AI Start-Up Ready To Build ‘Teachable’ Robots
Embodied Intelligence, a startup established by artificial intelligence researchers from the University of California Berkeley, and their partners at OpenAI, has raised $7 million in seed funding.
A Californian start-up company has raised $7million in seed funding to develop artificial intelligence software that will make it easy for anyone to teach robots new, complex skills. Embodied Intelligence, a spin-out from University of California Berkeley and OpenAI, has been set up by a team with 30 combined years of experience in artificial intelligence, deep learning and robotics.
The work at Embodied Intelligence, which has been founded by Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, Rocky Duan and Tianhao Zhang, sounds like it may be in direct competition with Kindred Systems, which was founded by D-Wave's Geordie Rose. Kindred also claims to use VR technology to 'teach' robots.
Typical robotics code is written line-by-line - a time-consuming task, even for experts. Embodied Intelligence’s software will allow anyone to program a robot simply by wearing virtual reality systems
and guiding the robot through the task. Such a
demonstration will train a deep neural network, which will be further tuned
by reinforcement learning, resulting in robots that can be easily taught
a wide range of skills.Complicated tasks which are all candidates to benefit from Embodied Intelligence’s work include:
- the manipulation of deformable objects such as wires, fabrics, linens, apparel, fluid-bags, and food;
- picking parts and order items out of cluttered, unstructured bins;
- completing assemblies where hard automation struggles due to variability in parts, configurations, and
- individualization of orders.
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“Traditional
robot programming requires substantial time and expertise,” explains Abbeel, president and chief scientist at Embodied Intelligence.
“What we will provide is an AI layer that can be added to any existing
robot, enabling robots to learn new skills rather than requiring
explicit programming.”He and two of Embodied Intelligence’s co-founders, Chen and Duan, recently spent more than a year at the non-profit AI research company, OpenAI, working on learning technologies.
They founded Embodied Intelligence, together with Zhang, to bring modern deep learning and AI technology to robotics.
"This work will now bring these cutting-edge AI and robotics advances into the real world."
“Recent
breakthroughs in AI have enabled robots to learn locomotion, develop
manipulation skills from trial and error, and to learn from VR
demonstrations,” says Sunil Dhaliwal, a general partner at Amplify
Partners, which led the fundraising. “However, all of these advances
have been in simulation or laboratory environments. The Embodied
Intelligence team that led much of this work will now bring these
cutting-edge AI and robotics advances into the real world.”“Advanced robotic capabilities have been confined to established players that can afford costly R&D efforts,” adds Duan, Embodied Intelligence’s chief technology officer. “Our teachable robots will empower any size businesses to incorporate robotics into their manufacturing processes and keep up with the competition.”
The company’s CEO, Chen, points out that VR devices provide an easy way to control and teach robots. “Since the robot simply mimics the hand motion that’s tracked by VR, a person without any special training can make the robot do the right thing right from the beginning. The robot will keep learning and, after a while, the robot says, ‘I got this, I can do this task on my own now.’”
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