United States: NVIDIA, the American multinational technology company, has announced Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots. The firm also introduced Jetson Thor, a new computer for humanoid robots, along with upgrades to its Isaac robotics platform.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, stated that, “Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today. The enabling technologies are coming together for leading roboticists around the world to take giant leaps towards artificial general robotics.”
‘GR00T’ is an acronym that stands for ‘Generalist Robot 00 Technology.’ Robots that are developed using this platform have the potential to comprehend natural language and imitate movements by observing actions. According to NVIDIA, such robots can learn coordination, dexterity, and other skills rapidly, enabling them to navigate, adapt, and interact with the actual world.
Jetson Thor is a powerful computing platform created by NVIDIA, based on their Thor system-on-a-chip. This platform is designed to perform difficult assignments and interact safely and naturally with people and machines. The architecture of Jetson Thor is modular and optimised for performance, power, and size. NVIDIA is collaborating with various humanoid robot companies, such as Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Fourier Intelligence, Sanctuary AI, Unitree Robotics and XPENG Robotics, to develop a comprehensive AI platform.
Jonathan Hurst, cofounder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics said in a statement that, “We are at an inflection point in history, with human-centric robots like Digit poised to change labour forever. Modern AI will accelerate development, paving the way for robots like Digit to help people in all aspects of daily life. We’re excited to partner with NVIDIA to invest in the computing, simulation tools, machine learning environments and other necessary infrastructure to enable the dream of robots being a part of daily life.”
NVIDIA proclaimed multiple upgrades to its Isaac robotics platform, which powers GR00T. The Isaac devices used by GR00T offer the power to form new foundational models for any robot, in any environment. Among these tools, people can uncover Isaac Lab for reinforcement learning and OSMO, an orchestration service. Additionally, the firm informed Isaac Manipulator and Isaac Perceptor, both of which are pre-trained models, libraries, and reference hardware that helps robots perform their tasks.
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