Video Friday: Watch This Running Robot Not Fall Down Stairs

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.

RSS 2026: 13–17 July 2026, SYDNEY

Summer School on Multi-Robot Systems: 29 July–4 August 2026, PRAGUE

Actuate 2026: 18–19 August 2026, SAN FRANCISCO

Enjoy today’s videos!

It’s been a while since a humanoid robot video actually impressed me, but the beginning of this does.

Hard to know how much of that recovery was luck, though.

[ Deep Robotics ]

When you’re very confident in your MPC-based balance controller...

I feel you, buddy. And thanks for posting this. We’ve all been there, in one way or another.

[ DARoS Lab ]

GENE01 designed from scratch and sent to batch production. Two scalable lower bodies. Physical AI deployed for motor control and world-action modeling. All in three months. Generative Bionics is running.

[ Generative Bionics ]

Alex, the newest humanoid robot built entirely by ‪IHMCRobotics‬, takes its first steps outdoors! This was a significant milestone for our team, especially because Alex is the first humanoid robot developed entirely by IHMC Robotics to venture outside the lab. These outdoor trials were conducted in preparation for a demonstration in Maryland, where Alex later successfully walked completely untethered.

[ IHMC ]

Built on the Enlight platform, Flexiv Mico is a compact dual-arm system engineered for safe, seamless collaboration in any workspace.

[ Flexiv Robotics ]

Is it weird that I’m jealous that robots can have feet that are swappable?

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Midweek at ICRA 2026. Cable-climbing robots that work as a squad: CCRobot-S is a team of robots with reconfigurable cable-driven manipulation that collaboratively inspect and maintain long-span bridge stay cables. Parallel operation for speed, morphological reconfiguration for reach.

[ IEEE Transactions on Robotics ]

I would love to know the story behind this odd choice of hat.

[ Robotis ]

How did Atlas learn football—and why? Go behind the scenes of School of Football and discover a glimpse of the Next of robotics.

What I really want to know is, what kinds of things is it possible to do in football (soccer) when your robot’s joints are not constrained by biology?

[ Boston Dynamics ]