Videos: Holiday Robot Helpers, Dancing Robots, and More

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

ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA

Enjoy today’s videos!

Happy Holidays from Boston Dynamics!

I would pay any amount of money for that lamp.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

What if evolution wasn’t carbon-based—but metal instead? This short film explores an alternative, iron-based evolution through robots, simulation, and real-world machines. Inspired by biological evolution, this Christmas lab film imagines a world where machines evolve instead of organisms.

[ ETH Zurich Robotics System Lab ]

Happy Holidays from FieldAI!

[ FieldAI ]

Happy Holidays from the Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at Poznan University of Technology!

[ Poznan University of Technology IRMI ]

Happy Holidays from BruBotics!

[ AugmentX ]

Thanks, Bram!

[ Humanoid ]

Check out how SCUTTLE tackles the dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks of the pest control industry.

[ Ground Control Robotics ]

Happy Holidays from LimX Dynamics!

[ LimX Dynamics ]

Happy (actually maybe not AI?) Holidays from Kawasaki Robotics!

[ Kawasaki Robotics ]

Happy Holidays from AgileX Robotics

[ AgileX Robotics ]

Big news: Badminton just got a new training partner. Our humanoid robot can rally with a human in continuous exchanges, combining fast returns with stable movement. Peak return speed reaches 19.1 m/s.

[ Phybot ]

Well, here’s one way of deploying a legged robot.

[ Kepler ]

Today, we present the world’s first demo video of a full-size robot taking on the challenging Charleston dance.

[ PNDbotics ]

The DR02 humanoid robot from DEEP Robotics showcases remarkable versatility and agility. From the graceful flow of Tai Chi to the energetic moves of street dance, DR02 combines precision, strength, and artistry with ease!

[ Deep Robotics ]

Decreasing the Cost of Morphing in Adaptive Morphogenetic Robots: By using kirigami laminar jamming flippers, the Jamming Amphibious Robotic Turtle (JART) can quickly morph its limbs to adapt to changing terrain. This pneumatic layer jamming technology enables multi-environment locomotion on land and water by changing the robot’s flipper shape and stiffness to decrease the cost of transport.

[ Paper ]

Super Odometry is a resilient sensor-fusion framework that delivers accurate, real-time state estimation in challenging environments by integrating external and inertial sensing. For decades, SLAM has depended on external sensors like cameras and lidar. We argue it’s time to reverse this hierarchy: True robustness begins from within. By placing inertial sensing at the core of state estimation, robots gain an inner sense of motion. We believe the systems that not only see, but also feel, learn, and adapt.

[ AirLab ]