Meta says it’s partnering with sensor agency GelSight and Wonik Robotics, a South Korean robotics firm, to commercialize tactile sensors for AI.
The brand new units aren’t meant for shoppers. Relatively, they’re supposed for scientists. Meta says it envisions them getting used to advance analysis into AI that may “learn about the world in richer detail” and “better understand and model the physical world.”
GelSight will work with Meta to deliver to market Digit 360, which Meta describes as a “a tactile fingertip with human-level multimodal sensing capabilities.” The successor to Meta’s Digit sensor, Digit 360 digitizes contact alerts, utilizing an on-device AI chip and roughly 18 “sensing features” to detect adjustments in its environment.
“We developed a touch-perception-specific optical system with a wide field of view … for capturing omnidirectional deformations on the fingertip surface,” Meta defined in a weblog publish. “Additionally, we equipped the sensor with many sensing modalities, since each touch interaction with the environment has a unique profile produced by the mechanical, geometrical, and chemical properties of a surface to perceive vibrations, sense heat, and even smell odor.”
Digit 360 might be obtainable for buy subsequent yr, and Meta’s launched a name for proposals by which researchers can achieve early entry.
Meta’s work with Wonik will concentrate on a brand new technology of Wonik’s Allegro Hand, a robotic hand with tactile sensors like Digit 360. Constructing on a platform Meta developed to combine sensors on a single robotic hand, the upcoming Allegro Hand will characteristic management boards that encode information from the tactile sensors onto a bunch pc.
The Allegro Hand might be obtainable beginning subsequent yr.
