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the humanoid robot company invested by microsoft and openai has a new product!

1x technologies, a norwegian robotics company, has released a prototype of its new generation household robot neo.

unlike those steel behemoths with only mechanical skeletons, neo wears human-like clothes and looks more like a human.

neo is designed for home use, with 20 degrees of freedom for the hands, allowing a range of coffee-making operations to be completed.

it is also ultra-quiet. you only need to stand up to let neo help you pick up the backpack on the ground and hand it to you.

many netizens believe that there must be a real person inside the clothes imitating the activities of a robot (manual dog head).

some people even stood up to "fight fakes" and posted a screenshot of "1x team recruiting actors to pretend to be robots."

however, this "anti-counterfeiting" tweet was soon subjected to a second anti-counterfeiting campaign - this so-called recruitment notice did not actually exist, but was tampered with from an unrelated notice on the platform.

in addition, in an interview program, 1x’s ceo and other executives also revealed some technical information about neo.

during the period, the ceo also said that neo is planned to be released as early as this year, and the price will be kept at "the level equivalent to an economy car."

more human-like robots

next, let us take a closer look at neo, the robot that is “closest to humans”.

neo is 5.41 feet (1.65 meters) tall, weighs 66 pounds (29.9 kilograms), and can walk at a speed of up to 2.5 miles (4.02 kilometers) per hour.

it can withstand a weight of 44 pounds (20 kg), which is 2/3 of its own body weight, and has a battery life of 2-4 hours.

neo can perform complex operations and can also organize the high-heeled glasses in the cupboard with very smooth movements.

not only that, neo is also a good partner of humans, and will actively offer eggs to humans when they are cooking.

it can also actively summon humans for a big hug.

especially since it is wearing clothes, it feels more friendly and is also safer than a complete steel body.

what technical details are hidden behind these performances? 1x ceo bernt børnich and vice president of ai and former google senior scientist eric jang revealed them together.

bionic design makes robots safer

first of all, in terms of driving mode, neo adopts aflexible driving technology similar to human tendons, use wire rope to transmit power.

at the joints, neo usesseries elastic actuator, two low-gear-ratio, high-torque motors work together to pull the joints through steel cables.

this tendon-based drive method imitates human muscle movements and can make robots more flexible and compliant.

at the same time, this driving method also greatly improves the safety of the robot——

• the elastic driving mode greatly reduces the stiffness of the robot and reduces the energy in the event of a collision.

• the muscle-like cable drive also eliminates high-speed rotating parts, making the robot's movement smoother.

bernt børnich said that security was the primary consideration for the 1x team when developing neo.

however, unlike traditional robots, which regard all physical contacts as "collisions" and try to avoid them, neo is designedregular contact with the physical world was considered from the beginning, achieving a good balance between security and practical performance.

in addition to the design of the mechanical part, another highlight of neo is the addition of ai skills.

the 1x team is developing a robot foundation model that captures extensive world knowledge, collects data in real home environments, and trains robots to develop a wide range of household skills.

in actual work, neo will continue to learn, and the more you interact with them, the more natural and intuitive it will feel to use.

training of some of neo’s capabilities is done through a no-code interface, which means that non-professionals can also participate in the development of ai systems.

in addition, the 1x team also plans to quickly transfer the experience accumulated from the previous generation of eve robots (wheeled) to neo through transfer learning and other methods.

bernt børnich predicts that by 2027, robots will become "smart enough" and widely used in a variety of fields.

reference links:
[1]https://www.1x.tech/androids/neo
[2]https://twitter.com/TheHumanoidHub/status/1829577272820736060
[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ccPTpDq05A
[4]https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1f5jdsd/neos_20_degrees_of_freedom_hand_enables_humanlike/