Sanctuary AI, bent on developing human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots, today announced “a major step forward” in this mission with the unveiling of its sixth-generation robot.
The robot’s name is Phoenix.
Phoenix is a humanoid general-purpose robot powered by Carbon, an AI control system that is designed to give Phoenix human-like intelligence and enable it to do a range of work to address the labour challenges affecting organizations today, according to a statement from Sanctuary.
“We designed Phoenix to be the most sensor-rich and physically capable humanoid ever built and to enable Carbon’s rapidly growing intelligence to perform the broadest set of work tasks possible,” stated Geordie Rose, co-founder and CEO, Sanctuary AI. “We see a future where general-purpose robots are as ubiquitous as cars, helping people to do work that needs doing, in cases where there simply aren’t enough people to do that work.”
Phoenix is very much an average humanoid in terms of form, standing between five and six feet tall and weighing about 150 pounds, with a typical arrangement of limbs and extremities. And, akin to many modern humans, Phoenix maxes out at about five kilometres per hour.
What sets Sanctuary AI apart from others in the industry is this literal emphasis on creating a technology that can conduct physical work just like a person.
“To be general-purpose, a robot needs to be able to do nearly any work task, the way you’d expect a person to, in the environment where the work is,” argues Rose. “While it is easy to get fixated on the physical aspects of a robot, our view is that the robot is just a tool for the real star of the show, which in our case is our proprietary AI control system, the robot’s Carbon-based mind.”
Carbon is a “cognitive architecture and software platform for humanoid general-purpose robots,” according to Sanctuary, which integrates AI technologies to translate natural language into action in the real world; this is what enables Phoenix “to think and act to complete tasks like a person.”
Earlier this year Sanctuary AI successfully completed the first-ever “deployment of a unique system designed to deliver the world’s first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots at a customer commercial facility.”
Last year the startup raised a sizeable round of funding.
Sanctuary AI was founded in Vancouver in 2018.
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