ICRA 2026 was lots of fun! Having attended ICRA in 2023 and staying on top of what is happening in robotics, I thought I knew what I would see - lots of humanoids and VLA demos. Boy, was I wrong. It feels like 30% of the exhibition floor was about robot hands and tactile sensing. There were quite a few humanoid robots and VLA demos. Another change from three years ago I noticed: close to 40% of exhibitors were Chinese companies. The change and speed of development there is wild. Also, there was a robot Panda, which I really liked!
NIST proposes a baseline performance benchmark for humanoid robots
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is coming up with a benchmark ‘apparatus’ for a humanoid robot. The test aims to cover mobility, manipulation, and cognition. One thing that makes me wonder - can this approach work in the world of VLAs? Surely, one could train exclusively for an open benchmark while neglecting real-world scenarios? I’m looking forward to seeing how this is implemented and if the industry will follow.
Why Robotics is a Pre-Paradigm Field
I thouroughly enjoyed this essay on the current state of robotics. It starts with a definition of a paradigm shift, and only gets better from there:
Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, introducing the notion of a paradigm shift in science: when a field of science converges around an organizing principle that changes everything. The discovery of DNA. The periodic table of elements. The germ theory of disease.
Kilometer-Scale GNSS-Denied UAV Navigation
Here is an interesting approach to drone localization: load a digital elevation model of the area you are flying in and use it as a reference for voxel-based mapping. The result is a system capable of correcting odometry errors during long-distance flights to within 5-15m of total error.
Autonomously Mapping with Visual SLAM
Michael Hart tinkered with the $99 Viam Rover to turn it into a ROS-based rover capable of doing autonomous mapping. Michael open-sourced this work through this GitHub repository.
The Evolution of Execution Management in rclcpp
Skye Medeiros did an excellent write-up that you should look into if you are using ROS and haven’t given much thought to executors yet.
OpenCV 5 Deep Dive: A New Foundation for Computer Vision
OpenCV 5 is here! In this blog post, you can learn about all the new features: from API improvements to the DNN engine and expanded 3D vision capabilities.
Ways To Embed Magnets In 3D Prints And Not Ruin Printers
I’m really glad I came across this feature because I would totally make all those mistakes. Being a magnet noob, I didn’t even know they demagnetize at high temperatures. Good to know!
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Events
- 2026 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: Jun 22 - Jun 24, 2026. Houston, Texas, United States of America
- Robotics: Science and Systems: Jul 13 - Jul 16, 2026. Sydney, Australia
- Actuate 26: Aug 18 - Aug 19, 2026. San Francisco, California, United States of America
- Commercial UAV Expo: Sep 01 - Sep 03, 2026. Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America
- Autonomy: Sep 14, 2026. Malmö, Sweden
- Open Source Summit: Oct 07 - Oct 09, 2026. Prague, Czechia
- ROSCon Spain 2026: Oct 27 - Oct 28, 2026. Valencia, Spain
- ROSCon BE 2026: Nov 25 - Nov 26, 2026. Nivelles, Belgium
- Humanoids 2026: Dec 06 - Dec 09, 2026. Santa Clara, California, United States of America
For more robotic events, check out our event page.
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