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. This week's collection features a bipedal wheeled robot prototype, NASA's SkyFall and MoonFall missions, a new class of artificial muscle fibers, an open-source quadruped robot, and more.
The Bipedal Wheeled Robot
The 'Roadrunner' is a new bipedal wheeled robot prototype designed for multimodal locomotion. It weighs around 15 kg and can seamlessly switch between its side-by-side and in-line wheel modes and stepping configurations depending on what is required for navigating its environment. The robot's legs are entirely symmetric, allowing it to point its knees forward or backward, which can be used to avoid obstacles or manage specific movements. A single control policy was trained to handle both side-by-side and in-line driving. Several behaviors, including standing up from various ground configurations and balancing on one wheel, were successfully deployed zero-shot on the hardware. Personally, I find this particularly fascinating because it showcases the potential for robots to adapt to different environments and tasks, which is crucial for their widespread adoption.
NASA's SkyFall and MoonFall Missions
NASA's SkyFall mission will build on the success of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Using a daring midair deployment, SkyFall will deliver a team of next-gen Mars helicopters to scout human landing sites and map subsurface water ice. NASA's MoonFall mission will blaze a path for future Artemis missions by sending four highly mobile drones to survey the lunar surface around the Moon's South Pole ahead of astronauts' arrival there. MoonFall is built on the legacy of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. The drones will be launched together and released during descent to the surface. They will land and operate independently over the course of a lunar day (14 Earth days) and will be able to explore hard-to-reach areas, including permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), surveying terrain with high-definition optical cameras and other potential instruments. What many people don't realize is that these missions are not just about exploring other planets, but also about pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation, which can have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
Artificial Muscle Fibers
In Science Robotics, researchers from the Tangible Media group led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, together with colleagues from Politecnico di Bari, present Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles: a new class of artificial muscle fibers for robots and wearables. Unlike the rigid servo motors used in most robots, these fiber-shaped muscles are soft and flexible. They combine electrohydrodynamic (EHD) fiber pumps—slender tubes that move liquid using electric fields to generate pressure silently, with no moving parts—with fluid-filled fiber actuators. These artificial muscles could enable more agile untethered robots, as well as wearable assistive systems with compact actuation integrated directly into textiles. What makes this particularly fascinating is that it opens up new possibilities for creating more natural and intuitive human-robot interactions, which is essential for the development of more advanced and useful robots.
Open-Source Quadruped Robot
We developed MEVIUS2, an open-source quadruped robot. It is comparable in size to the Boston Dynamics Spot, equipped with two lidars and a C1 camera, and can freely climb stairs and steep slopes! All hardware, software, and learning environments are released as open source. Personally, I think this is a significant step forward in making advanced robotics more accessible and affordable, which is crucial for democratizing the benefits of automation and artificial intelligence.
Reliability Testing for Live Performances
Arun highlights the reliability testing that goes into trying a new behavior for Spot. This is a critical aspect of developing advanced robots that can perform complex tasks in real-world environments. Reliability testing ensures that robots can handle unexpected situations and maintain their performance over time, which is essential for their widespread adoption.
Multirobot Planning and Control Framework
In this work, a multirobot planning and control framework is presented and demonstrated with a team of 40 indoor robots, including both ground and aerial robots. The soundtrack, though. Personally, I find this particularly fascinating because it showcases the potential for robots to work together in complex environments, which is crucial for developing more advanced and useful robotic systems.
DreamWaQ++
Quadrupedal robots can navigate cluttered environments like their animal counterparts, but their floating-base configuration makes them vulnerable to real-world uncertainties. Controllers that rely only on proprioception (body sensing) must physically collide with obstacles to detect them. Those that add exteroception (vision) need precisely modeled terrain maps that are hard to maintain in the wild. DreamWaQ++ bridges this gap by fusing both modalities through a resilient multimodal reinforcement learning framework. The result: a single controller that handles rough terrains, steep slopes, and high-rise stairs—while gracefully recovering from sensor failures and situations it has never seen before. What makes this particularly fascinating is that it demonstrates the potential for robots to learn and adapt to new situations, which is crucial for their widespread adoption.
iRobot's Pyramid Exploration
While the pyramid exploration that iRobot did was very cool, they did it with a custom-made robot designed for a very specific environment. Cleaning your floors is way, way harder. Here’s a bit more detail on the pyramids thing: Personally, I think this highlights the challenges of developing robots for real-world applications, where environmental conditions can be unpredictable and complex. It also underscores the importance of designing robots that can adapt to different environments and tasks, which is crucial for their widespread adoption.
Wristband-Controlled Robotic Hand
MIT engineers have designed a wristband that lets wearers control a robotic hand with their own movements. By moving their hands and fingers, users can direct a robot to perform specific tasks, or they can manipulate objects in a virtual environment with high-dexterity control. What makes this particularly fascinating is that it opens up new possibilities for creating more natural and intuitive human-robot interactions, which is essential for the development of more advanced and useful robots.
AI in the Physical World
At Nvidia GTC 2026, we showcased how AI is moving into the physical world. Visitors interacted with robots using voice commands, watching them interpret intent and act in real time—powered by our KinetIQ AI brain. Personally, I think this is a significant step forward in making AI more accessible and intuitive, which is crucial for its widespread adoption.
Aibo Updates
Props to Sony for its continued support and updates for Aibo! This robot looks like it could be a little curvier than normal? Personally, I think this is a great example of how robots can be designed to be more human-like and relatable, which is crucial for building trust and acceptance in the public.
Intelligent Cooking Device
Developed by Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd., the Naviai Robot is an intelligent cooking device. It can autonomously process ingredients, perform cooking tasks with high accuracy, adjust smart kitchen equipment in real time, and complete postcooking cleaning. Equipped with multimodal perception technology, it adapts to daily kitchen environments and ensures safe and stable operation. What makes this particularly fascinating is that it showcases the potential for robots to assist with daily tasks, which is crucial for improving the quality of life for people with disabilities or limited mobility.
Formal Methods for Robotics
This CMU RI Seminar is by Hadas Kress-Gazit from Cornell, on 'Formal Methods for Robotics in the Age of Big Data.' Formal methods—mathematical techniques for describing systems, capturing requirements, and providing guarantees—have been used to synthesize robot control from high-level specification, and to verify robot behavior. Given the recent advances in robot learning and data-driven models, what role can, and should, formal methods play in advancing robotics? In this talk I will give a few examples for what we can do with formal methods, discuss their promise and challenges, and describe the synergies I see with data-driven approaches. Personally, I think this is a critical area of research that can help ensure the safe and reliable development of advanced robots, which is crucial for their widespread adoption.
