This robot is skateboarding completely blind. And yes... It’s autonomous. No vision or markers. Just proprioception, joint torques and some very clever state estimation. Aditya Bhatt (PhD at IAS / DFKI under Jan Peters) just dropped one of the wildest robot demos of the year. People in the comments are already losing it over the same questions: How the hell does it know where the deck is? Pure IMU? Contact models? What observations is the policy actually getting at inference time? They only trigger the tricks like a real-life video game. This is coming straight out of @Jan_R_Peters’ lab, @ias_tudarmstadt. The same Jan Peters who just sat down for a long, unusually honest interview about how German red tape cost the field a full five-year head start on humanoids. If you’re into real robot learning (not just pretty videos), both are worth your time. Skateboarder demo and work by @aditya_bhatt. Podcast: Ep 105 | Red Tape Cost Us a 5-Year Lead in Humanoid Robotics (w/ Jan Peters) Huge thanks to Jan Peters for the rare honesty, his humour and insights into the world of robotics and his own! Full Conversation: On Spotify: On YouTube: