"Everything that moves in the future will be robotic.", Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO NVIDIA
Silicon Valley Robotics
Supporting innovation and commercialization of robotics technologies - Robots&Startups at https://249x.substack.com
Insane announcements from NVIDIA, amazing robot demos, and some incredible talks which often overlapped - so I'm looking forward to more viewing post #GTC2024.
CB Insights is correct in saying that there’s a wave of interest!
Humanoid robots are riding a wave of investor and market interest as they reach new levels of technical capability.?
The battle for the survival of the fittest humanoid robots is on! And it’s going to be determined by the benchmark.
What is the benchmark for humanoid robots? Well, atm it’s whatever you want it to be. This is where teams with lots of money and/or large PR teams and/or popular/viral videos get out in front of the rest. They are de facto setting the benchmarks by which other companies are judged.?
What do customers really need? A bad benchmark that I’ve heard recently is ‘speed’ (compared to a human OR another robot arm). If we’re looking at this from a commercial perspective, who cares if a robot is slower than a human for the first hour if it can keep going for hours at a time without stopping. And who cares if it’s slower than an industrial arm, if it’s able to rapidly move into new work areas without requiring reinstallation.?Not to mention the safety aspects!
Another benchmark is dexterity and no robot can match a human for hand dexterity. Melonee Wise and Damion Shelton of Agility Robotics make a good point in TechCrunch however. None of the commercial solutions at Modex or other industry tradeshows have robots with human hand equivalents. Most work can be done with much simpler end effectors. Not only that but robots of the future will be able to swap their end of arm tooling in a way that humans certainly can’t.
Human hands are incredible! But do robots need them? Not yet, and probably not for a very long time. We really don’t need robots that imitate people, no matter how much movies, sci-fi and our own natural biases would like that.
At the IEEE Humanoids Conference in Austin TX, all of the humanoid robotics leaders on the industry panel spoke of the need to provide common benchmarks in order to support the emerging market. Let me know if you’re interested in joining a new Humanoids Standards Working Group with IEEE RAS!
Did you just switch to a paid subscription over at https://249x.substack.com ? Thank you! It makes you an angel investor in the work I do at Silicon Valley Robotics as a startup advisor, and accelerator. If you are a robotics company, March is a great time to join Silicon Valley Robotics and our startup accelerator program.
Interesting Robots:
Building Bionic Jellyfish for Ocean Exploration - CalTech
RT-Sketch: Goal-Conditioned Imitation Learning from Hand-Drawn Sketches - Priya Sundaresan,1, 3 Quan Vuong,2 Jiayuan Gu,2 Peng Xu,2 Ted Xiao,2 Sean Kirmani,2 Tianhe Yu,2 Michael Stark,3 Ajinkya Jain,3 Karol Hausman,1, 2 Dorsa Sadigh*,1, 2 Jeannette Bohg*,1 Stefan Schaal*,3
*Equal advising, alphabetical order 1Stanford University, 2Google DeepMind, 3[Google] Intrinsic
More Robotics News:
Autonomous Vehicle Startup Applied Intuition Hits $6B Valuation After $250M Series E - Crunchbase News
Automated Driving Systems Should be Rated, IIHS Says - Autoweek
SWRI develops autonomous driving tools for ‘stealthy and agile’ off-road vehicles - The Engineer
Moon mining startup Interlune wants to start digging for helium-3 by 2030 - Engadget
This year autonomous trucks will take to the road with no one on board - IEEE Spectrum
Newesy Piaggio EV isn’t a Vespa - it’s an adorable robot work cart - Electrek
Bear Robotics, a robot waiter startup, just picked up $60M from LG - TechCrunch
Amazon’s Zoox robotaxis to drive faster, farther, at night in Las Vegas - Reuters
Aurora’s driverless trucks show they are for real - Freight Waves
Forterra, Kalmar Partner on Autonomous Terminal Tractors - Transport Topics
领英推荐
These commercial brands are testing Level 4 autonomous trucks through Plus partnership - Electrek
Anyware Robotics’ Pixmo Robots Add-On to Further Increase Container Unloading Throughput - Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Scythe expands production facility for robot mowers - The Robot Report
The World’s First Autonomous Snowplows Are in Service - Car and Driver
Will autonomous robots replace us or create more job opportunities for humans at sea? - Euronews.next
Urban Value Corner Store to open autonomous micro markets - CSNews
Inside the Chipotle founder’s new robot-powered vegan restaurant - Axios
Reflex Robotics’ wheeled humanoid is here to grab you a snack - TechCrunch
Intuitive Launches latest da Vinci robot, with force feedback controls - Fierce Biotech
I Tried Aescape’s Robot-Arm-Powered Massage Table - and Loved Being in Control - Wired
ANYmal can do parkour and walk across rubble - ETH Zurich
ABB Opens Revamped Robotics Center in Michigan Amid Growing Demand for AI Robots - WSJ
Covariant launches the first version of its ‘robot brain’ AI that learns by watching and listening - The Verge
Physical Intelligence is Building a Brain for Robots - Bloomberg
Watch the Figure 01 Robot Feed a Human, Sort the Dishes, And Stammer Like Us Meatbags - The Spoon
Mercedes wants humanoid robots to take over ‘physically demanding’ work - Quartz
The loneliness of the robotics humanoid - TechCrunch
Spotlight on mobility trends - McKinsey
The autonomous robotics future is around the corner - Bessemer Venture Partners
These 61 robotics companies are hiring - TechCrunch
Robotics Events:
28-29 March - Curbivore - Downtown Los Angeles
Join me at Curbivore, where the worlds of delivery robotics, mobility innovation, food automation, civic technology and policy / regulation converge, March 28 & 29 in Downtown LA. Meet with and hear from leaders at Starship, Waymo, DoorDash, Uber, Coco Robotics, Zenblen, as well as investors, media, and more - plus get your hands on all the latest machinery. First time attendees can join for just $20 when they register with code RS20.
5-6 April - SF Symphony: Press Play Carol Reiley and the Robots - Soundbox SF
POSTPONED - Robot Block Party - Circuit Launch San Leandro at Bayfair Mall
18-21 April 2024 - RoboGames - TBC
21 April 2024 - Robots on Ice - Yerba Buena Skating Rink SF
Some more upcoming academic robotics conferences:
Founder & CEO, Group 8 Security Solutions Inc. DBA Machine Learning Intelligence
8 个月Thanks for sharing!
Robotics Scientist at FutureBots Humanoid Lab
8 个月There is only 1 real humanoid robot out there in the USA and that is the ATOM 1.0 and soon to be built ATOM 2.0, the ATOM series of humanoids have real human character unlike the Teslas and Figures with there blank faces that scare people. The FutureBots humnoid lab maybe small and has little funding but we have BIG ideas, ideas that surpass all other humanoids being built, Dan Mathias may be a Engineer of one but I work harder than the teams of 50+ engineers at your Big deep pocket funded humnoid factory's. I do hope in the New Year to find visionary's like me to invest in the ATOM series of machines, I'm looking for USA based VC's and Angels or even Private investors, drop me a line at FutureBots.com please help me for fill my life long dream of doing GOD's work of helping the sick and elderly through robotics. God Bless..