A robot learns to lip sync

Columbia Engineers build a robot that learns to lip sync to speech and song.

Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

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Hod Lipson and his team have created a robot that, for the first time, is able to learn facial lip motions for tasks such as speech and singing.

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Credit: Jane Nisselson/ Columbia Engineering

New York, NY—Jan. 14, 2026—Almost half of our attention during face-to-face conversation focuses on lip motion. Yet, robots still struggle to move their lips correctly. Even the most advanced humanoids make little more than muppet mouth gestures – if they have a face at all. 

We humans attribute outsized importance to facial gestures in general, and to lip motion in particular. While we may forgive a funny walking gait or an awkward hand motion, we remain unforgiving of even the slightest facial malgesture. This high bar is known as the “Uncanny Valley.” Robots oftentimes look lifeless, even creepy, because their lips don't move. But that is about to change.

A Columbia Engineering team announced today that they have created a robot that, for the first time, is able to learn facial lip motions for tasks such as speech and singing. In a new study published in Science Robotics, the researchers demonstrate how their robot used its abilities to articulate words in a variety of languages, and even sing a song out of its AI-generated debut album “hello world_.”

The robot acquired this ability through observational learning rather than via rules. It first learned how to use its 26 facial motors by watching its own reflection in the mirror before learning to imitate human lip motion by watching hours of YouTube videos. 

“The more it interacts with humans, the better it will get,” promised Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab, where the work was done.

Robot watches itself talking 

Achieving realistic robot lip motion is challenging for two reasons: First, it requires specialized hardware containing a flexible facial skin actuated by numerous tiny motors that can work quickly and silently in concert. Second, the specific pattern of lip dynamics is a complex function dictated by sequences of vocal sounds and phonemes. 

Human faces are animated by dozens of muscles that lie just beneath a soft skin and sync naturally to vocal chords and lip motions. By contrast, humanoid faces are mostly rigid, operating with relatively few degrees of motion, and their lip movement is choreographed according to rigid, predefined rules. The resulting motion is stilted, unnatural, and uncanny.

In this study, the researchers overcame these hurdles by developing a richly actuated, flexible face and then allowing the robot to learn how to use its face directly by observing humans. First, they placed a robotic face equipped with 26 motors in front of a mirror so that the robot could learn how its own face moves in response to muscle activity. Like a child making faces in a mirror for the first time, the robot made thousands of random face expressions and lip gestures. Over time, it learned how to move its motors to achieve particular facial appearances, an approach called a “vision-to-action” language model (VLA).

Then, the researchers placed the robot in front of recorded videos of humans talking and singing, giving AI that drives the robot an opportunity to learn how exactly humans’ mouths moved in the context of various sounds they emitted. With these two models in hand, the robot’s AI could now translate audio directly into lip motor action.

The researchers tested this ability using a variety of sounds, languages, and contexts, as well as some songs. Without any specific knowledge of the audio clips' meaning, the robot was then able to move its lips in sync.

The researchers acknowledge that the lip motion is far from perfect. “We had particular difficulties with hard sounds like ‘B’ and with sounds involving lip puckering, such as ‘W’. But these abilities will likely improve with time and practice,” Lipson said. 

More importantly, however, is seeing lip sync as part of more holistic robot communication ability. 

“When the lip sync ability is combined with conversational AI such as ChatGPT or Gemini, the effect adds a whole new depth to the connection the robot forms with the human,” explained Yuhang Hu, who led the study for his PhD. “The more the robot watches humans conversing, the better it will get at imitating the nuanced facial gestures we can emotionally connect with.” 

“The longer the context window of the conversation, the more context-sensitive these gestures will become,” he added. 

The missing link of robotic ability

The researchers believe that facial affect is the ‘missing link’ of robotics. 

“Much of humanoid robotics today is focused on leg and hand motion, for activities like walking and grasping,” said Lipson. “But facial affection is equally important for any robotic application involving human interaction.”

Lipson and Hu predict that warm, lifelike faces will become increasingly important as humanoid robots find applications in areas such as entertainment, education, medicine, and even elder care. Some economists predict that over a billion humanoids will be manufactured in the next decade.

“There is no future where all these humanoid robots don’t have a face. And when they finally have a face, they will need to move their eyes and lips properly, or they will forever remain uncanny,” Lipson estimates.

“We humans are just wired that way, and we can’t help it. We are close to crossing the uncanny valley,” added Hu.

Risks and limits

This work is part of Lipson’s decade-long quest to find ways to make robots connect more effectively with humans, through mastering facial gestures such as smiling, gazing, and speaking. He insists that these abilities must be acquired by learning, rather than being programmed using stiff rules. 

“Something magical happens when a robot learns to smile or speak just by watching and listening to humans,” he said. “I’m a jaded roboticist, but I can’t help but smile back at a robot that spontaneously smiles at me.”

Hu explained that human faces are the ultimate interface for communication, and we are beginning to unlock their secrets.

“Robots with this ability will clearly have a much better ability to connect with humans because such a significant portion of our communication involves facial body language, and that entire channel is still untapped,” Hu said. 

The researchers are aware of the risks and controversies surrounding granting robots greater ability to connect with humans. 

“This will be a powerful technology. We have to go slowly and carefully, so we can reap the benefits while minimizing the risks,” Lipson said. 

Lip Syncing Robot Video [VIDEO] 

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Journal

Science Robotics

Article Publication Date

14-Jan-2026

 

Level 4 self-driving cars may come to Europe next year, says Nvidia executive

Copyright AP Photo/John Locher

By Pascale Davies

Published on 15/01/2026 - EURONEWS

Euronews Next sat down with Nvidia's vice president of the automotive team and spoke about how AI is changing the gears of self-driving cars, what it will mean for Europe, what we would do when we commute, and how it may change infrastructure.

Partial autonomous driving may come to Europe this year, and more advanced self- driving cars could arrive on the continent as soon as next year, vice president of Nvidia's automotive team, Ali Kani, told Euronews Next in an interview.

The chip leader and artificial intelligence (AI) giant revealed last week that, instead of building its own car, it has developed the software that supplies the intelligence layer for autonomy that robotaxi companies can purchase and build on.

AI is becoming a key accelerator behind self-driving technology and could cut the costs of the technology. However, Europe in particular stands at a critical juncture in determining how and when self-driving cars will navigate its streets and there may need to be infrastructure changes.

“We need to go as fast as regulation allows us, and I think what we see is it's opening up,” Kani said.

“My guess is in Europe it might end up being the end of this year,” he said, referring to Level 2+ driving, which means that the driver is still responsible for monitoring the driving environment, but the vehicle can steer, brake, and accelerate

As for Level 4, which means the vehicle operates completely autonomously under certain conditions and humans do not need to be ready to get involved, it could come in 2027, Kani said.

You can just redesign a city so that we have more space for people to live and put parking lots further away.

 Ali Kani 

Nvidia VP autonomotive team

Trials are already being announced in major European cities, including London, though the timeline for full regulatory clearance depends on how well the systems perform in real-world conditions.

Europe currently allows Level 2 systems universally and has already approved Level 3 for controlled conditions. But this is not without its challenges.

This week, it was reported that Mercedes-Benz was pausing its Drive Pilot, an “eyes off” conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US, according to the German publication Handelsblatt.

Nvidia announced last week that it will use its new technology in a new robotaxi alliance between Lucid, Uber, and Nuro.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz, which also works with Nvidia, said it will launch a new advanced driver-assistance system in the US this quarter that will let vehicles operate autonomously under driver supervision. Nvidia’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang said the Mercedes-Benz technology will come to Europe and Asia in Q2 of this year.

Related

• Future of autonomous driving and robots just went up a gear. Nvidia and Boston Dynamics CES latest

Safety first

One of the biggest hurdles for deploying autonomous vehicles in Europe is the different regulations across different countries

But Nvidia’s technology can cleverly swerve the various laws, as while the core end-to-end model is consistent globally, the rules-based safety stack is customised for each country’s driving requirements.

Kani said that the company also has a different philosophy from its competitors, which is key to safety.

“Some other players talk about how we want to make sure we drive better than a human.

“We don't architect our system like that. We actually think of it in terms of how do we design this system so it doesn't ever cause an accident,” he said.

Nvidia achieves this by first, by using diverse sensor sets, so that if one camera isn’t working, there are other sensor options.

Related

• Driverless robotaxis hit the road in Abu Dhabi in Uber and WeRide partnership

Secondly, it runs two stacks simultaneously: an end-to-end AI model alongside a dedicated safety stack that acts as a type of guardian. The stacks refer to a linear data structure that stores and manages data.

“The foundation is that two things are running, and the safety stack will make sure you never make a mistake. That means the AI model on its own is not something we depend on. We have a Safety Guard built into the system,” Kani said.

Nvidia’s Drive AV software recently earned a five-star safety rating from the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) in the Mercedes-Benz CLA, which is a notable accomplishment for a first-time production autonomous vehicle stack.

The long road

In five to 10 years, the Nvidia executive said one of the main challenges will be “long tail scenarios”—unexpected situations that systems haven't encountered before.

Such anincident occurred in December, when the robotaxi service Waymo was suspended for hours as vehicles struggled to read malfunctioning stoplights amid a power outage in San Francisco. Those in the driverless vehicles then found themselves stuck at darkened traffic lights.

One possible incident in the future could occur on European country roads. While Kani admitted he didn’t know much about the continent's road infrastructure, he said that he doesn’t think there would need to be a major overhaul for Europe’s roads to accommodate autonomous vehicles, but changes may be needed in more rural areas.

I just feel like there are so many things we could do with our time if we had that [autonomous driving].

 Ali Kani 

Nvidia

Kani said that while Nvidia’s technology can adapt to existing conditions on roads, he suggested it could be harder for autonomous vehicles to pull over on small, narrow country roads, as there is no shoulder.

“If that happens to be the case that on these country roads, there really is nowhere for you to pull over, you really have to stop in the lane. That's not safe because then there's another car that comes,” Kani said.

But despite these potential scenarios, there are many reasons to be optimistic about autonomous driving.

Kani said that self-driving vehicles make roads safer as human error or fatigue while driving is eliminated. But the vehicles could also reshape urban planning and how we manage our time.

He said an autonomous car could drop you off, go back home, and then pick you up when needed, effectively getting rid of the need for parking lots and using the space for society’s other needs, such as housing.

“You can just redesign a city so that we have more space for people to live and put parking lots further away,” Kani said.

For him personally, he is most excited about what he would do while commuting to work. He said he has a second home an hour and 40 minutes away from the Nvidia office.

With an autonomous vehicle, he said he could work in the car, or on longer journeys, or even travel overnight and sleep on the journey and arrive at the destination in the morning.

“I just feel like there are so many things we could do with our time if we had that [autonomous driving], and I would love that," he said.

“So I'm looking forward to that when we get there.”

Trump's evil henchmen are clones of a horrific monster who died in disgrace

John Casey
January 13, 2026 

RAW STORY


White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller listens to Donald Trump. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

At first glance, Roy Cohn, Stephen Miller and Emil Bove share an eerie resemblance, though they hail from distinct eras of American dysfunction.

Cohn was a McCarthy-era fixer and Manhattan attorney who mentored the young Donald Trump then died in disgrace. Miller is Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff, to some his “prime minister,” to all the face and voice of Trump’s tyranny. Bove is now a federal judge, but before that was Trump’s legal counsel while Trump was indicted again and again. Oh, how I long for those days.

Different résumés, yes. But the same moral rot behind the same vicious visage.

They are fraternal, tyrannical triplets. They look alike. They speak alike. They operate alike. And most importantly, they thrive for the same reason: Donald Trump, who is, in the words of South Park, “f—ing Satan,” likes demonic despotic dudes, and asks for nothing more.

The vile Cohn was Trump’s most important early influence, not because he taught him the law, but because he taught him how to abuse it, evade it, and weaponize it against anyone in the way.

Cohn’s worldview was brutally simple: never apologize, never admit error, always counterattack harder. Appeal, appeal, appeal, until justice cries “uncle.” He had a viper tongue and a monstrous leer.

To Cohn, truth was irrelevant, institutions were weapons to be bent or broken, and loyalty to scumbags mattered more than reverence for legal scholars.


Roy Cohn advises Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1953. Picture: Los Angeles Times/Wiki Commons.

Like a fly to feces, Trump absorbed this crock of crap. In the decades since, he has surrounded himself with similar people. If Trump is the water pump, Bove and Miller are the outhouse.


Miller and Bove are near-Cohn clones, Cohn-esque pinheads with the same skull, ego, brain, and heart. Cohn preached brute force and illegality in the courtroom. Now Bove practices it while Miller reimagines it through Trump’s immigration and foreign policies, wielding cruelty as part of a 21st-century Lebensraum doctrine.

Trump selects a very specific enforcer archetype: someone who treats politics as destruction, law as an irrelevance, morality as a waste of time. These guys are willing to be hated, feared, and blamed. In fact, those traits aren’t flaws. They’re prerequisites. Miller and Bove crave insolence.

In a normal presidency, these qualities would be blasphemous, jail-inducing and worthy of impeachment. In Trump’s pigpen, they’re just mud to roll around in.


Miller’s role is not merely to craft immigration policy. It is to function as shock-and-awe made flesh. Miller says the quiet parts loud, proposes the harshest version of every policy, and luxuriates in the backlash.

Cruelty is not a byproduct. It is the point of Miller’s existence. While some men obsess over their appearance — clearly not Miller’s concern — he obsesses over wickedness. He feeds Trump’s “rule the world” fantasies and sermonizes imperialism in unblinking media appearances.

Cohn played the same ruthless role. He intimidated judges, threatened reporters, and crossed lines others would not approach. Cohn understood that power depends less on legality than on the willingness to violate norms, fast and furious, before anyone can catch up.


And then there’s Evil — sorry, Emil — Bove. He fits Trump’s corrosive mold perfectly. His value lies in being, as Trump would say, a “sleazebag” attorney. He pushed conspiracy theories disguised as legal arguments to their absolute breaking point. He taunted judges, dared courts to challenge Trump, and lied in depositions and in open court — under oath — just like his client.

Now, astonishingly, he’s a federal judge.

He is plainly, unequivocally unqualified. His entire career showcases the traits the position demands one not have: belligerence, partisanship, a staggering lack of judicial temperament.


A federal judge is supposed to be an independent arbiter, guided by restraint, humility, and respect for the rule of law. Bove laughs at such quaint notions. He is about loyalty and aggression. Always and forever. He disdains the norms that protect judicial independence. The court has adjourned on his petulance and incompetence.

These bozos thrive because they lack honor, decency, humility, or, most glaringly, truth. Loyalty tests are endless. Media outrage is constant. Legal jeopardy is routine. In this ecosystem, they become role models. Like robots, they churn out their own replacements. The insidious Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s White House press secretary, is a Miller disciple.

Cohn ended up disbarred, dying alone, loathed and disgraced. But that was the 1980s. In this Trump era, Cohn would be basking at Mar-a-Lago. Miller is a hero to his MAGA minions. He boasts 1.6 million followers on X. Think about it. So many people hang on his every post, each packed with cruelty, fabrication, and garbage.


Emil Bove attends Manhattan criminal court in New York. JEENAH MOON/Pool via REUTERS

And Bove? He is Trump’s representative on the federal bench — which is, of course, illegal. But who cares? Bove attends Trump rallies and events, sparking ethics complaints. Critics argue such attendance violates the code of conduct for federal judges, which bars political activity and even the appearance of impropriety, especially so soon after confirmation and despite prior ethical concerns.

A watchdog group has formally asked the Third Circuit’s chief judge to investigate and potentially discipline Bove for placing partisan loyalty above judicial neutrality. Blah, blah, blah. All this protestation matters not, because Bove’s response to all of it is a big FU.

Even the aesthetic similarities between the three matter. The severe expressions, clipped speech, and utter lack of warmth project authority without empathy. These are badges of honor bestowed by their narcissist-in-chief.

The thread, and threat, of their inhumanity proves they are not aberrations. They are continuations. Roy Cohn didn’t disappear when he died. His ethos simply evolved, metastasizing into Stephen Miller and Emil Bove.

There were once the Three Stooges, whose slapstick and bawdiness prompted laughter. Cohn, Miller and Bove are Trump’s three stooges, but they aren’t eliciting laughter. They spur terror.

When cruelty, propaganda, and law enforcement align, comedy dies and horror begins.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

'Just a pathetic little man': Stephen Miller lambasted as columnist refuses to hold back

Nicole Charky-Chami
January 13, 2026 
RAW STORY



A columnist Tuesday revealed how White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has influenced the policies under the Trump administration — and why he wants people to fear him.

The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi described how Miller, "the driving force behind the Trump administration’s most extreme policies," is craving immense power, but "is ultimately still just a man."

Some of President Donald Trump's aides have even reportedly begun referring to Miller as "prime minister." Behind the scenes, he has being credited with orchestrating the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and has hopes to remove birthright citizenship.

Despite these moves and wielding this power, Miller is simply one person, the writer argued.

"While the ghouls hellbent on bringing authoritarianism to America, and misery to their self-declared enemies, may think of themselves as demi-gods, they are, ultimately, just mere mortals," Mahdawi wrote.

Miller, the architect of Trump's anti-immigrant policies, including the family border separations during the first Trump administration, even bonded with his wife Katie, a right-wing podcaster, about their harsh stance. And although his own family escaped persecution in Europe as Jewish refugees, something his uncle has publicly slammed Miller for, Trump's "mastermind" has continued to push for these "aggressive tactics."

And he has one goal in mind, Mahdawi argued.

"What people like Miller want most of all is for us to fear them; that’s why they’re all so obsessed with talking about strength and force and power," Mahdawi wrote. "And, yes, we should all be afraid of Miller’s brutish vision of the world. We should be worried about what Miller is doing.

"But we should also make sure to laugh at him; there is nothing thin-skinned authoritarians hate more than being laughed at. And we should never forget that, amid all the trappings of office, Stephen Miller is ultimately just a pathetic little man. One who really likes mayonnaise."

The final dig is in response to Miller's wife revealing on her podcast that her husband eats mayonnaise by the spoonful.

'Ever since hearing that podcast, I’ve had intermittent intrusive thoughts of Miller standing barefoot in the luminous light of a fridge spooning mayonnaise into his mouth, straight from the jar," Mahdawi wrote.

" ... I think the reason the mayonnaise anecdote has stuck with me is because it’s a reminder that while Miller may be in a position of extraordinary power, he is ultimately still just a man, one who likely has grease stains on his T-shirts."

'Utterly chilling': Stephen Miller's 'glaring' Fox News interview sparks outrage

Robert Davis
January 13, 2026 

RAW STORY


White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

One of President Donald Trump's top aides sparked outrage on Tuesday after he claimed that immigration agents enjoy "federal immunity" while they're doing their jobs on Fox News.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller joined Fox News host Will Cain on "The Will Cain Show" to discuss the Trump administration's ongoing deportation operations. The interview happened at a time when the operations are facing increased scrutiny following the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.

During the interview, Miller said immigration agents that anyone who tries to stop them from performing their jobs is committing a "felony," a claim that legal experts disputed.

"You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties," Miller said.

Political analysts and observers reacted on social media.

"He’s not a lawyer," public defender Eli Northrup posted on X. "There is no blanket 'immunity' for criminal behavior. States can and should hold federal officers accountable."

"Not just false, utterly chilling. Saying you have a free pass to murder people," Norman Ornstein, political scientist and contributing editor at The Atlantic, posted on X. "The law and constitution are clear. States can arrest federal officials who violate their laws." Period.

"Among the most glaring issues of this statement: qualified immunity, which is what ICE officers are covered under, does not shield them from prosecution for *unlawful conduct, civil rights abuses, or excessive force," Evan Rosenfeld, deputy digital director at The Bulwark, posted on X.

This deeply damaged psychopath is now Trump's role model

Thom Hartmann
January 13, 2026

COMMON DREAMS


Donald Trump arrives back at the White House. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

This past week, Donald Trump demanded that the Pentagon produce an invasion plan for Greenland, an action that would have world-changing consequences to the benefit of Vladimir Putin and the detriment of Europe, democracy, and America. He followed that by suggesting that Marco Rubio should be the next president of Cuba, the same way Putin had promised his generals and oligarchs that they could have Ukraine.

Step-by-step it appears that Trump is trying to turn America into Russia. We saw the latest and most gruesome example this weekend as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — who shot her puppy in the face and bragged about it — went on national TV to defend Jonathan Ross shooting Nicole Good in the face, then calling her a “f------ bitch.”

What’s becoming increasingly clear to Americans — which is why so many millions were in the streets this weekend — is that Trump is trying to use ICE as his own private version of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a secret, unchallengeable police force loyal to him rather than the law, whose job is to terrify and pacify the population so they won’t object to having their pockets picked and their freedom taken.

And his threats against Greenland are designed to break up NATO, fulfilling Putin’s deepest desire, which could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the Atlantic alliance and eventually to the military domination of Europe by Russia.

Both Putin and Trump appear to want the thorn in their sides of the example of a democratic Europe to fail, thus making the world safe for looter-mentality strongman autocracies.

I used to think that Trump always did whatever Putin told him to, during both his administrations and even before, because Putin was blackmailing him or dangling billion-dollar Trump Hotel Moscow opportunities in front of him.

While both of those options are still pretty likely, increasingly I’m seeing that Trump is doing what Putin suggests because he wants to be like Putin. And he wants America to be like Russia.

These two men are deeply damaged psychopaths who never matured emotionally because of the psychological trauma of their childhoods.

They think alike, as do most dictators in history, men who feel fundamentally insecure and get their feeling of safety by dominating others. Abusers who were abused and now inflict abuse.

As a result, they both delight in killing people via their militaries.

They get high by terrorizing people with their secret police and militias.

They both hate and fear a free and open press and any sort of legislative or judicial power that may constrain them.

They both have corruptly made billions from their political positions, both use public monies to shower wealth and opportunity on their friends, and both wield the police and judicial powers of their nations to punish their enemies. Trump’s most recent is Fed chair Jerome Powell.

Other dictators throughout history have shared these same characteristics. Hitler was an abused, unwanted child, much like Trump and Putin. Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco were all the victims of violent alcoholic fathers who beat them and their mothers, growing up in severely dysfunctional families.

Historian Brian Junkermeier notes that, “Stalin’s father was so violent, that on more than one occasion, he physically abused Stalin to the point where he would have blood in his urine for several days.”


All of these men grew up to be abusers, not just of their family members but of their entire nations.

Most Americans, not being psychopaths who survived cruel childhoods, don’t understand and can’t identify with these impulses. But it’s a safe bet that many of the people who’re enthusiastically answering the ICE recruiting call to “reclaim our nation” from Black and brown people and democracy-loving liberals also share Trump’s and Putin’s propensity for violence.

After all, it wasn’t until Renee Nicole Good told Jonathan Ross that she wasn’t mad with him and was leaving — a statement that she was in control and was leaving her abuser, the exact moment when most abusive husbands who kill their wives take that final step — that he fired three times into her head and called her a “fuckin’ bitch.”

It’s a classic abuser’s move, particularly against women.

Meanwhile, a handful of emotionally stunted rightwing billionaires who are democracy-skeptical are right there with Trump, using their financial power to promote autocracy and oligarchy. Many have had their worldview twisted by the power their own wealth gives them.

Robert Caro once noted:

“Power doesn’t corrupt. Power reveals. When a man is climbing, when he needs votes, when he needs allies, he is careful. When he has power, he no longer needs to be careful — and then you see who he really is.”

In that, he’s echoing Lord Acton’s famous 1887 observation:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Trump, the billionaires he surrounds himself with (13 in his cabinet, over a hundred others as major donors), and the police-state toadies like Miller, Noem, Vance, Homan, Patel, Bavino, etc are — based on observable behaviors and statements — almost universally opposed to democracy.

They’re trying to normalize turning America into an oligarchy with the First Family making billions in their first dozen months and their secret police openly killing people in the street and then blaming their victims on national television.

The danger with this is that oligarchy, as I point out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, is a transitional form of government that rarely lasts more than a generation or two. It’s so unstable because when the people realize the oligarchs are ripping them off and essentially stealing the nation’s wealth for themselves, they tend to rise up and loudly object.

That’s what we’re seeing with the No Kings and other protests here in America.Average Americans know that when modern GOP-driven Reaganomics started in 1981 fully two-thirds of us had a good, middle-class life with a single paycheck but today it takes two paychecks to barely reach that level, which is why the middle class has collapsed down to fewer than half of us.

They know that the top 1% has extracted more than $50 trillion from working class people over the past 44 years via Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts and the destruction of the union movement.

They know that when Reagan came into office a home cost three times the average salary and today it’s ten times a single salary (or five times a two-income household’s income).

They know their parents went to college for free or cheap and they’re now indebted for half or more of their lives.

They know that healthcare and health insurance used to be affordable when hospitals and health insurance companies were required to be nonprofits, and are now a massive trillion-dollar annual wealth-extraction scheme that’s making people like Rick Scott and Dollar Bill McGuire richer than the pharaohs.

So, when the morbidly rich seize power and rip off the working class, history shows that people rise up against the new oligarchy, leaving Trump and his billionaires with two choices.

They can, like they did in the face of FDR’s overwhelming popularity and success with the New Deal, simply retire from politics and just go back to making money and running their businesses (1933-1981).
Or they can, like they did in Russia two decades ago (and are doing today in numerous other countries including Iran and Venezuela), come down on the protestors with an iron fist, a steel-heeled boot (to paraphrase Grover Cleveland), led by state power and a brutal secret police and intelligence force.

Trump and the hard-right billionaires who made him president appear to be betting option number two will work out for them as well as it did for Putin.

It’s up to us and the politicians we’ve elected to represent us to make sure they don’t succeed and our nation returns to the rule of law.

History tells us how this moment will end if We the People hesitate.

Autocrats like Trump don’t stop because they suddenly find a conscience; they stop when institutions push back, when laws are enforced by judges and the military refuse illegal orders, and when ordinary people refuse to be intimidated into silence.

Russia didn’t fall into tyranny overnight. It slid there step by step, excuse by excuse, “reasonable step away from law and order” by reasonable step, until the police and military were no longer servants of the law but enforcers of loyalty, and regime-aligned billionaires became untouchable partners in plunder.

America is standing at that same fork in the road right now.

Either we insist — loudly, relentlessly, and electorally — that no president is above the law, that no secret police may operate without accountability, that no billionaire may buy immunity, and that democracy is not optional…or we allow fear, exhaustion, and cynicism to finish the job Trump has begun.

This is quite literally a battle over whether the United States remains a democratic constitutional republic or becomes another cautionary tale taught to future generations who inevitably and naïvely ask how a free people could have let it happen.

The choice is still ours, at least for the moment. But history makes one thing clear: once the jackboot is fully laced, it rarely comes off without blood.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.

 

Bringing human dexterity to robots by combining human motion and tactile sensation

Researchers develop an adaptive motion system that allows robots to generate human-like movements with minimal data

Keio University Global Research Institute

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This image depicts the real-time transfer of a human’s motion to a robotic avatar, enabling the latter to perform a dexterous task.

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Credit: Associate Professor Takahiro Nozaki from Keio University, Japan

Accelerating progress in robotic automation promises to revolutionize industries and improve our lives by replacing humans in risky, physically demanding, or repetitive tasks. While existing robots already excel in controlled environments such as assembly lines, the ultimate frontier of automation lies in dynamic environments found in tasks, such as cooking, assisting the elderly, and exploration. To realize this goal, one of the key barriers is making robots capable of adapting to touch. Unlike human hands, which intuitively adjust their grip for objects of unknown weight, friction, or stiffness, most robotic systems lack this crucial form of adaptability.

To transfer sophisticated human dexterity to machines, researchers have developed various motion reproduction systems (MRSs). These are centered around accurately recording human movements and recreating them in robots via teleoperation. However, MRSs tend to encounter problems if the properties of the object being handled change or do not match those of the recorded movement. This limits the versatility of MRSs and, in turn, the applicability of robots in general.

To address this fundamental challenge, a research team from Japan has developed a novel system designed to adaptively model and reproduce complex human motions. The study was led by Master’s student Mr. Akira Takakura from the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, and co-authored by Associate Professor Takahiro Nozaki, Department of System Design Engineering; Doctoral student Kazuki Yane; Professor Emeritus Shuichi Adachi, also from Keio University; and Assistant Professor Tomoya Kitamura from Tokyo University of Science, Japan. Their paper was published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, a world-leading international academic journal in this field, on December 30, 2025.

The team’s core breakthrough was moving past linear modeling strategies and instead using Gaussian process regression (GPR). This is a regression technique that can accurately map complex nonlinear relationships, even with a small amount of training data. By recording human grasping motions for multiple objects, the GPR model was trained to identify the relationship between the object’s ‘environmental stiffness’ and the necessary position and force commands issued by the human. In turn, this process effectively reveals the human’s underlying motion intention, or ‘human stiffness’—allowing the robot to generate appropriate motion for objects it has never encountered. “Developing the ability to manipulate commonplace objects in robots is essential for enabling them to interact with objects in daily life and respond appropriately to the forces they encounter,” explains Dr. Nozaki.

To validate their approach, the researchers tested it against conventional MRSs, linear interpolation, and a typical imitation learning model. The proposed GPR system demonstrated significantly enhanced performance in reproducing accurate motion commands for both interpolation and extrapolation. For interpolation, which involves handling objects with a stiffness that falls within the limits of the training set, it reduced the average root-mean-square error (RMSE) by at least 40% for position and 34% for force. Meanwhile, for extrapolation of objects harder or softer than those in the training set, the results were equally robust, exhibiting a 74% reduction in position RMSE. Most importantly, the proposed method based on GPR markedly outperformed all other methods.

By accurately modeling human–object interactions with minimal training data, this new take on MRSs will help generate dexterous motion commands for a wide range of objects. This ability to capture and recreate complex human skills will ultimately enable robots to move beyond rigid contexts and toward providing more sophisticated services. “Since this technology works with a small amount of data and lowers the cost of machine learning, it has potential applications across a wide range of industries, including life-support robots, which must adapt their movements to different targets each time, and it can lower the bar for companies that have been unable to adopt machine learning due to the need for large amounts of training data,” comments Mr. Takakura.

Worth noting, this research group at Keio University has been actively engaged in research concerning the transmission, preservation, and reproduction of force-tactile feedback. Their previous efforts in this field have covered a wide range of topics, such as the reduction of data traffic, motion modeling, and haptic transplant technology. Their groundbreaking work on sensitive robotic arms and ‘avatar’ robots has been widely recognized by electronics research institutions like the IEEE, as well as by organizations such as the Government of Japan and Forbes.

 

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Reference
DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2025.3626633

 

About Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI), Japan
The Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI) was established in November 2016 as a research organization to bridge faculties and graduate schools across the university. KGRI aims to promote interdisciplinary and international collaborative research that goes beyond the boundaries of singular academic disciplines and international borders. It also aims to share research outcomes both in Japan and worldwide, further promoting engagement in joint research.

To achieve this goal, KGRI has set up more than 40 centers and projects funded by external sources or through internal grants, covering a wide range of research topics from basic research to addressing social challenges facing the world. In 2022, Keio University set its goal of becoming a "Research university that forges the common sense of the future".

Website: https://www.kgri.keio.ac.jp/en/index.html

 

About Associate Professor Takahiro Nozaki from Keio University
Dr. Takahiro Nozaki received his B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 2010, 2012, and 2014, respectively. In 2014, he joined Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan, as a Research Associate. In 2015, he joined Keio University, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He was also a Visiting Scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, from 2019 to 2021. He was one of the winners of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Under-35 Innovators Contest in 2019.

https://nozaki-lab.jp/

https://k-ris.keio.ac.jp/html/100011714_en.html

 

About Mr. Akira Takakura from Keio University
Mr. Akira Takakura received a B.E. degree in System Design Engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 2024. He is currently working toward an M.E. degree. His research interests include adaptive control, system identification, robotics, and haptics.

 

Funding information
This work was supported by JSPS (Grant No. 16H06079) and NEDO (Project No. P15009, “Development of Core Technologies for Next-Generation AI and Robotics”).

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Journal

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics

DOI

10.1109/TIE.2025.3626633 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Motion Reproduction System for Environmental Impedance Variation via Data-Driven Identification of Human Stiffness

From lab to rubble: can this lightning-fast origami robot be the future of search and rescue?

Scientists develop a powerful modular soft origami actuator for building small-scale soft robots with exceptional shape reconfiguration and locomotion abilities

Journal Center of Harbin Institute of Technology

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Imagine soft robots scurrying through rubble with the agility of geckos or leaping over obstacles with the dynamism of frogs—capabilities that would prove invaluable in post-disaster rescue and exploration missions. In recent years, soft robotics has emerged as a prominent focal point of academic research, owing to its intrinsic compliance, inherent operational safety, and superior environmental adaptability. Yet, endowing soft robots with biological-grade agility and speed has long remained a pivotal challenge that researchers strive to address.

Currently, most soft robots face a "performance shackle" in practical applications: they are often slow and weak in mobility. This limitation stems from a trade-off in soft actuators, where it is difficult to achieve high-speed response, large strain and force output simultaneously. Consequently, soft robots have long been stuck in a "slow-motion" phase, unable to perform high-mobility tasks in the real word.

To overcome the inherent "sluggishness" of traditional soft robots and enable high-speed, agile movements on par with their natural counterparts, a research team from Tongji University has carried out in-depth research—findings recently published in the journal SmartBot. Inspired by the synergistic "skeletal-muscle" mechanism of vertebrates, the team proposed a "rigid-flexible" solution: merging the geometric topology of origami with high-performance electrohydraulic actuators. This novel Electrohydraulic Origami (EHO) actuator uses a hexagonal rigid frame to act as a "skeleton" and electrohydraulic units to serve as "muscles". By applying high voltage to the flexible electrodes, the resulting electrostatic force squeezes the liquid dielectric, thereby driving the rotation of the origami joints. This design cleverly leverages the amplification and transmission principles of both structure and mechanics, transforming minute electrohydraulic zipping motions into massive, high-speed and multimodal structural deformations of the origami framework. 

By integrating soft electrohydraulic actuation with origami structures, the EHO actuators unlock entirely new actuation modes while delivering remarkable dynamic performance. Experimental results indicate that an EHO actuator with a 10-cm arm length can achieve a staggering axial strain of up to 3300% and a peak strain rate exceeding 23500 %/s—outperforming most existing soft actuators. Meanwhile, a smaller 2.5-cm-arm version can perform vertical jumps 8.5 times its own height without any external energy storage components. Furthermore, even under a 100 g load—equivalent to 12.5 times its own weight—the actuator maintained an impressive 483.3% actuation strain, demonstrating exceptional load-bearing capacity. Various robotic prototypes powered by EHO actuators demonstrate exceptional locomotion capabilities. Notably, the tethered crawling soft robot can achieve an average linear speed of 37.55 cm/s (approximately 9.39 body lengths per second) and a rapid turning velocity of 211.5°/s. Furthermore, the wireless version, equipped with a miniature high-voltage control system, delivers average speeds that outpace most previously reported untethered crawling soft robots driven by electroactive soft actuators. Moreover, the robot can crawl steadily on a 15.6° incline and perform agile maneuvers along S-shaped paths. These capabilities mark a significant milestone in transitioning electrohydraulic robots from laboratory prototypes toward untethered, practical applications like field exploration, search-and-rescue, and human-machine interactions, etc.

 

About Tongji University

Tongji University is a prestigious comprehensive research university located in Shanghai, China. As a member of the "Double First-Class" initiative, it excels in engineering, architecture, urban planning, and environmental science, with several disciplines ranked among the world’s top. Boasting world-class faculty, cutting-edge laboratories, and extensive global collaborations with leading institutions, Tongji prioritizes innovative research and interdisciplinary education. It nurtures talented professionals dedicated to addressing national and global challenges, making remarkable contributions to urban development, sustainable technology, and social progress.

Website: https://www.tongji.edu.cn/

About Dr. Wenbo Li from Tongji University, China

Dr. Li graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 2019 with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Mechanical Engineering. After completing a two-and-a-half-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, he joined Tongji University as a research professor of the School of Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics in 2022. His research interests include soft robots, smart materials and structures. He has published about 40 peer-reviewed papers in journals including Nature Communications, Science Advances, SmartBot, Advanced Functional Materials, etc. He also holds approximately 20 authorized Chinese patents.

Funding information

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 12472057, 12532002, and 12102398), General Project of the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (Grant 24ZR1468800), Research Project of State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration (Grant MSV202407), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Shanghai Gaofeng Project for University Academic Program Development.

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Journal

SmartBot

DOI

10.1002/smb2.70018 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Highly Dynamic Soft Electrohydraulic Origami Actuators for Agile and Multimodal Robotic Locomotion

Article Publication Date

6-Jan-2026