OpenAI dissolved its robotics department. Then, this brought it back. Now, through a social media post from its chief hardware officer and recently published job descriptions, OpenAI is revealing more about its plans for the revamped team.
In a post on X on Friday, Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI to lead hardware last November from Meta’s AR glasses division, he said that OpenAI will develop its own robots — complete with a custom suite of sensors.
In the post, Kalinowski showed new OpenAI robotics job listings with additional information.
According to the listings, OpenAI’s robotics team will focus on “general-purpose,” “adaptive,” and “flexible” robots that can operate with human intelligence in “dynamic,” “real-world” settings. OpenAI plans to create new sensors and computing components for its robotics, powered by artificial intelligence models the company develops internally.
“Working across the entire model stack, we integrate state-of-the-art hardware and software to explore a wide range of robotic form factors.” is reading one of the entries. “We’re trying to seamlessly combine high-level AI capabilities with the physical limitations of physical robotics platforms.”
One of the listings implies that OpenAI plans to hire contract workers to test its robotic prototypes. Another suggests that the company’s robots may have ends.
The Information recently reported that OpenAI has explored building its own humanoid robot.
Whatever form they end up taking, OpenAI’s robots — if all goes according to plan — will reach “full-scale production” someday, a description is reading. OpenAI seems to be bullish on the effort. In other in the introduction, the company says it’s looking for an engineer with “experience designing high-volume (1M+) mechanical systems.”
Robotics is a hot commodity. The sector raised over $6.4 billion from VCs last year, according to on Crunchbase, illustrating interest in a technology with potentially endless applications.
Companies like Bright Machines and Collaborative Robotics, which develop software and systems for factory manufacturing, seem to have successfully found a niche. So are companies like Carbon Robotics, which is building an AI-enabled weeding robot, and Bear Robotics, which is making a mobile robot capable of carrying trays and packages.
However, humanoid robots have attracted the most publicity.
X1 and Figure, which have OpenAI support, are trying to create general-purpose robots that move more or less like humans. The challenges are formidable, but these companies claim that the technology has reached the point where mass-produced humanoid robotic systems are a realistic near-term goal.
THE many The disappointments in the recent history of robotics suggest that this will be easier said than done.
Robots aren’t the only hardware project OpenAI is actively working on. Legendary former Apple product designer Jony Ive confirmed last year that it is working with OpenAI on a new device, and OpenAI is said to be designing a custom chip to run its AI models.
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