Video Friday: Arms on Vacuums

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.

RoboCup German Open: 12-16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYGerman Robotics Conference: 13-15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANYRoboSoft 2025: 23-26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLANDICUAS 2025: 14-17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NCICRA 2025: 19-23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GAIEEE RCAR 2025: 1-6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPANRSS 2025: 21-25 June 2025, LOS ANGELESIAS 2025: 30 June-4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALYICRES 2025: 3-4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGALIEEE World Haptics: 8-11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREAIFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15-18 July 2025, PARISRoboCup 2025: 15-21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

Enjoy today's videos!

I'm not totally sure yet about the utility of having a small arm on a robot vacuum, but I love that this is a real thing. At least, it is at CES this year.

[ Roborock ]

We posted about SwitchBot's new modular home robot system earlier this week, but here's a new video showing some potentially useful hardware combinations.

[ SwitchBot ]

Yes, it's in sim, but (and this is a relatively new thing) I will not be shocked to see this happen on Unitree's hardware in the near future.

[ Unitree ]

With ongoing advancements in system engineering, LimX Dynamics' full-size humanoid robot features a hollow actuator design and high torque-density actuators, enabling full-body balance for a wide range of motion. Now it achieves complex full-body movements in a ultra stable and dynamic manner.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

We've seen hybrid quadrotor bipeds before, but this one , which is imitating the hopping behavior of Jacana birds, is pretty cute.

What's a Jacana bird, you ask? It's these things, which surely must have the most extreme foot to body ratio of any bird:

Also, much respect to the researchers for confidently titling this supplementary video An Extremely Elegant Jump."

[ SSRN Paper preprint ]

Twelve minutes flat from suitcase to mobile manipulator. Not bad!

[ Pollen Robotics ]

Happy New Year from Dusty Robotics!

[ Dusty Robotics ]