Video Friday: Agile Humanoids

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, GERMANY

German Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY

European Robotics Forum: 25–27 March 2025, STUTTGART, GERMANY

RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND

ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NC

ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA

London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDON

IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN

2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX

RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES

IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY

ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL

Enjoy today’s videos!

Humanoid robots hold the potential for unparalleled versatility for performing human-like, whole-body skills. ASAP enables highly agile motions that were previously difficult to achieve, demonstrating the potential of delta action learning in bridging simulation and real-world dynamics. These results suggest a promising sim-to-real direction for developing more expressive and agile humanoids.

[ ASAP ] from [ Carnegie Mellon University ] and [ Nvidia ]

Big News: Swiss-Mile is now RIVR! We’re thrilled to unveil our new identity as RIVR, reflecting our evolution from a university spin-off to a global leader in Physical AI and robotics. In 2025, we’ll be deploying our groundbreaking wheeled-legged robots with major logistics carriers for last-mile delivery to set new standards for efficiency and sustainability.

[ RIVR ]

Robotics is one of the best ways to reduce worker exposure to safety risks. However, one of the biggest barriers to adopting robots in these industries is the challenge of navigating the rugged terrain found in these environments. UCR’s robots navigate difficult terrain, debris-strewn floors, and confined spaces without requiring facility modifications, disrupting existing workflows, or compromising schedules, significantly improving efficiency while keeping workers safe.

[ UCR ]

This paper introduces a safety filter to ensure collision avoidance for multirotor aerial robots. The proposed method allows computational scalability against thousands of constraints and, thus, complex scenes with numerous obstacles. We experimentally demonstrate its ability to guarantee the safety of a quadrotor with an onboard LiDAR, operating in both indoor and outdoor cluttered environments against both naive and adversarial nominal policies.

[ Autonomous Robots Lab ]

Thanks, Kostas!

Brightpick Giraffe is an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) capable of reaching heights of 20 feet (6 m), resulting in three times the warehouse storage density compared to manual operations.

[ Giraffe ] via [ TechCrunch ]

IROS 2025, coming this fall in Hangzhou, China.

[ IROS 2025 ]

This cute lil guy is from a “Weak Robots Exhibition” in Japan.

[ RobotStart ]

I see no problem with cheating via infrastructure to make autonomous vehicles more reliable.

[ Oak Ridge National Laboratory ]

I am not okay with how this coffee cup is handled. Neither is my editor.

[ Qb Robotics ]

Non-prehensile pushing to move and re-orient objects to a goal is a versatile loco-manipulation skill. In this paper, we develop a learning-based controller for a mobile manipulator to move an unknown object to a desired position and yaw orientation through a sequence of pushing actions. Through our extensive hardware experiments, we show that the approach demonstrates high robustness against unknown objects of different masses, materials, sizes, and shapes.

[ Paper ] from [ ETH Zurich and Instituto Italiano de Technologia ]

Verity, On, and Maersk have collaborated to bridge the gap between the physical and digital supply chain—piloting RFID-powered autonomous inventory tracking at a Maersk facility in California. Through RFID integration, Verity pushes inventory visibility to unprecedented levels.

[ Verity ]

For some reason, KUKA is reaffirming its commitment to environmental responsibility and diversity.

[ KUKA ]

Here’s a panel from the recent Humanoids Summit on generative AI for robotics, which includes panelists from OpenAI and Agility Robotics. Just don’t mind the moderator, he’s a bit of a dork.

[ Humanoids Summit ]

Reference: https://ift.tt/wZsQ7xd