IEEE Spectrum Video Friday: Robot Duos, Singing Microducks, and Mars Rover Record
IEEE Spectrum's Video Friday is a weekly roundup of notable robotics videos, curated by the publication's robotics team. The outlet also maintains a calendar of upcoming robotics events.
Upcoming events include CoRL 2026, scheduled for 9–12 November 2026 in Austin, and Humanoids 2026, taking place 6–9 December 2026 in Santa Clara, California.
JSK Lab demonstrates that when two robots are connected by a wire, they can combine to form a new robot, in a safe-for-work manner.
Pollen's Microducks, when multiple units meet, sync over Bluetooth and collaboratively compose songs in harmony and perfect time, without a score or conductor. Two to four ducks suffice to form a choir. The article suggests Pollen should sell them in four-packs for this purpose.
Google DeepMind researchers tested Gemini 4 Argon by having it watch a human play cornhole. Using video understanding and reasoning, Gemini 4 created a MuJoCo simulation to calculate physics and whole-body control, enabling Apptronik's Apollo 2 humanoid to make seven consecutive shots in reality. This Video-to-Sim-to-Real pipeline reduces weeks of manual modeling to hours, turning ordinary videos into a training ground for physical AI.
As of October 11, 2026, NASA's Perseverance rover has driven 28.10 miles (45.22 km), setting a new off-world distance record for any vehicle on another planet's surface. The previous record of 28.06 miles (45.16 km) was held by Opportunity. Perseverance achieved this on its 2,006th Martian day, covering in five and a half years what Opportunity took nearly 15 years to traverse.
OATs presents a video that, regardless of whether the subjects are considered robots, is deemed cool. A paper explores how many blocks 40 cute little robots can clean up, given that one robot can clean one block, providing scientific answers. The article also thanks Keisuke for a contribution.
The European Space Agency rehearses the Rosalind Franklin rover's first journey off its lander on Earth, using a full-size model and Mars-like terrain. The test simulates challenges like reduced gravity, a 20-degree incline, uneven ground, and obstacles beneath the ramps.
Boston Dynamics' Atlas shop floor emphasizes precision, rapid assembly, and real-time collaboration. By machining parts in-house and consolidating assembly and repair, the company drives manufacturing velocity to turn complex designs into walking hardware at scale.
DEEP Robotics' M20S quadruped joined a biodiversity expedition in China's Ailao Mountains. It navigated rugged terrain, scouted routes, carried equipment, and captured wildlife in areas hard to reach on foot.
Disney Research's Kamino simulation software is a GPU-accelerated physics solver for complex mechanical systems with kinematic loops—like parallel manipulators, linkages, and multi-limbed robots with coupled joints—without simplified approximations.
Kawasaki Robotics presents the original UNIMATE robot, as featured on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1992.
ETH Zurich's WildOS enables autonomous robots to perform long-range, open-vocabulary object search in unmapped outdoor environments by combining geometric safety with semantic visual reasoning. Using a vision-scored navigation graph and beyond-horizon localization, it outperforms conventional approaches in field experiments.
UBTECH Robotics showcases a robot that looks exactly like an AI-generated person, questioning the need for AI-generated humans. Sharpa demonstrates impressive recovery behaviors, but the robot is much slower than a human, so its value may be primarily in novelty. The article questions what happens when that novelty fades.
ICRA 2026 in Vienna features panels on 'Impact and Return on Investment on Humanoid Robots' and 'Advancing Sustainability in Robotics.'