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.

Actuate 2026: 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO

IROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGH

Humanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOUL

Enjoy today’s videos!

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the best part of any DARPA challenge is when things go horribly wrong. And after you enjoy all the crashes (followed by all of the battery fires), get caught up with the DARPA Lift Challenge with video recaps of the final few days.

[ DARPA Lift Challenge ]

Drone delivery: coming soon to a moving vehicle (or perhaps even through an open window) near you.

[ HKUST Aerial Robotics Group ]

This tiny little robot called STEMbot (as in stem, not STEM) can climb up and around plant stems to check for pests. It’s not very fast, but it sure is adorable.

[ STEMbot ]

Monumental’s robots delivered the brickwork for a semi-detached home, laying around 20,000 bricks in a new community.

[ Monumental ]

Meet the world’s most “truss’t-worthy” robot.

[ Modlab University of Pennsylvania ]

Stanford BDML and Honeybee Robotics propose a payload to test gecko-inspired adhesives in spaaace!

[ NASA ]

How can a legged robot organize its own walking while maintaining a desired direction? In this work, we present a Differential Adaptive Steering (DAST) mechanism for directional adaptation in legged robots under decentralized adaptive control.

[ BRAIN VISTEC ]

I do not care even a little bit if a robot fails (safely, of course), as long as it recovers from that failure.

[ Sanctuary AI ]

Even for a robot that doesn’t drink champagne, those are some pretty light pours.

[ Kawasaki Robotics ]

If we as a society would just accept that the appropriate place to store clothing is in a pile on the floor, robots would have a much easier time of it.

[ LimX Dynamics ]

To be fair, this is also the speed at which I fold shirts.

[ Sharpa ]

Our DR02 humanoid robot takes on the stairs with stable, controlled movement—steady steps, steady progress.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

Two words: structural minifridge. Or is it mini fridge...? Whatever, THREE words.

[ AgileX ]

Northrop Grumman has launched a sophisticated robotic spacecraft designed to service satellites in orbit, potentially allowing expensive space assets to be repaired, upgraded, moved and kept operational long after their original fuel supplies have been depleted. The company’s Mission Robotic Vehicle, or MRV, launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 […]