bots

CGTN coverage of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, in which humanoid robots perform synchronized martial arts routines alongside children.

Benn Jordan examines the role of bots and propaganda accounts on X and other social platforms, including the platform's decline and the influence of Russian operations. It covers more than bots, discussing bias and how the platform changed.

Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.

Slaughterbots is a short sci-fi film in which swarms of cheap autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets by profile. It was made as arms-control advocacy against autonomous weapons.

Tom Scott tours Ocado's automated grocery warehouse, where thousands of robots move boxes on a grid called the Hive, and asks whether they are individual robots or a hive mind.

A short Insider Tech look at Ocado's grocery warehouse where thousands of robots on a grid pack orders, communicating over 4G to avoid collisions. It handles around 65,000 orders a week.

An IEEE Spectrum compilation of humanoid robots falling over during the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals.

Slaughterbots, a short dystopian film in which swarms of small autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets matching a profile. It opens as a slick product launch before turning into a terror scenario.

An 8-minute fictional short film, made by campaigners for a ban on autonomous weapons, depicting swarms of cheap AI-guided micro-drones used to kill targeted people. It ends with a call to action against autonomous weapons.

Robin Deits presents the JuliaRobotics organization and shows how Julia is used to visualize, simulate and control a humanoid robot. The talk touches on real-time performance and composability across packages.

Toyota Research Institute presents an approach for teaching robots new dexterous behaviors from human demonstration. It explains why this capability matters and what advances made it possible.

A dramatized fictional video of micro drones with facial recognition and swarm AI used as autonomous killer weapons. It is a Slaughterbots-style warning about lethal autonomous weapons.

A Seeker short documentary on a lab where robots run experiments with almost no human intervention, covering automation and active machine learning in drug discovery and synthetic biology.

Lex Fridman talks with Tufts biologist Michael Levin about bioelectricity, embryogenesis, xenobots and how cells collectively pursue goals. They range into cognition, evolution and the possibility of aliens.

Short clip of Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot falling down stairs during a live demonstration.

Musician Benn Jordan explains how all of his music was removed from Spotify and walks through the history of digital music distribution and fake streams. He argues that Spotify's anti-bot measures are mostly a phony war.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Sand Flea, an 11-pound RC-car-style robot that can jump about 30 feet into the air. An onboard stabilization system keeps it oriented in flight and for landings.

Boston Dynamics' New Year video shows its Atlas, Spot and Handle robots dancing to 'Do You Love Me?'. It showcases the company's progress in legged dynamic balance.

An overview of the Quiet Logistics warehouse using Kiva Systems robots, narrated by company executives. The robots bring storage racks to human pickers at stations.

Boston Dynamics' March 2008 video of BigDog, a four-legged robot, walking on ice and snow, climbing rubble and recovering from slips and kicks.

Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robots running a parkour course with jumps, balance beams and vaults, demonstrating whole-body athletic control.

A short 2009 WIRED clip showing Kiva Systems robots moving inventory shelves in a warehouse serving online retailer Zappos. It shows how mobile robots bring goods to pickers instead of people walking the aisles.

A short Unitree promo for its G1 humanoid robot, priced from $16K, showing agile motion, dexterous hands and imitation and reinforcement learning.

A short Boston Dynamics demo of RHex, a 30-lb six-legged robot built for rough terrain, remotely operated with a video uplink and about four hours of battery life. It can run right-side-up or upside-down.

A one-minute Tesla clip showing multiple Tesla-built Optimus bots walking and learning about the real world.

Tesla's short promotional video of Optimus Gen 2, its humanoid robot, with new actuators and sensors, faster hands, faster walking and lower weight.

A one-minute clip from the film Elysium in which Matt Damon's character is stuck with an automated AI parole officer and gets asked whether he would like to talk to a human.

A Berkeley PR2 robot autonomously folds a pile of five previously unseen towels, shown at 50x speed. The video accompanies a 2010 ICRA paper from Pieter Abbeel's group.

Ben Katz's custom robot solves a Rubik's Cube in 0.38 seconds. The description links to the hardware and software write-ups.

A KUKA commercial staging a table tennis match between German star Timo Boll and a KUKA KR AGILUS industrial robot. It is a polished showcase of robot speed and precision.

Boston Dynamics shows WildCat, a four-legged robot built with DARPA funding that reached about 19 mph using bounding and galloping gaits.

Veritasium visits the Micromouse competition, where small autonomous robots race to solve mazes at extreme speed. It covers the competition's technical history, including fans and ground effect enabling very high-g turns.

Festo's promo video of SmartBird, an ultralight bionic flying model inspired by the herring gull that flaps and twists its wings to fly. It shows the robot in flight.

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.

Stuff Made Here builds a handwriting robot and sends its output to a handwriting expert to see whether it can pass as forgery. It walks through the engineering trials and errors along the way.

Part 1 of Smarter Every Day's three-part series on manipulating the YouTube algorithm. It features Renee DiResta and examples of how social media platforms can be manipulated.

Tesla's full AI Day 2022 presentation, covering the Tesla Bot hardware and software, Full Self-Driving planning and perception, the occupancy network, data labeling, simulation and Dojo training infrastructure.

A short Apple promotional video about Liam, a robot that disassembles old iPhones so their materials can be recovered. It frames the robot as part of Apple's product life cycle and recycling story.

A short Tesla clip showing the Optimus humanoid robot sorting objects autonomously and doing yoga-style stretches. Tesla says its neural network is trained end to end, from video in to controls out.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Atlas humanoid robot doing parkour, jumping over a log and leaping up steps using whole-body control and computer vision to locate markers.