Robot Videos: Humanoid Dancing, Robot Learning, More

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends on IEEE Spectrum robotics. We are also publishing a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ICRA 2026: June 1-5, 2026, VIENNA

RSS 2026: July 13-17, 2026, SYDNEY

Multi-Robot Systems Summer School: July 29 – August 4, 2026, PRAGUE

Enjoy today’s videos!

Making Digit dance isn’t just about putting on fancy shoes: our AI team can teach Digit new full-body control abilities overnight. Using raw motion data from mocap, animation and teleoperation methods, Digit learns new skills through simulation-to-real reinforcement training.

[ Agility ]

[ Generalist ]

Unitree open-source UnifoLM-WBT-Dataset: High-quality real-world humanoid robot whole body teleoperation (WBT) dataset for open environments. Available to the public since March 5, 2026, the dataset will continue to receive continuous high-frequency updates. It aims to establish the most comprehensive real-world humanoid robot dataset in terms of scenario coverage, task complexity, and manipulation diversity.

[ Hugging Face ]

Autonomous mobile robots operating in indoor environments shared by humans often require paths that reflect human spatial intentions, such as avoiding interference with pedestrian flow or maintaining comfortable open space. This paper introduces MRReP, a mixed reality-based interface that allows users to draw a hand-drawn reference path (HRP) directly on the physical ground using hand gestures.

[ MRReP ]

Thanks, Masato!

Eye contact, even momentary, between strangers, plays a central role in fostering human connection, promoting happiness, and strengthening belonging. Through autonomous navigation and adaptive mirror control, Mirrorbot facilitates incidental, nonverbal interactions by dynamically shifting thoughts from self-focus to mutual recognition, sparking eye contact, shared awareness, and playful engagement.

[ ARL ] via [ Cornell University ]

Discover PAL Robotics’ new teleoperation system for TIAGo Pro, the AI-ready mobile manipulator designed for advanced research. This real-time VR teleoperation setup allows precise control of TIAGo Pro’s two arms in Cartesian space, ideal for remote manipulation, AI data collection and robot learning.

[ PAL Robotics ]

The absolute brilliance of Robust AI. No notes.

[ Robust AI ]

Join our lead test engineer, Nick L., as he gives us a tour of the home test labs at iRobot headquarters.

[ iRobot ]

By automating the final “magic 5%” of production – the precise cutting of swimming goggles’ silicone seals based on scans of individual faces – UR cobots enable THEMAGIC5 to deliver affordable, custom-made glasses, allowing the company to go from a Kickstarter sensation to selling more than 400,000 glasses worldwide.

[ Universal Robots ]

Sanctuary AI has once again demonstrated its cutting-edge approach to training dexterous handling policies for its advanced hydraulic hands. In this video, their proprietary hydraulic hand autonomously manipulates a cube with letters, continually reorienting it to match a specified goal (shown in the lower left corner of the video).

[ Sanctuary AI ]

China’s Yuxing 3-06 commercial experimental satellite, the first of its kind to be equipped with a flexible robotic arm, recently completed an in-orbit refueling test and verification of key technologies. The test paves the way for Yuxing 3-06, nicknamed “space refueling station”, to refuel other satellites in orbit, manage space debris and provide other in-orbit services.

[ Sanyuan Aerospace ] via [ Space News ]

This is a demonstration of natural walking, full-body teleoperation and motion tracking with our custom humanoid robot. Control policies are trained using large-scale parallel reinforcement learning (RL). By deploying robust policies learned in a physical simulator on real hardware, we achieve dynamic and stable movements of the whole body.

[ Tokyo Robotics ]

Faced with aging railway infrastructure, a shrinking workforce and rising construction costs, Japan Railway West asked construction innovator Serendix to replace an old wooden building at its Hatsushima station using its 3D printing technology. An ABB robot enabled the company to assemble the new building in just one night, ready for the first train service the next day.

[ ABB ]

Humanoid, SAP and Martur Fompak team up to test humanoid robots in automotive manufacturing logistics. This joint proof of concept explores how robots can streamline operations, improve efficiency and shape the future of smart factories.

[ Humanoid ]

This MIT robotics seminar is led by Dario Floreano from EPFL, on “Avian Inspired Drones”.

[ MIT ]

This MIT robotics seminar is led by Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley: “Good old-fashioned engineering can close the 100,000-year ‘data gap’ in robotics.” »

[ MIT ]