In some parts of the world (read: Japan, primarily), eldercare has been an important robotics focus for decades. In recent years, other markets have begun exploring the space. Labrador Robotics’ home assistive system is a good example here in the States. In Tel Aviv, meanwhile, Intuition Robotics has been promoting a “companion” robot since 2016 or so.
ElliQ finally hit the market last March, and has found some success through partnerships with assistive care facilities. The little robot’s debut was clearly strong enough to bring investors back, as Intuition raised $25 million this summer. That latest round, led by Toyota’s Woven Capital growth funding, brought the startup’s total raise up to $83 million.
Much of that new capital has gone into ElliQ 3. The latest version of the robot features design tweaks, more powerful hardware and — of course — generative AI integration. That last bit seems to be a given for anything announced at this week’s CES event in Las Vegas.
ElliQ’s design is an Yves Behar joint effort. His studio is continuing to play a role in the refinement of this latest generation. The footprint is around one-third smaller than its predecessor and it weighs 1.3 pounds less. Memory has been increased, and the on-board MediaTek octa-core processor has been updated. Hardware updates appear primarily focused on improving ease-of-use and the ability to scale up manufacturing.
Generative AI is, of course, the big buzz phrase of CES — and, most likely, the year. Here the company says it’s leveraging LLMs to improve the system’s conversational capabilities. That, after all, is one of the system’s primary features. The company notes, “Now users can discuss a virtually infinite number of topics in a more natural and detailed manner with ElliQ.”
Intuition says the new models will improve the experience both in set and open-ended conversations, as well as improving ElliQ’s ability to intuit the nature of requests based on context. The company is exploring other avenues with generative AI, as well here.
“One example is the ability to paint or write poems together, activities that contribute to cognitive wellness and creativity,” Intuition notes. “Sharing these creations with loved ones or the greater ElliQ user community also contributes to social wellness, a decrease in loneliness, and amplifies a sense of recognition.”
Image Credits: Sahmyook University College of Health Science
Sahmyook University this week showcased some of the ongoing work the Seoul-based research institute is doing with Samsung on the robot exosuit front. There aren’t a ton of details surrounding EX1 (not to be confused with an old Samsung digital camera by the same name) at the moment, but there are some promising results here.
I tend to be wary when consumer electronics corporations dip their toes into the world of robotics. The category offers an attention-grabbing shorthand for companies attempting to bolster their future outlook. More often than not, the systems rolled out on-stage are little more than vaporware.
Samsung has mostly played it close to the belt when discussing their robotics ambitions. Sure, Ballie may actually launch somewhere down the road, but what of those more advanced dishwashing and food preparing robots? I’m certainly not holding my breath.
Back in 2019, the company showcased a trio of robots at CES. The wearable exoskeleton was the most compelling of the bunch for two main reasons. First, it’s a realistic product. After all, there are already a number of these solutions on the market. Second, they had working units at the event. I tried one on, and it did, indeed assist me while walking up stairs in the company’s booth.
The hip-worn EX1 falls squarely in the growing category of robotic age-tech. As you get older, muscle mass tends to decline, impacting your walking and increasing the risk of falls. The device is designed specifically to enhance balance and movement.
“Using the wearable robot EX1, older adults can effectively perform simple exercises such as walking and fitness, thereby improving their quality of life,” says research lead, Professor Wan-hee Lee. “EX1 can increase their participation in exercise and serve as a guideline for exercising the right way.”
As noted, the device is designed for both assistive wear and guided exercises. Per the study, stride length improved by more than 12%, while propulsion increased around 21% in subjects who wore EX1 for 50 minutes a day, three times a week for a month.
“Our findings provide a solid foundation for developing various types of improved and advanced wearable robots,” said Lee. “This will further expand the global wearable robot market, promoting further research and commercialization.”
It’s not certain when or if the Samsung EX1 might actually hit the market. Even so, anticipate assistive wearable robotics becoming a lot more prevalent over the next decade.
I’ve spent a good bit of time talking about inventory on these pages. I’m always happy to spend a couple of paragraphs discussing far and away my least favorite part of working retail. The job is, in essence, data collection. As such, it’s a prime candidate for automation — and there are no shortage of startups vying for a space in that conversation.
U.K.-based Dexory today announced plans to expand into the North American market. When I spoke with the startup last year at a robotics event in Chicago, their hardware solution piqued my interest. There is, after all, a big difference between retail and warehouse inventory (thankfully, I’ve never had to do the latter), including — perhaps most importantly — height.
Warehouses stack things vertically — something that is constrained by the height of the average consumer in the front of house. (Unless, of course, you are Costco and can get away with whatever you want because of $1.50 hot dogs.) In the warehouse or fulfillment center, however, things are really only limited by how high up your forklift can reach.
This issue has led to a range of different solutions. A number of robotics startups, for instance, are better than indoor drones and are the key to inventorying high shelves. On the other end of the spectrum are automated storage and retrieval systems — effectively robotic shelving systems that are unwieldy and expensive.
Front of house systems like Simbe, which have been cruising around supermarkets and the like for some time, simply can’t reach. In a lot of ways, DexoryView shares more common DNA than the other solutions. It uses scanning to build a 3D model of the shelving units in front of it. For higher shelves, a large, collapsing tower emerges from the top.
I suspect this is the kind of solution a lot of startups wrote off over feelings of it being altogether unwieldy. The firm has already found success in its native U.K. In June, it announced a $19 million Series A to bring the robot to the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands.
“Following successful customer deployments in Europe, we have seen an increased demand from the North American market,” co-founder and CEO Andrei Danescu says. “Organizations across the globe are getting to grips with the challenging demands of modern supply chains, and DexoryView allows businesses to gain rapid insights into their operations and make informed decisions that drive better efficiencies across their businesses.”
Former Zebra Technologies director of robotics product management Todd Boone will be heading up the efforts on this continent.
After two years of flying high, industrial robot orders dropped by nearly one-third last year. Per the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), 31,159 industrial robots were purchased by North American companies in 2023, down from 44,196. That marks a 30% drop for this key market. The number is also down (albeit less so) from 2021’s 39,708.
The drop is certainly a precipitous one worth examining. What it isn’t, however, is a complete surprise. Last August, we cited a report from the industry group noting a 37% year-over-year drop for the second quarter of 2023. That was the second straight quarterly decline for the industry.
These numbers throw a bit of cold water on what has been regarded as a white-hot industry dating back at least to the beginning of the pandemic. There is, no doubt, some cause for concern among robotics manufacturers. But all of this needs to be caveated by the fact that both 2021 and 2022 marked record sales for the industry. Some regression to the mean was probably inevitable here.
But the story behind the numbers is far more complex than a slowdown in adoption following a pandemic-fueled automation spree. As robust as the category has appeared at times, it’s not immune to the same macroeconomic headwinds as the rest of the tech world. In fact, in some ways, it may be more tenuous. Industrial robots aren’t exactly a luxury item, but they are big-ticket purchases with a lot of upfront costs, pushing many to begin considering the robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) rental model.
Uncertain times are no doubt a major cause of caution. Manufacturing continues to be the key driver for automation, and as the economy struggled in 2023, many postponed plans to purchase new cars. The chip shortage also continued to bottleneck production in the first half of the year. Automotive manufacturing robots — which make just over half the total number — saw a 34% drop for the year.
Non-automotive robots faired only slightly better last year, dropping 25%. According to A3, metal electronics manufacturing, food/consumer, medical and plastics/rubber saw the largest demand outside of automotive for the year.
A3 president Jeff Burnstein struck a hopeful note, stating, “While robotic sales were down over the year, 2023 ended with both an increase over the previous quarter and a nearly equal number of sales from automotive and non-automotive companies. Both are promising signs that more industries are becoming increasingly comfortable with automation overall. While we expect to see automotive orders rise again, there’s little doubt that orders will increase from all non-automotive industries as they recognize how robots can help them overcome their unique challenges.”
Certainly there are economic factors driving potential sales, going forward, including many industries’ stated hiring issues. But the process of adopting automation for the first time is rife with growing pains, and in some cases the promise of new robotics technologies isn’t mature enough for meaningful widescale adoption.
Robots, on the other hand, are a common sight in automotive manufacturing, which has a decades-long head start on the rest of the industry. Factoring in slowing EV purchases has meaningfully impacted the overall figures.
It’s easy to lose track of the fact that robotics is as much a software problem as a hardware one. The programming understandably gets overshadowed by the alure of mechatronics, but without the proper software solution, you’ve got little more on your hands than an expensive paper weight. The road to widespread robotics adoption is fraught with unexpected problems that can ultimately hamper real-world use. There are plenty of problems in search of software solutions.
Jacobi Robotics was founded in 2022 with one specific problem in mind: singularities. Confusingly, the word means something wholly different to robotics than it does in the world of Ray Kurzweil’s AI advancement projection.
In robot-land the concept is far more subtle, while requiring some real knowledge of the category to fully understand. It’s the sort of term one rarely encounters outside of research papers. It is, however, a very real issue with real-world implications.
“Singularities are the Achilles’ heel for industrial robots,” Jacobi notes. “In repetitive tasks, where the robot follows the same motions repeatedly and blindly, robots can be programmed to avoid singularities through weeks of tedious manual fine-tuning of robot paths. But for many robot applications, the robot paths must be modified periodically due to small changes in materials or thermal expansion.”
If you’re at all familiar with robotics hardware, you’ve likely heard the term “degrees of freedom” in reference to, say, a robot arm with six or seven degrees of freedom. This refers to the system’s joints and the axes along which those joints are capable of moving. Singularities are points in space where the robot cannot move. When that happens, a human generally needs to intervene to get things up and running again.
Jacobi Robotics takes its name from the Jacobian matrix, which — in turn — is a reference to pioneering nineteenth century German mathematician, Carl Jacobi. In the world of robotics, the concept refers to the relationship between the velocities of joint and end effectors. To further simplify something I’ve already oversimplified, the concept and the company named after it are concerned with robot path planning.
Jacobi Robotics was founded by a quartet of UC Berkeley robotics students, along with professor Ken Goldberg. Along with serving as the company’s chief scientist, Goldberg is also a co-founder of package sorting robotics company Ambi Robotics, so he’s been through this rodeo before.
To start, the team is focused almost exclusively on the issues around singularities, which can stop a robot dead in its tracks at unpredictable times. In the world of robotic arms, this presents a big issue for key applications, like bin picking, package sort, palletizing — more or less the key things we talk about when we talk about industrial robots.
Jacobi has been in pilots with select partners. That list includes automation deployment firm Formic, as well as a larger consumer electronics firm the company isn’t quite ready to name just yet (you know how these sorts of things go in the corporate world). According to Formic, Jacobi’s approach to attacking singularities has significantly reduced deployment times, even in this early stage. It’s certainly in a startup like Formic’s best interest to address as many potential problems during the deployment process, rather than having to send technicians in after the fact.
Along with Goldberg, the company’s founders include CEO Max Cao, CPO Yahav Avigal, Chief Architect Lars Berscheid and Chief Roboticist Jeff Ichnowski (who also serves as an assistant professor at CMU’s Robotics Institute). Jacobi closed a $1 million pre-seed in early 2023 and is currently focused on raising a proper seed as it looks to bring its solution to market. Current investors include Swift Ventures and Berkeley SkyDeck, the UC Berkely accelerator, which included the startup as part of recent demo day.
The software currently offers support for a number of the biggest robotics arms vendors, including ABB, Fanu, Universal and Yaskawa.
Today Figure confirmed long-standing rumors that it’s been raising more money than God. The Bay Area-based robotics firm announced a $675 million Series B round that values the startup at $2.6 billion post-money.
The lineup of investors is equally impressive. It includes Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures and ARK Invest. It’s a mind-boggling sum of money for what remains a still-young startup, with an 80-person headcount. That last bit will almost certainly change with this round.
Figure already had a lot to work with. Founder Brett Adcock, a serial entrepreneur, bootstrapped the company, putting in an initial $100 million to get it started. Last May, it added $70 million in the form of a Series A. I used to think “Figure” was a reference to the robot’s humanoid design and perhaps an homage to a startup that’s figuring things out. Now it seems it’s might also be a reference to the astronomical funding figure it’s raised thus far.
When Figure launched in 2022, it put out an ambitious goal of creating a walking bipedal robot within a year. The company told TechCrunch that it hit that date. We didn’t see walking video at the time, but it has since surfaced.
Image Credits: Figure
The startup is very much a product of its time: humanoid robots are having a moment. Examples have been showcased by Tesla (though I’d temper your expectations somewhat on that), Apptronik and 1X, among others. Amazon recently began a small pilot with Agility’s Digit robot, which seems to have found its groove supplementing human labor in brownfield warehouses and fulfillment centers.
Most of these efforts — including Figure’s — are working toward that same goal of building robots for industry. Upfront costs are just one reason it makes a lot more sense to focus on the workplace before the home. It’s also one of many reasons it’s important to properly calibrate your expectations of what a system like this can — and can’t — do.
Some companies (namely Tesla again) have perhaps set unrealistic expectations about the current state of the art. I’m speaking primarily about artificial general intelligence, which many roboticists believe is about five years out — though that could well prove optimistic.
“General purpose” gets tossed around a lot when discussing these robots. In essence, it refers to systems that can quickly pick up a variety of tasks the way humans do. Traditional robotics systems are single purpose, meaning they do one thing really well a number of times. Multipurpose systems are certainly out there, and APIs like the kind provided by Boston Dynamics for Spot will go some way toward expanding that functionality.
The eventual goal of generalized AI is, in fact, a big driver for the humanoid form factor. Robots built for a single function are difficult to adapt, while, in theory, a robot built to think like us can do anything we can.
When I visited Figure’s HQ last year, the company had recently built a demo area in the center of its office.
The space’s primary use was showcasing the robot for potential clients and investors. Tellingly, it was set up to resemble a warehouse or factory.
Most people believe that warehouse work is the first step to broader adoption and is perhaps the eventual arrival of a home robot. After all, corporations will happily invest a good chunk of money into a product they believe will save them money in the long run. Also, it’s much easier to fill a day’s work with one or two extremely repetitive tasks. Consumers will almost certainly demand something indistinguishable from generalization before paying the equivalent of a new car to buy one.
It’s worth noting that today’s news also finds Figure signing a partnership with generative AI pioneer OpenAI.
The goal of the deal is to “develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots,” according to Figure. The near-term application for Large Language Models will be the ability to create more natural methods of communication between robot and their human colleagues. “The collaboration aims to help accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline by enhancing the capabilities of humanoid robots to process and reason from language,” the company notes.
Natural language allows people to give the systems commands and gives humans a better understanding of what the robot is doing (hence the ability to “reason” in language). These are, after all, much more complex systems than a human-piloted forklift, for example. If they’re going to operate autonomously, you’re going to need a more direct method of communication — especially on a busy warehouse or factory floor. Language process allows for human assistance in correcting mistakes.
Image Credits: Figure
“We’ve always planned to come back to robotics and we see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models,” OpenAI VP, Peter Welinder, said in a statement. “We’re blown away by Figure’s progress to date and we look forward to working together to open up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life.”
Another thing that makes the deal interesting is OpenAI’s investment in direct competitor, 1X. One wonders whether such a deal is OpenAI rethinking its investments, or if this is simply the company playing the field. My guess at the moment is the latter. If you’re in OpenAI’s position, you might as well work with as many promising companies as you can, and Figure has certainly demonstrated some real progress in the eight months since it took its first steps.
Take the video below, posted a little over a week ago. Figure says the robot’s operations are roughly 16.7% the speed of a human doing the same task. That is, it’s very slow and methodical — deliberate, even. That much is clear from the video. And it’s always good to see a robot operating at actual speed in a demo video, no matter how well produced it happens to be. People have told me in hushed tones that some folks try to pass off sped up videos without disclosing as much. It’s the kind of thing that feeds into consumers’ already unrealistic expectations of what robots can do.
Microsoft’s investment finds Figure utilizing Azure for storage, training and ‘AI infrastructure.
“We are excited to collaborate with Figure and work towards accelerating AI breakthroughs,” said Microsoft Corporate VP, Jon Tinter in a statement. “Through our work together, Figure will have access to Microsoft‘s AI infrastructure and services to support the deployment of humanoid robots to assist people with real world applications.”
Somewhat interestingly, Figure was not included in Bill Gates’ recent list of exciting robotics startups, though two other humanoid companies (Agility and Apptronik) were.
The Amazon Innovation Fund’s participation in this round is also particularly notable, as it can often serve as a pipeline to real-world deployment in fulfillment centers — take Agility as a key example.
The autonomous part is important as well, given the propensity to pass off tele-op for autonomy. One of the reasons autonomy is so difficult in cases like this is all the variations you can’t account for. While warehouses tend to be fairly structured environments, any number of things can occur in the real world that will knock a task off-kilter. And the less structured these tasks become, the larger the potential for error. A lot of questions remain, including how many takes it took to get this right. One thing this absolutely has going for it is the fact that the action is captured in one continuous shot, meaning the company didn’t cobble together a series of actions through creative editing.
Image Credits: Figure
Mechatronics are easier to judge in a short video than AI and autonomy, and from that perspective, the Figure 01 robot appears quite dexterous. In fact, if you look at the angle and positioning of the arms, you’ll notice that it’s performing the carry in a manner that would be quite uncomfortable for most people. It’s important to note that just because the robot looks like a person doesn’t mean that it has to behave exactly like one. My educated guess is that the positioning of the tote has to do with the robot’s center of gravity and perhaps the fact that it appears to be extremely top heavy.
Figure says the money will go toward accelerating its go-to-market. The company has already signed a deal with BMW for robotics deployment.
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.
And Rebecca and Sean report on layoffs at Tesla, which they say hit high performers and gutted some departments. The cuts were largely due to poor financial performance; Tesla’s seen its profit margin narrow over the past several quarters as the EV price war persists.
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.
News
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.
Analysis
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 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.
