Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI

10+ years in robotics, AI/ML, computer vision, mechanical design & controls. Subscribe to my YouTube (77k)👇

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

@Geek90697183 @RysenRobotics Great work!

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

The Apex hand from @RysenRobotics can take a beating! It’s really strong and sensitive enough to measure your pulse. It’s one of the few robot hands that’s cable driven and also direct drive. Just did a full review of their hand on my YouTube channel covering additional features that make this hand stand out.

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

Let’s see if the robot can find the hole with tactile feedback alone and no vision… @DaimonRobotics

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

This is the Apex hand from @RysenRobotics holding 10 kg for several hours without overheating at all! They had a fan that actively cools the actuators in the palm. Many direct drive hands face this challenge of overheating especially during high payloads, so it was impressive to see and feel the temperature of these hands during actual operation. Full video on my YouTube!

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

One of the few robot hands out there with a built in camera that actually looks sleek. Many robot demos out there have a bulky camera attachment, but @Xynovaofficial_ integrated it very discretely. Should more robot hand companies do this?

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

Be nice to your LLM before they whip you

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

One of the more reliable and consistent demos I saw working at IROS 2026 from @agilityrobotics. Many of demos didn’t work first time or was overly sensitive to lighting. For example some would work because I was standing too close filming and only started working when people took a few steps back. Maybe next year we will see more robust end to end demos.

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

@dabblerer_ @SharpaRobotics @micoolcho Yeah that would be cool!

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

Oragami folding is quite an interesting benchmark test for robotic dexterous manipulation because it really challenges both the limits of hardware and AI model capabilities. Here they are using robot hand from @SharpaRobotics. I also learned from @micoolcho that there’s people in Japan that can fold a tiny crane as small as your finger tips all based on tactile and joint position with no vision at all. If robots can do that one day, then we know dexterous manipulation has been solved. Very impressive to see how much these teams can do in such short amount of time. Definitely not easy. Thanks @dabblerer_ for the tour! #IROS2026

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

@micoolcho @SharpaRobotics Great to meet you too! Thank you!

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

@ClaraChengGo @dabblerer_ @ieeeiros lol not too different

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

Trying out the new wuji gloves! You can see you’re able to control all the DOFs of the hand. Felt pretty good and responsive. In practice you get to recalibrate the hand per user for better accuracy but because this is a demo that part was skipped so more people can try. @wuji_global #IROS2026

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

@zhngjn357700 😂

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

I was pretty impressed to see this reaction demo with the Sharpa robot catching the falling sticks. Really shows the speed and hand eye coordination capabilities of their robot. This was also my first time trying this challenge and I failed miserably lol will need to practice

@SharpaRobotics #IROS2026

[Kevin Wood | Robotics & AI @KevinWoodAI]

This is one of the rare instances where I see a vla model like pi 0.5 actually deployed to run at speeds I expect. Much better performance than most rollouts out there. Impressive work from @PrismaXai #IROS2026