Is the future General Purpose or Humanoid Robots?
Last week Google DeepMind released the RT-X model. This is a comprehensive robotics model with the primary objective of extending and applying its aptitude to diverse robots and tasks, including actions, vision, and language comprehension. This broadens its utility as a single tool for wide-ranging robotics research and application, in short a general purpose robot. General purpose robots have a large number of use cases, yet suddenly we see  extensive research done on humanoid robots. A combination of general purpose humanoid robots are  on the rise like Unitree’s H1  robots designed to look like humans but also with a variety of use cases. Another example is the  Tesla Optimus, which recently went through a massive upgrade, is one of the many bipedal, humanoid robots that are being trained to perform tasks as the company puts it, “unsafe, repetitive or boring.” Now on the other hand, specialised robots perform specific tasks. This can be hugely beneficial when tasks require precision but then it isn’t possible to reprogram them to work in a different environment. Most specialised robots are used for cleaning. Most specialised robots are used for cleaning in different environments. Most recently, Beta Tank Robotics Pvt. Ltd, a company in Bangalore built a robot to clean petrochemical tanks. Generalised vs. Specialised Robots “I think 2023 is finally the year for robotics to scale up.” said Jim Fan, comparing the paper to the ImageNet that kicked off the deep learning revolution for computer vision. RT-X was trained on an extensive dataset known as the Open X-Embodiment dataset. This repository comprises data sourced from 22 distinct robot embodiments (or types of robots), covering an expansive spectrum of skills and tasks—totaling 150,000 tasks encapsulating over 500 discernible skills, as outlined in the paper. General purpose robots are already in use extensively. The automotive industry which uses the largest number of robots, don’t require humanoid but general purpose robots. “Robots are moving beyond the “mainframe” era of big, fixed installations,” said Benjamin Gibbs, the CEO of Ready Robotics. In contrast, specialised robots do only the task they’re designed to do. According to a recent research paper published a few years back, that compares if specialised robots are better than a generalist one. The results found that people trusted the former because of how the robot is trained for specific tasks which reduces the chances of errors. The future of Humanoid Robots For a long time now people have been working on building humanoid robots. Yet, there are no large-scale use cases for humanoid robots. The reasons are not hard to fathom as they are very expensive to build and maintain. Secondly, they are complex and difficult to control and finally, they are not very well-suited to performing many real-world tasks. While there is a new wave of humanoid robots with quite a few of them like Unitree, SanctuaryAI, Fourier Intelligence, there is very little adoption of these robots. To improve this, Agility Robotics is building RoboFab, a factory that builds humanoid robots at scale. AI Robotics startup Figure unveiled early conceptual images of its humanoid robot, temporarily named Figure 01. However, there is little adoption of humanoid robots compared to general purpose ones. There is also a distrust that the ‘anthropomorphism’ of machines could hurt the employment of real people.  This debate over whether robots should resemble humans, considering lesser efficiency of the structure itself. Some see potential in humanoid robots for medical and educational applications, enhancing our understanding of both robots and ourselves. Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure (AI Robotics) envisions humanoid robots serving various roles, from corporate labour to home assistance and space exploration. But there is no doubt that general purpose robots are ready for practical applications in comparison something Google DeepMind has thought of in their work with RT-X. Last week Google DeepMind released the RT-X model. This is a comprehensive robotics model with the primary objective of extending and applying its aptitude to diverse robots and tasks, including actions, vision, and language comprehension. This broadens its utility as a single tool for wide-ranging robotics research and application, in short a general purpose robot. General purpose robots have a large number of use cases, yet suddenly we see  extensive research done on humanoid robots. A combination of general purpose humanoid robots are  on the rise like Unitree’s H1  robots designed to look like humans but also with a variety of use cases. Another example is the  Tesla Optimus, which recently went through a massive upgrade, is one of the many bipedal, humanoid robots that are being trained to perform tasks as the company puts it, “unsafe, repetitive or boring.” Now on the other hand, specialised robots perform specific tasks. This can be hugely beneficial when tasks require precision but then it isn’t possible to reprogram them to work in a different environment. Most specialised robots are used for cleaning. Most specialised robots are used for cleaning in different environments. Most recently, Beta Tank Robotics Pvt. Ltd, a company in Bangalore built a robot to clean petrochemical tanks.
Google DeepMind introduced RT-X, a versatile robotics model. Yet, interest in humanoid robots like Unitree’s H1 and Tesla’s Optimus is on the rise, blurring the lines between general-purpose and specialised robots.
Google DeepMind introduced RT-X, a versatile robotics model. Yet, interest in humanoid robots like Unitree's H1 and Tesla's Optimus is on the rise, blurring the lines between general-purpose and specialised robots.
["Google Deepmind", "Humanoid Robots", "Robotics"]
["Go", "Humanoid Robots", "programming_languages:R", "AI", "programming_languages:Go", "Robotics", "computer vision", "deep learning", "Google Deepmind", "Rust", "R", "programming_languages:Rust", "startup"]
["AI", "deep learning", "computer vision", "R", "Go", "Rust", "startup", "programming_languages:R", "programming_languages:Go", "programming_languages:Rust"]
K L Krithika is a tech journalist at AIM. Apart from writing tech news, she enjoys reading sci-fi and pondering the impossible technologies, trying not to confuse it with reality.