TechCrunch Journalist Brian Heater talks with TRI's Vice President of Robotics Research Russ Tedrake and Max Bajracharya, Senior Vice President of Robotics, on the state of robotics.

In this Q&A, Tedrake and Bajracharya address questions, including the role generative AI will play in the future of robotics and their thoughts on the humanoid factor.

"Generative AI has the potential to bring revolutionary new capabilities to robotics," Tedrake said. "Not only are we able to communicate with robots in natural language, but also connecting to internet-scale language and image data is giving robots a much more robust understanding and reasoning about the world. But we are still in the early days; more work is needed to understand how to ground image and language knowledge in the types of physical intelligence required to make robots truly useful."

On the humanoid factor, Bajracharya said, "Places where robots might assist people tend to be designed for people, so these robots will likely need to fit and work in those environments. However, that does not mean they need to take a humanoid (two arms, five-fingered hands, two legs, and a head) form factor; simply, they need to be compact, safe, and capable of human-like tasks.

Read the full article to learn more.

Image Credits: Brian Heater