Amazon’s new robot Sparrow can handle most-items-in-the-everything-store/a/sqrt(s)=1.8TeV
Amazon is currently testing Sparrow at a facility in Texas where the robot is already sorting products for customer orders. The company says Sparrow can handle 65 percent of the more than 100 million items in its inventory. The range of the robot is what makes it stand out, says the chief technology officer at Amazon. No one has the inventory that Amazon has. Sparrow can grasp a lot of items, but hasn’t been able to comprehend complex packaging.
Brady said that the role ofrobots is misconstrued. “I don’t view it as replacing people,” he said. The win is if I can allow people to concentrate on higher level tasks, and if humans and machines work together.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/amazons-new-robot-sparrow-can-handle-most-items-in-the-everything-store/
Sanctuary, a Robotics Startup, and the Limits of AI: Why Robots Can’t Get Their Actors Remotely
At its event today, Amazon also demonstrated a new delivery drone, called MK30, that is capable of carrying loads of up to 5 pounds. The new, more efficient drone will go into service in 2024, as evidenced by the testing Amazon has done in Lockeford, California and College Station, Texas. The Rivian electric delivery vehicle has a number of safety systems that include collision warning and automatic braking as well as a system called Fleet Edge that gathers street-view footage and data to improve delivery routes.
Sanctuary recently ran what it calls the first “real world” test of one of its robots, by having a humanoid like this one work in a store not far from the startup’s headquarters. The company believes that it could help address the labor shortages that many companies are facing by being able to do physical work remotely.
Industrial robots are mostly stupid and powerful. They can’t perform the kind of manipulation tasks that require precision and responsiveness. That’s partly why the use of robots in factories is still relatively limited, and still requires an army of human workers to assemble all the fiddly bits into the guts of iPhones.
Sanctuary has a robot that does a variety of sophisticated manipulation tasks. Offscreen, a human wearing a VR headset and sensor-laden gloves is operating the robot remotely.
I have written about the advantages of remote assistance for robots when they get stuck. The limits of AI mean that robots working in restaurants, offices, and on the street as delivery mules are flummoxed by unusual situations. Some firms want to put remotely piloted trucks on the roads as a result of the difficulty in pulling off fully self driving.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/fast-forward-for-smarter-robots-just-add-humans/
Sanctuary and OpenAI: Robotic Teleoperation, Robotic Robots, and Human-like Intelligence for Human-Like Robots
Sanctuary’s founders, Geordie Rose and Suzanne Gilbert, ran Kindred, another company doing robotic teleoperation that was acquired in 2020 by Ocado, a UK supermarket firm that uses automation extensively. In this video the pair talk about the company’s history and plans for the future.
Data from people teleoperating therobots to teach them to do more tasks autonomously is the aim of the project. achieving humanlike intelligence in machines will require them to interact with and learn from the physical world, says Gilbert, Sanctuary’s CTO. (Sorry, ChatGPT.)
OpenAI has an interest in teleoperated humanoids. It is leading a $23.5 million investment in 1X, a startup developing a human-like robot. Brad Lightcap, Openai’s COO and manger of the Openai Startup Fund believes in the approach that 1X can have on the future of work.
Will Knight sent out this WIRED’s Fast Forward newsletter which explores artificial intelligence and other technology set to change our lives.