Stretch AI launch and Chinese perspective of AI and humanoid robots

Plus more stories from the 'making real robots' frontier, and all the latest news in robots and startups.

TLDR (difficult to translate the talks)

Being invited to attend Zhejiang Robotics Industry Association’s annual Westlake International Robotics Forum, I had great pleasure in hearing talks from leading robotics companies, universities and the launch of the Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. There is strong impetus in China to support the development of humanoids and AI embodiment technologies with the development of foundation models for robotics, particularly small scale multimodal LLMs.

The challenges are the same around the world, with the primary difference of manufacturing scale and government/university support. There were more than 85 humanoid robotics companies in China in Q3 2024, from 35 in Q1. Some like Unitree, Fourier, and Ubtech have strong history. Others like Galaxy, Deep Robotics and Agibot are much younger but have very strong founding teams and are attracting large investment. New Humanoid Robotics Innovation Centers and a cohesive support framework will be very beneficial to the best quality young companies.

The rest of the world should invest more in strategic technology support! And why not increase support for robotics clusters, instead of creating more standalone institutes or grant programs. Robotics clusters increase the success of individual companies by creating accessible resource pools. (Research backed statement.)

BTW For more nuances, please read today’s Information article about Trump bringing the Chinese EV industry to the USA. Manufacturing boundaries are more fluid, now and in the future, than it initially appears.

Hello Robot launches Stretch AI

Hello Robot have just announced the launch of Stretch AI!

The TLDR is that we wanted to open up access to the latest Embodied AI techniques and make them available to the fast-growing community of Stretch developers. Despite recent impressive advances in robotics and AI, it is still uncommon to see robots actually working in real homes with real people. With Stretch AI, we empower a diverse open-source community to drive forward the future of robots helping people in real homes.

Since the launch of Stretch 3 last February, we’ve seen an explosion of work by the Embodied AI community. In the last few months alone, work on Stretch was awarded the CoRL'24 Outstanding Paper, the IROS'24 Best Mobile Manipulation Paper, and the CoRL Best Paper at the Workshop on Lifelong Learning for Home Robots.

Rise of the Robots? A Framework for Startups

Amit Garg, The Data Driven Investor

1) Factors Accelerating Robotics

The word robot is just over a hundred years old and arguably the first modern robot was a hydraulic arm invented in the 1950s. They have been adopted widely in certain industries, especially manufacturing. But at Tau we subscribe to the view that robotics has now hit an inflection point and we are going to see robots adopted at mass scale. Part of it is the diminishing cost of materials, part of it is the combinatorial explosion of AI as outlined in our framework below.

The growth of foundational models illustrates how industry aka commercial applications are dwarfing the development of AI.

In the same vein the core arguments for robotics have been long-standing:

• cost — the unit economics of robots are increasingly making sense, especially for rote tasks

• efficiency — a robot doesn’t need to eat, doesn’t mind repetitive motions, doesn’t make mistakes from being tired

• safety — consider dangerous areas like factory floors or warehouses with forklifts

In the US specifically we believe restricted labor availability due to curtailed immigration will also propel robotic adoption. Overall at Tau our belief is the time is ripe for building great robotics companies.

2) Outstanding Challenges

… MORE NEXT WEEK or at THE DATA DRIVEN INVESTOR

Some Thoughts on Robotics Startups

Michael Ferguson at Robot & Chisel, 10/01/2024

Robotics is not SAAS

What surprises me is there are still investment firms trying this same playbook today. They go out and fund a robotics company founded entirely by roboticsists (and for some reason, many seem to think there are bonus points if every one of the founders is a Robotics PhD and has never held a job outside of academia).

Some of these firms claim that RaaS is the new SaaS: spoiler alert - it’s probably not! Robotics is capital intensive. Especially if you are buying all these robots, keeping them on the books, and then renting them out with a 1-2 year payback window. Even worse: robots age a lot worse than servers.

The really tricky thing about “robotics startups” is that the robot is JUST ONE PART of the business / product. It’s really just the starting point - and you will eventually end up expending far more effort on the rest of the product: the software you need for deployment and monitoring, the sales organization, the integration teams.

Finally, while many folks will tell you that “hardware is hard” - the bigger problem is that hardware is SLOW. Supply chains have improved from the days of the pandemic, but they are still slow, inefficient and generally a bit of a hot mess. So when you do suddenly land all those orders - good luck getting the parts you need to actually fulfill the order quickly.

/rant

Robotics Ecosystems

And now we get to something maybe actually useful to somebody. If our current generation of robotic startups are fully vertically integrated and founded solely by robotics people, what does the next generation look like? ….

READ MORE NEXT WEEK or at ROBOT & CHISEL

From Prototype to Product

A half day workshop on manufacturing for robotics and deep tech startups from IEEE RAS and Entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley Robotics and Circuit Launch, at the new Circuit Launch location in Mountain View, 599 Fairchild Drive.

Sign up now to speak with mentors in the manufacturing process, plus a few for the investor pitch side of things too. :)

Humanoids Summit - MC'd by Evan Ackerman and Andra Keay

Silicon Valley Robotics is proud to be the strategic advisor for the first Humanoids Summit, Dec 11th and 12th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

The first speakers to be announced include Jonathan Hurst from Agility Robotics. You’ll also meed 1X, Apptronik, Kind Humanoids, Engineered Arts, Enchanted Tools and Hanson Robotics, with MCs Evan Ackerman and Andra Keay. And we’re just getting started.

The Summit has expanded to three tracks in order to accommodate more stellar speakers and exhibitors, and if you’re a Silicon Valley Robotics member you get a great discount on exhibiting and attending.

Send me your community news to share!

Robotics News

Global Robot Density in Factories Doubled in Seven Years - IFR

Nvidia put on 90 days ‘watch’ by Citi analysts: The ‘big announcement’ on January 6, robots and more - MSN

TRUMPF & Intrinsic: AI-enabled robotics for the machine tool industry - Intrinsic Blog

Chicago South Suburbs see the future of manufacturing as American and robotic - The Robot Report

Rethink Robotics Announces Female Leadership Team Poised to Execute Growth Strategy - Cision

RealMan Showcases Ultra-Lightweight Humanoid Robotic Arms at Advanced Manufacturing Madrid 2024 - RealMan (humanoid? I guess all arms kind of are!)

Pickle Robot closes $50m Series B funding and secures new orders for 30+ unload robots - Globe Newswire

May Mobility launches autonomous e-Palette deployment at Toyota Motor Kyushu factory in Fukuoka, Japan - PRNewswire

Challenges facing agricultural robotics: production halts and a market shift - Future Farming

Are robotic weeders a cost effective part of sustainable farming? - Anthropocene

Tesla’s Elon Musk may not be the only one cashing in on humanoid robots - YahooFinance

Meet the human-like robots that may one day be inside your home - CNN Innovate

Figure 02 performing tasks autonomously - TechCrunch

Honda’s Haru Is a Cute New Robot Made to Cheer Up Kids in Hospitals - TheDrive

Molex Envisions the Future of Robotics in New Industry Report that Considers the Rising Potential of Human-Machine Collaborations - Media Outreach

The US Army’s Vision of Soldiers in Exoskeletons Lives On - Wired

Hyundai Motor and Kia Debut the X-Ble Shoulder - Worker Safety-Enhancing Wearable Robotics - Trendhunter

Hyundai Plans To Sell This Wearable Robot Tech - Autoweek

Robot balloons are snapping centimeter-resolution photos of the US - New Scientist

Waymo Officially Enters the LA Marketplace - LA Business Journal

A revolution in how robots learn - The New Yorker

Robotis, MIT to jointly develop physical AI - Korea Economic Daily

AI robots work together to perform autonomous synthesis and analysis - Chemistry World

Accelerating Materials Science With AI and Robotics - Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

The local events I’m going to be at…

• DIY Robocars & Brazilian BBQ and Grand Opening of Circuit Launch Mountain View! - Dec 7

• maybe ISRR in San Diego Dec 8-12

• Humanoid Robotics Summit - Mountain View - Dec 11 - 12

• SVR Robotics Entrepreneur Workshop on Dec 13 - get the news first here :)

And some more robotics conferences (and I’ll see you at CSAIL, BARS, ROSCon, Masters&Robots, ICSR and more tbd):

• ISRR - 40th Anniversary - Long Beach CA Dec 8 - Dec 12

2025

• 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