Chinese startup EngineAI unveiled their SE01 prototype in October. Today, they've announced the beginning of sales for their smaller humanoid PM01.
4'6" tall, weighs 40kg, has 24 DoF, 2m/s walking speed, and supports R&D with X86 + NVIDIA Jetson Orin.
Price: 88k RMB ($12,000)
Energy efficient morphing drones inspired by birds.
A new control system for avian-inspired drones developed at EPFL is taking adaptive flight to the next level.
Designed with morphing wings and tails, these drones offer exceptional agility and energy efficiency, mimicking the dynamics of bird flight.
The system leverages all available actuators to maintain stability—even in turbulent air or with partial system failures—making it incredibly resilient.
Using in-flight optimization, the drones improve energy efficiency by up to 11.5% at speeds of 8, 10, and 12 m/s.
This tech could reshape autonomous drone operations, from navigating diverse wind conditions to maximizing energy conservation.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that rather than seeing AI Scaling Laws hit a wall, if anything we are seeing the emergence of a new Scaling Law for test-time compute
Generative AI is cool and all, but procedural 3D modeling just hits different. Check out this Houdini setup by Pepe Buendia.
Why this is cool: Instead of manually placing every building and car, this system generates an NYC-style city that builds itself -- automatically spawning buildings with unique variations, plus a traffic system where cars actually obey traffic lights and avoid crashing into each other (all orchestrated through houdini VEX code).
Each car knows exactly which road it's on and makes real-time decisions about navigation. The whole thing runs on custom algorithms that handle everything from road directions to building placement.
If you did this with generative AI, even approaches to conditioning and taming the chaos -- you'd still get a ton of variance which might be an issue for visual and spatial consistency.
To me this is procedural modeling at its finest - precise control meets infinite scalability. Immensely useful for media & entertainment, but also synthetic training data for robotics and augmented reality.
I of course can't wait until multimodal LLMs to have the spatial understanding to write these kind of controllable 3D worlds for us. Claude counting 2D pixels on a screen is a step in this direction. Soon they'll be able to manipulate 2D ortho viewports, and eventually spawn procedural 3D worlds.
AI is making big moves in the 3D industry!
@meshcapade just launched their Text-to-3D Movement tool, which lets us customize character shapes and animate them using simple text prompts.
No more tedious rigging, mapping, or frame-by-frame animation!
Robots building homes! 🛖
Automated modular house construction getting a helping hand from robots.
Their approach aims to shift construction from traditional sites to factory settings, where robots assist workers in building houses using materials like wood or steel.
This method promises to reduce construction time and costs, optimize logistics, and maintain high-quality standards while being more resource-efficient and weather-independent. ⏱️
Modular construction allows customization to meet customer preferences and varying building regulations, dispelling the notion that factory-built homes are impersonal or identical.
@KUKAGlobal robots are helping out another industry! 🦺
P.S. The first gripper / EOAT is impressive! ❤️🔥
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♻️ RT to help 1 robot find a new workplace.
TechCrunch recently visited Figure in Sunnyvale.
⦿ Figure currently employs 130 engineers and will move to a new, larger facility next year
⦿ "The robots will return to the BMW plant in January, this time for good. The initial fleet will be in the mid-to-high single digits."
Meet Galbot G1, the 1st-generation robot by Chinese startup Galbot, designed for generalizable, long-duration tasks.
Founded in May 2023 by a Stanford PhD, the company currently has 80 engineers and researchers working on algorithms, software, and hardware development.
Founder @ElonMusk and @SpaceX prove that conquering challenges is key to realizing dreams, especially in the world of startups. Each setback is a step closer to success.
Embrace resilience.