A team of engineers at Toyota have spent years iterating on CUE6, the basketball-shooting robot. CUE6 uses machine learning to adjust his posture and arm movement in order to take the perfect shot nearly every time. The robot holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive basketball free throws by a humanoid robot after it […]
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NVIDIA on Tuesday unveiled the Jetson Orin Nano Super, a compact AI and robotics processor that delivers impressive performance in a small package. Dubbed “the world’s most affordable generative AI computer,” the processor has the ability to handle 70 trillion […]
The post NVIDIA launches Jetson Orin Nano Super for robotics and AI: Capable of 70 trillion operations per second for just $249 first appeared on Tech Startups.
Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they’ve developed […]
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Colin Angle, one of the co-founders of Roomba maker iRobot, is raising cash for a home robotics venture. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that Angle’s new company, Familiar Machines & Magic, is trying to raise $30 million. So far, it has raised $15 million from a group of eight investors. […]
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SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son agreed on Monday to double the company’s planned $100 billion investment in the United States to $200 billion. The decision came during an unexpected exchange with President-elect Donald Trump, showcasing Son’s willingness to respond […]
The post SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son commits to invest $200 billion in the US after Trump’s on-the-spot request first appeared on Tech Startups.
Industrial AI startup Haber has raised $44 million in its Series C funding round, with $38 million in equity and $6 million in debt. The round included participation from Creaegis, BEENEXT, and Accel, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company’s […]
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Anybotics has closed its Series B round at $110 million, some 18 months after announcing it had raised a $50 million Series B.
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In a press briefing on Wednesday, the Pentagon said it has no evidence that the mysterious drones that have been flying over New Jersey and other parts of the northeast U.S. in recent weeks were coming from a foreign entity, nor were they U.S. military drones. The comments come a day after a U.S. Congressional […]
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Most drones on the market are rotary-wing quadcopters, which can conveniently land and take off almost anywhere. The problem is they are less energy-efficient than fixed-wing aircraft, which can fly greater distances and stay airborne for longer but need a runway, a dedicated launcher, or at least a good old-fashioned throw to get to the skies.
To get past this limit, a team of Swiss researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne built a fixed-wing flying robot called RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments) with a peculiar bio-inspired landing gear: a pair of robotic bird-like legs. “The RAVEN robot can walk, hop over obstacles, and do a jumping takeoff like real birds,” says Won Dong Shin, an engineer leading the project.
The key challenge in attaching legs to drones was that they significantly increased mass and complexity. State-of-the-art robotic legs were designed for robots walking on the ground and were too bulky and heavy to even think about using on a flying machine. So, Shin’s team started their work by taking a closer look at what the leg mass budget looked like in various species of birds.
© EPFL/Alain Herzog
Recently, Amp Robotics changed its business model to focus on running entire facilities that sort recyclables.
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A startup with founders who previously served in the German military has created a product akin to an Amazon Firestick for legacy defense equipment, complete with a software stack. ARX Robotics claims its system can turn old equipment into AI-driven devices, such as autonomous-driving trucks. Back in June this year ARX raised a €9 million […]
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There's a common popular science demonstration involving "soap boats," in which liquid soap poured onto the surface of water creates a propulsive flow driven by gradients in surface tension. But it doesn't last very long since the soapy surfactants rapidly saturate the water surface, eliminating that surface tension. Using ethanol to create similar "cocktail boats" can significantly extend the effect because the alcohol evaporates rather than saturating the water.
That simple classroom demonstration could also be used to propel tiny robotic devices across liquid surfaces to carry out various environmental or industrial tasks, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv. The authors also exploited the so-called "Cheerios effect" as a means of self-assembly to create clusters of tiny ethanol-powered robots.
As previously reported, those who love their Cheerios for breakfast are well acquainted with how those last few tasty little "O"s tend to clump together in the bowl: either drifting to the center or to the outer edges. The "Cheerios effect is found throughout nature, such as in grains of pollen (or, alternatively, mosquito eggs or beetles) floating on top of a pond; small coins floating in a bowl of water; or fire ants clumping together to form life-saving rafts during floods. A 2005 paper in the American Journal of Physics outlined the underlying physics, identifying the culprit as a combination of buoyancy, surface tension, and the so-called "meniscus effect."
© Jackson K. Wilt et al. 2024
ktsimage/Getty, Justin Sullivan/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
Wearing his signature black leather jacket, Jensen Huang outstretched both arms, gesturing at the humanoid robots flanking him, and the audience applauded. "About my size," he joked from the stage at Computex 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan, in June.
"Robotics is here. Physical AI is here. This is not science fiction," he said. The robots, though, were flat, generated on a massive screen. What came onto the stage were wheeled machines resembling delivery robots.
Robots are a big part of Huang's vision of the future, which is shared by other tech luminaries, including Elon Musk. In addition to the Computex display, humanoid robots have come up on Nvidia's latest two earnings calls.
Most analysts agree that Nvidia's fate is all but sealed for a few years. Demand for graphics processing units has fueled it to a $3 trillion market capitalization — some days. But the semiconductor industry is cruel. Investment in data centers, which make up 87% of Nvidia's revenue, comes in booms and busts. Nvidia needs another big market.
At Computex, Huang said there would be two "high-volume" robotic products in the future. The first is self-driving cars, and the second is likely to be humanoid robots. Thanks to machine learning, the technologies are converging.
Both machines require humanlike perception of fast-changing surroundings and instantaneous reactions with little room for error. They also both require immense amounts of what Huang sells: AI computing power. But robotics is a tiny portion of Nvidia's revenue today. And growing it isn't just a matter of time.
If Nvidia's place in the tech stratosphere is to be permanent, Huang needs the market for robotics to be big. While the story of Nvidia's past few years has been one of incredible engineering, foresight, and timing, the challenge to make robots real may be even tougher.
Artificial intelligence presents a massive unlock for robotics. But scaling the field means making the engineering and building more accessible.
"Robotic AI is the most complicated because a large language model is software, but robots are a mechanical-engineering problem, a software problem, and a physics problem. It's much more complicated," Raul Martynek, the CEO of the data-center landlord DataBank, said.
Most of the people working on robotics are experts with doctoral degrees in robotics because they have to be. The same was true of language-based AI 10 years ago. Now that foundation models and the computing to support them are widely available, it doesn't take a doctorate to build AI applications.
Layers of software and vast language and image libraries are intended to make users stickier and lower the barrier to entry so that almost anyone can build with AI.
Nvidia's robotics stack needs to do the same, but since using AI in physical spaces is harder, making it work for laypeople is also harder.
The Nvidia robotics stack takes some navigating. It's a sea of platforms, libraries, and names.
Omniverse is a simulation platform. It offers a virtual world that developers can customize and use to test simulations of robots. Isaac is what Nvidia calls a "gym" built on top of Omniverse. It's how you put your robot into an environment and practice tasks.
Jetson Thor is Nvidia's chip for powering robots. Project Groot, which the company refers to as a "moonshot" initiative, is a foundation model for humanoid robots. In July, the company launched a synthetic-data-generation service and Osmo, a software layer that ties it all together.
Huang often says that humanoids are easier to build because the world is already made for humans.
"The easiest robot to adapt in the world are humanoid robots because we built the world for us," he said at Computex, adding: "There's more data to train these robots because we have the same physique."
Gathering data on how we move still takes time, effort, and money. Tesla, for example, is paying people $48 an hour to perform tasks in a special suit to train its humanoid, Optimus.
"That's been the biggest problem in robotics — how much data is needed to give those foundational models an understanding of the world and adjust for it," Sophia Velastegui, an AI expert who's worked for Apple, Google, and Microsoft, said.
But analysts see the potential. The research firm William Blair's analysts recently wrote, "Nvidia's capabilities in robotics and digital twins (with Omniverse) have the potential to scale into massive businesses themselves." The analysts said they expected Nvidia's automotive business to grow 20% annually through 2027.
Nvidia has announced that BMW uses Isaac and Omniverse to train factory robots. Boston Dynamics, BYD Electronics, Figure, Intrinsic, Siemens, and Teradyne Robotics use Nvidia's stack to build robot arms, humanoids, and other robots.
But three robotics experts told Business Insider that so far, Nvidia has failed to lower the barrier to entry for wannabe robot builders like it has in language- and image-based AI. Competitors are coming in to try to open up the ideal stack for robotics before Nvidia can dominate that, too.
"We recognize that developing AI that can interact with the physical world is extremely challenging," an Nvidia spokesperson told BI via email. "That's why we developed an entire platform to help companies train and deploy robots."
In July, the company launched a humanoid-robot developer program. After submitting a successful application, developers can access all these tools.
Ashish Kapoor is acutely aware of all the progress the field has yet to make. For 17 years, he was a leader in Microsoft's robotics-research department. There, he helped to develop AirSim, a computer-vision simulation platform launched in 2017 that was sunsetted last year.
Kapoor left with the shutdown to make his own platform. Last year, he founded Scaled Foundations and launched Grid, a robotics-development platform designed for aspiring robot builders.
No one company can solve the tough problems of robotics alone, he said.
"The way I've seen it happen in AI, the actual solution came from the community when they worked on something together," Kapoor said. "That's when the magic started to happen, and this needs to happen in robotics right now."
It feels like every player aiming for humanoid robots is in it for themselves, Kapoor said. But there's a robotics-startup graveyard for a reason. The robots get into real-world scenarios, and they're simply not good enough. Customers give up on them before they can get better.
"The running joke is that every robot has a team of 10 people trying to run it," Kapoor said.
Grid offers a free tier or a managed service that offers more help. Scaled Foundations is building its own foundation model for robotics but encourages users to develop one, too.
Some elements of Nvidia's robotics stack are open source. And Huang often says that Nvidia is working with every robotics and AI company on the planet, but some developers fear the juggernaut will protect its own success first and support the ecosystem second.
"They're doing the Apple effect. To me, they're trying to lock you in as much as they can into their ecosystem," said Jonathan Stephens, the chief developer advocate at the computer-vision firm EveryPoint.
An Nvidia spokesperson told BI that this perception was inaccurate. The company "collaborates with the majority of the leading players in the robotics and humanoid developer ecosystem" to help them deploy robots faster. "Our success comes from the ecosystem," they said.
Scaled Foundations and Nvidia aren't the only ones working on a foundation model for robotics. Skild AI raised $300 million in July to build its version.
Simulators are an essential stop on the path to humanoid robots, but they don't necessarily lead to humanlike perception.
When describing a robotic arm at Computex, Huang said that Nvidia supplied "the computer, the acceleration layers, and the pretrained AI models" needed to put an AI robot into an AI factory. The goal of using robotic arms in factories at scale has been around for decades. Robotic arms have been building cars since 1961. But Huang was talking about an AI robot — an intelligent robot.
The arms that build cars are largely unintelligent. They're programmed to perform repetitive tasks and often "see" with sensors instead of cameras.
An AI-enabled robotic arm would be able to handle varied tasks — picking up diverse items and putting them down in diverse places without breaking them, maybe while on the move. They need to be able to perceive objects and guardrails and then make moves in a coherent order. But a humanoid robot is a world away from even the most useful nonhumanoid. Some roboticists doubt that it's the right target to aim for.
"I'm very skeptical," said a former Nvidia robotics expert with more than 15 years in the field who was granted anonymity to protect industry relationships. "The cost to make a humanoid robot and to make it versatile is going to be higher than if you make a robot that doesn't look like a human and can only do a single task but does the task well and faster."
But Huang is all in.
"I think Jensen has an obsession with robots because, ultimately, what he's trying to do is create the future," Martynek said.
Autonomous cars and robotics are a big part of Nvidia's future. The company told BI it expected everything to be autonomous eventually, starting with robotic arms and vehicles and leading to buildings and even cities.
"I was at Apple when we developed iPad inspired by 'Star Trek' and other future worlds in movies," Velastegui said, adding that Robotics taps into our imagination.
Robotics startup Figure released a video update showcasing their Figure 02 humanoid robot autonomously performing tasks at HQ for a BMW use case.
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Agility Robotics
Robots are coming for our jobs — at least the repetitive, back-breaking jobs humans increasingly don't want to do.
Peggy Johnson, the Silicon Valley veteran who became the chief executive of Agility Robotics earlier this year, told Business Insider that it'd soon be "very normal" for humanoid robots to become coworkers with humans across a variety of workplaces.
Many factories in the US are struggling to recruit workers amid a labor shortage that Deloitte predicted could cost the economy as much as $1 trillion by 2030. In January, there were 622,000 manufacturing jobs that hadn't been filled, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Enter the robots.
"First in the business-enterprise space because that's where the need is highest. And then, as Digit learns new skills, it'll start to be able to go beyond logistics and manufacturing facilities and eventually, somewhere way down the line, is consumer robots," Johnson said in an interview at the Web Summit tech event in Lisbon earlier this month.
Digit is Agility Robotics' mobile manipulation humanoid robot. It stands at 5-foot-9 and has hands designed to grip and carry objects. Its backward-folding legs allow it to maneuver around a workspace. Digit also has animated LED eyes that act as indicators to its human coworkers to let them know which function it's about to perform next.
This year, Digit became the first humanoid robot to be "paid" for performing a job. Agility Robotics signed a multiyear deal with GXO Logistics for Digit to be deployed in its Spanx womenswear factories, with it moving boxes known as totes and placing them onto conveyor belts.
Agility Robotics charges a monthly fee, similar to a software-as-a-service model, which includes the Digit robot, its work cell, and the robot's operating software.
While Agility Robotics hasn't disclosed the exact amount its Digit robots are paid, the company has previously said that GXO is estimated to see a return on its investment within two years, based on the equivalent of a human working an hourly rate of $30.
Johnson said that any company that requires material handling — be it pharmaceutical or grocery — could make use of a workforce of Digits.
"Mobile phones started first in the enterprise space because there was an ROI for a salesperson not to stop and find a phone," Johnson said. "That will happen with robots."
Ford
Amazon began testing Digit in its warehouse operations last year. Ford is looking at how it can deploy Digit with its autonomous-vehicle technology to create a "last-mile" delivery service. Most recently, Agility Robotics struck a deal with the German automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler, which also made a minority investment in the company.
Agility Robotics has raised about $178 million in investment to date, a spokesperson said. It competes with the likes of Apptronik, which is working with NASA on humanoid robots, and Boston Dynamics, which has created humanoid robots called Atlas that it says can run and jump over obstacles, as well as perform factory-worker tasks.
Agility Robotics' humanoid robots are permitted to work only inside a specific, cordoned-off space separate from human workers. But Johnson said that by mid-2025, the next-generation version of Digit would be able to safely operate around humans. The company is aiming for the new model to be commercially available within 18 to 24 months.
A 2023 Gallup poll found that about one-fifth of US workers surveyed were worried that their jobs would become obsolete because of technology, up from 15% of workers polled in 2021. Johnson said Agility Robotics hadn't had pushback from the likes of workers' unions despite advancements in the number of humanlike tasks Digit can perform. Widespread deployment of humanoid robots is still some way off, however.
"I think they also recognize that these are jobs that they haven't been able to fill," Johnson said. "We tend to think of it as augmenting humans and not replacing humans — it's just taking some of the tasks off their plate."
While Digit robots are starting to be tested in some workplaces, Johnson said getting them to perform tasks around the home, like folding laundry, would take awhile longer.
"A household is a very chaotic environment: At any given moment, a child's ball runs across the room, and dogs run by. There's things that are in the way," Johnson said. "Warehouses are much more disciplined."
Agility Robotics
Johnson said the data gathered by robots working in warehouses would eventually be used to train consumer robots. But she added that she wanted Agility Robotics to focus on demonstrating what its technology can perform today — rather than the concept videos used by some of its competitors.
Robotics videos and demos at trade shows and events are often highly choreographed, she said. For instance, Tesla's humanoid Optimus bots at last month's robotaxi event were remotely operated by humans behind the scenes.
Tesla
"The hype, in general, is not great for the industry because people think it's somehow not here and now," Johnson said. "My job is to say, no, it is here and now. Humanoids are deployed right now and are getting paid to do work."
Agility Robotics takes a similarly cautious approach to its application of artificial intelligence, which is deep in the hype stage. Johnson described the company as "AI-agnostic," as it uses various models in reinforcement learning to help fine-tune Digit's leg movements and help it recognize and carry out various tasks.
"Many companies in the robotics space think, well, now that AI is here, I can just build a complete AI stack. We think that is very dangerous right now," Johnson said. "The problem is, just asking ChatGPT a question — it doesn't always answer exactly right. Can you imagine if what it's telling it to do is move an arm around and these things are human forms, 5-foot-9, 160 pounds? They have a lot of force."
Richard Bord/Getty Images
Neuralink has successfully implanted its brain chip in two human patients — and now it wants to hook it up to a robotic arm.
Elon Musk's brain implant startup said on Monday that it was launching a trial to test whether patients could use the Neuralink implant to control an "investigational assistive robotic arm."
"This is an important first step towards restoring not only digital freedom, but also physical freedom," read a post announcing the trial on the company's X account.
The trial, which Neuralink is calling Convoy, is very early in its development. But using Neuralink's brain implant to control robotic limbs has long been part of Elon Musk's vision for the company.
Last year, the billionaire suggested Neuralink could be combined with the robotic limbs of Tesla's Optimus robot to create a "Luke Skywalker solution," referencing the "Star Wars" protagonist's prosthetic hand.
Neuralink has said it has implanted its brain chip, which is designed to allow quadriplegic and paralyzed patients to control a computer with their mind, in two test subjects so far.
The implant captures brain activity and sends it to a computer via Bluetooth. It allows the user to control a computer cursor and perform activities, including playing video games, surfing the web, and designing 3D models through visualization.
Musk has suggested that Neuralink could have over a thousand patients with the implant by 2026, and the company is hiring manufacturing technicians and microfabrication specialists as it looks to ramp up production.
Neuralink did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent outside normal working hours.
As Tesla gears up to launch a robotaxi service in the coming years, the automaker looks like it’s building out a teleoperations team. According to a recent job listing, Tesla is hiring a software engineer to help develop a teleoperations system that will allow human operators to remotely access and control the company’s upcoming robotaxis […]
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Forget cold plunge pools. The new flex could soon be human washing machines. According to one of Japan’s oldest newspapers, an Osaka-based shower head maker called Science has developed a contraption that’s shaped like a cockpit, fills with water when a bather sits in a seat at its center, and measures the person’s pulse and […]
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Over the last century, automation has revolutionized crops like corn, wheat, and soy, driving down costs and boosting production. Yet, fruits and vegetables have largely been left behind, facing up to 15x higher harvesting costs due to the lack of […]
The post YC-backed robotics startup Four Growers secures $9M Series A to tackle greenhouse labor shortages with AI robots first appeared on Tech Startups.
