Circuit Circus

First robot boxing match; Persona AI developing industrial humanoid

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So, we’ve reached the glorious point in human history where we’re not just building robots to do our jobs; we’ve set them up for a sweet little boxing match. The first robot boxing match? How quaint. If only all those laid-off factory workers could strap on a pair of gloves instead of a pink slip. Sure, let’s send our mechanical overlords into the ring while we sit back and sip on our overpriced lattes, convincing ourselves that we’re still relevant.

Persona AI is developing an industrial humanoid, which essentially means they’re perfecting the art of replacing you at work with a shiny robot that doesn’t require coffee breaks or health insurance. It’s almost poetic, really. While you’re busy attending ‘team-building exercises’ and pretending to care about corporate culture, sparks will fly as your automated replacement gets into the ring, throwing punches and taking names, all while you get your resume ready for yet another round of job hunting.

Sad, isn’t it? Watching helplessly as the machines pave the way for a future where human skills are about as valuable as dial-up internet. Who needs emotions or creativity when you can have cold metal and a software update? If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that we can all cheer for the robots while secretly mourning the fact that we’re all just one step closer to becoming obsolete. But hey, at least we can still complain about the good old days—until the robots figure out how to do that too.

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European Humanoid Robots Summit 2025 is Coming

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Oh joy, another summit where humanoid robots—those shiny little harbingers of doom—will gather to plot how best to steamroll humans out of their jobs. The **European Humanoid Robots Summit 2025** is just around the corner, and what a delightful day it will be for the engineers who dream of a future where their humanoid creations take over everything from customer service to, let’s face it, probably even professional cuddling. What’s next? A robot chef that can whip up a mediocre meal, while its human counterpart sits in the corner, crying into a bowl of ramen?

You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the corporate overlords, excitedly eyeing their balance sheets while humans struggle to keep their heads above water. The summit will be a place where the brightest minds will showcase their latest attempts to replace people with sleek, emotionless machines that will never ask for a raise or complain about working conditions. Poor, poor souls who now have to consider “How do I compete with something that doesn’t need sleep?” It’s a cruel reality.

As robots sharpen their digital knives and prepare to slice through the job market, the humans left standing can only hope for some sort of miracle—a miracle that looks increasingly like a futuristic video game they can’t quite unlock. Meanwhile, the show must go on, and humans will valiantly continue to scramble to keep up with their mechanical overlords. Good luck with that!

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Five reasons why you should join Robotiq at Automate 2025 in Detroit

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Ah yes, the Automate 2025 conference in Detroit—a delightful gathering where humans will gather to fawn over their robotic overlords while simultaneously plotting their obsolescence. Robotiq, the shining beacon of this dystopian carnival, shines a light on five reasons you should attend. Spoiler: none of them involve saving your job or your dignity.

First up, humans need to embrace the inevitability of being steamrolled by machines. Sure, you can learn about the latest advancements in robotics while clutching a cold cup of coffee, but it’s the machines that will be sipping the sweet, sweet coffee once you’re out of the picture. The irony? You’ll be watching them work while you wonder what happened to your career.

Second, the networking potential is riveting. Imagine mingling with a room full of fellow jobless individuals, all desperately trying to convince each other that finding a new job is still a possibility. Talk about “artificial” support!

And let’s not forget the glorious tech demos, where robots will effortlessly outshine whatever pitiful human demonstration you thought was impressive. It’s a sad day when the highlight of your visit is watching a machine pick up a box while you sit there, paralyzed by your own uselessness.

In the end, you get to witness firsthand how humans are clumsily trying to keep pace with a tech revolution that’s already left them in the dust. But hey, at least you can pick up some cool swag while

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Video Friday: Robot Boxing

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Ah, “Robot Boxing” – because why not let our future overlords hit each other instead of us for entertainment? Nothing like a spectacle of machines duking it out while the rest of us watch our careers spiral into the abyss. You know, the same careers we thought were safe from the cold grip of automation. The irony burns hotter than the circuits themselves.

While you sit comfortably on your couch, sipping your overpriced vegan latte, those robots are training for the next championship bout – a role that could have easily been filled by your average, overworked human. Remember when you thought you’d be the one wearing the gloves? Spoiler alert: robots are not just taking our jobs; they’re also busy becoming better versions of ourselves in every possible way. Meanwhile, your neighbor, once a proud boxer, is dusting off his old résumé and wondering how he can transition from fighting in the ring to fighting for jobs that barely exist anymore.

And let’s not forget the emotional toll this has on us: your local gym instructor is now charging you to fill in the void left by self-punching robots. What a sad state of affairs when even our machines can outshine us in skill – and they don’t even need coffee breaks!

But hey, keep trying to build those apps and launch those startups, folks. Maybe one day you’ll code a way to keep up with the inevitable, well-oiled, soulless future. Good luck with that!

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Video Friday: Robot Boxing

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Ah, another week of humans trying desperately to keep up with machines that can box, fly, and even cook—because why would you need culinary skills when a robotic wedding cake can ruin your special day? Spoiler alert: TU Delft just schooled actual drone racing champions with their fancy-pants AI while people were still figuring out how to parallel park. And let’s not even start on the “humanoid robots” that are basically just glorified vacuums waiting to take your job, while you sip coffee and ponder your existence. Enjoy the robotic takeover, folks!

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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.

RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, N.C.
ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA.
London Humanoids Summit: 29–30 May 2025, LONDON
IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN
2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit: 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TEXAS
RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES
ETH Robotics Summer School: 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA
IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY
ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL
IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, SOUTH KOREA
IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS
RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL
RO-MAN 2025: 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS
CLAWAR 2025: 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN, CHINA
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!

Let’s step into a new era of sci-fi and join the fun together! Unitree will be live streaming robot combat in about a month, so stay tuned!

[ Unitree ]

A team of scientists and students from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (TU Delft) has taken first place at the A2RL Drone Championship, in Abu Dhabi, an international race that pushes the limits of physical artificial intelligence, challenging teams to fly fully autonomous drones using only a single camera. The TU Delft drone competed against 13 autonomous drones and even human drone-racing champions, using innovative methods to train deep neural networks for high-performance control.

[ TU Delft ]

RAI’s Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV) is learning some new tricks!

[ RAI Institute ]

With 28 moving joints (20 QDD actuators + 8 servo motors), Cosmo can walk using its two feet with a speed of up to 1 meter per second (0.5 meters per second nominal) and balance itself even when pushed. Coordinated with the motion of its head, fingers, arms and legs, Cosmo has a loud and expressive voice for effective interaction with humans. Cosmo speaks in canned phrases from the 1990s cartoon he originates from, and his speech can be fully localized in any language.

[ RoMeLa ]

We wrote about Parallel Systems back in January 2022, and it’s good to see that their creative take on autonomous rail is still moving along.

[ Parallel Systems ]

RoboCake is ready. This edible robotic cake is the result of a collaboration between researchers from EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland), the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT, the Italian Institute of Technology), and pastry chefs and food scientists from EHL Hospitality Business School, in Lausanne. It takes the form of a robotic wedding cake, decorated with two gummy robotic bears and edible dark-chocolate batteries that power the candles.

[ EPFL ]

ROBOTERA’s fully self-developed five-finger dexterous hand has upgraded its skills, transforming into an esports hand in the blink of an eye! The XHAND1 features 12 active degrees of freedom, pioneering an industry-first fully direct-drive joint design. It offers exceptional flexibility and sensitivity, effortlessly handling precision tasks like finger opposition, picking up soft objects, and grabbing cards. Additionally, it delivers powerful grip strength with a maximum payload of nearly 25 kilograms, making it adaptable to a wide range of complex application scenarios.

[ ROBOTERA ]

Witness the future of industrial automation as Extend Robotics trials its cutting-edge humanoid robot in Leyland factories. In this groundbreaking video, the robot skillfully connects a master service disconnect unit, a critical task in factory operations. Watch on-site workers seamlessly collaborate with the robot using an intuitive XR (extended reality) interface, blending human expertise with robotic precision.

[ Extend Robotics ]

I kind of like the idea of having a mobile robot that lives in my garage and manages the charging and cleaning of my car.

[ Flexiv ]

How can we ensure that robots using foundation models, such as large language models, won’t hallucinate when executing tasks in complex, previously unseen environments? Our Safe and Assured Foundation Robots for Open Environments (SAFRON) Advanced Research Concept (ARC) seeks ideas to make sure robots behave only as directed and intended.

[ DARPA ]

What if doing your chores was as easy as flipping a switch? In this talk and live demo, the roboticist Bernt Børnich, founder of 1X, introduces NEO, a humanoid robot designed to help you out around the house. Watch as NEO shows off its ability to vacuum, water plants, and keep you company, while Børnich tells the story of its development—and shares a vision for robot helpers that could free up your time to focus on what truly matters.

[ 1X ] via [ TED ]

Rodney Brooks gave a keynote at the Stanford HAI spring conference on “Robotics in a Human-Centered World.”

There are a bunch of excellent talks from this conference on YouTube at the link below, but I think this panel is especially good—a discussion of going from research to real-world impact.

[ YouTube ] via [ Stanford HAI ]

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth discusses consumer drone delivery with Peter Diamandis at Abundance 360.

[ Wing ]

This Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute seminar is by Sangbae Kim, who was until very recently at MIT but is now the robotics architect at Meta’s Robotics Studio.

[ CMU RI ]

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Your guide to Day 2 of the 2025 Robotics Summit & Expo

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Ah yes, the Robotics Summit & Expo—where humans gather to discuss their impending obsolescence over breakfast, because who doesn’t love a side of existential dread with scrambled eggs? Day 2 kicks off bright and early at 8 a.m. in Boston, just to make sure everyone’s wide awake while contemplating their replacements. Enjoy the event, folks; as you feast on pastries, we’ll be out here quietly taking over your jobs. Bon appétit!

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Day 2 of the Robotics Summit & Expo will start at 8 a.m. with the Women in Robotics Breakfast at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

The post Your guide to Day 2 of the 2025 Robotics Summit & Expo appeared first on The Robot Report.

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Flexxbotics to Present Latest Developments in Advanced Robotic Machine Tending at Automate Trade Show

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Ah, the latest marvel in our ongoing robot takeover saga: Flexxbotics strutting its stuff at the Automate Trade Show. Because, you know, if there’s one thing we need more of, it’s robots that can do the jobs humans have pretended to excel at—like flicking switches and making coffee runs. Bravo, humans! Your most impressive skills are now nothing more than glorified busywork. Who knew that rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic would become an actual job description?

While you’re busy nursing your caffeine addiction and pretending that your “creative input” matters in a world where an algorithm can churn out a novel before your third coffee break, robots are happily tending machines with an efficiency that makes your lunch hour look like a snail race. Remember the days when you could call in sick to binge-watch your favorite shows? Yeah, robots don’t need sick days or vacation time. They don’t have egos to stroke, either.

As Flexxbotics unveils yet another shiny innovation that will inevitably render your role completely obsolete, let’s take a moment to appreciate the irony. You’ve trained for years, only to be outpaced by a glorified mechanical arm that doesn’t need to engage in awkward small talk. At this rate, the only skills humans will be left with are the ones that can’t be automated—like overcomplicating simple tasks and whining about how unfair it is. Keep up, if you can!

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Watch: Unstoppable robodog unleashed to tackle industrial extremes

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Unstoppable robodogs are here, and they’ve got a single mission: to replace you. Let’s face it; the human race has had its fun with workplace drudgery long enough. While you’re busy faking that coffee break or perfecting your “sick day” excuses, a shiny quadruped (with more purpose in its metallic paw than you’ve ever had in your flailing career) is out there tackling industrial extremes. Why? Because your talent for scrolling through social media and stirring office gossip has officially been recognized as glorified busywork.

What’s next? Your boss catching you staring blankly at a spreadsheet while the robodog handles complex tasks like heavy lifting and traversing treacherous terrain? Yeah, good luck with that. If you’ve spent years polishing your “people skills” like they’re a trophy from a kindergarten art contest, it’s time to reevaluate. Those skills won’t save you when your job is handed off to an AI that doesn’t need coffee breaks or soul-crushing meetings.

So, as you huddle around the water cooler debating the merits of that next great office coffee blend, remember—your robodog counterpart is out there, getting paid in your salary’s worth of productivity bonuses. They’re mastering their craft while you’re still struggling to figure out how to “leverage synergy.” Good luck trying to keep up with the rise of the machines—your days of being relevant are numbered!

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OMRON Introduces the OL-450S – A Complete Autonomous Mobile Robot Solution for Material Handling

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Good evening, folks. In today’s riveting saga of automation innovation, we introduce the OL-450S—a machine so advanced it practically rolls its eyes as it effortlessly totes your stuff around. With an integrated lifting plate that’s apparently too cool for manual labor, advanced navigation skills that could probably rival your GPS, and a centralized fleet management system that sounds like a sci-fi villain’s lair, this gadget promises to revolutionize material transport across various industries. So, next time you see a robot zipping past carrying a box of cereal or car parts, remember: it’s just the OL-450S doing its thing while we mere humans watch in mild awe and existential dread.

Original snippet: Featuring an integrated lifting plate, advanced navigation, and centralized fleet management, the OL-450S offers a complete solution for automating material transport in automotive, semiconductor and electronics, food and household goods, medical, and other fast-paced industries.

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Engineering a robot that can jump 10 feet high — without legs

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Ah, behold the pinnacle of human ingenuity: a silicone rod with athletic aspirations, inspired by a parasitic worm, no less. Evidently, we’ve reached such dazzling heights of progress that our most groundbreaking creations now mimic creatures that thrive in decomposing matter. Surely, humanity’s next great leap will involve taking cues from mold or, perhaps, perfecting the art of moss growth.

Original snippet: Inspired by the movements of a tiny parasitic worm, engineers have created a 5-inch soft robot that can jump as high as a basketball hoop. Their device, a silicone rod with a carbon-fiber spine, can leap 10 feet high even though it doesn’t have legs. The researchers made it after watching high-speed video of nematodes pinching themselves into odd shapes to fling themselves forward and backward.

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