Punyo is a soft robot designed to improve whole-body manipulation research by employing its arms and chest.
Toyota seems to be diving into more than just cars.
Toyota developed Punyo, a soft robot with capabilities that amplify, rather than replace people, helps lift heavy objects or move furniture.
Check out Sanctuary AI’s Pheonix humanoid robot sorting items with grace and speed.
Following hot on the heels of Tesla’s Optimus and Figure 1 videos released recently, another humanoid robotics firm, Sanctuary AI, released the latest developments in its bot–the Pheonix.
Sanctuary AI’s Pheonix can now move things around a table just like a human being. Check it out for yourself.
Fast and cheap for AI inference (responding to chat prompts with very low latency at very high speeds.)
Discussing how it works, benchmarks, how it compares to other AI accelerators and the future outlook!
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The effort to give robots AI brains is revealing big practical challenges—and bigger ethical concerns.
Alan Thompson is an AI expert who is closely tracking progress to AGI.
His definition is:
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a machine capable of understanding the world as well as—or better than—any human, in practically every field, including the ability to interact with the world via physical embodiment.
Understanding Neuromorphic Engineering.
Neuromorphic Engineering draws inspiration from the human brain’s architecture and functioning, aiming to create electronic systems that mimic the brain’s ability to process information in a parallel, energy-efficient, and adaptable manner. Unlike traditional computing, which relies on sequential processing, neuromorphic systems leverage neural networks to enable faster and more efficient computation.
Mimicking the Human Brain.
Kurihara, Y., Takahashi, T. & Osu, R. The topology of interpersonal neural network in weak social ties. Sci Rep 14, 4,961 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55495-7
You’ve seen a ton of videos of humanoid robots – but this one feels different. It’s Sanctuary’s Phoenix bot, with “the world’s best robot hands,” working totally autonomously at near-human speeds – much faster than Tesla’s or Figure’s robots.
Canadian company Sanctuary AI has been accelerating its own progress toward general-purpose humanoids, using teleoperation to show Phoenix how to do things, and letting it go away and figure out more in simulation.
Phoenix is an odd duck in this space, in that the Sanctuary team hasn’t got it up and walking yet, deciding to let others figure that bit out so its team can focus on the nitty gritty of work behaviors. Thus, it sits on a decidedly unsexy wheeled platform, but it has some of the most finely-tuned and human-like hands out of anything we’ve ever seen.
Interestingly enough, although Elon Musk’s Neuralink received a great deal of media attention, early in 2023, Synchron published results from its first-in-human study of four patients with severe paralysis who received its first-generation Stentrode neuroprosthesis implant. The implant allowed participants to create digital switches that controlled daily tasks like sending texts and emails, partaking in online banking, and communicating care needs. The study’s findings were published in a paper in JAMA Neurology in January 2023. Then, before September, the first six US patients had the Synchron BCI implanted. The study’s findings are expected by late 2024.
Let’s return to Upgrade. “One part The Six Million Dollar Man, one part Death Wish revenge fantasy” was how critics described the movie. While Death Wish is a 1974 American vigilante action-thriller movie that is partially based on Brian Garfield’s 1972 novel of the same name, the American sci-fi television series The Six Million Dollar Man from the 1970s, based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg, could be considered a landmark in the context of human-AI symbiosis, although in fantasy’s domain. Oscar Goldman’s opening line in The Six Million Dollar Man was, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man… Better than he was before. Better—stronger—faster.” The term “cyborg” is a portmanteau of the words “cybernetic” and “organism,” which was coined in 1960 by two scientists, Manfred Clynes and Nathan S Kline.
At the moment, “cyborg” doesn’t seem to be a narrative of a distant future, though. Rather, it’s very much a story of today. We are just inches away from becoming cyborgs, perhaps, thanks to the brain chip implants, although Elon Musk perceives that “we are already a cyborg to some degree,” and he may be right. Cyborgs, however, pose a threat, while the dystopian idea of being ruled by Big Brother also haunts. Around the world, chip implants have already sparked heated discussions on a variety of topics, including privacy, the law, technology, medicine, security, politics, and religion. USA Today published a piece headlined “You will get chipped—eventually” as early as August 2017. And an article published in The Atlantic in September 2018 discussed how (not only brain chips but) microchip implants, in general, are evolving from a tech-geek curiosity to a legitimate health utility and that there may not be as many reasons to say “no.” But numerous concerns about privacy and cybersecurity would keep us haunted. It would be extremely difficult for policymakers to formulate laws pertaining to such sensitive yet quickly developing technology.
The lawsuit said Altman, along with OpenAI’s co-founder Greg Brockman, originally approached Musk to make an open source, non-profit company that would develop artificial intelligence technology for the “benefit of humanity”
The Microsoft-backed company’s focus on seeking profits breaks that agreement, lawyers for Musk said in the lawsuit.
OpenAI, Microsoft and Musk did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.