Today might be the golden age of humanoid robot development. Tesla is building Optimus, Figure AI is working on Figure 01, which it hopes will be the “world’s first commercially-viable autonomous humanoid robot.” Fourier Exo is building the GR-1, Agility Robotics is making Digit, and Boston Dynamics is always making some vaguely human or dog-like robot. Sanctuary AI is also building human-like robots, focusing largely on the artificial intelligence components. The company’s mission is “to create the world’s-first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots,” and CEO Geordie Rose says the actual robot bodies themselves are almost a secondary consideration. Except for one part: the hands. The problem: building human-like hands is beyond the bounds of today’s science, Rose says. “I think of all of the hands that have ever been built, ours is clearly the best today, but there’s still a big gap between the human hand and what we can build,” he told me recently on the TechFirst podcast. “Actually building a hand that’s like ours is beyond the boundaries of science … it’s not just that Sanctuary can’t do it. It’s that no one knows how to do it.”
Full story : More Than Half The Complexity Of Robots Is In The Hands.
