Video Friday: Grooving with CHILD

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!

Many parents naturally teach motions to their child while using a baby carrier. In this setting, the parent’s range of motion fully encompasses the child’s, making it intuitive to scale down motions in a puppeteering manner. This inspired UIUC KIMLAB to build CHILD: Controller for Humanoid Imitation and Live Demonstration.

The role of teleoperation has grown increasingly important with the rising interest in collecting physical data in the era of Physical/Embodied AI. We demonstrate the capabilities of CHILD through loco-manipulation and full-body control experiments using the Unitree G1 and other PAPRAS dual-arm systems. To promote accessibility and reproducibility, we open-source the hardware design.

[ KIMLAB ]

This costs less than US $6,000.

[ Unitree ]

If I wasn’t sold on one of these little Reachy Minis before, I definitely am now.

[ Pollen ]

In this study, we propose a falconry-like interaction system in which a flapping-wing drone performs autonomous palm landing motion on a human hand. To achieve a safe approach toward humans, our motion planning method considers both physical and psychological factors.

I should point out that palm landings are not falconry-like at all, and that if you’re doing falconry right, the bird should be landing on your wrist instead. I have other hobbies besides robots, you know!

[ Paper ]

I’m not sure that augmented reality is good for all that much, but I do like this use case of interactive robot help.

[ MRHaD ]

Thanks, Masato!

LimX Dynamics officially launched its general-purpose full-size humanoid robot LimX Oli. It’s currently available only in Mainland China. A global version is coming soon.

Standing at 165 cm and equipped with 31 active degrees of freedom (excluding end-effectors), LimX Oli adopts a general-purpose humanoid configuration with modular hardware-software architecture and is supported by a development toolchain. It is built to advance embodied AI development from algorithm research to real-world deployment.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

Thanks, Jinyan!

Meet Treadward – the newest robot from HEBI Robotics, purpose-built for rugged terrain, inspection missions, and real-world fieldwork. Treadward combines high mobility with extreme durability, making it ideal for challenging environments like waterlogged infrastructure, disaster zones, and construction sites. With a compact footprint and treaded base, it can climb over debris, traverse uneven ground, and carry substantial payloads.

[ HEBI ]

PNDbotics made a stunning debut at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) with the first-ever joint appearance of its full-sized humanoid robot Adam and its intelligent data-collection counterpart Adam-U.

[ PNDbotics ]

This paper presents the design, development, and validation of a fully autonomous dual-arm aerial robot capable of mapping, localizing, planning, and grasping parcels in an intra-logistics scenario. The aerial robot is intended to operate in a scenario comprising several supply points, delivery points, parcels with tags, and obstacles, generating the mission plan from voice the commands given by the user.

[ GRVC ]

We left the room. They took over. No humans. No instructions. Just robots… moving, coordinating, showing off. It almost felt like… they were staging something.

[ AgileX ]

TRI’s internship program offers a unique opportunity to work closely with our researchers on technologies to improve the quality of life for individuals and society. Here’s a glimpse into that experience from some of our 2025 interns!

[ TRI ]

In the third installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Dr. Catie Cuan, robot choreographer and former artist in residence at Everyday Robots, for a conversation about how dance can be used to build beautiful and useful robots that people want to be around.