On August 30th local time, 1X Technologies, the robotics company that OpenAI is betting on, announced the official launch of a bipedal humanoid robot prototype designed specifically for families - NEO Beta.
NEO is 5 feet 5 inches tall, approximately 1.65 meters tall, and weighs 30 kilograms; Walking speed of 2.5 miles per hour (1.12m/s), running speed of 7.5 miles per hour (3.35m/s); Its hands have 20 degrees of freedom and can lift up to 70 kilograms, which is more than twice its own weight. It can carry objects weighing up to 20 kilograms; The running time is relatively short, only 2 to 4 hours (which may be a trade-off after lightweight design).
The whole body is wrapped in fabric, making this robot appear less "cold and hard". In addition to its appearance, it does not rely on traditional rigid actuators (which allow NEO to remain quiet while performing tasks), but instead utilizes biomimetic design and more flexible components - its body adopts a structure design similar to human muscle tissue and a non strict hydraulic system, and its aluminum core is covered with a soft layer, making it both sturdy and flexible.
Behind this is 1X's well intentioned effort - to integrate robots into home scenes and create NEO as a universal household robot.
The company stated on its official website that NEO is a humanoid robot with a wide range of capabilities. They excel in industrial tasks such as safety, logistics, manufacturing, operating machinery, and handling complex tasks. In the long run, the company hopes that NEO can take care of household chores.
CEO and founder Bernt Brnich expressed his hope that NEO can complete tasks that humans do not like, such as cleaning, organizing, and other daily necessities, and can follow commands to customize according to user preferences and lifestyles.
According to the demonstration video of 1X, the household tasks that NEO can currently perform are very simple, including: delivering items, making coffee, and organizing items.
At the same time, NEO has certain "social skills" and can perform greetings, hugs, and wave gestures.
1X means that if users need assistance, NEO's vision and actions can be quickly taken over by remote human operators.
According to the official introduction, NEO is currently in the beta testing phase, and 1X will deploy a limited number of NEOs in selected households to collect crucial data for research and development.
After testing in different scenarios and environments, NEO will undergo large-scale production in its factory in Norway.
Regarding 1X: OpenAI once gained $100 million in investment through 13 PPTs with support
1X was founded in 2014 and has currently launched the wheeled robot EVE in North America and Norway, and has deployed it in areas such as logistics and safety (security).
In 2022, 1X began collaborating with OpenAI to introduce language models and embodied learning models.
In March 2023, OpenAI's startup fund became a shareholder of 1X through its A2 round of financing. In January of this year, 1X raised $100 million in Series B funding with 13 PowerPoint presentations introducing NEO, led by Swedish venture capital fund EQT Ventures, with new investor Samsung NEXT, existing investors Sandwater, Skagerak Capital, and Nistad Group participating.
In the process of robot training, rich data is very important. 1X claims that expanding its embodied intelligence data collection strategy and providing NEO robots to consumers will be its next milestone. 1X previously revealed that Series B financing will enable 1X to expand its data collection work, increase the scale of computing data for training AI, expand factory scale, and mass produce household robots.