Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On August 15, according to foreign media IEEE Specturm, South Korean car company Hyundai and its robotics company Boston Dynamics announced that they would jointly set up BDAII (Boston Dynamics AI Institute, Boston Institute of Power and artificial Intelligence) in Cambridge, Mass, Massachusetts, with the goal of "leading the progress of artificial intelligence and robotics".

Hyundai acquired Boston Power for $1 billion in December 2020 and became the parent company of Boston Power. Hyundai and Boston Dynamics will jointly provide more than $400 million (about 2.7 billion yuan) in start-up capital for the project. Mark Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, is in charge of the project, and Al Rizzi, chief scientist of Boston Dynamics, will serve as chief technology officer.

▲ Mark Leibert and Robot Atlas

First, without commercial pressure, the institute will focus on cutting-edge robot development. IEEE Specturm said that in the past five years, Boston Dynamics has shifted its focus to robots for some reason, hoping to build and commercialize robots with practical functions. This is not only the goal of Boston Dynamics, but also the goal of all cutting-edge robotics companies. If the robot industry is to move forward, both cutting-edge technology and basic technology are important, and these two areas need to go hand in hand.

But commercialization is not an easy goal, and before robot companies can achieve it, they may build a lot of robots that are impractical and unacceptable to consumers, but this process is the only way for them to achieve their goal.

▲ Boston Power Robot Atlas

Boston Dynamics hopes to commercialize it by selling practical robots. BDAII, a research institute independent of Boston Dynamics, is free to focus on forward-looking research paths without worrying about commercialization. IEEE Specturm said that although these studies do not directly reflect commercial value at present, they have great commercial potential, and in some ways, the technologies derived from these studies will be of great value in the future.

Academic research is an important reason to promote the emergence of new robots. However, there are often differences between academic-centered robot research and business-centered robot research. Academia usually gives priority to original research that can be funded and published, while the business community gives priority to robot research that can get a financial return. Neither of these two situations is conducive to really promoting the research process of robots.

The advantage of BDAII is that it can cooperate with university research laboratory and enterprise development laboratory at the same time, and draw on its own strengths, which is more conducive to promoting the research and development of robot technology.

▲ Boston Power Robot Dog Spot

Second, BDAII studies four major areas and further expands the scale of recruitment. The mission of BDAII is to solve the important challenges in the field of artificial intelligence and robots, and to accelerate the development of intelligent robots. BDAII will make robots smarter, more agile, more dexterous, more applicable, and more human-like. They hope to improve the productivity of robots and intelligent systems, replace people in those dangerous jobs, make life more convenient for people with disabilities, and thus make people's lives better.

BDAII is a research-oriented organization dedicated to solving the difficult technologies needed to build advanced robots. The Institute's four core technical areas of work are: cognitive AI (cognitive AI), Sports AI (athletic AI), Organic hardware Design (organic hardware design), and Robot Ethics and Policy (ethics and policy).

The Development History of ▲ Boston powered Robot

Therefore, BDAII will invest resources in R & D in these four areas. In addition, the institute will also establish cooperation with university research laboratories and enterprise development laboratories to test theory through practice and guide practice through theory.

BDAII's next step is to expand the scale of its research, so they have also expanded their recruitment to find more robotics experts. Mark Leibert wrote on BDAII's website:

Our team culture is technical fearlessness, teamwork, mutual respect and technical fun. We will hire the best talents we can find and provide them with the best resources such as equipment, computers and so on. If you are good at robotics, machine learning, computer, hardware engineering and other fields, we are very eager for you to join us to promote the development of artificial intelligence and robotics.

▲ Boston Dynamics hopes to recruit more robotics experts

Conclusion: can BDAII help the commercialization of Boston Power? Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 and was first acquired by Google in 2013. Four years later, Google sold Boston Dynamics to Softbank Corp. Group. Under SoftBank, Boston Dynamics's quadruped robot Spot went public, and related Spot Explorer kits generated more than $30 million in revenue for Softbank Corp.. In 2020, Softbank Corp. sold Boston Power to Hyundai Motor.

Boston Dynamics has had three owners in seven years, mainly because its robots have not been commercialized for a long time. IEEE Specturm says Boston Dynamics seems to have been trying two different paths. One is a business path around robots such as Spot and Stretch, and the other is an independent research path that focuses entirely on Atlas.

It is mentioned in this paper that advanced robot technology will have great commercial value in the future. As things stand, Boston Dynamics set up BDAII to prepare for a commercial landing through the development of more advanced robotics.

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