GoKawiilVideo 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.
ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA
RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY
Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE
Enjoy today’s videos!
“Roadrunner” is a new bipedal wheeled robot prototype designed for multimodal locomotion. It weighs around 15 kg (33 lb) 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.
[ Robotics and AI Institute ]
Incredibly (INCREDIBLY!) NASA says that this is actually happening.
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 ]
... continue reading