The humanoid sucked a large amount of air out of the room. After all, it's much easier to generate press with a robot that looks like a human and moves like a human. Ultimately, however, both the effectiveness and scalability of such a design remain to be proven. Brad Porter, founder of Collaborative Robotics, has been avoiding robots that look like humans for some time. But machines that can potentially reason in the same way as humans are a completely different story.
As the two-year-old startup's name suggests, Collaborative Robotics (cobots for short) is interested in how humans and robots will work together in the future. The company has not yet released its system, but Porter told me last year that the “new collaborative robot” system is neither humanoid nor a mobile manipulator attached to the back of an autonomous mobile robot (AMR). .
However, this system is starting to be implemented at some sites.
“Bringing our first robot into the field earlier this year, combined with today's investment, marks a major milestone in bringing collaborative robots with human-level capabilities to today's industry.” says Porter. “We are seeing a virtuous cycle where more robots in the field lead to improved AI and a more cost-effective supply chain.”
Further expansion will be supported by a new $100 million Series B led by General Catalyst and featuring Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures, and Lux Capital. This brings the Bay Area company's total funding to $140 million. General Catalyst's Teresa Carlson also joins the company as an advisor.
Cobot's staff includes former employees of Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and Waymo. Porter himself spent more than 13 years at Amazon. When his tenure at the company ended in summer 2020, he was leading the retail giant's industrial robotics team.
During this time, Amazon has become one of the world's top drivers and consumers of industrial robots, and its now ubiquitous AMR has proven highly effective in combining human and robot workers. I am.
While AI is, of course, a cornerstone of the company's “human problem solving” promise, the move away from humanoid form factors is, in part, an attempt to reduce the implementation costs of deploying these systems. It is also an initiative.