Back in February, Norway’s 1X showed off the progress it had made with its pick-and-place workplace humanoid, Eve. Now the OpenAI-backed company has released video footage of its latest prototype, a bipedal butlerbot named Neo Beta. Eve doesn’t walk on two legs but wheels along at up to 9 mph (14.5 km/h). It lacks human-like hands, instead using claws for repetitive pick-and-place operations. And its egg-shaped head features a fairly simple LED matrix face that masks the AI-driven smarts within. But given its likely deployment on manufacturing lines in the factories of tomorrow, such things are fit for purpose. When it comes to designing a general-purpose humanoid destined for domestic duties in the home, a bipedal seems to be the design of choice at the leading edge of butlerbot development. And so it is for 1X, as the Neo Beta is officially introduced (though it did make an appearance in March, on stage with NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang). Yes, it’s a very brief video and, unlike other promos, it doesn’t show the humanoid helper performing a multitude of everyday household tasks. But we can see that the Neo Beta bot wears a sporty fabric jumpsuit to disguise the “muscle-like anatomy” within, and features a more oblong visage that currently displays multi-line animations. It also sports dexterous five-digit hands that look more bot than human, but are clearly designed for grasping and holding a wide array of objects.
Full story : Neo Beta humanoid unveiled ahead of limited rollout to people’s homes.
