Robotics, labelling, AI, oh my...
Get involved in new robotics standards activities
Bots&Beers is Back Baby!
Wednesday Feb 5th from 6 to 8.30pm at Circuit Launch Mountain View.
Circuit Launch Mountain View is Open!
Want a dedicated desk? (Or office or hotdesk) I’m at Mountain View all week if you’d like to tour the new Circuit Launch space in the old Boston Dynamics building.
Circuit Launch is the ultimate hub for hardware innovators, offering state-of-the-art prototyping labs, co-working space, and a thriving community of entrepreneurs. We provide the tools, training, and connections to accelerate your ideas into reality, with locations in Oakland, San Leandro (2025) and Mountain View.
Tour the new facility and check out our Dedicated Desks, Entrepreneur Hot Desks, and Private offices, now available for your next big idea. info@circuitlaunch.com
Get involved in Standards Activities!
If you’re interested in joining the Humanoid Standards Study Group then let me know. If you’re interested in getting other robotics standards up and running then here’s a free introductory course about the process on IEEE.
A Working Group Chair Fundamentals online course on the IEEE SA standards development process is now available for free. This course not only provides Working Group Chairs with the fundamentals needed to chair a working group but also provides information to Working Group participants or anyone interested in participating in IEEE Standards about the process.
Scale.ai and robotics - article from The Information by Rocket Drew
You can read the full articles by subscribing to The Information - I can share the article link with a few readers but this article by Rocket Drew really nails the current state of data labelling so I’m sharing it anyway. You’ll have to dip behind their paywall for the follow up article - “A Competitor of Scale AI Doubles Its Revenue, Thanks to Reasoning”
As I wrote last month, there’s been a flurry of excitement about applying generative artificial intelligence techniques to robotics, a field that’s generated much hope and plenty of disappointment over the last two decades.
Like chatbot makers, robotics companies have relied on humans to manually label data, for example identifying packages in images to train robots to sort boxes. Many have used Scale AI, the data-labelling startup valued at $14 billion also used by AI model makers like OpenAI.
Now, Scale AI faces growing competition from smaller startups that specialize in labeling data for robotics, including Segments.ai, Kognic and Encord. Warehouse robotics maker Dexterity and self-driving truck company Kodiak Robotics are among the companies that have switched to the startups, which provide software tailored for labeling robotics data.
Dexterity started using Scale more than four years ago to identify items in scenes, but was not impressed with the quality of the labels, which seemed almost AI-generated, said Robert Sun, a founding engineer at Dexterity. A couple of years later, Dexterity switched to Segments, which farms out much labeling work to smaller companies and offers software that Dexterity’s employees can use to label images themselves.
Scale said some smaller customers have left as the company increasingly focused on larger companies. “Earlier this year we moved to prioritize large-scale engagements and ended a small self-service offering, called Rapid, which many of these companies used,” said a Scale spokesperson via email. “We continue to support complex robotics projects that require high-quality labeled data.”
For computer-vision projects, Scale uses AI models to generate initial labels that human labelers then review, in line with standard industry practice, said the spokesperson.
Pickle, which makes robotic arms to unload trucks, used Scale until a few months ago, when it switched to Encord, a San Francisco and London-based startup that provides data-labeling software. Pickle sends Encord images of robots making mistakes, such as picking the wrong item, bumping into objects or hallucinating a floating box. Within a few weeks, Encord returns the images with labels, said AJ Meyer, Pickle’s co-founder and CEO. The most expensive labels cost Pickle about $10 each, and Pickle gets on the order of 1,000 of those from Encord every month.
Last year, self-driving truck company Kodiak switched from Scale to Kognic, whose software can fuse data from radar, lidar and camera sensors for labeling, said Kodiak’s founder and CEO Don Burnette. Kognic contracts with annotation companies, whose human labelers identify objects like cars, pedestrians and street signs in Kodiak’s driving scenes.
The data-labeling companies focusing on robotics tend to offer specialized software to annotate video of moving robotic arms, reconstruct three-dimensional scenes from multiple camera angles and visualize data from lidar sensors. Other data labeling companies “don’t necessarily have the tooling and infrastructure” to support such tasks, said Ulrik Hansen, Encord’s president and co-founder.
Having access to multiple label vendors is useful for a robotics company trying to label a lot of data quickly, said Jeff Mahler, CTO of Ambi Robotics, which makes robot arms for sorting packages. Ambi uses Scale as well as Scale rivals such as SuperAnnotate, which has been quick and low-cost.
The cost of annotations depends on the task, but labeling a dozen items in an image typically costs Ambi around 50 cents. It takes about 10,000 labeled images to customize a computer vision model for one of Ambi’s customers, said Mahler.
More startups catering to robotics companies’ data needs are on the way. One robotics researcher told me they’re familiar with almost 10 stealth startups working on robotics data, though many are focused on demonstrating actions for robots, rather than labeling images.
Still, plenty of robotics companies prefer to label their images in-house. For example, foundation model companies Physical Intelligence and Skild, humanoid-maker Apptronik, autonomous construction vehicle company Teleo and supply chain company Brightpick collect and label their own data.
Send me your community news to share!
Robotics News
Human hands are astonishing tools. Here’s why robots are struggling to match them - BBC
The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to ‘move fast and break things’ in the defense industry - The Conversation
LG CNS, Bear Robotics to co-develop autonomous robots - The Korean Economic Daily
Shanghai rolls out the country’s first heterogeneous humanoid robot training ground - South China Morning Post
Truck loading and unloading robot maker Slip Robotics raises $28 million financing - Robotics and Automation News
Robot packers and AI cameras: UK retail embraces automation to cut staff costs - The Guardian
A robot made my lunch - NYTimes
AI comes alive: From bartenders to surgical aides to puppies, tomorrow’s robots are on their way - VentureBeat
NEURA Robotics raises $123M to continue developing cognitive, humanoid robots - The Robot Report
Walmart sells robotic business to Symbotic in play to further automate systems - Yahoo Finance
Automation firm Symbotic soars on $200 mln deal to buy Walmart’s robotics unit - Reuters
Makers of autonomous vehicles want to change the world - but first they want to change regulations - Fast Company
Amazon pauses drone deliveries after test crashes - The Information
Windracers unveils next generation of autonomous cargo drone - SUAS News
Robot surgeon startup scores $5m from US Investors - Australian Financial Times
Construction robot researchers target dangerous and dirty jobs - Construction Dive
Sereact Raises $26 Million for AI Warehouse Robotics Efforts - PYMNTS
Torc Robotics starts 2025 with revamped strategy - FreightWaves
How we bring AI into the physical world with autonomous systems - World Economic Forum
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation about technology and humanity with Silicon Valley Read’s featured authors Charlee Dyroff (Loneliness & Company), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI), and Ray Nayler (The Mountain in the Sea) on January 30th.
Attendees are invited to come early to see two robot dogs and visit the Euphrat Museum of Art, for their special exhibit where artists will be showcased around the theme "Encoding Empathy".
HRI 2025 - March 4-6 Melbourne Australia
In addition to a special “Industry Day” on March 3, 2025, the HRI 2025 conference invites partners to meet with some of the largest organizations in Australia!
This year, the conference theme is “robots for a sustainable world”—we all face the pressing global challenge of achieving sustainability in every facet of our lives; and we want to ensure that robots are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
The HRI conference gathers researchers and practitioners from all over the world to discuss and explore the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence with our human, social world. Details about partner/sponsor packages and à la carte options can be found here: https://humanrobotinteraction.org/2025/partners
IF you are a "supported organization", or small businesses (with fewer than 500 employees), businesses owned by women or socially or economically disadvantaged, nonprofits, and academic research groups, ask about the additional discounts.
Thanks and hope to have your organization represented at HRI 2025! :-)
2025
I can say that we launched International Humanoids Day on 12/12 and also that in 2025 the Silicon Valley / San Francisco Humanoids Summit will be back on Dec 11th and 12th 2025 AND in London on May 29th and 30th.
AMBayArea Winter Forum at NextFlex - Jan 23
ROS by the BAY - Jan 30
SVR Investor Summit - VIRTUAL - Jan 30
Bots&Beer is Back Baby! - Feb 5th
SVR Investor Summit - IN PERSON - Feb 12th
HRI 2025 Melbourne Australia March 4 - March 6
ProMat 2025 Chicago IL Mar 17 - Mar 20
ICRA 2025 Atlanta Georgia 17 May - 23 May 2025
Very neat images. Assuming AI - would be neat to see an article about how you get things in your distinctive style.