Weekly Robotics #323

Issue 323

In the end, I didn't take a break from the newsletter; there were too many exciting features, and I opted not to increase my backlog even more.

Tangram Office Hours [Sponsored]

Join the Tangram Vision team every Tuesday at 2pm CT for deep-dives into the art of calibration. Sessions alternate between MetriCal demos (webinar format) and open office hours (meeting format), where you can ask anything about computer vision, calibration, and perception. Gain hands-on experience with multi-modal sensor fusion, parameter optimization, and production-ready calibration workflows.

Tangram Vision

DeepMind Table Tennis Robots Train Each Other

DeepMind Table Tennis Robots Train Each Other cover

A team at DeepMind created two robotic agents to play against each other, forcing them to develop new strategies and adapt to the opponent’s changes. The team also experimented with an LLM coach with some interesting results.

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bagel

Bagel is an open-source tool for exporting and analyzing robotic data. It allows you to easily turn bagfile data into a pandas DataFrame or a PyArrow Dataset. To get an idea of how to work with this tool, check out the tutorial in this section.

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Introducing Skyfall: Potential Future Mission Concept for Next-gen Mars Helicopters and Exploration

Introducing Skyfall: Potential Future Mission Concept for Next-gen Mars Helicopters and Exploration cover

AeroVironment and NASA’s JPL have unveiled Skyfall, a concept for a 2028 Mars mission involving six helicopters. The biggest innovation here is the “Skyfall Maneuver”: why bother landing a giant spacecraft if the helicopters should be fully capable of landing themselves. I really hope we get to follow this mission in 2028! Check out this YouTube video for a demo of this mission.

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Unitree R1

Unitree R1 cover

I stopped featuring new humanoid robots in the newsletter a while back since everyone seems to be making one. What I found very interesting about R1 is its ultra-low weight (only 25 kg) and the very low price of $5,900. Based on the website and the videos, I don’t think it has articulated fingers, and at a height of 1.2m, it’s relatively small but should still make for some cool demos!

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CS 123: A Hands-On Introduction to Building AI-Enabled Robots

This course offers a hands-on introduction to AI-powered robotics. Unlike most introductory robotics courses, students will learn essential robotics concepts by constructing a quadruped robot from scratch and training it to perform real-world tasks such as navigation and command following. The course covers a broad range of topics critical to robot learning, including motor control, forward and inverse kinematics, system identification, simulation, and reinforcement learning.

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Retinify

Retinify cover

Retinify is an advanced AI-powered stereo vision library designed for robotics. It enables real-time, high-precision 3D perception by leveraging GPU and NPU acceleration.

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ROSCon 2025 schedule is out

The ROSCon schedule is out, and looking at the talks and who delivers them, I already have quite some FOMO. I’m looking forward to seeing some of these talks live this year!

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Events

For more robotic events, check out our event page.

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