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.Robotics Summit & Expo: 10–11 May 2023, BOSTONICRA 2023: 29 May–2 June 2023, LONDONRoboCup 2023: 4–10 July 2023, BORDEAUX, FRANCERSS 2023: 10–14 July 2023, DAEGU, KOREAIEEE RO-MAN 2023: 28–31 August 2023, BUSAN, KOREACLAWAR 2023: 2–4 October 2 ...read more

The 2023 ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction Conference (HRI) is taking place this week in Stockholm, with the theme of “HRI for all.” It’s a good theme, promoting diversity and inclusion, but it’s also a good reminder that all robots have (or should have) some thought put into how they interact with humans. HRI isn’t just for social robots. Even the most industrial of industrial robots, the lights-out manufacturing sorts of things that may never see a human while operating unless some ...read more

The European Commission wants Europe to boost its share of global semiconductor production to 20 percent by 2030, from 10 percent today. To that end, it is forwarding plans for more than €43 billion in public and private investment through a European Chips Act. To accomplish that increase in chip capacity, the legislation will approve appropriations for R&D, incentivize manufacturing, and take steps to make the supply chain more secure. Jo De Boeck, chief strategy officer and executive vice ...read more

My favorite approach to human-robot interaction is minimalism. I’ve met a lot of robots, and some of the ones that have most effectively captured my heart are those that express themselves through their fundamental simplicity and purity of purpose. What’s great about simple, purpose-driven robots is that they encourage humans to project needs and wants and personality onto them, letting us do a lot of the human-robot-interaction (HRI) heavy lifting.In terms of simple, purpose-driven robots, ...read more

The perpetual problem with scaling up most quantum computers is a seemingly mundane one—too many cables. Experts say quantum computers might need at least a million qubits kept at near absolute zero to do anything computationally noteworthy. But connecting them all by coaxial cable to control and readout electronics, which work at room temperature, would be impossible.Computing giants such as IBM, Google, and Intel hope to solve that problem with cyrogenic silicon chips that can operate close ...read more

On a gin-clear December day, I’m sitting under the plexiglass bubble of a radically new kind of aircraft. It’s a little past noon at the Byron Airport in northern California; in the distance, a jagged line of wind turbines atop rolling hills marks the Altamont Pass, blades spinning lazily. Above me, a cloudless blue sky beckons. The aircraft, called BlackFly, is unlike anything else on the planet. Built by a Palo Alto, Calif., startup called Opener, it’s an electric vertical take-of ...read more

Despite tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia investing billions of dollars in the development of the metaverse, it is still little more than a fantasy. Making it a reality is likely to require breakthroughs in a range of sectors such as storage, modeling, and communication. To spur progress in the advancement of those technologies, the IEEE Standards Association has launched the Persistent Computing for Metaverse initiative. As part of the IEEE’s Industry Connections Program, it ...read more

As technology continues to evolve, STEM education is needed more than ever. With the vast technical expertise of its 400,000-plus members and volunteers, IEEE is a leader in engineering and technology education. Its technical societies and its councils, sections, and regional groups offer educational events and resources at every level to support technical professions and prepare the workforce of tomorrow. IEEE offers many ways to support the educational needs of learners. For preuniversity stu ...read more

In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a groundbreaking experiment. They wanted to see whether an electric vehicle could feed electricity back to the grid. The experiment seemed to prove the feasibility of the technology. The company’s president, Tom Gage, dubbed the system “vehicle to grid” or V2G. The concept behind V2G had gained traction in the late 1990s after California’s landmark zero-emission-vehicle (ZEV) mandate went ...read more

Scientists today reported that they’ve observed room-temperature superconductivity. Superconductivity is a rarefied state of matter in which electrical resistance in a material drops to zero while its electrical and magnetic capacity vastly expands. Until now, the phenomenon has been observed only at cryogenic temperatures or phenomenally high pressures. Such a discovery, if confirmed, could open pathways to a range of applications including lossless electric transmission, high-efficiency ele ...read more