Holiday prep goes robotic as Christmas machines tackle decor and meals

As the Christmas season approaches, robotics and autonomous systems are increasingly being employed to handle festive preparations, blending holiday traditions with advanced automation. HEBI Robotics demonstrated this trend with their mobile manipulator Treadward, equipped with a 7-DoF arm, which efficiently decorated a Christmas tree and staged festive scenes in just two days. The robot showcased impressive strength, coordination, and adaptability, highlighting the potential of mobile manipulators to assist in real-world holiday tasks. Meanwhile, Germany’s FZI Research Center explored the challenges of robotic meal preparation under the guidance of large language models and human teleoperation. Their staged demonstration humorously illustrated how small miscommunications between AI instructions and robotic execution can lead to chaotic outcomes, while emphasizing ongoing research in robotic manipulation, human-robot interaction, and AI decision support. Additionally, Fraunhofer IOSB presented an autonomous system that assembled and decorated a large outdoor Christmas tree using coordinated multi-robot operations, including autonomous cranes and quadruped robots. This project undersc