Video Fridayis your weekly selection of awesomeroboticsvideos, collected by your friends atIEEE Spectrumrobotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Pleasesend us your eventsfor inclusion.
When one robot loves another robot very much, and they’re connected by a wire, they can get together and make a brand new robot! SFW.
If Pollen isn’t sellingMicroducksin four packs for this exact reason, WHAT ARE THEY EVEN DOING!?
Let’s not argue about whether these are robots or not and just agree that they’re cool.
If one cute little robot can clean up one block, how many blocks can 40 cute little robots clean up? Science has the answers!
The originalKawasakiUNIMATErobot as featured in (remember this show?)The MacNeil/Lehrer Reportin 1982.
Who needs an AI-generated person when you can have an actual robot that looks exactly like an AI-generated person instead?
The recovery behaviors here are impressive, but the robot is far slower than a human would be, suggesting that the value it generates is primarily in novelty. Which is fine for now, but novelty wears off, and then what?
Here are a couple of good panels fromICRA2026 in Vienna, including one on “Impact and Return on Investment on Humanoid Robots” and a second on “Advancing Sustainability in Robotics.”
Evan Ackermanis a senior editor atIEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.