Weekly Robotics #332

Issue 332

We did it again! With the same dream team as last year, we submitted a proposal for a Robotics and Simulation devroom at FOSDEM 2026. If we get in, I highly recommend you start looking for tickets to Brussels. FOSDEM is unlike any other event I've attended, and it's free! At FOSDEM 2025, we had some fantastic talks and I also created this write-up on my experience visiting this event for the first time.

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iRonCub: A Humanoid Robot Designed to Fly Like Iron Man

iRonCub: A Humanoid Robot Designed to Fly Like Iron Man cover

We covered iRonCub3 back in the issue 318, but in this article, Evan Ackerman provides more context about this build and how difficult it is to actually make a humanoid fly like this (for starters, the exhaust temperature is 800 degrees Celsius).

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ABB Group to sell ABB Robotics to SoftBank for $5.375B

One of the world’s largest industrial automation providers is changing owners. ABB Group today said it is divesting its ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation division to SoftBank Group Corp. for $5.375 billion. The Zurich-based company had announced plans to spin off the unit during an earnings call in April. At the time, it noted that orders and revenues had fallen sharply from 2023 to early 2025.

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LeRobot - Bring Your Own Hardware

Recently, LeRobot added a tutorial describing how you can add your own robot to use this end-to-end learning framework. Since the guide is using Python, the integration is quite straightforward.

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NVIDIA’s Greenwave Monitor - A tool for high-performance topic monitoring and diagnostics

NVIDIA's Greenwave Monitor - A tool for high-performance topic monitoring and diagnostics cover

If you are using ROS, you might want to check this out. NVIDIA open-source Greenwave Monitor, a tool for monitoring and debugging ROS topics. The monitor looks quite sleek (see the picture above). Can’t wait to test it out!

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Skydio - Universal Robots drone catching solution

Skydio - Universal Robots drone catching solution cover

A couple of weeks back, during their event, Skydio showcased a live demo of a UR robot arm launching and catching Skydio’s new fixed-wing aircraft. I assume this is some visual servoing in action; if that’s the case, then very well done! I highly recommend checking out the entire keynote, you will find some solid engineering there.

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We are entering a golden age of robotics startups — and not just because of AI

If you are working in the robotics space, let’s hype you up a little bit. Venture investors poured $6 billion into robotics startups in the first seven months of 2025. This can be attributed to the falling hardware costs, better software, and a decade of hard-won lessons.

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Kinethreads: Soft Full-Body Haptic Exosuit using Low-Cost Motor-Pulley Mechanisms

Kinethreads: Soft Full-Body Haptic Exosuit using Low-Cost Motor-Pulley Mechanisms cover

This video shows an interesting approach to developing a haptic interface that could be used for VR applications. The exoskeleton uses a set of pulleys that can exert force on the user in various ways, including simulating a sense of touch, collisions, etc. I wonder how believable this system is to the user.

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