Tootfinder

🦿 China's humanoid robots generate more soccer excitement than their human counterparts
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-china-humanoid-robots-generate-soccer.html

China's humanoid robots generate more soccer excitement than their human counterparts
While China's men's soccer team hasn't generated much excitement in recent years, humanoid robot teams have won over fans in Beijing based more on the AI technology involved than any athletic prowess shown.

EMP: Executable Motion Prior for Humanoid Robot Standing Upper-body Motion Imitation
Haocheng Xu, Haodong Zhang, Zhenghan Chen, Rong Xiong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15649

EMP: Executable Motion Prior for Humanoid Robot Standing Upper-body Motion Imitation
To support humanoid robots in performing manipulation tasks, it is essential to study stable standing while accommodating upper-body motions. However, the limited controllable range of humanoid robots in a standing position affects the stability of the entire body. Thus we introduce a reinforcement learning based framework for humanoid robots to imitate human upper-body motions while maintaining overall stability. Our approach begins with designing a retargeting network that generates a large-s…

Operationalizing AI for Good: Spotlight on Deployment and Integration of AI Models in Humanitarian Work
Anton Abilov, Ke Zhang, Hemank Lamba, Elizabeth M. Olson, Joel R. Tetreault, Alejandro Jaimes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15823

Operationalizing AI for Good: Spotlight on Deployment and Integration of AI Models in Humanitarian Work
Publications in the AI for Good space have tended to focus on the research and model development that can support high-impact applications. However, very few AI for Good papers discuss the process of deploying and collaborating with the partner organization, and the resulting real-world impact. In this work, we share details about the close collaboration with a humanitarian-to-humanitarian (H2H) organization and how to not only deploy the AI model in a resource-constrained environment, but also…

"Bande de #Gaza : 73 Palestiniens tués par l’armée israélienne en tentant de récupérer de l’aide humanitaire, selon la défense civile"

Bande de Gaza : 73 Palestiniens tués par l’armée israélienne en tentant de récupérer de l’aide humanitaire, selon la défense civile
Le Programme alimentaire mondial a jugé « totalement inacceptable » toute violence contre des civils cherchant à obtenir de l’aide humanitaire.

„Gaza’s hunger crisis has reached new levels of desperation. People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is surging, with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment. Nearly one person in three is not eating for days.“ https://www.th…

just heard the sad news that francesco lupica, whose homemade "cosmic beam" inspired mickey hart's instrument, passed away late last year. in turn, lupica was inspired by john lazelle, a one-time harry partch disciple. https://www.facebook.com/groups/topangalocal…

Der vorherige Premierminister Israels, Ehud Olmert, sagt die sogenannte „humanitäre Stadt” welche Netanyahu im Gazastreifen bauen will, sei ein Konzentrationslager.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/13/i…

Humanoid Robot Games highlighted robotics advancements but also limitations, with robots tripping over each other; one robot ran faster than many amateur humans (Yan Zhuang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/world/asia/china-humanoid-robot-games.…

At China’s Humanoid Robot Games, Athletes Fell Down a Lot
The Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing — featuring running, kickboxing and soccer — highlighted advancements in robotics. Limitations, too.

SimGenHOI: Physically Realistic Whole-Body Humanoid-Object Interaction via Generative Modeling and Reinforcement Learning
Yuhang Lin, Yijia Xie, Jiahong Xie, Yuehao Huang, Ruoyu Wang, Jiajun Lv, Yukai Ma, Xingxing Zuo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14120

SimGenHOI: Physically Realistic Whole-Body Humanoid-Object Interaction via Generative Modeling and Reinforcement Learning
Generating physically realistic humanoid-object interactions (HOI) is a fundamental challenge in robotics. Existing HOI generation approaches, such as diffusion-based models, often suffer from artifacts such as implausible contacts, penetrations, and unrealistic whole-body actions, which hinder successful execution in physical environments. To address these challenges, we introduce SimGenHOI, a unified framework that combines the strengths of generative modeling and reinforcement learning to pr…

No More Marching: Learning Humanoid Locomotion for Short-Range SE(2) Targets
Pranay Dugar, Mohitvishnu S. Gadde, Jonah Siekmann, Yesh Godse, Aayam Shrestha, Alan Fern
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14098

No More Marching: Learning Humanoid Locomotion for Short-Range SE(2) Targets
Humanoids operating in real-world workspaces must frequently execute task-driven, short-range movements to SE(2) target poses. To be practical, these transitions must be fast, robust, and energy efficient. While learning-based locomotion has made significant progress, most existing methods optimize for velocity-tracking rather than direct pose reaching, resulting in inefficient, marching-style behavior when applied to short-range tasks. In this work, we develop a reinforcement learning approach…