Quadruped Robot Solves Giant Rubik’s Cube in IEEE Spectrum Video Roundup
IEEE Spectrum’s weekly Video Friday roundup collects recent robotics demonstrations and lists upcoming events. The calendar includes CoRL 2026 in Austin from November 9–12 and Humanoids 2026 in Santa Clara, California, from December 6–9. The roundup mixes academic research, commercial product updates, and conference previews, with links to source labs and companies.
A highlight is a quadruped robot autonomously solving a giant Rubik’s Cube using only its feet. The demonstration comes from ETH Zurich’s Robotics Systems Lab.
Reflex is a three-stage framework for visual reactive whole-body control in humanoids. It learns to anticipate moving targets and respond reflexively with the whole body, connecting stages through a compact representation of object dynamics. The target behaviors include returning a tennis shot, catching a falling cup, stepping aside from a cart, and handling a tossed box. The work emphasizes that everyday human actions require anticipation and whole-body response within about a second, a capability still challenging for humanoids.
Commentary on robotic laundry folding argues that recognition and manipulation tasks should be made easy when possible. The same principle is said to extend to broader robot recognition and manipulation work.
Parallel Systems, first covered in 2022, appears still active. KAIST’s DRCD Lab and RAILAB demonstrate the KAIST Humanoid v0.9 using onboard visual feedback for whole-body loco-manipulation. It pushes objects up to 35 kg, lifts up to 20 kg, and arranges the letters “KAIST.”
Other clips are lighter in tone. One notes that robots without sensor budgets can afford much bigger wheels; another observes that wired robots have become somewhat stranger.
AthenaZero has two tendon-driven, three-fingered hands. Its fingers can interdigitate to hold objects of different sizes, such as an egg or a hammer. Motors in the torso keep each hand light and transmit force through flexible cables, enabling an 80-millisecond closing time. Barometric pressure sensors add gentle control, and the design is intended to combine speed, strength, and gentleness in a compact package.
ETH Zurich’s Soft Robotics Lab presents a biohybrid robot that pairs lab-grown skeletal muscle with a soft, 3D-printed scaffold. Instead of growing muscle and then building a skeleton, the team co-optimized muscle and scaffold in a soft-body simulation framework. The centimeter-scale bioactuators achieve up to 11 times more range of motion than comparable systems and can jump, swim, walk, and grasp. The work is presented as a co-design advance for machines powered by living tissue.
Unitree offers a humanoid demonstration that the roundup frames as a scalable use case. UIST teasers and SuperMimic are also featured. SuperMimic surpasses a state-of-the-art motion tracker baseline in three hours on one GPU, compared with seven days on 128 GPUs, cutting GPU-hours by more than 1,000 times. It fails on 25 of 129,514 benchmark motions versus 179 for the baseline, and reaches zero failures after 9.8 hours on two GPUs. The results are presented as a major efficiency gain for motion imitation.
Grain Weevil introduces a dual robot attachment that links two robots into one larger machine. A single operator runs the combined system, which does the work of up to three robots.
Generative Bionics announced plans for Europe’s largest Physical AI Data Factory, with AMD as its AI infrastructure partner, at CES Unveiled Milan.
NASA highlights lunar mobility for Moon Base development. Robotic rovers and lunar terrain vehicles will support Artemis astronauts, investigate the lunar South Pole, test technologies, and gather information for future missions. The Moon Base update focuses on how mobility supports a sustained human presence.
A single-motor drone project credits earlier research, including UPenn drones covered in 2014. At Humanoids Summit Seoul 2026, Michael Perry of Persona AI argues for the humanoid form factor over specialized wheels, gantry arms, or quadruped platforms, offering business and engineering justification.