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.
ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, N.C.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA
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
RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES
ETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA
IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY
ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL
IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, SOUTH KOREA
IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS
RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL
RO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS
CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN
CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL
IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL
World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN
IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA
Enjoy today’s videos!
The LYNX M20 series represents the world’s first wheeled-legged robot built specifically for challenging terrains and hazardous environments during industrial operation. Featuring lightweight design with extreme-environment endurance, it conquers rugged mountain trails, muddy wetlands and debris-strewn ruins—pioneering embodied intelligence in power inspection, emergency response, logistics, and scientific exploration.
[ DEEP Robotics ]
The latest OK Go music video includes lots of robots.
And here’s a bit more on how it was done, mostly with arms from Universal Robots.
[ OK Go ]
Despite significant interest and advancements in humanoid robotics, most existing commercially available hardware remains high-cost, closed-source, and nontransparent within the robotics community. This lack of accessibility and customization hinders the growth of the field and the broader development of humanoid technologies. To address these challenges and promote democratization in humanoid robotics, we demonstrate Berkeley Humanoid Lite, an open-source humanoid robot designed to be accessible, customizable, and beneficial for the entire community.
I think this may be the first time I’ve ever seen a pedestal-mounted Atlas from Boston Dynamics.
[ NVIDIA ]
We are increasingly adopting domestic robots (Roomba, for example) that provide relief from mundane household tasks. However, these robots usually only spend little time executing their specific task and remain idle for long periods. Our work explores this untapped potential of domestic robots in ubiquitous computing, focusing on how they can improve and support modern lifestyles.
Whenever I see a soft robot, I have to ask, “Okay, but how soft is it really?” And usually, there’s a pump or something hidden away off-camera somewhere. So it’s always cool to see actually soft robotics actuators, like these, which are based on phase-changing water.
[ Nature Communications ] via [ Collaborative Robotics Laboratory, University of Coimbra ]
Thanks, Pedro!
Pruning is an essential agricultural practice for orchards. Robot manipulators have been developed as an automated solution for this repetitive task, which typically requires seasonal labor with specialized skills. Our work addresses the behavior planning challenge for a robotic pruning system, which entails a multilevel planning problem in environments with complex collisions. In this article, we formulate the planning problem for a high-dimensional robotic arm in a pruning scenario, investigate the system’s intrinsic redundancies, and propose a comprehensive pruning workflow that integrates perception, modeling, and holistic planning.
[ Paper ] via [ IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine ]
Thanks, Bram!
Watch the Waymo Driver quickly react to potential hazards and avoid collisions with other road users, making streets safer in cities where it operates.
[ Waymo ]
This video showcases some of the early testing footage of HARRI (High-speed Adaptive Robot for Robust Interactions), a next-generation proprioceptive robotic manipulator developed at the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at University of California, Los Angeles. Designed for dynamic and force-critical tasks, HARRI leverages quasi-direct drive proprioceptive actuators combined with advanced control strategies such as impedance control and real-time model predictive control (MPC) to achieve high-speed, precise, and safe manipulation in human-centric and unstructured environments.
[ Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory ]
Building on reinforcement learning for natural gait, we’ve upped the challenge for Adam: introducing complex terrain in training to adapt to real-world surfaces. From steep slopes to start-stop inclines, Adam handles it all with ease!
[ PNDbotics ]
ABB Robotics is serving up the future of fast food with BurgerBots—a groundbreaking new restaurant concept launched in Los Gatos, Calif. Designed to deliver perfectly cooked, made-to-order burgers every time, the automated kitchen uses ABB’s IRB 360 FlexPicker and YuMi collaborative robot to assemble meals with precision and speed, while accurately monitoring stock levels and freeing staff to focus on customer experience.
[ Burger Bots ]
Look at this little guy, such a jaunty walk!
[ Science Advances ]
General-purpose humanoid robots are expected to interact intuitively with humans, enabling seamless integration into daily life. Natural language provides the most accessible medium for this purpose. In this work, we present an end-to-end, language-directed policy for real-world humanoid whole-body control.
[ Hybrid Robotics ]
It’s debatable whether this is technically a robot, but sure, let’s go with it, because it’s pretty neat—a cable car of sorts consisting of a soft twisted ring that’s powered by infrared light.
[ North Carolina State University ]
Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, discusses the future of robotics amid rising competition and advances in artificial intelligence.
[ Bloomberg ]
AI is at the forefront of technological advances and is also reshaping creativity, ownership, and societal interactions. In episode 7 of Penn Engineering’s Innovation & Impact podcast, host Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family dean of Penn Engineering and professor in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics, speaks with Meta’s chief AI scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun about the journey of AI, how we define intelligence, and the possibilities and challenges it presents.
[ University of Pennsylvania ]
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