Apptronik offers a bipedal configuration for movement through spaces built for people, while a wheeled base offers stability and efficiency for high-throughput environments. | Source: Apptronik
Apptronik yesterday made two major announcements. First, the company launched Apollo 2, its updated humanoid robot. Second, it opened its newly expanded Robot Park, its flagship data collection and training facility for humanoid robots in Austin, Texas.
Apollo 2 comes in both bipedal and wheeled-base configurations. Apptronik said it designed the robot to learn real-world work through large-scale data collection. It enables the company to gather diverse data across a wide range of tasks and environments.
As part of Apptronik’s research partnership with Google DeepMind, the data Apollo 2 collects helps to advance Gemini Robotics, Google DeepMind’s foundation models for robotics.
The facility in Austin joins a growing number of Apptronik Robot Parks at customer and partner sites worldwide. The company claimed that the facility, Apollo 2, and its research partnership form an integrated system for rapidly developing and deploying humanoid robot intelligence.
“The industry has spent years showing what robots can do in demos. We’re focused on what they can do every day on the job,” stated Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of Apptronik. “What we’re building is a continuous learning loop with the Google DeepMind Robotics team: robots working, collecting data, and improving with every cycle, in real environments, on real tasks.”
“Robot Park enables the data collection that is fuel for that, and Apollo 2 is the machine that makes it possible,” he added. “That’s how you move from early prototypes to real, deployable humanoid robots.”
Apptronik said Apollo is based on nearly a decade of development on 15 previous robots, including NASA’s Valkyrie. The company started out of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin and has nearly 300 employees. Earlier this year, it raised $520 million in funding, bringing its total capital raised to nearly $1 billion.
Apptronik prioritizes modularity with Apollo 2
Apollo 2 is a modular AI-powered humanoid that has been the workhorse behind Robot Park for more than a year. The robot enables continuous learning through deployment across Robot Park locations and at customer and partner sites.
By offering Apollo in modular configurations, Apptronik said it can optimize data collection across a variety of operational environments. The company designed the wheeled-base to conform with existing safety standards for industrial mobile robots. This allows it to fit easily into existing customer operations, it said.
The bipedal configuration provides maximum adaptability for complex environments. This allows Apptronik to continuously refine the safety and reliability of its walking platform in real-world scenarios.
“For truly useful humanoid robots, safety and reliability have to advance alongside capability,” said Barry Phillips, chief commercial officer at Apptronik. “The modular design of Apollo is a direct response to customer demand for adaptable automation.”
“By developing Apollo as a modular platform, we’re able to deploy the same core humanoid technology across different configurations, including wheeled robots that align with current industrial safety standards and bipedal robots for maximum adaptability,” he said. “This approach helps us build better robots for customers today while laying the groundwork for broad adoption of humanoid systems in the future.”
Apptronik asserted that everything it is proving and learning through the Apollo 2 platform is directly powering the development of its commercial product, Apollo 3.
Scalable data collection will fuel humanoid intelligence
Apollo 2 features an expressive LED mouth plus coordinated lighting, speech, and listening capabilities for more natural interactions with people. | Source: Apptronik
Apptronik said humanoid robots like Apollo need large amounts of real-world data to train the embodied AI models that will enable them to operate autonomously. Robot Park is where much of that data is created.
Inside the newly expanded nearly 90,000-sq.-ft. (8,361.2 sq. m) facility in Austin, both bipedal and wheeled Apollo 2 systems learn across an array of customer use cases. The robots are performing tasks in logistics, manufacturing, retail, and other customer-driven activities.
To capture diverse real-world experience at scale, Apptronik said it deployed similar data-collection workflows across a growing network of Robot Parks. This includes its research partner, Google DeepMind, and customers like Mercedes-Benz and GXO, a global leader in high-tech, high-volume logistics.
Through a combination of teleoperation and autonomous execution, Apollo 2 continuously generates significant quantities of high-quality training data, said Apptronik. It uses this growing dataset to train and refine the Gemini Robotics AI models. The company added that these models will prepare its commercial fleet for real-world deployment.
Robot Park provides the foundation of physical experience, Apptronik said. The company captures high-quality data through teleoperation and high-fidelity physics simulations. This allows it to accelerate both hardware design and algorithmic development.
Apptronik said its multi-modal approach allows its robots to learn from a wide variety of experiences. This further ensures the platform scales alongside the latest advancements in embodied AI.
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