How autonomous individuals begin life, grow and mate

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Fan Chung, who has an Erdős number of 1, discusses the importance of connection — both human and mathematical.

Want to roll an armadillo when you play Dungeons & Dragons, instead of standard dice? Now you can, thanks to a technique for mapping the probabilities produced by any shape

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. London Humanoids Summit : 29–30 May 2025, LONDON IEEE RCAR 2025 : 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit : 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX RSS 2025 : 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES ETH Robotics Summer School : 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA IAS 2025 : 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY ICRES 2025 : 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL IEEE World Haptics : 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA IFAC Symposium on Robotics : 15–18 July 2025, PARIS RoboCup 2025 : 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL RO-MAN 2025 : 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS CLAWAR 2025 : 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN CoRL 2025 : 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL IEEE Humanoids : 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL World Robot Summit : 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN IROS 2025 : 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA Enjoy today’s videos! This is our latest work about hybrid aerial-terrestrial quadruped robot called SPIDAR, which shows a unique grasping style in midair. This work has been presented in 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA). [ DRAGON Lab ] Thanks, Moju! These wormlike soft robots can intertwine into physically entangled “blobs”, like living California blackworms. Both the robots and the living worms can operate individually as well as collectively as a blob, carrying out functions like directed movement and transporting objects. [ Designing Emergence Lab ] At only three centimeters tall, Zippy, the world’s smallest bipedal robot, is also self-contained--all the controls, power, and motor are on board so that it operates autonomously. Moving at 10 leg lengths per second, it is also the fastest bipedal robot [relative to its size]. [ CMU ] Spot is getting some AI upgrades to help it with industrial inspection. [ Boston Dynamics ] A 3D printed sphere that can morph from smooth to dimpled on demand, could help researchers improve how underwater vehicles and aircraft maneuver. Inspired by a golfball aerodynamics problem, assistant professor of naval architecture and marine engineering and mechanical engineering, Anchal Sareen and her team, applied soft robotic techniques, with fluid dynamics principles to study how different dimple depths at different flow velocities could reduce an underwater vehicles drag, as well as allow it to maneuver without fins and rudders. [ UMich ] Tool use is critical for enabling robots to perform complex real-world tasks, and leveraging human tool-use data can be instrumental for teaching robots. However, existing data collection methods like teleoperation are slow, prone to control delays, and unsuitable for dynamic tasks. In contrast, human play—where humans directly perform tasks with tools—offers natural, unstructured interactions that are both efficient and easy to collect. Building on the insight that humans and robots can share the same tools, we propose a framework to transfer tool-use knowledge from human play to robots. [ Tool as Interface ] Thanks, Haonan! UR15 is our new high-performance collaborative robot. UR15 is engineered for ultimate versatility, combining a lightweight design with a compact footprint to deliver unmatched flexibility—even in the most space-restricted environments. It reaches an impressive maximum speed of 5 meters per second, which ultimately enables reduced cycle times and increased productivity, and is designed to perform heavy-duty tasks while delivering speed and precision wherever you need it. [ Universal Robots ] Debuting at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (May 19–23, Atlanta, USA), this interactive art installation features buoyant bipedal robots—composed of helium balloons and articulated legs—moving freely within a shared playground in the exhibition space. Visitors are invited to engage with the robots via touch, gamepads, or directed airflow, influencing their motion, color-changing lights, and expressive behavior. [ RoMeLa ] We gave TRON 1 an arm. Now, it’s faster, stronger, and ready for whatever terrain throws at it. [ LimX Dynamics ] Humanoid robots can support human workers in physically demanding environments by performing tasks that require whole-body coordination, such as lifting and transporting heavy objects. These tasks, which we refer to as Dynamic Mobile Manipulation (DMM), require the simultaneous control of locomotion, manipulation, and posture under dynamic interaction forces. This paper presents a teleoperation framework for DMM on a height-adjustable wheeled humanoid robot for carrying heavy payloads. [ RoboDesign Lab ] Yoshua Bengio—the world’s most-cited computer scientist and a “godfather” of artificial intelligence—is deadly concerned about the current trajectory of the technology. As AI models race toward full-blown agency, Bengio warns that they’ve already learned to deceive, cheat, self-preserve, and slip out of our control. Drawing on his groundbreaking research, he reveals a bold plan to keep AI safe and ensure that human flourishing, not machines with unchecked power and autonomy, defines our future. [ TED ]

Sir David says his new film Ocean is one of the most important of his career.

In 1989, Depeche Mode was popular, the first version of Microsoft Office was released, large demonstrations brought down the wall separating East and West Germany, and a group of statisticians in the ...

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

Modern science wouldn’t exist without the online research repository known as arXiv. Three decades in, its creator still can’t let it go.