"Everyday tasks like clearing the dinner table and loading the dishwasher are a major dexterity challenge for home robots that can require a lot of training data and capital. A new startup says it spent less than two years and a fraction of the costs to figure it out. On Thursday, Sunday Robotics emerged from stealth to demonstrate Memo, a fully autonomous home robot on wheels that can complete household tasks."
"To get a robot to interact with common household items - some of which can be delicate - is a crucial benchmark for dexterity in the world of robotics. For one, replicating the human hand, which has thousands of touch receptors, is a challenging engineering feat in itself. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said as much in the company's latest earnings call in October."
"A video posted on X by the company's cofounder, Tony Zhao, showed Memo move from the dining room to the kitchen to clear the table of dishes and load them in the dishwasher. The company said Memo was conducting the task autonomously. One other feat included Memo picking up two wine glasses, which can be notoriously fragile, with one hand. The robot also folded socks and loaded up an espresso machine."
Sunday Robotics developed Memo, a wheeled home robot that autonomously clears dinner tables, loads dishwashers, picks up fragile wine glasses, folds socks, and operates an espresso machine. Memo reached these capabilities after less than two years in stealth and by using gloves that mimic the robot's hands as a training approach. Memo reportedly broke zero wine glasses across more than 20 live demo sessions. The company was founded in April 2024 by Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi, both with robotics backgrounds. Replicating human-hand dexterity remains challenging because human hands contain thousands of touch receptors, and acquiring training data is a major bottleneck; teleoperation is one common training method.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]