Open AI-backed humanoid robotics manufacturer 1X has released footage of a fleet of fully autonomous humanoid robot workers performing warehouse and factory-based tasks without the need for teleoperation.
The Norwegian firm – formerly known as Halodi Robotics until a rebrand in March last year – says it has trained 30 bots on several individual tasks, using imitation learning via video and teleoperation.
That base model was then fine-tuned toward specific work – such as warehouse tasks, general door manipulation, and then finally trained the bots on the specific jobs they had to do.
Like muscle memory, 1x claims its androids “get better at common tasks every time. “Then that knowledge makes new tasks like “grab that lightbulb” even more seamless,” the firm added in a blog post on its website.
The robot, known as Eve, has an LED smiley face, wheels rather than legs and claws rather than hands.
“Every behaviour you see in the above video is controlled by a single vision-based neural network that emits actions at 10Hz. The neural network consumes images and emits actions to control the driving, the arms, gripper, torso and head,” the blog post continued.
“The video contains no teleoperation no computer graphics, no cuts, no video speed ups, no scripted trajectory playback. IT’s all controlled by neural networks, all autonomous, all 1X [real time] speed.”
According to the firm, the systems were first deployed on the bot in 2023 for patrolling tasks.
TechInformed met 1X CEO Bernt Øivind Børnich and one of his Eves at ADT’s booth at CES last year for a demo of its patrol work (see main picture). Back then, Eve was controlled using VR and AI, with a robot operator in the control centre.
A susequent round of funding ($23.5m) led by Chat GPT creator Open AI has seen the firm make significant strides in the bot’s autonomy – as demonstrated by those tasks in the video – which appear to demonstrate that the bots have learned purely from data.
The firm claims that the Eves can also open doors and take themselves to charging stations and plug themselves in.
The company is now on a mission to create robots with practical, real-world applications, Børnich added, and is working towards releasing commercial models in Norway and the US.
“Our androids will eventually work among people, one by one,” Børnich said. “And unlike other androids that have to slow down to be functional, 1X’s models work at 1x (real time) speed,” he claimed.
