Let’s step into a new era of sci-fi and join the fun together! Unitree will be live streaming robot combat in about a month, so stay tuned!

[ Unitree ]

A team of scientists and students from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands( TU Delft) has taken first place at the A2RL Drone Championship, in Abu Dhabi, an international race that pushes the limits of physical artificial intelligence, challenging teams to fly fully autonomous drones using only a single camera. The TU Delft drone competed against 13 autonomous drones and even human drone-racing champions, using innovative methods to train deep neural networks for high-performance control.

[ TU Delft ]

RAI’s Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV) is learning some new tricks!

[ RAI Institute ]

With 28 moving joints (20 QDD actuators + 8 servo motors), Cosmo can walk using its two feet with a speed of up to 1 meter per second (0.5 meters per second nominal) and balance itself even when pushed. Coordinated with the motion of its head, fingers, arms and legs, Cosmo has a loud and expressive voice for effective interaction with humans. Cosmo speaks in canned phrases from the 1990s cartoon he originates from, and his speech can be fully localized in any language.

[ RoMeLa ]

We wrote about Parallel Systems back in January 2022, and it’s good to see that their creative take on autonomous rail is still moving along.

[ Parallel Systems ]

RoboCake is ready. This edible robotic cake is the result of a collaboration between researchers from EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland), the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT, the Italian Institute of Technology), and pastry chefs and food scientists from EHL Hospitality Business School, in Lausanne. It takes the form of a robotic wedding cake, decorated with two gummy robotic bears and edible dark-chocolate batteries that power the candles.

[ EPFL ]

ROBOTERA’s fully self-developed five-finger dexterous hand has upgraded its skills, transforming into an esports hand in the blink of an eye! The XHAND1 features 12 active degrees of freedom, pioneering an industry-first fully direct-drive joint design. It offers exceptional flexibility and sensitivity, effortlessly handling precision tasks like finger opposition, picking up soft objects, and grabbing cards. Additionally, it delivers powerful grip strength with a maximum payload of nearly 25 kilograms, making it adaptable to a wide range of complex application scenarios.

[ ROBOTERA ]

Witness the future of industrial automation as Extend Robotics trials its cutting-edge humanoid robot in Leyland factories. In this groundbreaking video, the robot skillfully connects a master service disconnect unit, a critical task in factory operations. Watch on-site workers seamlessly collaborate with the robot using an intuitive XR (extended reality) interface, blending human expertise with robotic precision.

[ Extend Robotics ]

I kind of like the idea of having a mobile robot that lives in my garage and manages the charging and cleaning of my car.

[ Flexiv ]

How can we ensure that robots using foundation models, such as large language models, won’t hallucinate when executing tasks in complex, previously unseen environments? Our Safe and Assured Foundation Robots for Open Environments (SAFRON) Advanced Research Concept (ARC) seeks ideas to make sure robots behave only as directed and intended.

[ DARPA ]

What if doing your chores was as easy as flipping a switch? In this talk and live demo, the roboticist Bernt Børnich, founder of 1X, introduces NEO, a humanoid robot designed to help you out around the house. Watch as NEO shows off its ability to vacuum, water plants, and keep you company, while Børnich tells the story of its development—and shares a vision for robot helpers that could free up your time to focus on what truly matters.

[ 1X ] via [ TED ]

Rodney Brooks gave a keynote at the Stanford HAI spring conference on “Robotics in a Human-Centered World.”

There are a bunch of excellent talks from this conference on YouTube at the link below, but I think this panel is especially good—a discussion of going from research to real-world impact.

[ YouTube ] via [ Stanford HAI ]

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth discusses consumer drone delivery with Peter Diamandis at Abundance 360.

[ Wing ]

This Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute seminar is by Sangbae Kim, who was until very recently at MIT but is now the robotics architect at Meta’s Robotics Studio.

[ CMU RI ]