Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Meet Phoenix, a general-purpose humanoid robot designed for work

Canada’s Sanctuary AI, which aims to create the world’s-first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots, has now announced a major step forward with the unveiling of its sixth-generation general-purpose robot named Phoenix.

Phoenix is, the company says, the world’s first humanoid general-purpose robot powered by Carbon, its pioneering AI control system. The system is designed to give Phoenix human-like intelligence and enable it to do a wide range of work to help address the labor challenges affecting many organizations today.

Sanctuary has demonstrated Phoenix for hundreds of different tasks identified by customers from more than a dozen different industries.

The Phoenix model is the sixth generation of the platform and is the first robot model to be complete with legs and worthy of being characterized as a humanoid bipedal robotic system.

Standing at 5′ 7″ and weighing 155 lbs (70 kg), the humanoid robot is just about the size of an average human. It can carry a payload of up to 55 lb (25 kg) and has a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour (4.8 km/h). The Phoenix hand design features 20 degrees of freedom, which the company says rivals human hand dexterity and fine manipulation with proprietary haptic technology that mimics the sense of touch.

“We designed Phoenix to be the most sensor-rich and physically capable humanoid ever built and to enable Carbon’s rapidly growing intelligence to perform the broadest set of work tasks possible,” said Geordie Rose, co-founder and CEO of Sanctuary AI. “We see a future where general-purpose robots are as ubiquitous as cars, helping people to do work that needs doing, in cases where there simply aren’t enough people to do that work.”

Its literal take on “general purpose” and emphasis on creating a technology that can conduct physical work just like a person sets Sanctuary AI apart from others in the industry. “To be general-purpose, a robot needs to be able to do nearly any work task, the way you’d expect a person to, in the environment where the work is,” said Rose. “While it is easy to get fixated on the physical aspects of a robot, our view is that a robot is just a tool for the real star of the show, which in our case is our proprietary AI control system, the robot’s Carbon-based mind.”