NEWSLETTER
Over the next few weeks, TechCrunch’s Actuator robotics newsletter will host Q&A sessions with some of the top minds in robotics. Subscribe here for future updates.
Part 1: CMU’s Matthew Johnson-Roberson
This week we have two fer. Russ Tedrake and Max Bajracharya of the Toyota Research Institute shared the work. Tedrake is TRI’s vice president of Robotics Research. He is also an MIT Toyota Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Aero/Astro. Bajracharya is TRI’s Senior Vice President of Robotics. He previously served as director of Robotics at the Institute.
What role will generative ai play in the future of robotics?
Russ Tedrake: Generative ai has the potential to bring revolutionary new capabilities to robotics. Not only can we communicate with robots in natural language, but connecting to Internet-scale image and language data is giving robots much more robust understanding and reasoning about the world. But we are still in the early days; More work is needed to understand how to base knowledge of images and language on the types of physical intelligence needed to make robots truly useful.
What do you think about the humanoid form factor?
Max Bajracharya: The places where robots could help people tend to be designed for people, so these robots will likely need to adapt and work in those environments. However, that doesn’t mean they have to adopt a humanoid form factor (two arms, five-fingered hands, two legs, and a head); They simply need to be compact, safe, and capable of performing human-like tasks.
After manufacturing and warehouses, what is the next important category of robotics?
Max Bajracharya: I see a lot of potential and needs in farming, but the open-air, unstructured nature of many of the tasks is a big challenge. Toyota Ventures has invested in a couple of companies like Burro and Agtonomy, which are making good progress in bringing autonomy to some early agricultural applications.
How far away are true general-purpose robots?
Russ Tedrake: I’m optimistic that the field can make steady progress from the relatively specific robots we have today toward more general-purpose robots. It’s unclear how long it will take, but flexible automation, high-mix manufacturing, agricultural robots, point-of-service robots, and likely new industries we haven’t yet imagined will benefit from increasing levels of autonomy and increasingly general capabilities. . .
Will home robots (beyond vacuum cleaners) take off in the next decade?
Max Bajracharya: Homes remain a difficult challenge for robots because they are so diverse and unstructured, and consumers are price sensitive. The future is difficult to predict, but the field of robotics is advancing very quickly.
What important robotics story/trend isn’t getting enough coverage?
Russ Tedrake: We hear a lot these days about generative ai and the incredible advancements and investments in hardware. Many of these successes, however, were made possible by the quiet revolution we’ve seen in simulation. Just a few years ago, most robotics experts would have said that it was impossible to train or test a computer vision system in simulation; It is now standard practice. Some researchers are still skeptical that we can develop a control system for, for example, a dexterous hand completely in simulation and make it work in reality, but the trend is increasingly moving in this direction. Large investments from companies like Nvidia, Google DeepMind and TRI are helping to make this happen.
