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Google DeepMind and Apptronik team up on AI-driven humanoid robots

Matthias Bastian
Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian
Dec 19, 2024
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Apptronik

Google DeepMind and robotics company Apptronik announced a partnership to develop AI-driven humanoid robots that can operate in dynamic environments.

The partnership aims to combine Apptronik's robotics hardware with Google DeepMind's AI technology to create robots that can work in complex environments, Apptronik said in a press release. The company, which spun out of the University of Texas at Austin's Human Centered Robotics Lab in 2016, has developed 15 different robot models, including NASA's Valkyrie robot.

Their latest robot, Apollo, stands 1.73 meters tall and weighs 73 kilograms. Designed for industrial environments, the robot can work alongside humans. A recent Deepmind demo shows an Apollo unit controlled by Gemini 2.0 in action, viewable at the 2:20 mark of the Google's Gemini demo video.

Apptronik, which currently has 150 employees, has existing partnerships with GXO and Mercedes-Benz, with more partnerships planned for next year.

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AI software + robot hardware

Google DeepMind's robotics team brings expertise in machine learning, engineering and physics simulation to the partnership. The team recently demonstrated how its AI models help robots navigate complex environments using Gemini 1.5 Pro, achieving up to 90 percent success rates in navigation tasks.

One notable feature of the system is its ability to learn from simple smartphone videos. The AI can identify small objects like coasters and understand abstract concepts - for example, locating an appropriate whiteboard area when asked to find a place to draw.

OpenAI, Google DeepMind's main competitor, is also investing in robotics through a partnership with Figure and is rebuilding its own robotics division, which was shut down in 2020.

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