Last week, I promised there would be some news on how to be more involved in the Weekly Robotics community, and here it comes! I created a Matrix space for us that anyone can access here. To use Matrix, you will need to use some client. For me, Element has been working very well so far. Looking forward to catching-up with you!
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Parallels between Generative AI and Humanoid Robots
In this article, Rodney Brooks, compares the hype cycles of generative AI to Humanoid Robots. Both GenAI and humanoids are receiving massive investments, require data-intensive learning and because their output is human-like we might be misled about their true capabilities. Brooks argues that the physical scale or short timeframes some proponents imagine will not happen.
Amazon’s Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
Amazon had unveiled their new system for bin stowing and bin picking called Vulcan that I find quite elegant. The bins have an elastic band to protect items from falling out, and the system comes with a clever mechanism for pulling the band away and allowing the gripper to ‘Tetris’ the items into the bin. I highly recommend checking out the videos embedded in the article, the item placement is very tight! On the other side of this development, there is a bin-picking robot that is described in this article. I really like the minimalistic gripper in the picking solution.
Building in Robotics? Here is the Ultimate List of VCs Investing in Robotics and Physical AI
Are you looking for VCs to send your pitch deck to? If yes, Jasper Platz has you covered with a list of 159 investors with some robotics-related history!
Orca Hand
We present the ORCA hand, a 17-DoF tendon-driven robotic hand with fully integrated tactile sensors that can be assembled in under 8 hours and has a BOM of $2k. We showcase design features such as popping joints, auto-calibration, and tensioning systems that significantly reduce complexity while increasing reliability, accuracy, and robustness.
LEVA: A high-mobility logistic vehicle with legged suspension
ETH Zurich Researchers created this wheeled-legged robot with a suspension system that allows it to easily transport Euroboxes on its belly. Maybe I was not paying attention before, but is this the first wheeled-legged robot with actuated steering for each wheel? There is something satisfying in how this robot lies down to pick up a box. If you’d like to learn more about this work, check out this paper.
QuadRotary: Design and Control of In-Flight Transition Between Quadcopter and Rotary-Wing
We’ve featured these kinds of rotary wing drones on a couple of occasions. This design appears smaller than the ones we’ve featured to date, and promises an 18.4% increase in hover efficiency. I like how stable this UAV seems to be in hover flight.
Scan Your Caliper For Physical Part Copies
I love the trick shown in the featured video. You take a picture of your part in the caliper and use the caliper itself to scale the image in your CAD software so that you can easily trace it. Simple, yet very elegant! I also recommend checking the comment section, as some readers raised concerns about lens distortion that you might consider before you go all-in with this approach.
Events
- Automate 2025: May 12 - May 15, 2025. Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
- ICUAS (UAVs) 2025: May 14 - May 17, 2025. Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America
- Xponential 2025: May 19 - May 22, 2025. Houston, Texas, United States of America
- ICRA 2025: May 19 - May 23, 2025. Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
- Eurobot Open 2025: May 28 - May 31, 2025. La Roche-sur-Yon, France
- Open Hardware Summit 2025: May 30 - May 31, 2025. Edinburgh, Scotland
- Energy Drone & Robotics Summit 2025: Jun 16 - Jun 18, 2025. Houston, Texas, United States of America
- Robotics: Science and Systems 2025: Jun 21 - Jun 25, 2025. Los Angeles, California, United States of America
- Automatica 2025: Jun 24 - Jun 27, 2025. Munich, Germany
- RoboCup 2025: Jul 15 - Jul 21, 2025. Salvador, Brazil
For more robotic events, check out our event page.
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