Companies are racing to make AI-fueled robots for everyday life

Bangkok Post Group

The humanoid robot market looks set to explode in the coming years, with companies vying to be the first to get a viable android into our daily lives. - REUTERS

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00:00Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and engineering have the potential to change

00:06the world in many ways, from healthcare to disaster response.

00:10And now there's a push from companies racing to be the first to introduce AI-powered robots

00:16into our everyday lives.

00:18With proponents like Tesla CEO Elon Musk saying there could be billions of humanoid bots roaming

00:24the earth by 2040 and costs falling, the market looks set to explode.

00:32Here at the International Conference on Humanoid Robotics in Nancy, France, more than two dozen

00:37companies alongside research institutions are showcasing their latest machines.

00:42We are really witnessing a huge revolution, a huge increase in the number of start-ups.

00:49Serena Ivaldi is Director of Research at the INRIA Center at the University of Lorraine.

00:55In the last year there has been a revolution in the actuation and in some mechatronics

00:59components and so the robots now are more robust, more efficient, more performing.

01:04And also the cost has decreased, which enables more companies, more labs to produce new prototypes.

01:11Ivaldi says that cheaper engineering costs have allowed a rise in start-ups developing

01:16robotics.

01:17While engineers design the machines to mimic human form and movement, AI provides the brainpower,

01:23helping the robots to learn from their environment, make decisions and perform complex tasks.

01:30Ivaldi also says new AI methods that incorporate image and language processing will make the

01:35machines more useful.

01:36Right now in the AI domain there is a lot of work that is done with the pre-trained

01:42models that start from a lot of examples, a lot of demonstrations, but I think it's

01:49not that far the moment where the AI methods will exhibit the generalization capacity that

01:56enables the robot to do new stuff that is explained on the fly without having demonstrations.

02:03Companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia have already invested billions

02:08in adopting AI.

02:10According to venture capital firm Excel, funding of AI and cloud companies in the US, Europe

02:15and Israel is estimated to hit nearly $80 billion by the end of 2024.

02:22But as some robots showed off their skills at the conference, Agnieszka Wachowska from

02:27the Italian Institute of Technology warned that we are still a ways away from seeing

02:31the sorts of robots we'd recognize from science fiction.

02:35I guess at this moment is what I just mentioned, is being naturally in real time able to respond

02:46to the environment, to the human and act in complex environments like home for example

02:55or clinical setting like where we are.

02:59So I think this is still a big challenge and we're very far away from making robots fully

03:04autonomous to be able to interact with humans in such a way.

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