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. You can find the video index for the entire Video Friday series, with links to all the videos from previous weeks, here. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; please send us your events for inclusion. Enjoy today's videos!
Figure's Robot Factory
Figure is now able to produce 55 robots per week, which will be "allocated to internal research and development groups, data collection, efforts for robots to perform end-to-end housework, and commercial use-case development." Er, that seems like a lot of robots to be making when commercial use cases are still "in development," doesn't it?
NEO Factory
The opening of the NEO Factory in Hayward, Calif., marks a fundamental shift in humanoid robotics: The United States' most vertically integrated robot factory has now begun full-scale production, bringing end-to-end manufacturing of NEO under one roof. Spanning 58,000 square feet and employing over 200 team members, 1X designs and builds every critical component in-house—motors, batteries, transmissions, sensors, structures, and final assembly—enabling faster iteration, superior safety, and true American scale. With the first robots already coming off the line and consumer shipments planned for 2026, this is the critical milestone that turns the vision of abundant, general-purpose home robots into reality.
Scale will fix everything...?
Digit on One Leg
Unlike statically stable robots, a dynamically balanced robot can shift its center of mass to accommodate loads without tipping over, so we like to see just how far we can push our software. Getting Digit to stand on one leg pushes the limits of our sim-to-real pipeline training methodologies—even the slightest model mismatches can lead to instability.
Humanoid Touch Dream
In this work, we develop a tactile-enabled whole-body humanoid manipulation system for stable, dexterous, contact-rich real-world manipulation. Our system combines VR-based whole-body teleoperation, a lower-body controller based on reinforced learning, dexterous hand retargeting, distributed tactile sensing, and a multimodal policy called Humanoid Transformer with Touch Dreaming (HTD).
Can I Have a Pet T. Rex?
Originally posted two years ago, "Can I Have a Pet T. Rex?" is a short interdisciplinary portrait documentary. It features paleontologist and Kodlab postdoc Aja Mia Carter and the Kodlab robotics researchers Wei-Hsi Chen (also a postdoc) and J. Diego Caporale, a Ph.D. student.
It's been two years! Where is her pet T. rex!?
CMU and HEBI at the NFL Draft
I am not entirely sure why CMU and HEBI had robots at the 2026 NFL Draft, but I'm entirely sure that it made it more interesting to watch.
Robot Perception
Ethan Lauer, a software engineer, answers your questions about robot perception, world modeling, and what spooks our Stretch robot.
Yet another thing that a robot is consistently better at than I am.
Humanoid Robot Sales
If you’re wondering where all those reported humanoid robot sales are coming from, it’s because every big company needs one or two for this sort of thing.
Full-Color Laser Yo-Yo Zapper
Full-color laser yo-yo zapper, a phrase never before written in the history of the universe.
L’Oréal Pro 2026 Le Hair Show
The future of the L’Oréal Pro 2026 Le Hair Show is...a bald robot?
MagicHand H01
Meet MagicHand H01, our all-new dexterous hand.
This is briefly one of the flattest quadrupeds I have ever seen.
I appreciate that Engineered Arts did not try to cover up the sound in this video.
This is very impressive considering that magnets are basically indistinguishable from magic.
Mars Rovers
NASA has two rovers on Mars, but they’re exploring entirely different eras of the planet’s past. Separated by 2,300 miles, the two rovers are uncovering clues from very different moments in Martian history. Perseverance is on the rim of Jezero Crater, where it’s studying some of the oldest Martian terrain ever explored while searching for signs of ancient microbial life. Meanwhile, Curiosity is climbing Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, where layers of rock reveal how Mars’s climate changed as water dried up from its surface.
Surgical Robot for Neuralink
We’ve built a surgical robot to automate key steps in the process of receiving a Neuralink implant to promote safety, reliability, and scalability.
Unitree G1 in the US
The Chinese-made Unitree G1 humanoid robots are making their way into the United States. And they aren’t just in viral videos but in major tech companies like OpenAI and Nvidia, and top academic institutions. Most arrive through Robostore, a robotics reseller based on Long Island. I went there to watch them come off the pallet, then brought one to my home to see what it could actually do. Are these the future of home robots? A security risk? A Chinese surveillance system on legs? I got answers—and a broken toe.
Autonomous Robots
How do autonomous robots make decisions when the world is unpredictable? From self-driving cars to drone swarms, autonomous systems must operate under uncertainty—making real-time decisions with incomplete or unreliable data. In this video, Harvard SEAS Prof. Stephanie Gil explains how AI-powered robots coordinate, adapt, and stay safe in complex, real-world environments.
