www.listsofthings.com

Robot Talk Episode 126 – Why are we building humanoid robots?

Research into humanoid robots is a rapidly advancing field, with companies around the world striving to produce robots that look and act more like us. But what is it about recreating ourselves in robot form that we find so captivating? Why do humanoid robots both enthral and terrify us? And is our obsession with robotic humans just vanity, or could they play valuable roles in our future society?In this special live recording at Imperial College London as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festiva

Gearing up for RoboCupJunior: Interview with Ana Patrícia Magalhães

Action from RoboCupJunior Rescue at RoboCup 2024. Photo: RoboCup/Bart van Overbeeke.The annual RoboCup event, where teams gather from across the globe to take part in competitions across a number of leagues, will this year take place in Brazil, from 15-21 July. An important part of the week is RoboCupJunior, which is designed to introduce RoboCup to school children, and sees hundreds of kids taking part in a variety of challenges across different leagues. This year, the lead organizer for RoboCu

Robot Talk Episode 125 – Chatting with robots, with Gabriel Skantze

Claire chatted to Gabriel Skantze from KTH Royal Institute of Technology about having natural face-to-face conversations with robots.Gabriel Skantze is a Professor of Speech Communication and Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He specializes in conversational systems and leads several research projects on conversational AI and human-robot interaction. His work focuses on computational models of spoken interaction, integrating both verbal and non-verbal aspects such as prosody, turn

Preparing for kick-off at RoboCup2025: an interview with General Chair Marco Simões

The Salvador Convention Center, where RoboCup 2025 will take place.RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal of advancing the state of the art of intelligent robots, AI and automation. The annual RoboCup event, where teams gather from across the globe to take part in competitions across a number of leagues, will this year take place in Brazil, from 15-21 July. We spoke to Marco Simões, one of the General Chairs of RoboCup 2025 and President of RoboCup Brazil, to find out wh

Interview with Amar Halilovic: Explainable AI for robotics

In this interview series, we’re meeting some of the AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants to find out more about their research. The Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for a group of PhD students to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives in an interdisciplinary workshop together with a panel of established researchers. In this latest interview, we hear from Amar Halilovic, a PhD student at Ulm University.Tell us a bit about your PhD – where are yo

Robot Talk Episode 124 – Robots in the performing arts, with Amy LaViers

Claire chatted to Amy LaViers from the Robotics, Automation, and Dance Lab about the creative relationship between humans and machines.Amy LaViers works at the intersection of robotics and dance. Her writing, choreography, and machine designs have been presented internationally at performing arts and engineering venues, including Merce Cunningham’s studios, the Performance Arcade, and universities like Berkeley and Brown. She is the founder of three startup companies, including AE Machines, whic

Robot Talk Episode 123 – Standardising robot programming, with Nick Thompson

Claire chatted to Nick Thompson from BOW about software that makes robots easier to program.Nick Thompson is CEO of BOW and exited founder of One Beyond Ltd, an international software development firm. His career started in 1997 as a software engineer, founded One Beyond in the early 2000’s and after 20 years in the business sold to a private equity firm. In 2022 he was recognised as one of the UK’s ‘Most Ambitious Business Leaders’ by LDC Private Equity Group.

Congratulations to the #AAMAS2025 best paper, best demo, and distinguished dissertation award winners

The AAMAS 2025 best paper and demo awards were presented at the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, which took place from 19-23 May 2025 in Detroit. The Distinguished Dissertation Award was also recently announced. The winners in the various categories are as follows:Best Paper AwardWinnerSoft Condorcet Optimization for Ranking of General Agents, Marc Lanctot, Kate Larson, Michael Kaisers, Quentin Berthet, Ian Gemp, Manfred Diaz, Roberto-Rafael Maura-Rivero

Congratulations to the #ICRA2025 best paper award winners

The 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)best paper winners and finalists in the various different categories have been announced. The recipients were revealed during an award ceremony at the conference, which took place from 19-23 May in Atlanta, USA. IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award on Robot LearningWinner*Robo-DM: Data Management for Large Robot Datasets, Kaiyuan Chen, Letian Fu, David Huang, Yanxiang Zhang, Yunliang Lawrence Chen, Huang Huang, Kush Hari, Ashwin Balak

#ICRA2025 social media round-up

The 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA) took place from 19–23 May, in Atlanta, USA. The event featured plenary and keynote sessions, tutorial and workshops, forums, and a community day. Find out what the participants got up during the conference. Check out what’s happening at the #ICRA2025 Welcome Reception! pic.twitter.com/w66IQDFsku— IEEE ICRA (@ieee_ras_icra) May 19, 2025The excitement is real — #ICRA2025 is already buzzing! pic.twitter.com/DtVgLwiaTB

Robot Talk Episode 122 – Bio-inspired flying robots, with Jane Pauline Ramos Ramirez

Claire chatted to Jane Pauline Ramos Ramirez from Delft University of Technology about drones that can move on land and in the air.Jane Pauline Ramos Ramirez is a licensed engineer with a multidisciplinary background in bionics, mechanical, and aerospace engineering, and international research experience. Her life’s work is rooted in designing inclusive, socially accessible systems that work in synergy with nature and create meaningful impact in communities. As part of this mission, she has been

Robot Talk Episode 121 – Adaptable robots for the home, with Lerrel Pinto

Claire chatted to Lerrel Pinto from New York University about using machine learning to train robots to adapt to new environments.Lerrel Pinto is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at New York University (NYU). His research is aimed at getting robots to generalize and adapt in the messy world we live in. His lab focuses broadly on robot learning and decision making, with an emphasis on large-scale learning (both data and models); representation learning for sensory data; developing algor

What’s coming up at #ICRA2025?

The 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) will take place from 19-23 May, in Atlanta, USA. The event will feature plenary talks, technical sessions, posters, workshops and tutorials, forums, and a science communication short course.Plenary speakersThere are three plenary sessions this year. The speakers are as follows:Allison Okamura (Stanford University) – Rewired: The Interplay of Robots and SocietyTessa Lau (Dusty Robotics) – So you want to build a r

Robot see, robot do: System learns after watching how-tos

Kushal Kedia (left) and Prithwish Dan (right) are members of the development team behind RHyME, a system that allows robots to learn tasks by watching a single how-to video.By Louis DiPietroCornell researchers have developed a new robotic framework powered by artificial intelligence – called RHyME (Retrieval for Hybrid Imitation under Mismatched Execution) – that allows robots to learn tasks by watching a single how-to video. RHyME could fast-track the development and deployment of robotic syste

AI-powered robots help tackle Europe’s growing e-waste problem

Photo credit: Muntaka Chasant, reproduced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. By Kaja ŠerugaJust outside the historic German town of Goslar, a sprawling industrial complex receives an endless stream of discarded electronics. On arrival, this electronic waste is laboriously prepared for recycling. Electrocycling GmbH is one of the largest e-waste recycling facilities in Europe. Every year, it processes up to 80 000 tonnes of electronic waste, which comes in all shapes and forms.Manual dismantlingDespit

Robot Talk Episode 120 – Evolving robots to explore other planets, with Emma Hart

Claire chatted to Emma Hart from Edinburgh Napier University about algorithms that ‘evolve’ better robot designs and control systems.Emma Hart is a computer scientist working in the field of evolutionary computation. Her work takes inspiration from the natural world, in particular biological evolution, and uses this to develop algorithms that ‘evolve’  both the design and control systems of a robot, customised  to a specific application. She was elected as a Fellow of the

Robot Talk Episode 119 – Robotics for small manufacturers, with Will Kinghorn

Claire chatted to Will Kinghorn from Made Smarter about how to increase adoption of new tech by small manufacturers.Will Kinghorn is an automation and robotics specialist for the Made Smarter Adoption Programme in the UK. With a background as a chartered manufacturing engineer in the aerospace industry, Will has extensive experience in developing and implementing automation and robotic solutions. He now works with smaller manufacturing companies, assessing their needs, identifying suitable techn

Multi-agent path finding in continuous environments

By Kristýna Janovská and Pavel SurynekImagine if all of our cars could drive themselves – autonomous driving is becoming possible, but to what extent? To get a vehicle somewhere by itself may not seem so tricky if the route is clear and well defined, but what if there are more cars, each trying to get to a different place? And what if we add pedestrians, animals and other unaccounted for elements? This problem has recently been increasingly studied, and already used in scenarios such as warehous

Interview with Yuki Mitsufuji: Improving AI image generation

Yuki Mitsufuji is a Lead Research Scientist at Sony AI. Yuki and his team presented two papers at the recent Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024). These works tackle different aspects of image generation and are entitled: GenWarp: Single Image to Novel Views with Semantic-Preserving Generative Warping and PaGoDA: Progressive Growing of a One-Step Generator from a Low-Resolution Diffusion Teacher . We caught up with Yuki to find out more about this research.There a

Robot Talk Episode 118 – Soft robotics and electronic skin, with Miranda Lowther

Claire chatted to Miranda Lowther from the University of Bristol about soft, sensitive electronic skin for prosthetic limbs.Miranda Lowther is a PhD researcher at the FARSCOPE-TU Centre for Doctoral Training, a joint venture between University of Bristol, University of West of England, and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, where she is pursuing her passion for using soft robotics and morphological computation to help people in healthcare. For her PhD, she is investigating how soft e-skins and morphol