (CeraCharge 1704-SSB) and a 4-V custom design from CEA-Leti. With 1.6 grams of TDK cells, the circuit reached 56.1 volts and delivered a power density of 79 milliwatts per gram, but with 0.014 grams of the custom storage, it maxed out at 68 V, and demonstrated a power density of 4,500 mW/g.

Mercier plans to test the system with robotics partners while his team and CEA-Leti work to improved the flying batteries system’s packaging, miniaturization, and other properties. One important characteristic that needs work is the internal resistance of the microbatteries. “The challenge there is that the more you stack, the higher the series resistance is, and therefore the lower the frequency we can operate the system,” he says.

Nevertheless, Mercier seems bullish on flying batteries’ chances of keeping microbots aloft. “Adiabatic charging with charge recovery and no passives: Those are two wins that help increase flight time.”

Although they’re a staple of sci-fi movies and conspiracy theories, in real life, tiny flying microbots—weighed down by batteries and electronics—have struggled to get very far. But a new combination of circuits and lightweight solid-state batteries called a “flying batteries” topology could let these bots really take off, potentially powering microbots for hours from a system that weighs milligrams.

Microbots could be an important technology to find people buried in rubble or scout ahead in other dangerous situations. But they’re a difficult engineering challenge, says Patrick Mercier, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. Mercier’s student Zixiao Lin described the new circuit last month at the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). “You have these really tiny robots, and you want them to last as long as possible in the field,” Mercier says. “The best way to do that is to use lithium-ion batteries, because they have the best energy density. But there’s this fundamental problem, where the actuators need much higher voltage than what the battery is capable of providing.”

A lithium cell can provide about 4 volts, but piezoelectric actuators for microbots need tens to hundreds of volts, explains Mercier. Researchers, including Mercier’s own group, have developed circuits such as boost converters to pump up the voltage. But because they need relatively large inductors or a bunch of capacitors, these add too much mass and volume, typically taking up about as much room as the battery itself.

A new kind of solid-state battery, developed at the French national electronics laboratory CEA-Leti, offered a potential solution. The batteries are a thin-film stack of material, including lithium cobalt oxide and lithium phosphorus oxynitride, made using semiconductor processing technology, and they can be diced up into tiny cells. A 0.33-cubic-millimeter, 0.8-milligram cell can store 20 microampere-hours of charge, or about 60 ampere-hours per liter. (Lithium-ion earbud batteries provide more than 100 Ah/L, but are about 1,000 times as large.) A CEA-Leti spinoff based on the technology, Inject Power, in Grenoble, France, is gearing up to begin volume manufacturing in late 2026.

Stacking Batteries on the Fly

Because a solid-state battery can be diced up into tiny cells, researchers thought that they could achieve high voltages using a circuit that needs no capacitors or inductors. Instead, the circuit actively rearranges the connections among many tiny batteries moving them from parallel to serial and back again.

Imagine a microdrone that moves by flapping wings attached to a piezoelectric actuator. On its circuit board are a dozen or so of the solid-state microbatteries. Each battery is part of a circuit consisting of four transistors. These act as switches that can dynamically change the connection to that battery’s neighbor so that it is either parallel, so they share the same voltage, or serial, so their voltages are added.

At the start, all the batteries are in parallel, delivering a voltage that is nowhere near enough to trigger the actuator. The 2-square-millimeter IC the UCSD team built then begins opening and closing the transistor switches. This rearranges the connections between the cells so that first two cells are connected serially, then three, then four, and so on. In a few hundredths of a second, the batteries are all connected in series, and the voltage has piled so much charge onto the actuator that it snaps the microbot’s wings down. The IC then unwinds the process, making the batteries parallel again, one at a time.

The integrated circuit in the “flying battery” has a total area of 2 square millimeters.Patrick Mercier

Adiabatic Charging

Why not just connect every battery in series at once instead of going through this ramping up and down scheme? In a word, efficiency.

As long as the battery serialization and parallelization is done at a low-enough frequency, the system is charging adiabatically. That is, its power losses are minimized.

But it’s what happens after the actuator triggers “where the real magic comes in,” says Mercier. The piezoelectric actuator in the circuit acts like a capacitor, storing energy. “Just like you have regenerative breaking in a car, we can recover some of the energy that we stored in this actuator.” As each battery is unstacked, the remaining energy storage system has a lower voltage than the actuator, so some charge flows back into the batteries.

The UCSD team actually tested two varieties of solid-state microbatteries—1.5-volt ceramic version from Tokyo-based TDK (CeraCharge 1704-SSB) and a 4-V custom design from CEA-Leti. With 1.6 grams of TDK cells, the circuit reached 56.1 volts and delivered a power density of 79 milliwatts per gram, but with 0.014 grams of the custom storage, it maxed out at 68 V, and demonstrated a power density of 4,500 mW/g.

Mercier plans to test the system with robotics partners while his team and CEA-Leti work to improved the flying batteries system’s packaging, miniaturization, and other properties. One important characteristic that needs work is the internal resistance of the microbatteries. “The challenge there is that the more you stack, the higher the series resistance is, and therefore the lower the frequency we can operate the system,” he says.

Nevertheless, Mercier seems bullish on flying batteries’ chances of keeping microbots aloft. “Adiabatic charging with charge recovery and no passives: Those are two wins that help increase flight time.”

Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project out of Ron Fearing’s lab at UC Berkeley. The palm-sized spring-loaded jumping robot has gone from barely being able to chain together a few open-loop jumps to mastering landings, bouncing around outside, powering through obstacle courses, and occasionally exploding.

What’s quite unusual about Salto is that it’s still an active research project—nine years is an astonishingly long life time for any robot, especially one without any immediately obvious practical applications. But one of Salto’s original creators, Justin Yim (who is now a professor at the University of Illinois), has found a niche where Salto might be able to do what no other robot can: mid-air sampling of the water geysering out of the frigid surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

What makes Enceladus so interesting is that it’s completely covered in a 40 kilometer thick sheet of ice, and underneath that ice is a 10 km-deep global ocean. And within that ocean can be found—we know not what. Diving in that buried ocean is a problem that robots may be able to solve at some point, but in the near(er) term, Enceladus’ south pole is home to over a hundred cryovolcanoes that spew plumes of water vapor and all kinds of other stuff right out into space, offering a sampling opportunity to any robot that can get close enough for a sip.

“We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” —Justin Yim, University of Illinois

Yim, along with another Salto veteran Ethan Schaler (now at JPL), have been awarded funding through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to turn Salto into a robot that can perform “Legged Exploration Across the Plume,” or in an only moderately strained backronym, LEAP. LEAP would be a space-ified version of Salto with a couple of major modifications allowing it to operate in a freezing, airless, low-gravity environment.

Exploring Enceladus’ Challenging Terrain

As best as we can make out from images taken during Cassini flybys, the surface of Enceladus is unfriendly to traditional rovers, covered in ridges and fissures, although we don’t have very much information on the exact properties of the terrain. There’s also essentially no atmosphere, meaning that you can’t fly using aerodynamics, and if you use rockets to fly instead, you run the risk of your exhaust contaminating any samples that you take.

“This doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of options for getting around, but one that seems like it might be particularly suitable is jumping,” Yim tells us. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” And with Enceladus’ gravity being just 1/80th that of Earth, Salto’s meter-high jump on Earth would enable it to travel a hundred meters or so on Enceladus, taking samples as it soars through cryovolcano plumes.

The current version of Salto does require an atmosphere, because it uses a pair of propellers as tiny thrusters to control yaw and roll. On LEAP, those thrusters would be replaced with an angled pair of reaction wheels instead. To deal with the terrain, the robot will also likely need a foot that can handle jumping from (and landing on) surfaces composed of granular ice particles.

LEAP is designed to jump through Enceladus’ many plumes to collect samples, and use the moon’s terrain to direct subsequent jumps.NASA/Justin Yim

While the vision is for LEAP to jump continuously, bouncing over the surface and through plumes in a controlled series of hops, sooner or later it’s going to have a bad landing, and the robot has to be prepared for that. “I think one of the biggest new technological developments is going to be multimodal locomotion,” explains Yim. “Specifically, we’d like to have a robust ability to handle falls.” The reaction wheels can help with this in two ways: they offer some protection by acting like a shell around the robot, and they can also operate as a regular pair of wheels, allowing the robot to roll around on the ground a little bit. “With some maneuvers that we’re experimenting with now, the reaction wheels might also be able to help the robot to pop itself back upright so that it can start jumping again after it falls over,” Yim says.

A NIAC project like this is about as early-stage as it gets for something like LEAP, and an Enceladus mission is very far away as measured by almost every metric—space, time, funding, policy, you name it. Long term, the idea with LEAP is that it could be an add-on to a mission concept called the Enceladus Orbilander. This US $2.5 billion spacecraft would launch sometime in the 2030s, and spend about a dozen years getting to Saturn and entering orbit around Enceladus. After 1.5 years in orbit, the spacecraft would land on the surface, and spend a further 2 years looking for biosignatures. The Orbilander itself would be stationary, Yim explains, “so having this robotic mobility solution would be a great way to do expanded exploration of Enceladus, getting really long distance coverage to collect water samples from plumes on different areas of the surface.”

LEAP has been funded through a nine-month Phase 1 study that begins this April. While the JPL team investigates ice-foot interactions and tries to figure out how to keep the robot from freezing to death, at the University of Illinois Yim will be upgrading Salto with self-righting capability. Honestly, it’s exciting to think that after so many years, Salto may have finally found an application where it offers the actual best solution for solving this particular problem of low-gravity mobility for science.

Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project out of Ron Fearing’s lab at UC Berkeley. The palm-sized spring-loaded jumping robot has gone from barely being able to chain together a few open-loop jumps to mastering landings, bouncing around outside, powering through obstacle courses, and occasionally exploding.

What’s quite unusual about Salto is that it’s still an active research project—nine years is an astonishingly long life time for any robot, especially one without any immediately obvious practical applications. But one of Salto’s original creators, Justin Yim (who is now a professor at the University of Illinois), has found a niche where Salto might be able to do what no other robot can: mid-air sampling of the water geysering out of the frigid surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

What makes Enceladus so interesting is that it’s completely covered in a 40 kilometer thick sheet of ice, and underneath that ice is a 10 km-deep global ocean. And within that ocean can be found—we know not what. Diving in that buried ocean is a problem that robots may be able to solve at some point, but in the near(er) term, Enceladus’ south pole is home to over a hundred cryovolcanoes that spew plumes of water vapor and all kinds of other stuff right out into space, offering a sampling opportunity to any robot that can get close enough for a sip.

“We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” —Justin Yim, University of Illinois

Yim, along with another Salto veteran Ethan Schaler (now at JPL), have been awarded funding through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to turn Salto into a robot that can perform “Legged Exploration Across the Plume,” or in an only moderately strained backronym, LEAP. LEAP would be a space-ified version of Salto with a couple of major modifications allowing it to operate in a freezing, airless, low-gravity environment.

Exploring Enceladus’ Challenging Terrain

As best as we can make out from images taken during Cassini flybys, the surface of Enceladus is unfriendly to traditional rovers, covered in ridges and fissures, although we don’t have very much information on the exact properties of the terrain. There’s also essentially no atmosphere, meaning that you can’t fly using aerodynamics, and if you use rockets to fly instead, you run the risk of your exhaust contaminating any samples that you take.

“This doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of options for getting around, but one that seems like it might be particularly suitable is jumping,” Yim tells us. “We can cover large distances, we can get over obstacles, we don’t require an atmosphere, and we don’t pollute anything.” And with Enceladus’ gravity being just 1/80th that of Earth, Salto’s meter-high jump on Earth would enable it to travel a hundred meters or so on Enceladus, taking samples as it soars through cryovolcano plumes.

The current version of Salto does require an atmosphere, because it uses a pair of propellers as tiny thrusters to control yaw and roll. On LEAP, those thrusters would be replaced with an angled pair of reaction wheels instead. To deal with the terrain, the robot will also likely need a foot that can handle jumping from (and landing on) surfaces composed of granular ice particles.

LEAP is designed to jump through Enceladus’ many plumes to collect samples, and use the moon’s terrain to direct subsequent jumps.NASA/Justin Yim

While the vision is for LEAP to jump continuously, bouncing over the surface and through plumes in a controlled series of hops, sooner or later it’s going to have a bad landing, and the robot has to be prepared for that. “I think one of the biggest new technological developments is going to be multimodal locomotion,” explains Yim. “Specifically, we’d like to have a robust ability to handle falls.” The reaction wheels can help with this in two ways: they offer some protection by acting like a shell around the robot, and they can also operate as a regular pair of wheels, allowing the robot to roll around on the ground a little bit. “With some maneuvers that we’re experimenting with now, the reaction wheels might also be able to help the robot to pop itself back upright so that it can start jumping again after it falls over,” Yim says.

A NIAC project like this is about as early-stage as it gets for something like LEAP, and an Enceladus mission is very far away as measured by almost every metric—space, time, funding, policy, you name it. Long term, the idea with LEAP is that it could be an add-on to a mission concept called the Enceladus Orbilander. This US $2.5 billion spacecraft would launch sometime in the 2030s, and spend about a dozen years getting to Saturn and entering orbit around Enceladus. After 1.5 years in orbit, the spacecraft would land on the surface, and spend a further 2 years looking for biosignatures. The Orbilander itself would be stationary, Yim explains, “so having this robotic mobility solution would be a great way to do expanded exploration of Enceladus, getting really long distance coverage to collect water samples from plumes on different areas of the surface.”

LEAP has been funded through a nine-month Phase 1 study that begins this April. While the JPL team investigates ice-foot interactions and tries to figure out how to keep the robot from freezing to death, at the University of Illinois Yim will be upgrading Salto with self-righting capability. Honestly, it’s exciting to think that after so many years, Salto may have finally found an application where it offers the actual best solution for solving this particular problem of low-gravity mobility for science.

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

A bioinspired robot developed at EPFL can change shape to alter its own physical properties in response to its environment, resulting in a robust and efficient autonomous vehicle as well as a fresh approach to robotic locomotion.

[ Science Robotics ] via [ EPFL ]

A robot CAN get up this way, but SHOULD a robot get up this way?

[ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ]

I’m impressed with the capabilities here, but not the use case. There are already automated systems that do this much faster, much more reliably, and almost certainly much more cheaply. So, probably best to think of this as more of a technology demo than anything with commercial potential.

[ Figure ]

NEO Gamma is the next generation of home humanoids designed and engineered by 1X Technologies. The Gamma series includes improvements across NEO’s hardware and AI, featuring a new design that is deeply considerate of life at home. The future of Home Humanoids is here.

You all know by now not to take this video too seriously, but I will say that an advantage of building a robot like this for the home is that realistically it can spend most of its time sitting down and (presumably) charging.

[ 1X Technologies ]

This video compilation showcases novel aerial and underwater drone platforms and an ultra-quiet electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) propeller. These technologies were developed by the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory (AVFL) at Texas A&M University and Harmony Aeronautics, an AVFL spin-off company.

[ AVFL ]

Yes! More research like this please; legged robots (of all sizes) are TOO STOMPY.

[ ETH Zurich ]

Robosquirrel!

[ BBC ] via [ Laughing Squid ]

By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study from researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies.

[ Columbia University, School of Engineering and Applied Science ]

If I was asking my robot to do a front flip for the first(ish) time, my face would probably look like the poor guy at 0:25. But it worked!

[ EngineAI ]

*We kindly request that all users refrain from making any dangerous modifications or using the robots in a hazardous manner.

A hazardous manner? Like teaching it martial arts...?

[ Unitree ]

Explore SLAMSpoof—a cutting-edge project by Keio-CSG that demonstrates how LiDAR spoofing attacks can compromise SLAM systems. In this video, we explore how spoofing attacks can compromise the integrity of SLAM systems, review the underlying methodology, and discuss the potential security implications for robotics and autonomous navigation. Whether you’re a robotics enthusiast, a security researcher, or simply curious about emerging technologies, this video offers valuable insights into both the risks and the innovations in the field.

[ SLAMSpoof ]

Thanks, Kentaro!

Sanctuary AI, a company developing physical AI for general purpose robots, announced the integration of new tactile sensor technology into its Phoenix general purpose robots. The integration enables teleoperation pilots to more effectively leverage the dexterity capabilities of general purpose robots to achieve complex, touch-driven tasks with precision and accuracy.

[ Sanctuary AI ]

I don’t know whether it’s the shape or the noise or what, but this robot pleases me.

[ University of Pennsylvania, Sung Robotics Lab ]

Check out the top features of the new Husky A300 - the next evolution of our rugged and customizable mobile robotic platform. Husky A300 offers superior performance, durability, and flexibility, empowering robotics researchers and innovators to tackle the most complex challenges in demanding environments.

[ Clearpath Robotics ]

The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will drill deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two meters deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures.

[ European Space Agency ]

AI has been improving by leaps and bounds in recent years, and a string of new models can generate answers that almost feel as if they came from a person reasoning through a problem. But is AI actually close to reasoning like humans can? IBM distinguished scientist Murray Campbell chats with IBM Fellow Francesca Rossi about her time as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). They discuss the state of AI, what modern reasoning models are actually doing, and whether we’ll see models that reason like we do.

[ IBM Research ]

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GALondon Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TXRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

A bioinspired robot developed at EPFL can change shape to alter its own physical properties in response to its environment, resulting in a robust and efficient autonomous vehicle as well as a fresh approach to robotic locomotion.

[ Science Robotics ] via [ EPFL ]

A robot CAN get up this way, but SHOULD a robot get up this way?

[ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ]

I’m impressed with the capabilities here, but not the use case. There are already automated systems that do this much faster, much more reliably, and almost certainly much more cheaply. So, probably best to think of this as more of a technology demo than anything with commercial potential.

[ Figure ]

NEO Gamma is the next generation of home humanoids designed and engineered by 1X Technologies. The Gamma series includes improvements across NEO’s hardware and AI, featuring a new design that is deeply considerate of life at home. The future of Home Humanoids is here.

You all know by now not to take this video too seriously, but I will say that an advantage of building a robot like this for the home is that realistically it can spend most of its time sitting down and (presumably) charging.

[ 1X Technologies ]

This video compilation showcases novel aerial and underwater drone platforms and an ultra-quiet electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) propeller. These technologies were developed by the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory (AVFL) at Texas A&M University and Harmony Aeronautics, an AVFL spin-off company.

[ AVFL ]

Yes! More research like this please; legged robots (of all sizes) are TOO STOMPY.

[ ETH Zurich ]

Robosquirrel!

[ BBC ] via [ Laughing Squid ]

By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study from researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies.

[ Columbia University, School of Engineering and Applied Science ]

If I was asking my robot to do a front flip for the first(ish) time, my face would probably look like the poor guy at 0:25. But it worked!

[ EngineAI ]

*We kindly request that all users refrain from making any dangerous modifications or using the robots in a hazardous manner.

A hazardous manner? Like teaching it martial arts...?

[ Unitree ]

Explore SLAMSpoof—a cutting-edge project by Keio-CSG that demonstrates how LiDAR spoofing attacks can compromise SLAM systems. In this video, we explore how spoofing attacks can compromise the integrity of SLAM systems, review the underlying methodology, and discuss the potential security implications for robotics and autonomous navigation. Whether you’re a robotics enthusiast, a security researcher, or simply curious about emerging technologies, this video offers valuable insights into both the risks and the innovations in the field.

[ SLAMSpoof ]

Thanks, Kentaro!

Sanctuary AI, a company developing physical AI for general purpose robots, announced the integration of new tactile sensor technology into its Phoenix general purpose robots. The integration enables teleoperation pilots to more effectively leverage the dexterity capabilities of general purpose robots to achieve complex, touch-driven tasks with precision and accuracy.

[ Sanctuary AI ]

I don’t know whether it’s the shape or the noise or what, but this robot pleases me.

[ University of Pennsylvania, Sung Robotics Lab ]

Check out the top features of the new Husky A300 - the next evolution of our rugged and customizable mobile robotic platform. Husky A300 offers superior performance, durability, and flexibility, empowering robotics researchers and innovators to tackle the most complex challenges in demanding environments.

[ Clearpath Robotics ]

The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover will drill deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two meters deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures.

[ European Space Agency ]

AI has been improving by leaps and bounds in recent years, and a string of new models can generate answers that almost feel as if they came from a person reasoning through a problem. But is AI actually close to reasoning like humans can? IBM distinguished scientist Murray Campbell chats with IBM Fellow Francesca Rossi about her time as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). They discuss the state of AI, what modern reasoning models are actually doing, and whether we’ll see models that reason like we do.

[ IBM Research ]

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, N.C.ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA.London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTONRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

We’re introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics.

This is moderately impressive; my favorite part is probably the handoffs and that extra little bit of HRI with what we’d call eye contact if these robots had faces. But keep in mind that you’re looking at close to best case for robotic manipulation, and that if the robots had been given the bag instead of well-spaced objects on a single color background, or if the fridge had a normal human amount of stuff in it, they might be having a much different time of it. Also, is it just me, or is the sound on this video very weird? Like, some things make noise, some things don’t, and the robots themselves occasionally sound more like someone just added in some “soft actuator sound” or something. Also also, I’m of a suspicious nature, and when there is an abrupt cut between “robot grasps door” and “robot opens door,” I assume the worst.

[ Figure ]

Researchers at EPFL have developed a highly agile flat swimming robot. This robot is smaller than a credit card, and propels on the water surface using a pair of undulating soft fins. The fins are driven at resonance by artificial muscles, allowing the robot to perform complex maneuvers. In the future, this robot can be used for monitoring water quality or help with measuring fertilizer concentrations in rice fields

[ Paper ] via [ Science Robotics ]

I don’t know about you, but I always dance better when getting beaten with a stick.

[ Unitree Robotics ]

This is big news, people: Sweet Bite Ham Ham, one of the greatest and most useless robots of all time, has a new treat.

All yours for about US $100, overseas shipping included.

[ Ham Ham ] via [ Robotstart ]

MagicLab has announced the launch of its first generation self-developed dexterous hand product, the MagicHand S01. The MagicHand S01 has 11 degrees of freedom in a single hand. The MagicHand S01 has a hand load capacity of up to 5 kilograms, and in work environments, can carry loads of over 20 kilograms.

[ MagicLab ]

Thanks, Ni Tao!

No, I’m not creeped out at all, why?

[ Clone Robotics ]

Happy 40th Birthday to the MIT Media Lab!

Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has provided a home for interdisciplinary research, transformative technologies, and innovative approaches to solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary year, we’re looking ahead to decades more of imagining, designing, and inventing a future in which everyone has the opportunity to flourish.

[ MIT Media Lab ]

While most soft pneumatic grippers that operate with a single control parameter (such as pressure or airflow) are limited to a single grasping modality, this article introduces a new method for incorporating multiple grasping modalities into vacuum-driven soft grippers. This is achieved by combining stiffness manipulation with a bistable mechanism. Adjusting the airflow tunes the energy barrier of the bistable mechanism, enabling changes in triggering sensitivity and allowing swift transitions between grasping modes. This results in an exceptional versatile gripper, capable of handling a diverse range of objects with varying sizes, shapes, stiffness, and roughness, controlled by a single parameter, airflow, and its interaction with objects.

[ Paper ] via [ BruBotics ]

Thanks, Bram!

In this article, we present a design concept, in which a monolithic soft body is incorporated with a vibration-driven mechanism, called Leafbot. This proposed investigation aims to build a foundation for further terradynamics study of vibration-driven soft robots in a more complicated and confined environment, with potential applications in inspection tasks.

[ Paper ] via [ IEEE Transactions on Robots ]

We present a hybrid aerial-ground robot that combines the versatility of a quadcopter with enhanced terrestrial mobility. The vehicle features a passive, reconfigurable single wheeled leg, enabling seamless transitions between flight and two ground modes: a stable stance and a dynamic cruising configuration.

[ Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory ]

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this trick performed by a robot with soft fingers before.

[ Paper ]

There are a lot of robots involved in car manufacturing. Like, a lot.

[ Kawasaki Robotics ]

Steve Willits shows us some recent autonomous drone work being done at the AirLab at CMU’s Robotics Institute.

[ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ]

Somebody’s got to test all those luxury handbags and purses. And by somebody, I mean somerobot.

[ Qb Robotics ]

Do not trust people named Evan.

[ Tufts University Human-Robot Interaction Lab ]

Meet the Mind: MIT Professor Andreea Bobu.

[ MIT ]

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYEuropean Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, N.C.ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA.London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDONIEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTONRSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVAIAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today’s videos!

We’re introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics.

This is moderately impressive; my favorite part is probably the handoffs and that extra little bit of HRI with what we’d call eye contact if these robots had faces. But keep in mind that you’re looking at close to best case for robotic manipulation, and that if the robots had been given the bag instead of well-spaced objects on a single color background, or if the fridge had a normal human amount of stuff in it, they might be having a much different time of it. Also, is it just me, or is the sound on this video very weird? Like, some things make noise, some things don’t, and the robots themselves occasionally sound more like someone just added in some “soft actuator sound” or something. Also also, I’m of a suspicious nature, and when there is an abrupt cut between “robot grasps door” and “robot opens door,” I assume the worst.

[ Figure ]

Researchers at EPFL have developed a highly agile flat swimming robot. This robot is smaller than a credit card, and propels on the water surface using a pair of undulating soft fins. The fins are driven at resonance by artificial muscles, allowing the robot to perform complex maneuvers. In the future, this robot can be used for monitoring water quality or help with measuring fertilizer concentrations in rice fields

[ Paper ] via [ Science Robotics ]

I don’t know about you, but I always dance better when getting beaten with a stick.

[ Unitree Robotics ]

This is big news, people: Sweet Bite Ham Ham, one of the greatest and most useless robots of all time, has a new treat.

All yours for about US $100, overseas shipping included.

[ Ham Ham ] via [ Robotstart ]

MagicLab has announced the launch of its first generation self-developed dexterous hand product, the MagicHand S01. The MagicHand S01 has 11 degrees of freedom in a single hand. The MagicHand S01 has a hand load capacity of up to 5 kilograms, and in work environments, can carry loads of over 20 kilograms.

[ MagicLab ]

Thanks, Ni Tao!

No, I’m not creeped out at all, why?

[ Clone Robotics ]

Happy 40th Birthday to the MIT Media Lab!

Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has provided a home for interdisciplinary research, transformative technologies, and innovative approaches to solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary year, we’re looking ahead to decades more of imagining, designing, and inventing a future in which everyone has the opportunity to flourish.

[ MIT Media Lab ]

While most soft pneumatic grippers that operate with a single control parameter (such as pressure or airflow) are limited to a single grasping modality, this article introduces a new method for incorporating multiple grasping modalities into vacuum-driven soft grippers. This is achieved by combining stiffness manipulation with a bistable mechanism. Adjusting the airflow tunes the energy barrier of the bistable mechanism, enabling changes in triggering sensitivity and allowing swift transitions between grasping modes. This results in an exceptional versatile gripper, capable of handling a diverse range of objects with varying sizes, shapes, stiffness, and roughness, controlled by a single parameter, airflow, and its interaction with objects.

[ Paper ] via [ BruBotics ]

Thanks, Bram!

In this article, we present a design concept, in which a monolithic soft body is incorporated with a vibration-driven mechanism, called Leafbot. This proposed investigation aims to build a foundation for further terradynamics study of vibration-driven soft robots in a more complicated and confined environment, with potential applications in inspection tasks.

[ Paper ] via [ IEEE Transactions on Robots ]

We present a hybrid aerial-ground robot that combines the versatility of a quadcopter with enhanced terrestrial mobility. The vehicle features a passive, reconfigurable single wheeled leg, enabling seamless transitions between flight and two ground modes: a stable stance and a dynamic cruising configuration.

[ Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory ]

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this trick performed by a robot with soft fingers before.

[ Paper ]

There are a lot of robots involved in car manufacturing. Like, a lot.

[ Kawasaki Robotics ]

Steve Willits shows us some recent autonomous drone work being done at the AirLab at CMU’s Robotics Institute.

[ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ]

Somebody’s got to test all those luxury handbags and purses. And by somebody, I mean somerobot.

[ Qb Robotics ]

Do not trust people named Evan.

[ Tufts University Human-Robot Interaction Lab ]

Meet the Mind: MIT Professor Andreea Bobu.

[ MIT ]