Video Friday: Grain Weevil

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.

Robotics Summit & Expo: 10–11 May 2023, BOSTON

ICRA 2023: 29 May–2 June 2023, LONDON

RoboCup 2023: 4–10 July 2023, BORDEAUX, FRANCE

RSS 2023: 10–14 July 2023, DAEGU, KOREA

IEEE RO-MAN 2023: 28–31 August 2023, BUSAN, KOREA

CLAWAR 2023: 2–4 October 2023, FLORIANOPOLIS, BRAZIL

Humanoids 2023: 12–14 December 2023, AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA

Enjoy today’s videos!

This is the Grain Weevil, and it’s designed to keep humans out of grain bins. I love this because it’s an excellent example of how to solve a real, valuable problem uniquely with a relatively simple, focused robot.

[ Grain Weevil ]

As the city of Paris sleeps, Spot is hard at work inspecting some of RATP Group’s 35,000 civil works components. The RATP (Autonomous Parisian Transportation Administration) Group is a French state-owned public transport operator and maintainer for the Greater Paris area. With thousands of civil works to inspect each year, the company has turned to mobile robotics to inspect hard-to-reach and hazardous areas in order to keep employees out of harm’s way.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Thanks, Renee!

Looks like Agility Robotics and the new Digit had a productive (and popular!) time at ProMat.

[ Agility Robotics ]

I still cannot believe that this makes sense. But it does?

[ Tevel ]

Unitree sells a lidar now, and it’s US $330.

[ Unitree ]

1`We recently had the privilege to host Madeline Gannon (robot whisperer and head of Atonaton) at our HQ in Portland. It’s no surprise that a week in our shop resulted in a game of industrial basketball with our ABB IRB 8700-turned-basketball hoop.

[ Loupe ]

Thanks, Madeline!

We demonstrated Stretch, our autonomous case-handling robot, automating trailer unloading at ProMat 2023. From efficiency to ease of use, hear from our team to learn how Stretch works, what’s new, and what’s coming next for warehouse automation!

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) has developed a quadrupedal robot locomotion technology that moves it up and down stairs without the aid of visual or tactile sensors in a disaster situation where it is impossible to see due to smoke, and it moves without falling over bumpy environments such as tree roots.

[ KAIST ]

Here’s how Pickle’s box-unloading robot has been doing.

[ Pickle Robot ]

Quite possibly the most destructive combat robot ever designed has been revamped and is heading to RoboGames 2023.

Use the code “HardCore” for a discount on your RoboGames tickets!

[ RoboGames ]

Is AI smarter than babies? Depends what you mean by “smarter,” of course.

[ NSF ]

Someone can do this through a telepresence robot, and I can’t even do it in real life (sigh).

[ Sanctuary AI ]

Chen Li, from the Terradynamics Lab at Johns Hopkins University, gives a talk on the need for and feasibility of alternative robots to traverse sandy and rocky extraterrestrial terrain.

[ JHU ]