Sanctuary AI Presents 5’7” General-Purpose Robot That Moves Like A Human

This week, Tesla made new progress with its humanoid robot, Optimus, in a recent demonstration that showed a small army of five droids walking around the office and performing menial tasks. Since it first announced in 2021 that it would come up with a humanoid bot of its own, other tech companies have started to try their (robotic) hand at devising their own version.

One such firm, Sanctuary AI, is introducing its robot ‘Phoenix’, which is meant to be a general-purpose machine and aid humans in everyday duties.

Phoenix can mimic and move around much like a human despite its very mechanical form factor of exposed hardware and cameras for eyes. It’s five feet and seven inches tall and weighs 155 lbs, and it even has a hand much like ours, with four fingers, a thumb, and 20 degrees of freedom to move it around.
 
Phoenix can walk at a speed of three miles an hour, and it can lift 55 lbs worth of goods. It’s powered up by Sanctuary AI’s Carbon platform, an AI system responsible for Phoenix’s human-like thinking.

In March, the company employed the robot at a Mark’s store just outside of Vancouver, Canada, to work among other human employees. Phoenix was in charge of back- and front-store tasks, including carrying around stock, tagging, labeling, and folding items.
 
Per TechCrunch, Sanctuary AI posits a future where general-purpose robots are as common as cars. In order to do this, the company states that a focus on the AI control systems of these machines is imperative to get them to integrate into a human’s workflow.
 
Last March, it secured a Series A funding of almost $60 million, and later in the year, the Canadian government invested another $30 million into the project.

[via TechCrunch and The Robot Report, images via Sanctuary AI]