Ethan B. Holland

Over 56,100 manually organized AI links and counting

a human-like robot sitting at a modern workspace, engaged in a conversation with a senior citizen. The robot, designed with sleek, futuristic elements, resembles a high-tech doll. It is equipped with a touchscreen interface on its chest, displaying conversation cues and health reminders. The senior, visibly engaged and comforted, is smiling and gesturing towards the robot as if in deep conversation. Warm, natural lighting fills the room, highlighting the interaction between human and AI, and emphasizing the blend of technology and care in addressing loneliness and health management. The setting is cozy yet modern, with indoor plants adding a touch of warmth

Robotics and Embodiment News: Week Ending 03/15/2024

March 15, 2024

“With OpenAI, Figure 01 can now have full conversations with people -OpenAI models provide high-level visual and language intelligence -Figure neural networks deliver fast, low-level, dexterous robot actions Everything in this video is a neural network: https://twitter.com/Figure_robot/status/1767913661253984474

“South Korea’s local governments are deploying around 7,000 AI-robot dolls to seniors and dementia patients. The $1,800 robot doll by Hyodal can hold full conversations to tackle loneliness and remind users to take medication. Dystopian, yes, but the data is fascinating: 1.… https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1767235363385561577

“Robotics startup Covariant just unveiled RFM-1, an AI platform that brings ChatGPT-like language reasoning to physical robots. The platform allows robots to learn new skills, adapt to unexpected situations, and interact with humans more naturally. https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1767410891216028013

Covariant is building ChatGPT for robots | TechCrunch – https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/11/covariant-is-building-chatgpt-for-robots/

Covariant | Powering the Future of Automation, Today – https://covariant.ai/insights/introducing-rfm-1-giving-robots-human-like-reasoning-capabilities/

Covariant Announces a Universal AI Platform for Robots – IEEE Spectrum – https://spectrum.ieee.org/covariant-foundation-model

How the A.I. That Drives ChatGPT Will Move Into the Physical World – The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/ai-robots-technology.html

“Yes, 2024 is shaping up a big year for robotics! Introducing @CovariantAI’s RFM-1, which just like Sora can generate video, but RFM-1 does it for robotic interaction with the world. But there is so much more it can do. RFM-1 is a multimodal any-to-any sequence model. RFM-1… https://twitter.com/pabbeel/status/1767237552455729657

“So RFM-1 can just as well be instantiated to enable a robot to have conversations in plain English, follow instructions. Here is a video showcasing RFM-1 doing just that: https://twitter.com/pabbeel/status/1767237554880000294

“DexCap: a $3,600 open-source hardware stack that records human finger motions to train dexterous robot manipulation. It’s like a very “lo-fi” version of Optimus, but affordable to academic researchers. This isn’t teleoperation: data collection is decoupled from the robot… https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1768323865317671413

Physical Intelligence Raises $70M to Build AI-Powered Robots for Any Application – https://www.maginative.com/article/physical-intelligence-raises-70m-to-build-ai-powered-robots-for-any-application/

Physical Intelligence Is Building AI for Robots, Backed by OpenAI – Bloomberg – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-12/physical-intelligence-is-building-ai-for-robots-backed-by-openai

“Introducing SIMA: the first generalist AI agent to follow natural-language instructions in a broad range of 3D virtual environments and video games. 🕹️ It can complete tasks similar to a human, and outperforms an agent trained in just one setting. 🧵 https://twitter.com/GoogleDeepMind/status/1767918515585994818

“Congrats @rkjenamani, @RealZiangLiu and the team on getting nominated for best paper award at #HRI2024 for their work on inside-mouth bite transfer for people with severe mobility limitations. People with severe mobility conditions cannot bend their neck to take a bite from a… https://twitter.com/TapoBhat/status/1767575022053347799

“We just released our new work on miniaturizing high-resolution tactile sensors using fiber optics, and open-sourced the new DIGIT Pinky sensor. Paper: https://twitter.com/RCalandra/status/1767819755136717286

“Introduce 3D-VLA, a 3D Generative World Model! Humans use mental models to predict and plan for the future. Similarly, 3D-VLA achieves this by linking 3D perception, future prediction, and action executions through a generative world model. https://twitter.com/gan_chuang/status/1768715113794506843

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AI News #24: Week Ending 03/15/2024 with Executive Summary and Top 36 Links

The post you just read is an deep dive extension of my weekly newsletter, This Week In AI, an executive summary of the top things to know in AI. Each week, I create an accessible overview for laypeople to feel confident they are conversant with the week’s AI developments. I include a curated list of must-click links of the week, to offer everyone a hands-on opportunity to explore the most intriguing updates in artificial intelligence across various categories, including robotics, imagery, video, AR/VR, science, ethics, and more. Beyond the overview, I post these topic-based deeper dives (below). If you haven’t read this week’s overview, I recommend starting there.

Credits/Sources

Most of these weekly links come from just a few prolific oversharing sources. Please follow them, as they work hard to find the news each week and they make it a lot easier for me to compile.