Video Friday: Project GR00T

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.

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

Enjoy today’s videos!

See NVIDIA’s journey from pioneering advanced autonomous vehicle hardware and simulation tools to accelerated perception and manipulation for autonomous mobile robots and industrial arms, culminating in the next wave of cutting-edge AI for humanoid robots.

[ NVIDIA ]

In release 4.0, we advanced Spot’s locomotion abilities thanks to the power of reinforcement learning. Paul Domanico, Robotics Engineer at Boston Dynamics talks through how Spot’s hybrid approach of combining reinforcement learning with model predictive control creates an even more stable robot in the most antagonistic environments.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

We’re excited to share our latest progress on teaching EVEs general-purpose skills. Everything in the video is all autonomous, all 1X speed, all controlled with a single set of neural network weights.

[ 1X ]

What I find interesting about the Unitree H1 doing a standing flip is where it decides to put its legs.

[ Unitree ]

At the MODEX Exposition in March of 2024, Pickle Robot demonstrated picking freight from a random pile similar to what you see in a messy truck trailer after it has bounced across many miles of highway. The piles of boxes were never the same and the demonstration was run live in front of crowds of onlookers 25 times over 4 days. No other robotic trailer/container unloading system has yet to demonstrate this ability to pick from unstructured piles.

[ Pickle ]

RunRu is a car-like robot, a robot-like car, with autonomy, sociability, and operability. This is a new type of personal vehicle that aims to create a “Jinba-Ittai” relationship with its passengers, who are not only always assertive, but also sometimes whine.

[ ICD-LAB ]

Verdie went to GTC this year and won the hearts of people but maybe not the other robots.

[ Electric Sheep ]

The “DEEPRobotics AI+” merges AI capabilities with robotic software systems to continuously boost embodied intelligence. The showcased achievement is a result of training a new AI and software system.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

If you want to collect data for robot grasping, using Stretch and a pair of tongs is about as affordable as it gets.

[ Hello Robot ]

The real reason why Digit’s legs look backwards is so that it doesn’t bang its shins taking GPUs out of the oven.

Meanwhile, some of us can bake our GPUs without even needing an oven.

[ Agility ]

P1 is LimX Dynamics’ innovative point-foot biped robot, serving as an important platform for the systematic development and modular testing of reinforcement learning. It is utilized to advance the research and iteration of basic biped locomotion abilities. The success of P1 in conquering forest terrain is a testament to LimX Dynamics’ systematic R&D in reinforcement learning.

[ LimX ]

And now, this.

[ Suzumori Endo Lab ]

Cooking in kitchens is fun. BUT doing it collaboratively with two robots is even more satisfying! We introduce MOSAIC, a modular framework that coordinates multiple robots to closely collaborate and cook with humans via natural language interaction and a repository of skills.

[ Cornell ]

neoDavid is a Robust Humanoid with Dexterous Manipulation Skills, developed at DLR. The main focus in the development of neoDavid is to get as close to human capabilities as possible—especially in terms of dynamics, dexterity and robustness.

[ DLR ]

Welcome to our customer spotlight video series where we showcase some of the remarkable robots that our customers have been working on. In this episode we showcase three Clearpath Robotics UGVs that our customers are using to create robotic assistants for three different applications.

[ Clearpath ]

This video presents KIMLAB’s new three-fingered robotic hand, featuring soft tactile sensors for enhanced grasping capabilities. Leveraging cost-effective 3D printing materials, it ensures robustness and operational efficiency.

[ KIMLAB ]

Various perception-aware planning approaches have attempted to enhance the state estimation accuracy during maneuvers, while the feature matchability among frames, a crucial factor influencing estimation accuracy, has often been overlooked. In this paper, we present APACE, an Agile and Perception-Aware trajeCtory gEneration framework for quadrotors aggressive flight, that takes into account feature matchability during trajectory planning.

[ Paper ] via [ HKUST ]

In this video, we see Samuel Kunz, the pilot of the RSL Assistance Robot Race team from ETH Zurich, as he participates in the CYBATHLON Challenges 2024. Samuel completed all four designated tasks—retrieving a parcel from a mailbox, using a toothbrush, hanging a scarf on a clothesline, and emptying a dishwasher—with the help of an assistance robot. He achieved a perfect score of 40 out of 40 points and secured first place in the race, completing the tasks in 6.34 minutes.

[ CYBATHLON ]

Florian Ledoux is a wildlife photographer with a deep love for the Arctic and its wildlife. Using the Mavic 3 Pro, he steps onto the ice ready to capture the raw beauty and the stories of this chilly, remote place.

[ DJI ]