Robot Videos: SCUTTLE Robot, Laundry Folding, 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.

RO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS

CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN, CHINA

ACTUATE 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO

CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL

World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Enjoy today’s videos!

Check out our latest innovations on SCUTTLE, advancing multilegged mobility anywhere.

[ GCR ]

That laundry-folding robot we’ve been working on for 15 years is still not here.

Honestly I think Figure could learn a few tricks from vintage UC Berkeley PR2, though.

– YouTube

[ Figure ]

Tensegrity robots are so cool, but so hard—it’s good to see progress.

[ Michigan Robotics ]

We should find out next week how quick this is.

[ Unitree ]

We introduce a methodology for task-specific design optimization of multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles. By leveraging reinforcement learning, Bayesian optimization, and covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy, we optimize aerial robot designs guided only by their closed-loop performance in a considered task. Our approach systematically explores the design space of motor pose configurations while ensuring manufacturability constraints and minimal aerodynamic interference. Results demonstrate that optimized designs achieve superior performance compared to conventional multirotor configurations in agile waypoint navigation tasks, including against fully actuated designs from the literature. We build and test one of the optimized designs in the real world to validate the sim2real transferability of our approach.

[ ARL ]

Thanks, Kostas!

I guess legs are required for this inspection application because of the stairs right at the beginning? But sometimes, that’s how the world is.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

The Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at DLR has a long tradition in developing multifingered hands, creating novel mechatronic concepts as well as autonomous grasping and manipulation capabilities. The range of hands spans from Rotex, a first two-fingered gripper for space applications, to the highly anthropomorphic Awiwi Hand and variable stiffness end effectors. This video summarizes the developments of DLR in this field over the past 30 years, starting with the Rotex experiment in 1993.

[ DLR RM ]

[ Arc Lab ]

Serious question: Why don’t humanoid robots sit down more often?

[ EngineAI ]

And now, this.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

NASA researchers are currently using wind tunnel and flight tests to gather data on an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) scaled-down small aircraft that resembles an air taxi that aircraft manufacturers can use for their own designs. By using a smaller version of a full-sized aircraft called the RAVEN Subscale Wind Tunnel and Flight Test (RAVEN SWFT) vehicle, NASA is able to conduct its tests in a fast and cost-effective manner.

[ NASA ]

This video details the advances in orbital manipulation made by DLR’s Robotic and Mechatronics Center over the past 30 years, paving the way for the development of robotic technology for space sustainability.

[ DLR RM ]

This summer, a team of robots explored a simulated Martian landscape in Germany, remotely guided by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. This marked the fourth and final session of the Surface Avatar experiment, a collaboration between ESA and the German Aerospace Center (‪DLR) to develop how astronauts can control robotic teams to perform complex tasks on the Moon and Mars.

[ ESA ]