Robotics

The latest robot dog is smarter — and less expensive — than ever. Unitree Robotics of Hangzhou, China, unleashed Go2, a quadruped robot that trots alongside its owner, stands on two legs, jumps, talks, takes photos, and retails for less than a high-end MacBook.

Training an agent that controls a robot arm to perform a task — say, opening a door — that involves a sequence of motions (reach, grasp, turn, pull, release) can take from tens of thousands to millions of examples...

Neural networks are predicting how metal will deform under pressure to pilot robots through the tricky process of fabricating aircraft. Machina Labs crafts metal using AI-guided robotic arms.

Adults in the United States tend to view AI’s medical applications favorably but are leery of text and image generation. Pew Research Center polled 11,004 U.S. adults for their opinions of AI in science, healthcare, and media.

Roboticists often train their machines in simulation, where the controller model can learn from millions of hours of experience. A new method trained robots in the real world in 20 minutes.

Autonomous robots trained to navigate in a simulation often struggle in the real world. New work helps bridge the gap in a counterintuitive way.

Individual deep learning models proved their mettle in hundreds of tasks. The scope of multi-task models expanded dramatically in the past year.

If a robot can predict what it’s likely to see next, it may have a better basis for choosing an appropriate action — but it has to predict quickly. Transformers, for all their utility in computer vision, aren’t well suited to this because of their steep computational and memory requirements...

A new method enables robots to respond helpfully to verbal commands by pairing a natural language model with a repertoire of existing skills.

Shinkei Systems developed a machine that uses computer vision to slaughter fish in a way that maximizes their shelf life and flavor.

FamilyMart, a chain of Japanese convenience stores, plans to employ robots to fill shelves with beverage bottles at 300 locations.

Robots trained via reinforcement learning usually study videos of robots performing the task at hand. A new approach used videos of humans to pre-train robotic arms.

The United States space agency is upgrading the system that pilots its helicopter on the Red Planet. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that Ingenuity, a drone sent to Mars as part of its 2020 mission to Mars, will receive a new collision-avoidance algorithm.

A weaponized AI system intended to protect students has been grounded. Axon, which makes law-enforcement equipment such as tasers and body cameras, canceled a plan to sell remote-controlled drones capable of firing electroshock darts.

Researchers took a step toward achieving a longstanding goal: One model that performs a whole lot of very different tasks. Scott Reed, Konrad Żołna, Emilio Parisotto and a team at DeepMind announced Gato.