GR-3 Care-bot: The Gentle Robot Companion Experience

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 2025: 23–24 September 2025, SAN FRANCISCO

CoRL 2025: 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL

IEEE Humanoids: 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL

World Robot Summit: 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN

IROS 2025: 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA

Enjoy today’s videos!

Fourier’s First Care-bot GR-3. This full-size “Care-bot” is designed for interactive companion. Its soft-touch outer shell and multimodal emotional interaction system bring the concept of “warm tech companionship” to life.

I like that it’s soft to the touch, although I’m not sure that encouraging touch is safe. Reminds me a little bit of Valkyrie, where NASA put a lot of thought into the soft aspects of the robot.

[ Fourier ]

TAKE MY MONEY

This 112 gram micro air vehicle (MAV) features foldable propeller arms that can lock into a compact rectangular profile comparable to the size of a smartphone. The vehicle can be launched by simply throwing it in the air, at which point the arms would unfold and autonomously stabilize to a hovering state. Multiple flight tests demonstrated the capability of the feedback controller to stabilize the MAV from different initial conditions including tumbling rates of up to 2500 deg/s.

[ AVFL ]

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in collaboration with NASA, is advancing space robotics by deploying reinforcement learning algorithms onto Astrobee, a free-flying robotic assistant on board the International space station. This video highlights how NRL researchers are leveraging artificial intelligence to enable robots to learn, adapt, and perform tasks autonomously. By integrating reinforcement learning, Astrobee can improve maneuverability and optimize energy use.

[ NRL ]

[ Ground Control Robotics ]

Trust is built. Every part of our robot Proxie—from wheels to eyes—is designed with trust in mind. Cobot CEO Brad Porter explains the intent behind its design.

[ Cobot ]

Phase 1: Build lots of small quadruped robots. Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Profit!

[ DEEP Robotics ]

LAPP USA partnered with Corvus Robotics to solve a long-standing supply chain challenge: labor-intensive, error-prone inventory counting.

[ Corvus ]

I’m pretty sure that 95 percent of all science consists of moving small amounts of liquid from one container to another.

[ Flexiv ]

Raffaello D’Andrea, interviewed at ICRA 2025.

[ Verity ]

Tessa Lau, interviewed at ICRA 2025.

[ Dusty Robotics ]

Ever wanted to look inside the mind behind a cutting-edge humanoid robot? In this special episode, we have Dr.Aaron, our Product Manager at LimX Dynamics, for an exclusive deep dive into the LimX Oli.

[ LimX Dynamics ]