2026-02-01 22:00:01
As a kid in the 1970s, I watched the Apollo moon missions on TV, drawn like a curious moth to the cathode-ray tube’s glow. The English band Pink Floyd blared through the speakers of my mom’s Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, beckoning us to the dark side of the moon.
The far side of the moon, the term most scientists prefer, is indeed dark (half the time), cold, and inhospitable. There’s regolith and a couple of Chinese landers—Chang’e 4 in January 2019 and Chang’e 6 in June 2024—and not much else. That could change in about a year, as Contributing Editor Ned Potter reports in “The Quest to Build a Telescope That Can Hear the Cosmic Dark Ages.” Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 2 with the LuSEE-Night radio telescope aboard will attempt to become the third successful mission to land there.
The moon’s far side is the perfect place for such a telescope. The same RF waves that carried images of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface, Roger Waters’s voice, and hundreds of Ned Potter’s space and science segments for the U.S. broadcast networks CBS and ABC interfere with terrestrial radio telescopes. If your goal is to detect the extremely faint and heavily redshifted signals of neutral hydrogen from the cosmic Dark Ages, you just can’t do it from Earth. This epoch is so-called because we Earthlings have yet to sense anything from this time period, which started about 380,000 years after the big bang and lasted 200 million to 400 million years. The far side of the moon may be a terrible place to live, but it’s shielded from all the noise of Earth, making it the ideal spot to place a radio telescope.
As Potter emphasized to me recently, LuSEE-Night won’t listen for a signal from Dark Ages hydrogen directly. “Will the hydrogen from the Dark Ages send a signal? No,” says Potter. “But all that hydrogen out there may absorb a little bit of energy from the cosmic microwave background, interfering with that even more distant remnant of the big bang.”
The far side may not stay quiet for much longer. Several countries, including China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, are making slow but steady progress toward establishing a lunar presence. As they do so, they’ll place more relay satellites into orbit around the moon to support exploratory activities as well as moon bases planned for the next decade and beyond. That means the window on a noise-free far side is closing. LuSEE-Night, a project 40 years in the making, might just get there in the nick of time.
Potter is tracking emerging protocols that could preserve the far side’s electromagnetic silence even as such efforts advance. Radio astronomers he’s talked to have shared ideas about how to prevent this emerging problem from turning into a crisis. “There are no bad guys in this story, at least not yet,” says Potter. “But there are a lot of well-meaning people who could complicate the picture a great deal if they don’t know that there’s a picture to complicate.”
It’s a busy time for moon missions. In addition to Blue Ghost Mission 2, the Chinese are sending Chang’e 7 to the moon’s south pole, while NASA’s Artemis II is scheduled to enter the first of three launch windows this month. Artemis II will be the first mission to put humans into lunar orbit since the last Apollo mission in 1972. And IEEE Spectrum readers will enjoy a front row seat, thanks to the enterprising reporting of a true legend in the business, our own Ned Potter.
This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “See You on the Far Side of the Moon.”
2026-01-31 23:00:02
Assistive technology is expensive, and many people with disabilities live on fixed incomes. Disabled assistive tech users also must contend with equipment that was often designed without any capacity to be repaired or modified. But assistive tech users ultimately need the functionality they need—a wheelchair that isn’t constantly needing to be charged, perhaps, or a hearing aid that doesn’t amplify all background noise equally. Assistive tech “makers,“ who can hack and modify existing assistive tech, have always been in high demand.
Therese Willkomm, emeritus professor of occupational therapy at the University of New Hampshire, has written three books cataloging her more than 2,000 assistive technology hacks. Wilkomm says she aims to keep her assistive tech hacks costing less than five dollars.
She’s come to be known internationally as the “MacGyver of Assistive Technology” and has presented more than 600 workshops and assistive tech maker days across 42 states and 14 countries.
IEEE Spectrum sat down with Willkomm ahead of her latest assistive tech Maker Day workshop, on Saturday, 31 Jan., at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) conference in Orlando. Over the course of the conversation, she discussed the evolution of assistive technology over 40 years, the urgent need for affordable communication devices, and why the DIY movement matters now more than ever.
IEEE Spectrum: What got you started in assistive technology?
Therese Wilkomm: I grew up in Wisconsin where my father had a machine shop and worked on dairy and hog farms. At age ten, I started building and making things. A cousin was in a farm accident and needed modifications to his tractor, which introduced me to welding. In college, I enrolled in vocational rehabilitation and learned about rehab engineering—assistive technology wasn’t coined until 1988 with the Technology-Related Assistance Act. In 1979, Gregg Vanderheiden came to the University of Wisconsin-Stout and demonstrated creative things with garage door openers and communication devices. I thought, wow, this would be an awesome career path—designing and fabricating devices and worksite adaptations for people with disabilities to go back to work and live independently. I haven’t looked back.
You’ve created over 2,000 assistive technology solutions. What’s your most memorable one?
Wilkomm: A device for castrating pigs with one hand. We figured out a way to design a device that fit on the end of the hog crate that was foot-operated to hold the hind legs of the pig back so the procedure could be done with one hand.
How has assistive technology evolved over the decades?
Wilkomm: In the 1980s, we fabricated devices from wood and early electronics. I became a [Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, a.k.a. RESNA] member in 1985. The 1988 Technology-Related Assistance Act was transformational—all fifty states finally got funding to support assistive technology and needs in rural areas. Back in the ‘80s, we were soldering and making battery interrupters and momentary switches for toys, radios, and music. Gregg was doing some things with communication. There were Prentke Romich communication devices. Those were some of the first electronic assistive technologies.
The early 1990s was all about mobile rehab engineering. Senator Bob Dole gave me a $50,000 grant to fund my first mobile unit. That mobile unit had all my welding equipment, all my fabrication equipment, and I could drive farm to farm, set up outside right in front of the tractor, and fabricate whatever needed to be fabricated. Then around 1997, there were cuts in the school systems. Mobile units became really expensive to operate. We started to look at more efficient ways of providing assistive technology services. With the Tech Act, we had demonstration sites where people would come and try out different devices. But people had to get in a car, drive to a center, get out, find parking, come into the building—a lot of time was being lost.
In the 2000s, more challenges with decreased funding. I discovered that with a Honda Accord and those crates you get from Staples, you could have your whole mobile unit in the trunk of your car because of advances in materials. We could make battery interrupters and momentary switches without ever having to solder. We can make switches in 28 seconds, battery interrupters in 18 seconds. When COVID happened, we had to pivot—do more virtual, ship stuff out to people. We were able to serve more individuals during COVID than prior to COVID because nobody had to travel.
How do you keep costs under five dollars?
Wilkomm: I aim for five dollars or less. I get tons of corrugated plastic donated for free, so we spend no money on that. Then there’s Scapa Tape—a very aggressive double-sided foam tape that costs five cents a foot. If you fabricate something, and it doesn’t work out, and you have to reposition, you’re out a nickel’s worth of material. Buying Velcro in bulk helps too. Then Instamorph—it is non-toxic, biodegradable. You can reheat it, reform it, in five minutes or less up to six times. I’ve created about 132 different devices just using Instamorph. A lot of things I make out of Instamorph don’t necessarily work. I have a bucket and I reuse that Instamorph. We can get six, seven devices out of reusable Instamorph. That’s how we keep it under five dollars.
What key legislation impacts assistive technology?
Wilkomm: Definitely the Technology-Related Assistance Act. In the school system, however, it only says “did you consider assistive technology?” So that legislation really needs to be beefed up. The third piece of legislation I worked on was the AgrAbility legislation to fund assistive technology consultations and technical assistance for farmers and ranchers. The latest Technology-Related Assistance Act was reauthorized in 2022. Not a whole lot of changes—it’s still assistive technology device demonstrations and loans, device reuse, training, technical assistance, information and awareness. The other thing is NIDILRR—National Institute on Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, funded under [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a.k.a. HHS]. Funding the rehab engineering centers was pretty significant in advancing the field because these were huge, multimillion-dollar centers dedicated to core areas like communication and employment. Now there’s a new one out on artificial intelligence.
Over more than 2,000 hacks to improve usability of assistive technologies, veteran DIY maker Therese Wilkomm has earned the moniker “the MacGyver of assistive tech.” Therese Willkomm
What deserves more focus in your field?
Wilkomm: The supply-and-demand problem. It all comes down to time and money. We have an elderly population that continues to grow, and a disability population that continues to grow—high demand, high need for assistive technology, yet the resources available to meet that need are limited. A few years back, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation had a competition. I submitted a proposal similar to the Blue Apron approach. People don’t have supplies at their house. They can’t buy two inches of tape—they have to buy a whole roll. They can’t buy one foot of corrugated plastic—they’ve got to buy an 18-by-24 sheet or wait till it gets donated.
With my third book, I created solutions with QR codes showing videos on how to make them. I used Christopher Reeve Foundation funding to purchase supplies. With Blue Apron, somebody wants to make dinner and a box arrives with a chicken breast, potato, vegetables, and recipe. I thought, what if we could apply that to assistive technology? Somebody needs something, there’s a solution out there, but they don’t have the money or the time—how can we quickly put it in a box and send it to them? People who attended my workshops didn’t have to spend money on materials or waste time at the store. They’d watch the video and assemble it.
But then there were people who said, “I do not have even five minutes in the school day to stop what I’m doing to make something.” So we found volunteers who said, “Hey, I can make slant boards. I can make switches. I can adapt toys.” You have people who want to build stuff and people who need stuff. If you can deal with the time and money issue, anything’s possible to serve more people and provide more devices.
What’s your biggest vision for the future?
Wilkomm: I’m very passionate about communication. December 15th was the passage in 1791 of our First Amendment, freedom of speech. Yet people with communication impairments are denied their basic right of freedom of speech because they don’t have an affordable communication device, or it takes too long to program or learn. I just wish we could get better at designing and fabricating affordable communication devices, so everybody is awarded their First Amendment right. It shouldn’t be something that’s nice to have—it’s something that’s needed to have. When you lose your leg, you’re fitted with a prosthetic device, and insurance covers that. Insurance should also cover communication devices and all the support services needed. With voice recognition and computer-generated voices, there are tremendous opportunities in assistive technology for communication impairments that need to be addressed.
What should IEEE Spectrum readers take away from this conversation?
Wilkomm: There’s tremendous need for this skill set—working in conjunction with AI and material sciences and the field of assistive technology and rehab engineering. I’d like people to look at opportunities to volunteer their time and also to pursue careers in the field of specialized rehab engineering.
How are DIY approaches evolving with new technologies?
Wilkomm: What we’re seeing at maker fairs is more people doing 3D printing, switch-access controls, and these five-minute approaches. There has to be a healthy balance between what we can do with or without electronics. If we need something programmed with electronics, absolutely—but is there a faster way?
The other thing that’s interesting is skill development. You used to have to go to college for four, six, eight years. With YouTube, you can learn so much on the internet. You can develop skills in things you never thought were possible without a four-year degree. There’s basic electronic stuff you can absolutely learn without taking a course. I think we’re going to have more people out there doing hacks, asking “What if I change it this way?” We don’t need to have a switch.
We need to look at the person’s body and how that body interacts with the electronic device interface so it requires minimal effort—whether it be eye control or motion control. Having devices that predict what you’re going to want next, that are constantly listening, knowing the way you talk. I love the fact that AI looks at all my emails and creates this whole thing like “here’s how I’d respond.” I’m like, yeah, that’s exactly it. I just hit select and I don’t have to type it all out. It speeds up communication. We’re living in exciting times right now.
2026-01-31 22:00:02
There’s an interesting development in amateur ballooning: using so-called superpressure balloons, which float high in the atmosphere indefinitely rather than simply going up and up and then popping like a normal weather balloon. Superpressure balloons can last for months and travel long distances, potentially circumnavigating the globe, all the while reporting their position.
You might imagine that an undertaking like this would be immensely difficult and cost thousands of dollars. In fact, you can build and launch such a balloon for about the cost of a fancy dinner out. You just have to think small! That’s why amateur balloonists call them pico balloons.
The payload of a pico balloon is so light (between 12 to 30 grams) that you can use a large Mylar party balloon filled with helium to lift it. They’re also inexpensive; that’s important because you won’t get your payload back. And because such diminutive payloads don’t pose a danger to aircraft, they aren’t subject to the many rules and restrictions on free-floating balloons that carry more mass.
The essential advances that made pico ballooning possible were figuring out how to track a balloon no matter where in the world it might be and how to power such tiny payloads. A lot of folks worked on these challenges and came up with good solutions that aren’t hard or expensive to reproduce.
Amazingly, the global tracking of the balloon’s telemetry is done without satellites. Instead, pico balloonists take advantage of an amateur-radio network called WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter), a protocol developed by a rather famous ham-radio enthusiast—Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., one of the two scientists awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering binary pulsars.
A Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller [top left] is soldered directly to a daughterboard consisting of a high-frequency transmitter and a GPS module [bottom left], which are all powered by solar panels [right].James Provost
WSPR was designed to monitor signal-propagation conditions for different radio bands—useful information if you’re a ham trying to make distant contacts. WSPR can also record low-power balloon-telemetry signals. WSPR is very low bandwidth—less than 10 bits per minute—but it does the job. A worldwide network of radio amateurs receives these WSPR signals and reports them publicly over the internet, which gives picoballoonists a way to track their flights. You need at least a general-class ham-radio license to launch a pico balloon, as one is required to transmit on the bands used for long-distance telemetry.
The pico balloon payload I chose to build is based on the aptly named US $4 Raspberry Pi Pico board, with a solder-on daughterboard that contains a GPS receiver and transmitter. The folks who developed this daughterboard and associated software (to create what they call the Jetpack WSPR Tracker) have done a fantastic job of making their work easy to reproduce.
You could, in principle, power the Jetpack tracker with batteries, but in practice it would be impossible to keep them warm in the stratosphere, where average temperatures can be as low as –51 °C. Instead, the tracker runs off two lightweight solar modules. At night, it gracefully powers down. When the sun rises high enough in the morning, the tracker powers up and starts transmitting again.
My first pico balloon made it only halfway across the Atlantic before going silent.
I had five Jetpack boards custom-manufactured in China for just $39. The cost nearly doubled after adding shipping and tariff charges. Still that’s really cheap, even when you add the cost of the Raspberry Pi ($4), the party balloon ($10 for two), the helium ($10 at my local supermarket), and the two solar modules ($7 each).
The biggest sticking point I had with the Jetpack design was the liberties it takes with spurious emissions from its transmitter. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations call for spurious emissions to be at least 43 decibels below the power of the transmitted signal. But my transmitter had strong unwanted emissions at odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency. (That’s because the transmitter is a Si5351A temperature-controlled oscillator, which outputs a square wave, not a sinusoid.) Taking measurements, I could see that the third harmonic at 42 megahertz was only 25 dB quieter than the 14-MHz fundamental of my WSPR signal’s frequency.
As of press time, the WSPR network had tracked my balloon from the Eastern United States to the Mediterranean coast. James Provost
In practical terms, this shouldn’t create any noticeable interference, given that this transmitter puts out milliwatts at most and floats miles away from the nearest receiver. Still, I wanted to be fully compliant with FCC regulations, so I added traps to the antenna—simple circuit elements that hams use to allow a single antenna to work on multiple bands by altering how the antenna resonates at different frequencies. Each trap was made of a small inductor (four 5-millimeter-diameter loops of No. 32 magnet wire) in parallel with a 220-picofarad capacitor. I tuned them with the help of a NanoVNA signal analyzer by stretching the loops apart slightly. I attached the traps directly to the tracker board, so that they quashed the spurious 42-MHz emissions at the source. That worked well and added only 0.3 grams of weight.
With my payload complete, I partially filled my balloon with helium. You want the balloon to hold just a little more gas than it takes to lift the payload off the ground. This will give the helium room to expand as the balloon climbs to its final altitude.
My first pico balloon, launched from a park near my home in North Carolina, made it only halfway across the Atlantic before going silent. My second went up and was never heard from again. The third was indeed the charm. It crossed the Iberian Peninsula and at the time of this writing is somewhere over the Mediterranean at an altitude of nearly 12 kilometers. With any luck, it might go on to orbit the planet.
I’m a little puzzled about the balloons’ telemetry messages received on the WSPR network, as they have been few and far between. My best guess is that power from the horizontal solar panels I’m using is marginal, with the winter sun being so low in the sky. That’s something I should have thought about before launching the first balloon just 24 hours after the winter solstice!
This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “Long-Duration Amateur Ballooning.”
2026-01-31 03:02:06
As fairies for the Irish or leeks for Welsh,
it’s the secret lives of small hidden machines,
their junctures, and networks that inspire me:
Mystic hidden functionaries that make
our made world live, brave little servo motors,
whose couplers, whose eccentric fire-filled
sensors are encased in bakelite with brass
screws, who stare with red eyes, who gauge moisture,
who notice tiny motions and respond,
whose cooling fans call out in white-noise
registers like older folk singers–I can
almost hear their earlier songs, their strong voices
now yelps, their thumps, their throbs, their hum, their chant–,
they click, they whir, they are sent spinning
inside like teen girls giggling over boy bands.
Most of all: ones waiting silently, concealing
the surprise of their purpose, tasks not yet known,
their true natures found only in connections.
Those that listen, those that speak,
those that control cool and heat,
those that open doors, those that lock
all the things that we’ve forgot,
those that hide, those that disclose
those embedded in our clothes
those in our ears, those in our hearts
those that bring together, those a part
of divisions, those like birds,
like parrots that complete our words,
those like fish, those that entrap,
those that free, those that freely flap
in fierce winds, those that replace
what we have lost, those that see
at night, in fog, in brightness, in fear,
those that show what we hold dear,
those that tempt, those that repel,
those that buy and those that sell,
those that keep us alive, those that
don’t, won’t, couldn’t and cannot.
Parts of one mind, not mine, blunt orchestra
of information, bundles of feelers
reaching out to touch us, teach us, guide us
to form better futures better understood.
May your sounds, your chimes, your silence calm us.
May your tender tendrils touch what we seek.
Small parts becoming one being intertwined,
a world in itself, remind us to be kind.
2026-01-31 03:00:02
This article is part of our exclusive career advice series in partnership with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society.
In your career, you are likely to face many choices and job opportunities. One I faced was whether to participate in a development project involving teams from around the world. It presented a great opportunity for personal and professional enrichment.
Throughout my 40-year career with Honeywell, I have held leadership roles for such projects in Australia, China, Finland, and India.
You might be offered similar assignments. Here are some benefits of taking on international projects.
As a rule, international projects are large in scope and involve many critical components, making them ideal for your professional growth. Such projects are likely to be identified by your organization as essential to the business and, as such, present opportunities for individual achievement and recognition.
They also can give you the opportunity to work with many technical aspects—which would allow you to see beyond the scope of smaller-scale projects.
Likewise, you can gain an understanding of different global markets and how to meet diverse customer needs.
It can significantly expand your company’s market reach to enter new geographic areas. It also can lead to a better understanding of local preferences, regulations, and technical standards, making the products more appealing to customers in other countries.
When embarking on a global, multisite assignment, seek help to define your role. The project could require you to take on several different positions such as project manager, program manager, scrum leader, architect, requirements analyst, designer, and user experience lead. Which role would be best suited for you? You should decide based on your skills, long-term career growth, and the project’s needs.
Regardless of which role you have, it is important to have an understanding of the team’s other members, including their skills and competencies and how best to interact with them.
A key decision early on is whether you’ll have to colocate at one location and, if so, for how long. There are different types of colocation, including frequent travel between offices, a temporary relocation known as a “bubble assignment,” and an expatriate assignment that involves relocating to another country for a period of time.
Travel between offices makes sense when there are more than two locations involved in the project and your role requires your presence at each. Although weekly communication can be done via virtual meetings, there is no substitute for occasional face-to-face interaction.
Participation in global product development empowers engineers to drive innovation, achieve career growth, and make a meaningful impact in the global marketplace and on society itself.
Bubble assignments require longer on-site presence but without the rigor and complexity of an expat assignment. Generally, bubble assignments last three to six months.
Expat assignments are suitable when the project scope requires a multiyear engagement. They involve relocating to that country for the duration of the project. You and your employer should be clear about taxes, salary, benefits, housing, and other implications.
Your compensation is a significant consideration. It’s not just about how much money you earn. Consider maintaining your salary in your home country’s currency. The benefits include maintaining your bank and automatic payroll deposits, avoiding currency fluctuation and potentially adverse inflation.
Depending on the length of your stay, you might have to pay income tax in several countries. Make sure you understand the tax implications before embarking on any long assignments.
In addition, find out about your health insurance coverage when living abroad.
Many critical aspects define a successful global assignment, including communication across time zones, managing cultural barriers and expectations, ensuring each site has employees with the expertise and skills needed, and setting clear project goals and time frames.
Most importantly, establish and maintain trust. Every member on the global team must have everyone’s best interests, including the company’s, in mind.
Trust is not easily gained, but it can be easily—and quickly—lost. To establish trust, the project leadership must be transparent, communicate frequently, set clear goals and boundaries, and define roles that match the participants’ skills, capabilities, and long-term interests.
It’s also critical that you and your team fulfill your promises on time.
Large, complex, multilocation projects present other significant challenges that must be understood and managed.
Think about your company’s organizational structure and boundaries. Is there a consistent reporting structure with shared goals and expectations? Or are there potentially competing interests at the executive level?
If the latter, think about how you will navigate those boundaries. And find a way to align the organization in a way that benefits all participants and teams.
A method Honeywell has used to navigate such challenges is to create a “hub and spoke” approach to the critical disciplines of program management, architecture, and design. The approach includes offering management, verification, validation, and quality assurance with the intent that each participating site has representation in all four cornerstone areas.
Consider your computer systems. Is your company set up to allow for IT collaboration across sites and geographic boundaries? Having the right multisite computing privileges to ensure frictionless virtual teamwork is vital.
Are there legal issues such as export restrictions or government regulations? Are there intellectual property constraints when working with other countries? Also consider other impediments such as tariffs and customs duties; where the parts of your product are manufactured; product and component licensing; and use of open-source technology.
Addressing those issues starts with training the workforce in different countries about company-approved methods and restrictions, as well as having multisite tools that allow for intercountry collaboration.
In addition to contributing to your professional growth, actively engaging in a global development project can be personally enriching. Working with people in different countries, with distinct cultures and languages, can broaden your understanding of the world and can create lasting friendships.
That can extend to your family by hosting international colleagues in your home country and by affording your family the ability to travel with you. Children and adults can benefit from engaging with diverse people from around the world.
Taking an active part in global development offers numerous advantages for an individual. You can broaden your horizons, gain exposure to diverse markets, and develop a deeper understanding of global consumer needs. The experience can enhance your problem-solving skills and encourage innovative thinking.
Engineers who navigate the challenges of global product development become more adept at overcoming communication barriers, managing logistical complexities, and adapting to varying consumer preferences.
Ultimately, active participation in global product development empowers engineers to drive innovation, achieve career growth, and make a meaningful impact in the global marketplace and on society itself.
2026-01-31 02:30:02
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.
Enjoy this week’s videos!
Westwood Robotics is proud to announce a major update: THEMIS Gen2.5, the world’s first commercial full-size humanoid robot capable of manipulation on the move!
Now that you mention it, the bit at the end where the robot picks up a can while walking? I haven’t seen a lot of that.
Last year, Helix showed that a single neural network could control a humanoid’s upper body from pixels. Today, Helix 02 extends that control to the entire robot—walking, manipulating, and balancing as one continuous system.
Why yes, I am a normal human and this is very similar to the default state of my kitchen.
[ Figure ]
Harry Goldstein, our Editor in Chief, went to meet Sprout from Fauna Robotics. He was skeptical at first, but Sprout won him over with its robotic charm.
[ Fauna Robotics ]
Kimberly Elenberg is showing how the data collected by robotic responders can save lives in mass casualty events.
[ Carnegie Mellon University ]
The educational robotics market is tough, but you’ve got to hand it to Sphero—going strong since 2011, which is pretty incredible.
[ Sphero ]
If you want to fly in crazy conditions, you have to flight test in those conditions. Here’s how and why we do it!
[ Zipline ]
I want to be impressed more by the idea of 3D printing skin and skeleton at the same time, but come on, animals have been doing that for literally hundreds of years without even trying.
[ JSK Lab, University of tokyo ]
If there is a market for small bipedal robots that can both ski and be dinosaurs, LimX has it covered.
[ LimX ]
How do you remotely control robots that change shape? We introduce a method for user-guided control of modular robots using reconfigurable joint-space joysticks (JoJo) and real-time optimization. We demonstrate this system on two different robots, Mori3 and Roombots. The video shows examples of these robots performing object manipulation, locomotion, human-assistance, and reconfiguration, controlled by our system.
[ EPFL Reconfigurable Robotics Lab ] via [ Nature Communications ]
Quadrotor Biplane Tailsitter (QBiT) UAVs at four different sizes (4, 12, 25, and 50 lbs) developed at Texas A&M University. QBiT combines the mechanical simplicity of a quadrotor drone with the cruise efficiency of a fixed-wing aircraft.
There’s a new DARPA challenge for “novel drone designs that can carry payloads more than four times their weight, which would revolutionize the way we use drones across all sectors.”
[ DARPA ]
Here are a couple of plenary and keynote talks from IROS 2025, from Marco Hutter and Karinne Ramirez Amaro.
[ IROS 2025 ]