Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos collected from your friends at IEEE Spectrum Robotics. We also publish a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

IROS 2023: 1st–5th October 2023, DETROIT

CLAWAR 2023: 2nd–4th October 2023, FLORIANOPOLIS, BRAZIL

ROSCon 2023: 18-20 October 2023, NEW ORLEANS

Humanoids 2023: 12-14 December 2023, AUSTIN, TEX.

Cybathlon challenges: February 2, 2024, ZURICH

Have fun with today’s videos!

We use tensegrity structures as wheels for a mobile robot that can actively change its shape by expanding or contracting the wheels. In addition to the ability to change shape, using tensegrity wheels as wheels offers several advantages over traditional wheels of similar size, such as: B. the ability to absorb shock without adding mass, as tensegrity wheels are both light and extremely compliant. With a bistable mechanism that can gradually store energy but quickly release it again, the robot can also jump onto obstacles up to 300 millimeters high.

[ Adaptive Robotics Lab ]

Meet GE Aerospace’s Sensiworm (Soft ElectroNics Skin-Innervated Robotic Worm), a highly intelligent, highly sensitive soft robot that could serve as an additional pair of in-engine eyes and ears for aerospace service providers. In the future, the use of self-driving, compliant robots like Sensiworm would allow operators virtually unhindered access to perform inspections without having to disassemble the engine.

[ GE ]

Why not Zoidberg?

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Conventional AI methods require several weeks, days or hours for a walking robot to learn to walk. This becomes inconvenient. This study overcomes the problem by presenting a novel bioinspired integrative approach to developing neural locomotion control, enabling a stick insect-like walking robot to learn to walk within 20 seconds! The study not only proposes a solution for neural locomotion control, but also provides insights into the neural makeup of the biological template. It also provides guidance for the further development of advanced bio-inspired theories and simulations.

[ VISTEC ]

Thank you, Poramate!

At Hello Robotics, we are redefining the way people and robots interact. Our latest creation, MAKI Pro, embodies our belief in empathetic design – a principle that foregrounds the emotional and social dimensions of technology. MAKI Pro offers unique features such as animatronic eyes for improved eye contact, an embedded PC and 17 points of articulation. Its voice features are also powered by ChatGPT, adding a more natural element of interaction. The compact design allows for easy placement on a desk.

[ Hello Robotics ]

Thanks Tim!

As part of the RoboNav project, autonomous driving tests were carried out in the Seetal Alps in Austria. The Mattro Rovo3 crawler robot autonomously navigates to the selected destination within the operational area, taking alternative paths into account and making real-time decisions to avoid obstacles.

[ RoboNav ] above [ ARTI ]

Thanks Lena!

NASA’s lunar rover prototype has completed exit testing for the lunar lander.

[ NASA ]

In the early days of Hello Robot, Aaron Edsinger and Charlie Kemp created and tested several robot prototypes. This November 24, 2017 video was recorded as Charlie remotely controlled a robot prototype to care for his family’s cat at his unoccupied Atlanta home in rural Tennessee. Charlie controlled the robot remotely on November 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th. He successfully provided fresh food and water for the cat, put dirty dishes in the sink, threw away empty cat food cans, and checked the cat litter.

[ Hello Robot ]

For a robot that looks nothing like a bug, this robot really reminds me of a bug.

[ Zarrouk Lab ]

Teaching four-legged robots to push things, which actually seems more useful than it sounds.

[ RaiLab Kaist ]

The KUKA Innovation Award has been presented annually since 2014 and is aimed at developers, graduates and research teams from universities or companies. For this year’s award, applicants were asked to use open interfaces in our newly introduced robot operating system iiQKA and to add their own hardware and software components. In the end, the JARVIS team from the Merlin Laboratory of the Italian Politecnico di Milano emerged as the winner. It impressed the jury with its plug & play method for programming collaborative robotics applications, which is fully integrated into the iiQKA ecosystem.

[ Kuka ]

Once a year, the FZI Research Center for Computer Science offers a practical course on the topic of “Biologically Motivated Robots” for students at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). As part of the internship, student teams develop solutions for a hide-and-seek challenge in which mobile robots (Boston Dynamics Spot, ANYbotics ANYmal, Clearpath Robotics Husky) have to hide and find each other autonomously.

[ FZI ]

Last year some plenary lectures on the 35th anniversary of IROS from Kyoto with Marc Raibert and Roland Siegwart.

[ IROS ]

Are robots on the verge of becoming human-like and taking over most jobs? When will self-driving cars be cost effective? What challenges in robotics are solved by large language models and generative AI?
Although renowned roboticist Ruzena Bajcsy recently retired from Berkeley, she will return to discuss her insights on how robotics research has evolved over the last half century with five experienced colleagues who collectively have over 200 years of research experience feature.

[ Berkeley ]