A robot to carry your shopping bags? You dreamed it, Toyota did it

2024-04-09 05:30:00

Thin ! Your shopping bag has just fallen to the ground… Your neighbor bends down and picks it up. A banal scene that a humanoid robot is now capable of performing (almost) as naturally as a human, and without the risk of back pain. The Toyota Research Institute, one of the Japanese manufacturer’s scientific centers, recently published a video of its latest robot capable of using its body in addition to its limbs to pick up objects.

Called Punyo, he can grab a large stuffed animal with one arm and pull a cupboard drawer with the other. All this to store the toy in the latter by bending over. In the video produced by its team of designers, we also see the robot carrying shopping bags against it by tilting its abdomen backwards. In another example, the machine uses its arms to roll a bolster before gripping it.

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But what is his secret ? In reality, this robot with a friendly face has two. The first is in its body and its oval “hands”, which lack fingers or joints. The latter are covered with a grid fabric which allows cameras located inside Punyo to detect any contact with an object. The sensors that dot the robot’s body also allow it to sense the objects to be worn and adapt its behavior accordingly.

The robot uses special hands, called “legs”, which end in deformable and inflatable pads. They are equipped with dot patterns, monitored by internal cameras. The system allows Punyo to perceive contact with objects, which adds an additional level of interaction and understanding of the environment by the machine.

More impressively, Toyota used artificial intelligence (AI) in the design of the robot. So it was the AI that trained Punyo to adapt his postures and his way of grasping objects according to their shape or weight. If the commercialization of the machine is not announced, a robot with motor skills like Punyo could help humans in their daily tasks. A niche that Tesla has in mind with its Optimus Gen 2 presented at the end of 2023 and one of the stated objectives of which is to be able to relieve workers in difficult physical tasks. Toyota, in Japan with an aging population, is focusing more on robots to assist the elderly.