When I attended Automate in Chicago a few weeks back, multiple people thanked me for TechCrunch’s semi-regular robotics job report. It’s always edifying to get that feedback in person. While it’s true that the industry has seen ups and downs in terms of both funding and hiring in recent years, there’s never been a more […]
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Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores. Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called the Bot Company, has raised $150 million from former Github CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotics AI. At the end of February, the Windows maker spearheaded a massive $675 million Series B in Bay Area-based Figure. Today, the tech giant announced a collaboration with Figure competitor Sanctuary AI, best known for its humanoid robot, Phoenix.
The Sanctuary partnership really gets to the heart of Microsoft’s interest in the category: artificial general intelligence. It’s a concept that comes up a lot when discussing humanoid robots — too often, I would argue, given the state of things. While such breakthroughs are likely several years off (at least), they’re required for humanoid robots to reach the long promised “general-purpose status.”
In essence, that means robots that can learn and reason like humans. That represents a potential quantum leap for robotic capabilities, which have traditionally been limited to one or two tasks. The humanoid form factor opens these systems to a far broader range of motion than single-purpose systems, but they will ultimately need the intelligence to match.
“Creating systems that think like, and understand us, is one of the biggest civilization-level technical problems and opportunities that we will ever face,” Sanctuary co-founder and CEO Geordie Rose notes. “A challenge like this requires the best global minds to work together. We’re excited to be working with Microsoft to unlock the next generation of AI models that will power general-purpose robots.”
Such a partnership deepens Microsoft’s commitment to AI development and delivers a partner who can design hardware to those specifications. Sanctuary has been operating in the space for some time now, and recently scored a pilot partnership with Magna, which will bring the latest version of Phoenix to car plants.
All told, Sanctuary robots “have been tested across 400 customer-defined tasks across 15 different industries.” Of course, we’re still in the very early stages of all of this.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke about his own interest in humanoids earlier this year. Neither Sanctuary nor Figure got a mention, though he did spend some time discussing competitors Agility and Apptronik.
Microsoft isn’t alone in hedging its bets in the category. OpenAI (another Microsoft partner) has made its own investments in both Figure and competitor 1X.
Sanctuary AI often isn’t mentioned in the same breath as humanoid robotics firms like Boston Dynamics, Agility, Figure and 1X, but the Canadian company has been operating in the space for some time. In fact, a new robot introduced on Thursday is actually the seventh-generation of its Phoenix line.
While a recent iteration introduced legs into the line, Sanctuary is most concerned with what’s happening from the waist up. Tellingly, new videos of the latest robot are focused on the system’s torso. The Canadian firm is highlighting the system’s human-like movements while sorting product, as well as the speed with which it can learn such tasks.
Much of the humanoid coverage up to this point has (understandably) revolved around mechatronics — specifically how these robots look as they navigate their way through the world. Boston Dynamics’ recent video is a perfect example of how much can be communicated in a few short seconds.
Ultimately, however, robotic intelligence will be as — or perhaps more — important to these systems, going forward. While “general intelligence” is one of those big, abstract terms, the consensus among many roboticists is that we’re still five-10 years out from robots that are capable of learning new tasks in a manner similar to their human co-workers.
That does not mean, however, that today’s systems can’t learn tasks quickly. Sanctuary, for instance, suggests that the new Phoenix is capable of automating new tasks in less than 24 hours.
“With generation seven, we have a system that we believe is the most closely analogous to a person of any available,” co-founder and CEO Geordie Rose says. “We see this as not only the cornerstone of general-purpose AI robotics but a critical step on the path to artificial general intelligence, and we’re thrilled to be leading the charge on it.”
Image Credits: Sanctuary AI
Now the amount of time and consistency almost certainly varies from task to task. Those featured in the demo are relatively simple — separate objects of different colors — in what looks to be a structured and controlled environment. But Sanctuary absolutely deserves credit for already having deployed earlier systems. The company also recently announced a deal that will bring its systems to Magna auto manufacturing facilities.
For the most part, the seventh-generation robot — introduced 12 months after its predecessor — brings further refinements to the line, including increased up time, an improved range of motion, lighter weight and a lower-cost bill of materials.
Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s weekly news recap. The weather’s getting hotter — but not quite as hot as the generative AI space, which saw a slew of new models released this week, including Meta’s Llama 3.
In other AI news, Hyundai-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics unveiled an electric-powered humanoid follow-up to its long-running Atlas robot, which it recently retired. As Brian writes, the new robot — also called Atlas — has a kinder, gentler design than both the original Atlas and more contemporary robots like the Figure 01 and Tesla Optimus.
Turning our attention to YouTube for a moment, Dom and Amanda wrote about how Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), the famed gadget reviewer, shouldn’t be blamed for the fate of AI startup Humane AI, whose product, the Ai Pin, Brownlee gave a scathing review of earlier this week. They point out that Humane is a well-funded company with plenty of funds in the bank to burn, and find that critics of Brownlee — who accuse him of being unfairly harsh — have misplaced their rage.
Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.
X charges for posting: X CEO Elon Musk is planning to charge new X users a small fee to enable posting on the social network in an effort to curb what he describes as a “bot problem.”
Change ransomware: An extortion group has published a portion of what it claims are the private and sensitive patient records on millions of Americans stolen during the ransomware attack on Change Healthcare in February.
Tesla adjusts prices: In more Tesla news, the automaker ditched EV inventory price discounts in what CEO Elon Musk characterized as a move to “streamline” sales and delivery. Tesla also dropped the price of its advanced driver assistance package, Full Self-Driving, to $99 per month in the U.S.
Mars free-for-all: Devin reports that space startups are licking their lips over NASA’s decision to convert its $11 billion, 15-year mission to collect and return samples from Mars into essentially a commercial free-for-all.
Waymo problems: Six Waymo robotaxis blocked traffic moving onto an on-ramp in San Francisco on Tuesday. It’s not the first time Waymo vehicles have caused a road blockage, notes Rebecca — but this is the first documented incident involving a freeway.
Google Cloud bets on generative AI: Ron writes about how Google Cloud is investing heavily in generative AI, as evidenced by the string of announcements during Google’s Cloud Next conference earlier in the month.
Generative AI in health: Generative AI is coming for healthcare — but not everyone’s thrilled. Some experts don’t think the tech is ready for prime time.
Airchat, for talking: Anthony breaks down the hype over Airchat, an app launched by former AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and ex-Tinder product exec Brian Norgard that focuses on voice, not text.
Sanctuary AI announced that it will be delivering its humanoid robot to a Magna manufacturing facility. Based in Canada, with auto manufacturing facilities in Austria, Magna manufactures and assembles cars for a number of Europe’s top automakers, including Mercedes, Jaguar and BMW. As is often the nature of these deals, the parties have not disclosed how many of Sanctuary AI’s robots will be deployed.
The news follows similar deals announced by Figure and Apptronik, which are piloting their own humanoid systems with BMW and Mercedes, respectively. Agility also announced a deal with Ford at CES in January 2020, though that agreement found the American carmaker exploring the use of Digit units for last-mile deliveries. Agility has since put that functionality on the back burner, focusing on warehouse deployments through partners like Amazon.
For its part, Magna invested in Sanctuary AI back in 2021 — right around the time Elon Musk announced plans to build a humanoid robot to work in Tesla factories. The company would later dub the system “Optimus.” Vancouver-based Sanctuary unveiled its own system, Phoenix, back in May of last year. The system stands 5’7” (a pretty standard height for these machines) and weighs 155 pounds.
Phoenix isn’t Sanctuary’s first humanoid (an early model had been deployed at a Canadian retailer), but it is the first to walk on legs — this is in spite of the fact that most available videos only highlight the system’s torso. The company has also focused some of its efforts on creating dexterous hands — an important addition if the system is expected to expand functionality beyond moving around totes.
Sanctuary calls the pilot, “a multi-disciplinary assessment of improving cost and scalability of robots using Magna’s automotive product portfolio, engineering and manufacturing capabilities; and a strategic equity investment by Magna.”
As ever, these agreements should be taken as what they are: pilots. They’re not exactly validation of the form factor and systems — that comes later, if Magna gets what it’s looking for with the deal. That comes down to three big letters: ROI.
The company isn’t disclosing specifics with regard to the number of robots, the length of the pilot or even the specific factory where they will be deployed.
This week Boston Dynamics retired its well-known Atlas robot that was powered by hydraulics. Then today it unveiled its new Atlas robot, which is powered by electricity.
The change might not seem like much, but TechCrunch’s Brian Heater told the TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulics system was out of date. It’s not hard to spot why Boston Dynamics, owned by Hyundai, wanted to go electric. Its new Atlas robot is leaner, and appears to have improved range-of-motion. Size and ability to contort and maneuver are not cosmetic elements to a humanoid robot — they can unlock new use cases and possible work environments.
The new Atlas is not incredibly well-defined today, which is not a massive surprise given that it’s still a work in progress. Still, we do know that it will first head to Hyundai factories before hitting the market more generally down the road.
Happily for those of us who want a domestic robot to handle household chores and hold our hands whilst we cry, there are other startups working on the humanoid robot project. Figure, Agility, Tesla, there are too many companies vying for the same prize to note in this short post. Which has me incredibly excited — more people working on the problem means quicker progress, and hopefully faster completion of a general purpose humanoid robot that can learn.
On that last bit, it’s worth keeping in mind that AI is set to play a large role in how robots go from being great at set, repetitive tasks to being able to learn, and do a great deal more without direct programming. While it will take time for LLMs’ ability to ingest language, write code, and the like to connect to robots under development today, you can spot the future if you squint far enough into the distance. To which all I can say is, faster, please!
Atlas lies motionless in a prone position atop interlocking gym mats. The only soundtrack is the whirring of an electric motor. It’s not quiet, exactly, but it’s nothing compared to the hydraulic jerks of its ancestors.
As the camera pans around the robot’s back, its legs bend at the knees. It’s a natural movement, at first, before crossing into an uncanny realm, like something out of a Sam Raimi movie. The robot, which appeared to be lying on its back, has effectively switched positions with this clever bit of leg rotation.
As Atlas fully stands, it does so with its back to the camera. Now the head spins around 180 degrees, before the torso follows suit. It stands for a moment, offering the camera its first clear view of its head — a ring light forming the perimeter of a perfectly round screen. Once again, the torso follows the head’s 180, as Atlas walks away from the camera and out of frame.
A day after retiring the hydraulic version of its humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics just announced that — like Bob Dylan before it — Atlas just went electric.
The pace is fast, the steps still a bit jerky — though significantly more fluid than many of the new commercial humanoids to which we’ve been introduced over the past couple of years. If anything, the gait brings to mind the brash confidence of Spot, Atlas’ cousin whose branch on the evolutionary tree forked off from the humanoid a few generations ago.
The new version of the robot is virtually unrecognizable. Gone is the top-heavy torso, the bowed legs and plated armor. There are no exposed cables anywhere to be found on the svelte new mechanical skeleton. The company, which has warded off reactionary complaints of robopocalypse for decades, has opted for a kinder, gentler design than both the original Atlas and more contemporary robots like the Figure 01 and Tesla Optimus.
The new robot’s aesthetic more closely matches that of Agility’s Digit and Apptronik’s Phoenix. There’s a softer, more cartoonish design to the traffic-light-headed robot. It’s the “All New Atlas,” according to the video. Boston Dynamics has bucked its own trend by maintaining the research name for a product it will be positioning toward commercialization. SpotMini became Spot. Handle became Stretch. For now, however, Atlas is still Atlas.
“We might revisit this when we really get ready to build and deliver in quantity,” Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter tells TechCrunch. “But I think for now, maintaining the branding is worthwhile.”
The executive’s statement betrays the still early stages of the project. Boston Dynamics’ current timeline has the electric Atlas beginning pilot testing at Hyundai facilities earlier next year, with full production a few years further down the road.
“We’re going to be doing experiments with Hyundai on-site, beginning next year,” says Playter. “We already have equipment from Hyundai on-site. We’ve been working on this for a while. To make this successful, you have to have a lot more than just cool tech. You really have to understand that use case, you’ve got to have sufficient productivity to make investment in a robot worthwhile.”
Image Credits: Boston Dynamics
What’s most striking about the 40-second “All New Atlas” teaser is the robot’s movements. They’re a reminder that building a humanoid robot doesn’t require making the robot as human as possible. As an investor pointed out to me years back, billions of years of evolution hasn’t made us humans perfect machines. If we are going to create machines in our own images, why not build ones that can do things we can’t?
“We built a set of custom, high-powered and very flexible actuators at most joints,” says Playter. “That’s a huge range of motion. That really packs the power of an elite athlete into this tiny package, and we’ve used that package all over the robot.”
One thing worth keeping in mind while watching the footage is that Boston Dynamics has made its name across decades of viral videos. Recent additions to the canon are just as likely to showcase a ’bot’s dance moves as they are anything genuinely useful in an industrial setting. For that reason, it’s difficult to decouple what the company has deemed real functionality and what is just a bit of showing off.
Starting in the prone position, for instance, is an opportunity to showcase that cool reverse crab leg trick — but it’s practical, as well. As Boston Dynamics was more than happy to showcase in the hydraulic Atlas’ farewell video, falling down is part of the job — and so, too, is getting up. The truth of the matter is that most of the current crop of industrial robots require human intervention when they fail. A robot that can simply dust itself off and get back to work, on the other hand, is a big win for productivity.
The system’s ability to turn on a dime also lends considerably to its productivity potential. It brings to mind Agility’s Digit demos (the company is notably the only one of its ilk demoing systems at this scale), wherein a robot walks to a shelf, turns around, walks to the conveyer belt, turns around and walks back. Multiply that job by hundreds — or even thousands — of times a day, and you begin to see the value of shaving off precious seconds.
“It’s going to be capable of a set of motions that people aren’t,” explains Playter. “There will be very practical uses for that.”
Significantly reducing the robot’s turn radius is also important in tight spaces. Remember, these machines are meant to be brownfield solutions — that is, they’re designed to be plugged into existing workflows in existing spaces. Increased maneuverability could ultimately mean the difference between working in a setting and having to redo the layout.
Image Credits: Boston Dynamics
The hands aren’t brand new for the video, having previously made appearances on the hydraulic model. They do, however, also represent the company’s decision to not hue entirely to human design as a guiding force. Here, the difference is as simple as opting for three fingers, instead of four on the end effectors.
“There’s so much complexity in a hand,” says Playter. “When you’re banging up against the world with actuators, you have to be prepared for reliability and robustness. So, we designed these with fewer than five fingers to try to control their complexity. We’re continuing to explore generations of those. We want compliant grasping, adapting to a variety of shapes with rich sensing on board, so you understand when you’re in contact.
Internally, the most contentious aspect of the design may well be the head. The big, round display has shades of a cosmetic mirror.
“It was one of the design elements we fretted over quite a bit,” says Playter. “Everybody else had a sort of humanoid shape. I wanted it to be different. We want it to be friendly and open. It provides a palette for a display. Of course, there are sensors buried in there, but also the shape is really intended to indicate some friendliness. That will be important for interacting with these things in the future.”
Image Credits: Boston Dynamics
The landscape has changed dramatically in the decade since the hydraulic Atlas’ introduction. Electric Atlas has a fair bit of company, in the form of humanoid robots from Figure, Apptronik, Tesla and 1X, among others.
“For us, there’s obviously been a huge influx of interest. I think that influx has been motivated by three events. Boston Dynamics got acquired [by Hyundai] for nearly a billion dollars. That sort of woke everybody up like, ‘whoa, there’s an exit path.’ Tesla expressing interest in manufacturing sort of validated things we’ve been doing for a long time. And then, the emergence of AI as a tool to help deal with generality is making all of this feasible. We’ve been patient to announce, because we wanted to do enough research to understand that we can solve manipulation problems and be confident in a new generation of machine.
In spite of Boston Dynamics’ big head start in humanoids, Playter says the company got the new robot’s first build together around Christmas 2023. Before that, it was working through many of the more complex problems in simulation.
This week, it seems, the company is finally ready to begin showing off what the robot can do — or at least the early stages of what it’s planning with the system.
One thing you can definitely say about Elon Musk is the guy makes big promises. In the earliest public-facing days of Optimus, when the Tesla ’bot appeared to be little more than a spandex-clad human, the executive spoke of a system that could do it all. Your Optimus could work all day in the factory, do your grocery shopping and then cook you dinner. That’s the dream, right?
The truth of the matter is, of course, one built around baby steps. Robotics firms may already be discussing “general-purpose humanoids,” but their systems are scaling one task at a time. For most, that means moving payloads from point A to B. Truly utilizing the form factor, however, will require a more generalized intelligence.
It appears the app store model might present the clearest path there. Developer access has, after all, been a big part of growing out Spot’s feature set. Playter, however, says Boston Dynamics won’t be taking that approach with Atlas.
“We are definitely going to target an application ourself and not build a platform,” he says. Our experience is that the way to go fast is for us to focus on an application and go solve problems — and not assume someone else is going to solve it for us. I do think AI is an essential piece here. To support the generality of tasks is going to take and will be reinforced with AI techniques.”
The company recently opened access to Spot’s reinforcement learning algorithm for developers. That work will be foundational to Atlas’ growing skillset.
To be successful, Playter explains, humanoids have to move beyond the boxes.
“I think you can do that with so many other robots,” he says. “Humanoids need to be able to support a huge generality of tasks. You’ve got two hands. You want to be able to pick up complex, heavy geometric shapes that a simple box picker could not pick up — and you’ve got to do hundreds of thousands of those. I think the single-task robot is a thing of the past. Stretch is one of the last applications where you can have a robot just moving around boxes and make it work.”
If not boxes, what will the new Atlas be tasked with on the Hyundai show floor? The answer can be found in a video posted by the company back in February, which saw the hydraulic version of the robot interacting with car struts — the Hyundai components to which Playter alluded to earlier.
“Our long history in dynamic mobility means we’re strong and we know how to accommodate a heavy payload and still maintain tremendous mobility,” he says. “I think that’s going to be a differentiator for us, being able to pick up heavy, complex, massive things. That strut in the video probably weighs 25 pounds. Picking up wheels — we’ll launch a video later as part of this whole effort showing a little bit more of the manipulation tasks with real-world objects we’ve been doing with Atlas. I’m confident we know how to do that part, and I haven’t seen others doing that yet.”
Mentee Robotics hasn’t been in stealth, exactly. The Israeli firm caught a small wave of press at the tail end of 2022, following Tesla’s initial humanoid robotics announcement. As that was the year of the startup’s founding, it didn’t have much to show off at the time. Even so, the firm caught some headlines because its co-founder and chair, Amnon Shashua, founded Mobileye and the well-funded AI firm, AI21 Labs.
On Wednesday, however, the company offered up a glimpse of Menteebot, its own stab at the rapidly growing humanoid category. In its current form, the system certainly represents a dramatically different approach than others on the market. In fact, this is one of those spots where the precise definition of what constitutes a humanoid system gets blurred.
It’s worth noting here that the robot on display is very much a prototype — albeit one its creators believe has made sufficient progress to justify a public debut after two years in stealth. Given Shashua’s resume, two things are predictably front and center with Menteebot: computer vision and generative AI.
“We are on the cusp of a convergence of computer vision, natural language understanding, strong and detailed simulators, and methodologies on and for transferring from simulation to the real world,” the founder says in a release. “At Mentee Robotics we see this convergence as the starting point for designing the future general-purpose bi-pedal robot that can move everywhere (as a human) with the brains to perform household tasks and learn through imitation tasks it was not previously trained for.”
Image Credits: Mentee Robotics
Undoubtedly, perception and reasoning are two key pillars that are going to drive the evolution of the category, and Mentee has a lot going for it, with regard to pedigree. In addition to Shashua, the founding team is rounded out by CEO and former Facebook AI Research director Lior Wolf and Shai Shalev-Shwartz, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and current Mobileye CTO. That team, in part, has helped the firm raise $17 million, thus far, led by Ahren Innovation Capital.
Mentee looks to be casting a very wide net to start, looking at both the industrial and home markets. Makers of humanoids will generally tell you that the home is somewhere way down the road map. Warehouse and factories are the first stop, given the need for additional labor, and the fact that they’ve got deeper pockets than most consumers and the more structured environments offered by industrial settings.
For now, the company is showcasing how AI models can help the system work through tasks.
Mentee notes:
Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) are used for interpreting commands and “thinking through” the required steps for completing the task. An emphasis is placed on the ability to integrate locomotion and dexterity, i.e., dynamically balancing the robot when carrying weights or reaching out with the hands.
Mentee expects to release a production-ready prototype toward the beginning of 2025.
Now that humanoids are all the rage in the robotics industry, Boston Dynamics on Tuesday officially retired theirs. The Hyundai-owned firm has always marched to the beat of its own drummer. Even so, it’s an odd decision as funding pours into the category by the hundreds of millions.
Venturing an educated guess, I would say that today’s Atlas retirement is less about endings than new beginnings. Most likely, the hulking humanoid is gracefully stepping out of the way of whatever is coming next for the firm.
Boston Dynamics has been focused on commercializing technologies for a number of years now. Hyundai’s 2021 acquisition of the firm, coupled with the appointment of Rob Playter as its second-ever CEO, has further accelerated that path. Given the tremendous interest around companies like Agility, Figure, 1X and Apptronik, it stands to reason that — at the very least — the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company has — at the very least — seriously explored the commercial humanoid category.
Boston Dynamics was, of course, well ahead of the current humanoid robotics curve. Last July marked the 10th anniversary of the bipedal robot’s debut. The company teamed with DARPA for Atlas’ early development, leading the robot to be heavily incorporated into challenges of the era.
“At the time of its debut, Atlas was one of the most advanced humanoid robots ever built,” DARPA notes, “but it was essentially a physical shell for the software brains and nerves that the teams developed.”
Then-DARPA program manager Gill Pratt compared the robot to a human infant. “A one-year-old child can barely walk, a one-year-old child falls down a lot,” he said. “As you see these machines and you compare them to science fiction, just keep in mind that this is where we are right now.”
Atlas has taken many strides in the intervening decade, of course, as the bipedal robot continues to factor into Boston Dynamics’ research and promotional material. Today, however, marks the end of the road for the robot. While many of the system’s advances in locomotion still impress, certain aspects, like its hydraulics, are antiquated by contemporary robotics standards.
Another wrinkle in today’s news is that, as of February, Boston Dynamics was still showcasing Atlas’ capabilities. In fact, the company seemed to be teasing at commercializing the project with the release of a video called “Atlas Struts” (not Atlas Shrugs, mind).
The video’s official caption reads, “Can’t trip Atlas up! Our humanoid robot gets ready for real work combining strength, perception, and mobility.” The video, meanwhile, showcased some cool augmented reality perception tricks and a new grasper that appeared specifically designed for work on the factory floor. Given Hyundai’s ownership of the firm, it’s easy to imagine some eventual Atlas descendant helping to build future cars.
Meantime, in lieu of a gold watch, Boston Dynamics is offering up a video featuring some of Atlas’ greatest hits and most spectacular falls. It’s one final blooper reel that demonstrates just how much work goes into those perfectly choreographed videos.
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