Google Everyday Robots & Intrinsic: Mystery about robots revealed?

Last summer, Google parent Alphabet founded Intrinsic. The company is intended to pave Google's way into industrial robotics. It previously founded Everyday Robots for household robotics. Alphabet is known for making bets on the future. The prerequisite is a belief in huge market potential. This also applies to robotics. It can be assumed that both robotics startups will exchange ideas with each other.

Google invests massively in Munich

Google is relying heavily on German expertise for its project. During the last few months, specialists and even luminaries from Kuka, Fraunhofer IPA and ABB have been poached on a large scale. At the same time, large-scale construction is currently underway in Munich's prime location. After all, Bavarian Science Minister Markus Blume was in Silicon Valley at the end of August to meet the Intrinsic bosses(link). So Alphabet's robotics subsidiaries are a force to be reckoned with.

Household robots are controlled even more simply than thought

No-code programming is gaining in importance. However, the commands today - whether by pointing or speech - are still communicated to the robots quite awkwardly. Cumbersome then, if you've seen the video below. Google is taking a different approach here. The robot should only be told what to do, or even better, what happened. As an example, a spilled Coke can can be seen in the video. The robot is told "wipe the table" - nothing more - and it does it. For this, it must understand the task, know where a cleaning cloth is and where the table is.

Decisive for success will obviously be the language modeling.

Ethics and hierarchy

In my opinion, ethics and the question of who such a robot listens to will also be important. Imagine quarreling, smaller siblings. In case of escalation, one child could sic the robot on the other child. Neura Robotics' approach should reduce such a risk: With Maira, the robot repeats in command and waits for confirmation. Only then does it become active.

However, Alphabet is also known to pull the plug when successes fail to materialize. This was the case with my former "favorite bet" Makani. You to remember the video that had impressed me deeply years ago:

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The author of this blog is significantly involved in the AI/robotics project Opdra. He consults around robotics. More about him can be found here.