Everything from the speed of the recording to the tasks being performed (such as carrying boxes or sorting objects) may be misrepresenting what these bipedal bots are actually capable of right now.
The MIT Technology Review has put together a quick guide to help viewers be more aware and critical of what’s happening behind the scenes.
[MIT Technology Review]
We haven’t seen much of Boston Dynamics’ new all-electric version of Atlas since its debut back in April. But today the company shared another brief look at the highly articulated humanoid doing a quick round of pushups.
Boston Dynamics originally described the new Atlas as being able to “move in ways that exceed human capabilities.” Doing seven pushups already exceeds this human’s capabilities.
Mineral, which Alphabet shut down last month, says it has sold some of its technology to John Deere to support the company’s See & Spray product, according to a memo posted last week. The startup also confirms that the berry company Driscoll will use Mineral’s tech to “better forecast yields, optimize quality inspections, and reduce food waste.”
The new Aibo Kinako Edition is the first to feature a two-tone finish on its face and will include two new eye color options.
It will be officially available starting tomorrow in Japan, but Sony has also announced a ¥55,000 (about $374) price increase for its already pricey robot dog, citing the rising costs of raw materials.
AES has given its Atlas solar robot some AWS smarts and redubbed it “Maximo.” It helped complete an Amazon-backed solar farm in Louisiana and is now moving on to Bellefield, California, home of the largest solar-plus-storage project in the US. According to Amazon, it can “reduce solar installation timelines and costs by as much 50 percent:”
Besides automating heavy lifting, Maximo can also perform in nearly any weather or lighting condition, which is especially useful for the Bellefield project, which is located in a sandy desert area known for extreme heat. Once Maximo arrives there later this year, the robot will work alongside crews to lift hundreds of heavy solar panels into place.
What he means by that exactly is anyone’s guess. Will they be helping to build vehicles? Is Optimus being ditched as it wasn’t name-dropped? We might find out next year, though Musk has previously admitted these timelines are mostly guesswork.
It’s not like Tesla has stuck to its Robotaxi reveal dates yet.
IHMC showcased improvements to its Nadia robot that lower the latency of its VR-controlled inputs enough to play table tennis against a human.
The ultimate design goal for Nadia — named after famed gymnast Nadia Comăneci — is to achieve a human range-of-motion, having demonstrated its boxing capabilities last year in a Real Steel-like fashion.
In Julio Torres’ series Fantasmas, survival in the future is an intricate, corporate-owned game of feeding your identity to the machine.
This dark comedy imagines a future where humanity’s bugs are robots’ special features.
Tesla says it “deployed two Optimus bots performing tasks in the factory autonomously.” It’s just a single bullet in a very long post on X that Elon made somebody write to justify voting for his $56 billion payday.
That autonomy could mean anything, of course, but this video from May includes a possible scenario.
Aibo — Sony’s “Four-Legged Entertainment Robot” — hit the shelves in 1999, to the utter horror of parents (like my own) who had barely recovered from Furbies launching the year prior.
Happy 25th birthday you old dog! My inner child is heartbroken to have never owned you, but my now 30-year-old self will happily skip the current model’s near $3,000 price tag.
Recently we suggested Boston Dynamics should enshroud its bots in some kind of hair. Today Boston Dynamics showed off a costume for its Spot robot that is festooned in blue, sparkly fur.
I’m sure its just a coincidence, but if not, thank you for listening Boston Dynamics. The bots are indeed less terrifying when they look like giant puppet dogs or some kind of adorable CGI render.
Equipped with laser sighting, lidar mapping, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the Thermonator (yes, really) is apparently legal in 48 US states for things like “snow and ice removal.” It’s also purportedly being sold for $9,420, or about 3x more than buying the robot and flamethrower separately. But what good is a flamethrower if not for a marketing stunt?
That’s what Elon Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call on Tuesday, adding that Tesla will likely be able to sell the humanoid bot “externally by the end of next year.” But don’t get your hopes up just yet — Musk says these timelines “are just guesses.”
Its robotic arm heats vegan burgers and crispy potatoes while relegating humans to assembly line jobs.
Disney is showcasing some of the incredible technology and design developments that go into its theme parks in its “We Call It Imagineering” YouTube series.
The first episode features audio-animatronics for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (which is replacing Splash Mountain), including Tiana herself and the massive trumpet-playing alligator Louis from The Princess and the Frog. Plus, a cameo from these delightful droids!
According to this Financial Times report, AI and robotics providers have some lofty expectations regarding how popular their technology will be in manufacturing environments.
One company claims that 14 percent of manufacturing and automotive jobs will be automated in the next four years, and Goldman Sachs projects that the humanoid robot market could reach $38 billion by 2035 — at least if robots like Tesla’s Optimus can become as capable as their makers are claiming they will be.
This is Figure’s humanoid robot, which can now use OpenAI’s large vision language model (VLM) to provide reasoning and language understanding. The video shows how the bot can identify and interact with the objects on the counter in front of it when given a prompt, like “Can I have something to eat?”
