Video Friday: Rescue Robot, Gesture Control, and 1986 Self-Driving Van

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. The 2016 U.S. Robotics Roadmap was released this week; it's a massive document authored by 150 roboticists that's intended to help frame and guide research and policy decisions with the goal of solving societal problems in the United States. We'll be taking a closer look at it, but here's a 30-minute summary from lead editor Henrik Christensen: The legged robot ANYmal can support disaster relief teams with safer search and rescue operations. With its advanced locomotion capabilities, ANYmal can operate in rough outdoor environments, crawl through pipes, and access buildings over steps and stairs.