"Everything that moves in the future will be robotic.", Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO NVIDIA

Insane announcements from NVIDIA, amazing robot demos, and some incredible talks which often overlapped - so I'm looking forward to more viewing post #GTC2024.

CB Insights is correct in saying that there’s a wave of interest!

Humanoid robots are riding a wave of investor and market interest as they reach new levels of technical capability. 

The battle for the survival of the fittest humanoid robots is on! And it’s going to be determined by the benchmark.

What is the benchmark for humanoid robots? Well, atm it’s whatever you want it to be. This is where teams with lots of money and/or large PR teams and/or popular/viral videos get out in front of the rest. They are de facto setting the benchmarks by which other companies are judged. 

What do customers really need? A bad benchmark that I’ve heard recently is ‘speed’ (compared to a human OR another robot arm). If we’re looking at this from a commercial perspective, who cares if a robot is slower than a human for the first hour if it can keep going for hours at a time without stopping. And who cares if it’s slower than an industrial arm, if it’s able to rapidly move into new work areas without requiring reinstallation. Not to mention the safety aspects!

Another benchmark is dexterity and no robot can match a human for hand dexterity. Melonee Wise and Damion Shelton of Agility Robotics make a good point in TechCrunch however. None of the commercial solutions at Modex or other industry tradeshows have robots with human hand equivalents. Most work can be done with much simpler end effectors. Not only that but robots of the future will be able to swap their end of arm tooling in a way that humans certainly can’t.

Human hands are incredible! But do robots need them? Not yet, and probably not for a very long time. We really don’t need robots that imitate people, no matter how much movies, sci-fi and our own natural biases would like that.

At the IEEE Humanoids Conference in Austin TX, all of the humanoid robotics leaders on the industry panel spoke of the need to provide common benchmarks in order to support the emerging market. Let me know if you’re interested in joining a new Humanoids Standards Working Group with IEEE RAS!

Did you just switch to a paid subscription over at https://249x.substack.com ? Thank you! It makes you an angel investor in the work I do at Silicon Valley Robotics as a startup advisor, and accelerator. If you are a robotics company, March is a great time to join Silicon Valley Robotics and our startup accelerator program.

Interesting Robots:

Building Bionic Jellyfish for Ocean Exploration - CalTech

RT-Sketch: Goal-Conditioned Imitation Learning from Hand-Drawn Sketches - Priya Sundaresan,1, 3 Quan Vuong,2 Jiayuan Gu,2 Peng Xu,2 Ted Xiao,2 Sean Kirmani,2 Tianhe Yu,2 Michael Stark,3 Ajinkya Jain,3 Karol Hausman,1, 2 Dorsa Sadigh*,1, 2 Jeannette Bohg*,1 Stefan Schaal*,3

*Equal advising, alphabetical order 1Stanford University, 2Google DeepMind, 3[Google] Intrinsic

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More Robotics News:

Autonomous Vehicle Startup Applied Intuition Hits $6B Valuation After $250M Series E - Crunchbase News

Automated Driving Systems Should be Rated, IIHS Says - Autoweek

SWRI develops autonomous driving tools for ‘stealthy and agile’ off-road vehicles - The Engineer

Moon mining startup Interlune wants to start digging for helium-3 by 2030 - Engadget

This year autonomous trucks will take to the road with no one on board - IEEE Spectrum

Newesy Piaggio EV isn’t a Vespa - it’s an adorable robot work cart - Electrek

Bear Robotics, a robot waiter startup, just picked up $60M from LG - TechCrunch

Amazon’s Zoox robotaxis to drive faster, farther, at night in Las Vegas - Reuters

Aurora’s driverless trucks show they are for real - Freight Waves

Forterra, Kalmar Partner on Autonomous Terminal Tractors - Transport Topics

These commercial brands are testing Level 4 autonomous trucks through Plus partnership - Electrek

Anyware Robotics’ Pixmo Robots Add-On to Further Increase Container Unloading Throughput - Supply & Demand Chain Executive

Scythe expands production facility for robot mowers - The Robot Report

The World’s First Autonomous Snowplows Are in Service - Car and Driver

Will autonomous robots replace us or create more job opportunities for humans at sea? - Euronews.next

Urban Value Corner Store to open autonomous micro markets - CSNews

Inside the Chipotle founder’s new robot-powered vegan restaurant - Axios

Reflex Robotics’ wheeled humanoid is here to grab you a snack - TechCrunch

Intuitive Launches latest da Vinci robot, with force feedback controls - Fierce Biotech

I Tried Aescape’s Robot-Arm-Powered Massage Table - and Loved Being in Control - Wired

ANYmal can do parkour and walk across rubble - ETH Zurich

ABB Opens Revamped Robotics Center in Michigan Amid Growing Demand for AI Robots - WSJ

Covariant launches the first version of its ‘robot brain’ AI that learns by watching and listening - The Verge

Physical Intelligence is Building a Brain for Robots - Bloomberg

Watch the Figure 01 Robot Feed a Human, Sort the Dishes, And Stammer Like Us Meatbags - The Spoon

Mercedes wants humanoid robots to take over ‘physically demanding’ work - Quartz

The loneliness of the robotics humanoid - TechCrunch

Spotlight on mobility trends - McKinsey

The autonomous robotics future is around the corner - Bessemer Venture Partners

These 61 robotics companies are hiring - TechCrunch

Robotics Events:

28-29 March - Curbivore - Downtown Los Angeles

Join me at Curbivore, where the worlds of delivery robotics, mobility innovation, food automation, civic technology and policy / regulation converge, March 28 & 29 in Downtown LA. Meet with and hear from leaders at Starship, Waymo, DoorDash, Uber, Coco Robotics, Zenblen, as well as investors, media, and more - plus get your hands on all the latest machinery. First time attendees can join for just $20 when they register with code RS20.

5-6 April - SF Symphony: Press Play Carol Reiley and the Robots - Soundbox SF

POSTPONED - Robot Block Party - Circuit Launch San Leandro at Bayfair Mall

18-21 April 2024 - RoboGames - TBC

21 April 2024 - Robots on Ice - Yerba Buena Skating Rink SF

Some more upcoming academic robotics conferences:

• Haptics 2024 Long Beach CA 7 Apr - 10 Apr

• Robosoft 2024 San Diego CA 14 Apr - 17 Apr

• ICRA 2024 Yokohama Japan 13 May - 17 May 2024

• ARSO 2024 Hong Kong, China 20 May - 22 May 2024

• AIM 2024 Boston MA 14 July - 18 July

• CASE 2024 Puglia Italy 28 Aug - 1 Sep 2024

• IROS 2024 AbuDhabi 14 Oct - 18 Oct 2024

• Humanoids 2024 Nancy FR 26 Nov - 28 Nov

• ICRA 2025 Atlanta Georgia 17 May - 23 May 2025