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! The excitement is real -- #ICRA2025 is already buzzing!

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 developing nature-inspired drones that can move on both land and in the air -- blending her appreciation for nature, design, and the mechanics of how things work.

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 algorithms to model actions and behaviour; reinforcement learning for adapting to new scenarios; and building open-source, affordable robots.

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. Cornell 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 systems by significantly reducing the time, energy and money needed to train them, the researchers said. "One of the annoying things about working with robots is collecting so much data on the robot doing different tasks," said Kushal Kedia, a doctoral student in the field of computer science and lead author of a corresponding paper on RHyME. "That's not how humans do tasks. We look at other people as inspiration."

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 Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022, and was awarded the ACM SIGEVO Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evolutionary Computation in 2023. She was invited to give a TED Talk on her work in 2021 that has over 1.8 million views.

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 technologies, and guiding them through the adoption process. Last year he released a book called'Digital Transformation in Your Manufacturing Business – A Made Smarter Guide'.

Imagine 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 warehouse logistics, where a group of robots move boxes in a warehouse, each with its own goal, but all moving while making sure not to collide and making their routes – paths – as short as possible. Multi-agent path finding describes a problem where we have a group of agents – robots, vehicles or even people – who are each trying to get from their starting positions to their goal positions all at once without ever colliding (being in the same position at the same time).

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 morphological computation concepts can be used to improve prosthetic user health, comfort, and quality of life, through sensing and adaptation.

In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Tanja Katharina Kaiser from the University of Technology Nuremberg about how applying evolutionary principles can help robot teams make better decisions.

Claire chatted to Tanja Katharina Kaiser from the University of Technology Nuremberg about how applying evolutionary principles can help robot teams make better decisions. Tanja Katharina Kaiser is a senior researcher heading the Multi-Robot Systems Satellite Lab at the University of Technology Nuremberg (UTN) in Germany. She and her team focus on the development of adaptive multi-robot systems to solve complex real-world tasks using artificial intelligence. Tanja received her doctorate in robotics from the University of Lübeck in Germany in 2022. Before joining UTN, she held postdoctoral research positions at the Technical University of Dresden and the University of Konstanz.