The AI-powered humanoid robotics firm, Apptronik, has just announced a partnership with Google DeepMind that will combine the company’s expertise in robotics with the AI capabilities of Google DeepMind. The goal is to create intelligent humanoid robots that are capable of working autonomously in different environments.
Apptronik is a spinout from the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. It serves the robotics and robot manufacturing industries together with software solutions to go with its hardware. The company generated over $10 million in revenue every year.
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The company’s main product is the Apollo humanoid robot that aids in various tasks in the logistics, manufacturing, and retail industries. It weighs 160 lbs and can carry a load of 55 lbs. The company’s history of research and development work and advanced patent technologies allow it to have a solid foundation in the robotics industry.
The objectives of the firm’s partnership with Google DeepMind sound quite similar to what Elon Musk talks about when he mentions his company’s humanoid robot, the Optimus. Optimus is quite similar to Apollu as it weighs 160 lbs and can carry a weight of 45 lbs. Alphabet is certainly taking an aim at Tesla with this acquisition, though there are slight differences in what both companies are trying to achieve.
Alphabet is focused on fusing AI and robotics to create intelligent robots that can perform useful tasks in industries. Tesla, on the other hand, wants to integrate its existing AI technologies, most notably autonomy, into Optimus for various industrial applications. While Apptroik is a leader in robotics looking for a helping hand from Alphabet, Tesla is leveraging its powerful brand and existing knowledge of AI and autonomy to improve Optimus.
For now, Alphabet and Tesla are not competing against each other. However, once both companies have created a humanoid robot that is ready to be sent to work in an industry, things could change pretty quickly. The nature of AI is such that whoever is the first to achieve autonomy gets a headstart that the other isn’t able to catch up with. Tesla has a massive headstart in the sense that it already has vast amounts of data to train its humanoid robot on. The EV maker has millions of cars on the road that are gathering data daily, mostly related to image recognition, manipulation, and reacting to certain obstacles based on how the tech sees them. This is similar to what a humanoid robot would do. It would need to perceive its environment, navigate through movements, and then make a decision to perform a task.
Google is neither a robotics company nor has the luxury of the vast amounts of data to train robots on. However, it would be foolish to underestimate the firm’s resolve to make a working humanoid robot. The Apptronik partnership takes the company one step closer to competing directly with Tesla. Interesting times ahead.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
