Image: Boston Dynamics
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At the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, Hyundai and Boston Dynamics plan to explore artificial intelligence for advanced robots and new hardware designs.
Founded in 1992, the robotics company Boston Dynamics has a long history of research and development. However, AI only played a minor role in this. Instead, the company focused on frictionless robotic mechanics combined with manually programmed capabilities.
More AI for Spot, Atlas and Co.
But that’s changing: Cognitive advances in artificial intelligence, such as computer vision, are creating new opportunities in robot control as well. Recently, Boston Dynamics has increasingly moved from manually programmed motion sequences to automated sequences and uses machine vision more, for example for its Stretch warehouse robot.
Artificial intelligence for robotics will be further advanced at the newborn AI Institute: Boston Dynamics says research will focus on cognitive AI, artificial intelligence for sports or robot movement, organic hardware design, ethics and policies. Each of these disciplines contributes to advanced robots, the institute’s announcement states.
Initially, Boston Dynamics and parent company Hyundai are investing $ 400 million to build the institute, which will develop its own technologies and collaborate with research units from other companies and universities.
Robots should become more like humans
The institute’s goal is to develop a new generation of robots which are “much better than anything that exists today”. Robots need to become “smarter, more agile and skilled and generally easier to use” and “more like people,” the company says.
Once that goal is achieved, it is argued, robots and other types of intelligent systems could further improve productivity, take on jobs that are dangerous to humans, care for people with disabilities, or help people in general “live a better life” .
With the AI Institute, Boston Dynamics was able to try to set up profitable research projects and products: for more than two decades, the company was primarily a research and development company. It didn’t launch open robot sales until the summer of 2020 with its Spot dog robot. For example, he introduced Stretch, a logistics robot designed to help in DHL’s warehouse.
On the other hand, there is the visionary humanoid robot Atlas (see our history of robotics), which does not yet have immediate practical use (and may never have), but which will advance robotics in general as a research project. .
Boston Dynamics is likely to focus more on commercial and manufacturing robots, also considering the economic needs of its listed parent company Hyundai, while the Boston Dynamics AI Institute is carrying out complex basic robotics research.
This theory is supported by a staff decision: Al Rizzi, who has more than 25 years of experience in robotics development – including 17 as a senior scientist at Boston Dynamics – will become chief technology officer of the AI Institute.
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