Anyone attending ROSCon Global this year? Feel free to let me know if you’d like to meet up and catch up!
Live Demo: Compose Your Robotics Data Platform [Sponsored]
Building a robotics data platform means connecting data collection, search, visualization, custom tooling, and automation. In this live session on October 14th, learn how to build a robotics data stack using APIs, custom visualizations and transformations, webhooks, and embedded tooling. Open to all.
Magic Trick Performing Robot
I really enjoyed the demo of this project by Sean Tsai, where a compact robot arm performs some magic tricks. On the linked page, you will find some architectural diagrams of this arm.
Visible-Reachable Workspace for Perception-Aware Humanoid Design
Duke University Researchers developed an interesting humanoid robot with two depth cameras, each on an independently articulated pan-tilt platform. The result is quite interesting; the robot can reach for objects simultaneously in two directions and doesn’t need constant reorienting to get a good, unobstructed view of targets.
Learning Agile Perceptive Traversal of Sparse 3D Structures for Humanoids
Researchers at the ETH Robotic Systems Lab added a solid-state LiDAR and some hook-like end-effectors to a humanoid robot and taught it to traverse monkey bars and avoid obstacles. It’s interesting to see robots capable of such explosive movements.
SwingBot: Learning Whole-Body Brachiation for Humanoid Robots
If you saw the previous feature and thought, “Man, I would really like to see some more robots on monkey bars,” then here you are! This one is definitely smaller than the one from ETH, and it starts already hanging, but if you like sim-to-real workflows, then you might like this one. Check out this paper for more information about this project.
FailBench: How Reliable are VLMs at Judging Robot Task Success?
Last week, we discussed how much it can cost for an LLM to operate a robot arm (~$1 per task for GPT-6). With this research, we can learn how well an LLM can judge task success. Spoiler alert: it’s not great, at 0.77 accuracy for the best model.
Agility Robotics reports $1.8M revenue ahead of humanoid SPAC
I’m not financially literate by a long shot, but I found the numbers contained in the article very interesting. In 2025, Agility made only $1.8M against a $140M operating loss. The most interesting diagram was the image from the S-4 filing showing two operating models. Robotics-as-a-Service would cost customers $8,500 per month. For contrast, a minimum full-time salary in the U.S. is $1,257, a shipbuilder’s median salary is $4,500, and an aircraft mechanic can earn $8,014 a month. I find it useful to think about these robots in these terms, as it gives us an idea of the skills the robot would need to fill some labor gap, bearing in mind that the robot can work close to three shifts.
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Events
- Autonomy: Sep 14, 2026. Malmö, Sweden
- ROSCon Global: Sep 22 - Sep 24, 2026. Toronto, Canada
- Gravis Robotics x Foxglove: Zurich Robotics Night: Sep 29, 2026. Zürich, Switzerland
- FUSE Toulouse 2026: Oct 06, 2026. Toulouse, France
- Open Source Summit: Oct 07 - Oct 09, 2026. Prague, Czechia
- ROSCon UK 2026: Oct 21 - Oct 23, 2026. Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- ROSCon Spain 2026: Oct 27 - Oct 28, 2026. Valencia, Spain
- FUSE San Francisco 2026: Nov 19, 2026. San Francisco, California, United States of America
- 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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