Minds in Machines
Weekly Roundup #2
Fellow Constructor,
Welcome to the second edition of the Minds in Machines Weekly Roundup. Its fantastic to have you here. In this letter I explore where the physical world and artificial intelligence intersect. Minds in Machines. You can expect stories, news, research and random musings. Any feedback is appreciated.
In the Spotlight:
Helix does the dishes.
We have seen a lot of robots do our laundry as Chris Paxton pointed out it his article: Why is Everyone's Robot Folding Clothes?. In short: It’s repeatable, relatively easy, requires precision but not too much precision and is quite forgivable. Figure has upped the ante releasing its newest video of Helix loading a dishwasher with a range of plates, glasses and bowls. I would probably be in trouble for loading the dishwasher this shoddy, that aside, it’s extremely impressive as loading the dishwasher provides several challenges in comparison with folding clothes:
Requires significantly more precision than folding clothes as items are fragile, different weight, shape, break and need to fit into specific slots.
Requires more precise force control.
The action space is far more complex and sequential dependencies create additional planning challenges.
It is encouraging to see the progress of humanoids towards more and more useful tasks and to see the same robot and model tackle two complex tasks.
What do you think will be the next task Helix will demonstrate?
Research that Caught my Attention:
Meet EMMA
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have published a new approach to tackle data scarcity and cost of mobile robot teleoperation: EMMA (Egocentric Mobile MAnipulation).
The core problem: Large-scale data collection using whole-body robot teleoperation is extremely expensive, resource intensive and requires tethering human operators to robots. This is a fundamental bottleneck for scaling data collection which is vital for improvements in robotics.
The core idea: Cut out mobile teleoperation completely by co-training on human full-body motion data (from egocentric video) paired together with static robot manipulation data.
The results: EMMA achieves comparable or superior performance to mobile ALOHA across three real world tasks (Grocery Shopping, Handover Wine, Table Service). This could represent an unlock in scaling data collection.
All credit: EMMA
Random Musing of the Week:
When listening to an episode of BG2 I came across the launch story of Xiaomi Auto. It is a remarkable story of that it takes to engineer greatness.
The day its founder Lei Jun decided to build a car, he swapped seats with his driver and obessively fell in love with cars. He drove over 170 cars himself. Whenever he saw a new one in the Xiamoi parking lot he would ask to borrow it to get a feeling for the car. He set himself the goal to become “the best driver among all the automotive company bosses in China”. Over 70 days he and his team visited 10 cities and talked to over 200 industry insiders. In 3 years he achieved what Apple failed to do. The SU7 sold 10,000 units in just 4 minutes.
Its an amazing inside in the mindset, the grid and passion it takes to build a great machine.
Funding News:
Robotic farming startup Orchard AI has raised $22 million to improve data availability and quality in farming. Orchard offers camera systems, data management systems and is working on decision engines to empower farmers.
Shenzen-based UBTECH raised $1 billion credit to drive manufacturing of humanoid robot. The company has over 2,700 patents and announced the first batch purchase for its intelligent humanoid robots.
HappyRobot AI has raised $44 million to develops its AI operating system for the physical world. The company has won over 70 enterprise customers including electrification champion Schneider Electric.
Launches, Unleashed and spotted in the Wild:
Innate Bot has launched MARS, a personal AI robot starting at $1,999 and shipping in Q4. What I find exciting, is the idea that you can train it yourself using your phone and share it with the community. Looks very cool, especially in Orange/Black. Check out the launch video here.
Simulation software developer RoboDK has launched a free academy to learn basic robot programming skills. The course is self paced and allows users to learn the fundamentals of manipulation. The ambition is to become the global hub for robotic learning.
Thank you for reading. If you like this, please share with one person you think could get value from it. Means the world.
Keep constructing.
Dominic