Video Friday: Give Robots a Hand

IEEE Spectrum's weekly Video Friday roundup features new demonstrations in robotic gripping, locomotion, and firefighting, alongside a schedule of major robotics conferences through October 2026. [1] The selection includes a disembodied robot hand crawling across a table from Tangent Robotics and MIT CSAIL's Improbable AI Lab Director Pulkit Agrawal explaining his "SoftMimic" approach to making robots safer around humans. [1] PNDbotics contributed a humanoid demonstration that prompted the comment, "I now have absolutely no interest in a humanoid robot for my home unless it can do this." [1] Agility Robotics showed its Digit robot performing reactive footstep planning, stepping and shuffling around a moving obstacle on the floor without breaking stride or losing balance. The company said the same dynamic footwork is used to navigate clutter and foot traffic on a real warehouse floor. [1] DEEP Robotics presented what it called "the most aggressive firefighting robot I've ever seen." [1] The Unitree R1, priced at US$4,900, drew measured praise. "I am the first to admit that for US$4,900, the performance of the Unitree R1 is very impressive," the accompanying commentary noted, before questioning what return on investment the machine could deliver in real-world settings. [1] Several upcoming events were listed: RSS 2026 runs 13–17 July in Sydney, a Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems follows from 29 July to 4 August in Prague, Actuate 2026 takes place 18–19 August in San Francisco, and IROS 2026 is scheduled for 27 September to 1 October in Pittsburgh. [1] The DARPA Lift Challenge will be open to the public Aug. 6-9, 2026, at the National Museum of the US Air Force. [1] The word "robot" itself entered the English language through Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R., which premiered in 1921 and was translated into thirty languages by 1923. [2] The concept has since expanded across every medium, with fictional robots and androids appearing chronologically in literature, television, and cinema. [3] Modern robotics engineering draws from mechanical, electrical, software, and artificial intelligence disciplines to design machines that function reliably in real-world scenarios. [9] Swarm robotics, a subfield studying decentralized systems whose collective behavior emerges from individual interactions, is one active research area. [10] Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics, a vision-language-action model tailored for robotics applications and launched in March 2025, remains restricted to trusted testers including Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics. [8] Rodney Brooks, founder and chief technology officer of Robust.AI, discussed the origins of the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the future of robotics in a LinkedIn interview. [1] Harvard SEAS Professor Stephanie Gil explored the possibility of using AI-driven robots and machine learning to understand whale communication. [1] Senior editor Evan Ackerman, who has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology since 2007, curated the roundup. [1]