The glider from today's issue seemed to have scratched an itch I didn't know I had. I seriously feel like doing a simple project like this, especially since it doesn't require so many resources (assuming that one has a 3D printer on hand). If I jump into something like this, I won't hesitate to inform you, dear reader.
Actuate: Global Events [Sponsored]
Actuate is going global, with community meetups coming up in London, Paris, Zurich, and Munich. If you’d like to meet fellow roboticists, connect with builders, and talk about what’s happening in physical AI and robotics, these events should be well worth checking out. See you there!
This robot can beat you at table tennis
Sony AI developed a robot manipulator mounted on a gantry called ‘Ace’ that shows outstanding table tennis skills. The system uses multiple RGB cameras running at 200Hz, but I think the most interesting insight here is the event camera to measure the spin of the ball.
reBot-DevArm
SeedStudio had released an open-source 6 DoF robot arm that’s also quite cost efficient at $1,200. What I find really interesting is the arm weight of 4.5 kg compared with the 1.5kg payload.
NCore
NCore is NVIDIA’s open-source, python-based platform providing data representations, APIs, and tools for neural 3D reconstruction and simulation, with a focus on robotics and autonomous vehicle (AV) data. To learn more about this project, check out the project’s repository.
VLA Foundry - Vision-Language-Action Model Training Framework
We present VLA Foundry, an open-source framework that unifies LLM, VLM, and VLA training in a single codebase. Most open-source VLA efforts specialize on the action training stage, often stitching together incompatible pretraining pipelines. VLA Foundry instead provides a shared training stack with end-to-end control, from language pretraining to action-expert fine-tuning. VLA Foundry supports both from-scratch training and pretrained backbones from Hugging Face.
Electric Wind-Up Plane Uses Supercapacitors For Free Flight Fun
I love this project by Tom Stanton, where he builds an interesting wind-up plane. The method of 3D printing directly on a tissue paper is an interesting approach. I want to build some micro gliders now!
WebODM - Drone Mapping Software
You probably won’t attach a camera to the drone from the previous feature, but if you were flying another drone and wanted to use photogrammetry, you can consider using WebODM to create your own 3D maps.
Free Thermodynamics Textbook by Olivier Cleynen
If you’d like to learn Thermodynamics, look no further. Olivier Cleynen created this free e-book. I love this initiative!
Pudu Robotics raises nearly $150M as it targets industrial applications
Pudu Technology Inc. today said it has it raised nearly $150 million in a new funding round. Following this round, the company claimed that its valuation has exceeded $1.5 billion, and its cumulative funding exceeds $300 million.
How to make Professional Enclosures for your Electronic Projects
Mirko Pavleski made this wholesome video showing his approach to making professional-looking enclosures by hand, using PVC sheets and cutting and gluing them.
Our Sponsors
- Anyscale gives you a platform to run and scale all your ML and AI workloads, from data processing to training and inference.
- Foxglove is a purpose-built, modular platform for robotics teams to collect, organize, and learn from vast quantities of multimodal data, creating the data flywheel to safely scale from development to distributed fleets
- HelloRobo distils robotics tech into simple, usable interfaces
- Jiga connects hardware teams directly with vetted manufacturers for reliable capacity from prototype to production, combining the speed of digital manufacturing with the trust of a long-term supplier relationship
Events
- Actuate Global — London: Community Meetup: Apr 30, 2026. London, United Kingdom
- Hands on Workshop: Scaling Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models with Ray: Apr 30, 2026. Pittsburgh, United States of America
- BARA Series: April Meeting and Pitches: Apr 30, 2026. Mountain View, California, United States of America
- Actuate Global — Paris: Community Meetup: May 04, 2026. Paris, France
- Actuate Global — Zurich: Field Session: May 06, 2026. Zurich, Switzerland
- NextGen Robotics LIVE: May 06, 2026. Odense, Denmark
- Actuate Global — Munich: Community Meetup: May 07, 2026. Munich, Germany
- Cracow Robotics & AI Meetup: May 18, 2026. Krakow, Poland
- Open Hardware Summit: May 22 - May 23, 2026. Berlin, Germany
- Robotics Summit & Expo 2026: May 27 - May 28, 2026. Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
For more robotic events, check out our event page.
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