Robot Videos: Boston Dynamics Atlas, Aldebaran Robotics Nao and more

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos collected from your friends at IEEE Spectrum Robotics. We also publish a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Humanoids 2024: 22-24 November 2024, NANCY, FRANCE

Have fun with today's videos!

We're hoping to hear more about it from Boston Dynamics, but if you haven't seen it yet, here's the electric Atlas doing something productive (and autonomous!).

And why not wear a hot dog costume for Halloween?

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Oh, that's exciting! Aldebaran is preparing to release a seventh generation of NAO!

[ Aldebaran ]

Okay, I actually found that a bit spooky, but Happy Halloween from ANYbotics!

[ ANYbotics ]

Happy Halloween from Clearpath!

[ Clearpath Robotics Inc. ]

Another truly spooky Happy Halloween from Boston Dynamics!

[ Boston Dynamics ]

This “city opera” by Compagnie La Machine took place in Toulouse last weekend and featured some truly huge fantastic robots.

[ Compagnie La Machine ]

Thanks, Thomas!

Impressive descent from Deep Robotics' DR01.

[ Deep Robotics ]

Cobot juggling by Daniel Simu.

[ Daniel Simu ]

[ Environmental Robotics Lab paper ]

This is a pitching demonstration of the new Torobo. The new Torobo is lighter than the older version and allows for faster movements like throwing a ball. The new model will be available in Japan in March 2025 and abroad from October 2025.

[ Tokyo Robotics ]

[ Robot Era ]

And now I'm choosing a micro cat.

[ RoCogMan Lab ]

When Arvato employees in Louisville, Kentucky, wanted a robotic system that could unload cargo more quickly and safely, Boston Dynamics' Stretch robot stood out. Stretch is the first mobile robot of its kind designed specifically to unload boxes from trailers and shipping containers, freeing employees to focus on more important tasks in the warehouse. Arvato purchased its first stretch system this year and the impact of the robot was immediately noticeable.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture the silhouette of Phobos, one of Mars' two moons, as it passed by on September 30, 2024, the 1,285th. Martian day or sol, mission passed in front of the sun.

[ NASA ]

[ University of Michigan Robotics ]

Discover groundbreaking projects and cutting-edge technology at the Robotics and Automation Summer School (RASS), hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this exclusive behind-the-scenes video, students from top universities work on advanced robotics in disciplines such as AI, automation, machine learning and autonomous systems.

[ Los Alamos National Laboratory ]

This week's Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute seminar will be taught by Anirudha Majumdar of Princeton University on the topic “Robots that know when they don't know.”

Fundamental machine learning models have enabled rapid advances in natural language perception, planning, and understanding for robots. However, current systems do not have strict guarantees when required to generalize to new scenarios. For example, perceptual systems cannot identify or locate unknown objects, and planners based on large language models (LLM) can hallucinate outputs that produce uncertain results when executed by robots. How can we accurately quantify the uncertainty of machine learning components so that robots know when they don't know and can act accordingly?

[ Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute ]