Sanctuary AI announced a major step forward for humanoid robots with the unveiling of its sixth-generation general-purpose robot named Phoenix™. Phoenix is the world’s first humanoid general-purpose robot powered by Carbon™, a pioneering and unique AI control system, 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 been able to show that its technology is already capable of completing hundreds of tasks identified by customers from more than a dozen different industries.
“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, 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.”
About Phoenix™
Human-like form and function: standing at 5’ 7” and weighing 155 lbs
Maximum payload of 55 lbs
Maximum speed of 3 miles per hour
Industry-leading robotic hands with increased degrees of freedom (20 in total) that rival human hand dexterity and fine manipulation with proprietary haptic technology that mimics the sense of touch
Improved aesthetics with a bolder color palette and elevated textures.
About Carbon™
A cognitive architecture and software platform for humanoid general-purpose robots
Integrates modern AI technologies to translate natural language into action in the real world
Enables Phoenix to think and act to complete tasks like a person
Explainable and auditable reasoning, task, and motion plans
Symbolic and logical reasoning coupled with modern LLMs (for general knowledge), domain-specific integrations, and extensions
Agency and goal-seeking behaviors
Uses Deep Learning & Reinforcement Learning
Photo-realistic and physics-realistic world simulations for robot training
Human-in-the-loop supervision, teleoperation, and fleet management
What sets Sanctuary AI apart from others in the industry is its literal take on “general-purpose” and emphasis on creating a technology that can conduct physical work just like a person. “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 the 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.”
In March, Sanctuary AI announced it completed its first commercial deployment, a significant milestone in the company’s progress toward full commercialization. At that same time, Sanctuary AI announced it was taking an open and collaborative approach to building a new ecosystem in AI and robotics. To fulfill the ambitious mission of creating human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots, Sanctuary AI assembled a robust coalition of best-in-class vendors and partners — including Apptronik, Bell, Common Sense Machines, Contoro, Cycorp, Exonetik, HaptX, Magna, Tangible Research, Verizon Ventures, and Workday Ventures.
Last spring, the company announced the completion of its Series A funding round. In November, the company received a C$30 million Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) contribution from the Government of Canada, bringing Sanctuary AI’s total funding to over C$100 million. Sanctuary AI is active in its next funding round to fuel its mission. Interested parties can learn more at the official company website: https://sanctuary.ai
The prior version of the SanctuaryAI bot is shown in the video.
SanctuaryAI Discussion on Generative AI
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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It is awfully slow. If the limiting factor is software mostly and speed can be improved by a lot, then good. If hardware limits the robot too much, then it is not useful even with updates.
Valid point about the speed. I saw robots folding shirts years ago at a very slow speed and they haven’t seemed to have made much progress on that front but these are moving a LOT more smoothly and precisely than previous humanoid and partial humanoid bots I’ve seen recently. Even assuming tele-operation that’s still closing in on the territory of “useful” even if they aren’t there yet.
I think a lot of limitation for real world jobs for robots is a human’s ability to improvise to meet challenges and changes. Stairs and hallway blocked? Leave the building and come in the other door. No new tasks? Grab a broom or face some products forward on the shelves until a supervisor figures out what you should do next. While many individual humans may struggle with these things there is usually someone among them who can and the rest can learn by observing or communicating. AI is promising to provide these abilities to robots but it is a long road to hoe.
Actually, now that I think of it, the shirt folding robot from years back may have had the video sped up so they may have made more progress over the years than I thought at first. I think they said most of the time it took was for planning the movements so the limitation may very well be software rather than hardware.
Exactly what I was thinking. It’s… yikes…godawful slow.
Sanctuary AI is from Canada. Perhaps Brian could write another article about GDP of Canada.
“Human-like form and function: standing at 5’ 7” and weighing 155 lbs
Maximum payload of 55 lbs
Maximum speed of 3 miles per hour
Industry-leading robotic hands with increased degrees of freedom (20 in total) that rival human hand dexterity and fine manipulation with proprietary haptic technology that mimics the sense of touch
Improved aesthetics with a bolder color palette and elevated textures.”
One of these items is decidedly not like the others! 😉
20 degrees of freedom per hand isn’t bad, that’s about as many as a human hand, if you leave out the wrist. It’s enough to type, certainly. Assuming they don’t mean 20 for both hands combined.
The haptics are for teleoperation, I assume?
Is this slowmo? I fell asleep watching Robocop opening a zip lock bag.
Seriously, Brian, would you PLEASE do something about the autofill bug? The above was not me.
This is incredible technology has come so far I didn’t think it would get This Far me personally, I’m just not ready to turn over a lot of things to computers are remember they can’t feel and they don’t have a soul….
Autofill bug? You’re just being delusional now.