2024-02-29 15:48:00
[Article publié le lundi 26 février 2023 à 18h50 et mis à jour le jeudi 29 février à 16h07]
Since Pepper, the cute robot with round eyes, was thanked in 2021, we thought humanoid robots were more or less buried. Since once the entertaining and impressive effect of their human appearance had passed, their creators were struggling to find a truly useful use case for them.
However, they are making a comeback on the tech scene with great fanfare. This is evidenced by the recent fundraising by the Californian start-up Figure AI, launched in 2022 in Sunnyvale. The latter has just raised $675 million in less than two months from a host of major industrialists in the sector, bringing its valuation to $2.6 billion. On February 29, the company also announced a partnership with OpenAI. Sam Altman’s company will be in charge of developing artificial intelligence models allowing Figure AI robots to understand language. Enough to accelerate the commercial development of the company, specifies a press release.
Nvidia, Microsoft and Jeff Bezos among investors
The creator of ChatGPT, as well as Microsoft, launched the wave a month ago by announcing that they had financed the young shoot, to the tune of 5 million and 95 million dollars respectively. Two days ago, Nvidia – which thanks to its processors saw its market valuation soar – and Amazon joined them with 50 million dollars each, reports Bloomberg. Jeff Bezos, through his firm Explore Investment, injected $100 million into the startup. Other companies like Intel, LG Innotek and Samsung are also participating in this fundraising. Last year, Figure AI had already raised $70 million from Parkway Venture.
Investors believe in the promise of Figure AI: building a robot capable of behaving like a human, with the same dexterity in all types of tasks. Figure 01 (this is the short name given to the robot) will be able, says the company, to carry out dangerous and complex tasks, and to compensate for the labor shortage. In the most recent video, we currently see him using (very slowly) a coffee machine. A human assistant is first required to place a cup in the machine.
And the demonstration doesn’t impress Internet users that much. “Scary, by 2050, the robot will undoubtedly manage to manipulate the mug itself”, comments in particular an ironic user on YouTube. The company says little about the technologies used by Figure 01. It simply states that he learned these gestures (putting a capsule on) after 10 hours of training during which he “watched” a human doing these movements.
Generative AI revives the subject
Compared to traditional robots found in factories and warehouses, Figure 01 promises to be versatile, performing every task a human can. However, cobots (so-called collaborative robots), deployed for several years, already allow them to be easily reprogrammed to carry out different tasks. And they don’t need to look human to do this (most of the time, they are uncaged robotic arms integrated directly into production lines).
This interest in humanoid robots is revived by the new wave of generative artificial intelligence, and maintained by a controversial belief in the advent of so-called general artificial intelligence, capable of doing everything better than humans.
Without going that far, this new generation of robots actually uses large language models (LLM) like GPT-4 and others to translate a command made in natural language into movement. Jenseng Huang, CEO of Nvidia (one of Figure AI’s investors), In Wiredgoes even further. “If we can generate text and images, can we also generate movement? The answer is probably yes. (…) Humanoid robotics should therefore not be very far away”he asks himself.
A new impetus after twenty years of failure
Figure AI is not alone in this humanoid robot race. The Norwegian startup 1x cherishes the same objective and raised $100 million last January, notably from OpenAI, to achieve this. Ditto for the Canadian Sanctuary AI and its humanoid Phoenix, selected as one of the best innovations of 2023 by TIME. Tesla is also working on the subject with its Optimus Gen 2, a humanoid robot that Elon Musk considers to be his most important project. He too has a big future, but for now he’s handling eggs and doing squats on YouTube.
And this “dream” of a robot perfectly adapted to the human world thanks to its appearance is far from new. As early as 2000, Honda presented Asimo, a model with the appearance of a cosmonaut capable of walking like a human. The robot was eventually intended to assist the elderly, but it mainly entertained the gallery at trade shows. A bit like its French version Pepper (later bought by the Japanese Softbank) which, when used on a daily basis, ends up boring customers and employees. Moreover, both Honda and Softbank ended up abandoning their humanoid robot due to lack of sales.
Since then, other human-looking robots have emerged, but above all with the aim of technical demonstration. In YouTube videos broadcast at regular intervals, Atlas, the bipedal robot from Boston Dynamics, performs all kinds of stunts under the half-amazed, half-frightened eye of Internet users. He does back and front somersaults, then parkour, opens doors and beer cans. The fact remains that for the moment the android from Boston Dynamics, which was bought by Hyundai in 2021, does not have commercial applications, unlike Spot, its robot dog.
Figure AI founder hopes humanoids will colonize the planet
During an interview with Fast CompanyBrett Adcok, the founder of Figure AI, assures that his robot will be, unlike its predecessors, useful. “Existing humanoid robots are only there for stunts and demos (…) We want to move away from that. »
The company has already sold a first fleet of robots to BMW. This should be deployed in the coming year at the automobile manufacturer, first at its Spartanburg (South Carolina) site. But Brett Adcok remains cautious about the speed of development of his company. “It will take 20 or 30 years”he estimates with Fast Companyto which he does not hesitate to specify that one day “humanoid robots will colonize the planet”. Not far from the predictions of Elon Musk, who hopes for 40 billion humanoids on earth by 2040.
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