Source | New Zhiyuan

After Optimus and Optimus Prime, the field of humanoid robots has broken into another fierce general.

1X Technologies, the startup that OpenAI is betting on, has officially announced the launch of the beta version of the latest universal housework robot, NEO.

It is a humanoid robot designed for humans, built for the home environment.

However, its first appearance was mistaken by everyone - isn't this a "person" in a suit?

In a demo video, the heroine is cooking in the kitchen, and NEO hands her eggs.

It also helped the heroine with her bag, waved her over, and greeted everyone together.

Eric Jang, the company's vice president of AI, also announced the news on Twitter, while teasing the next release.

It's great to finally share NEO publicly. In hardcore technology, the simplest things (ultrapure water, superplane mirrors) are super difficult. We have built an ultra-quiet robot that is very safe around humans. We'll be sharing more progress on AI soon

CEO and founder Bernt Børnich said that the hope is that NEO can complete tasks that humans don't like to do, such as cleaning, tidying up and other daily chores, and can follow instructions and customize them according to the user's preferences and lifestyles.

In order to make NEO more suitable for home and life scenarios, 1X has made special designs for the shape and hardware specifications of the robot.

After all, the industrial general robot EVE they launched before is 1.82 meters tall and weighs 87 kilograms, which can be said to be the physique of a "big man".

The NEO is only 1.67 meters tall, which is basically the average human level, and weighs only 30 kilograms, which is about one-third of EVE.

Appearance of EVE and NEO

Even though it is lightweight, it doesn't mean that NEO can't do heavy work.

According to reports, its hands have 20 degrees of freedom and can lift 70 kilograms of weight more than twice its own weight, and can also carry objects weighing up to 20 kilograms.

The "people" in suits have super silky movements

Compared to the Optimus' racing-like cool appearance, NEO is almost completely wrapped in cloth, which seems to be more human-like.

OpenAI scientist Noam Brown, the father of Poker, quipped, "Believe it or not, this is not a man in a suit."

In addition to its appearance, the NEO has a muscle-like anatomy and a non-rigid hydraulic system that blends strength with softness so that it can interact with humans very naturally.

Not only can you walk, jog and run up stairs naturally, but you can also carry out remote manual control and complete a lot of "human" actions.

For example, bow your head and turn your wrist -

Greeting, hugging, and waving in one go, the posture, amplitude, and speed of the movements are quite close to those of humans.

The dexterous hand, which is essential for housework, also looks natural and flexible, not only holding objects steadily, but also holding soft rags.

And it is a veritable "general-purpose" housework robot, in addition to being able to organize kitchen utensils-

You can also complete the operation of the whole process independently, and use the coffee machine to make a cup of coffee.

By not relying on traditional rigid actuators, but utilizing a bionic design and more flexible components, the NEO is able to achieve smoother movements and consume less energy.

The on-board motor generates about 80% of the force density of human muscles, and no gears are required.

Unfortunately, NEO can only run for 2 hours, which may be a trade-off after lightweight design compared to EVE's 8 hours of battery life.

Amazed netizens

Nvidia scientist Jim Fan rushed to congratulate him as soon as he saw the demo and said that he was "very amazing".

Documentary filmmaker Jason Carman, who just made films for 1X Technologies and NEO some time ago, also helped out on the platform.

Since 2014, 1X Technologies has been building humanoid-like robots. Now, they have shown the world the latest robot, NEO.

After watching the demo, some netizens boldly predicted: In the next 5 years, housekeeping robots will become the mainstream!

As for what Eric Jang called "ultra-quiet", both the trial and Jason Carman said: "Yes, the actuator is simply too quiet!"

When shooting video, you even need to turn up the audio level a lot to hear the sound that NEO is making when it is on a mission.

Regarding the "security" that both 1X robots focus on, some people directly question: What do you mean by "security"?

Eric Jang also responded online:

In terms of hardware alone, it has compliance and low reflective inertia even when moving at high speeds. Of course, "security" also means situational awareness and empowerment (e.g., holding sharps and hot coffee) – but we're not ready to share that information yet.

Technical introduction

The official blog said, "Our top priority is safety." After testing in different scenarios and environments, NEO will be mass-produced in a factory in Norway.

In the current beta testing phase, 1X will deploy a limited number of NEOs in selected homes for data that is critical in research and development.

Inspired by digital assistants and autonomous driving, 1X's data collection is different from traditional coding and predefined algorithms.

They used a method called VR Teleop.

The operator will guide the robot to work in different real-world scenarios, so that the robot can intuitively understand the difficulty and feasibility of the task. When data collection reaches a certain scale, the robot learns a new skill.

In the real world, NEO is designed to work "out of the box", but it can be continuously learned as it is used. The more you use it, the more "smart" it becomes.

As a result, the beta testing phase will allow NEO to collect more data to help the company build general AI models to improve the system over time.

Børnich, CEO of the company, said, "We try to solve the problem of intelligence through embodiment, and data diversity is the secret."

"It's not so secret, but without secure and dynamic robots, it's hard to be 'smart' in the real world."

Star robot start-up, OpenAI is optimistic

1X is a company that has grown a lot of money, and the current CEO and founder, Bernt Bornich, founded the company 10 years ago under the original name Halodi Robotics.

At that time, they set a goal of creating general-purpose robots to handle labor-intensive tasks.

But this decade, 1X Technologies only began shipping to enterprise users, while working on several technology developments, including the world's highest-torque torque-weight drive servo motor to mimic soft muscle movements.

The major breakthrough came in 2022, when 1X began to cooperate with OpenAI to introduce language models and embodied learning models to add "intelligence" to robots.

Riding the express train of OpenAI, 1X's growth took off in an instant, and in March last year, it completed a $23.5 million A2 round of financing, led by the OpenAI Venture Fund.

In January, they raised another $100 million in a Series B funding round, bringing the total amount raised in the two rounds to nearly $137 million.

In addition to the recently launched bipedal humanoid robot NEO for the consumer market, Eve, a wheeled robot developed earlier by 1X to perform industrial tasks, is already being deployed in several real-world scenarios, such as mobile devices, door opening, and order fulfillment.

After 1.5 × accelerated processing

CEO and founder Bernt Bornich graduated from the University of Oslo, Norway, with a degree in robotics and nanoelectronics.

After graduating, Bornich worked in development for several companies and founded 1X back in 2014, still headquartered in Norway.

Eric Jang graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in computer science, and worked as a senior research scientist on Google's robotics team for 6 years after graduation.

In 2022, Eric Jang joined 1X Technologies as Vice President of AI.

At the same time, Jang also works part-time as the chief scientific advisor to Toruts, an AI medical company.

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com