Unlike other robots, Proxie’s battery can be changed to avoid charging downtime. Cobot declined to say how much it costs to buy or lease Proxie, but mobile robots often cost tens of thousands of dollars each.
The robots work alongside humans, taking turns moving carts and navigating busy spaces without bumping into anyone. Porter says the idea is that robots will level up as AI becomes more capable, allowing for more sophisticated manipulation and communication.
Cobot has a version of Proxie that will respond to voice commands using a large language model to parse expressions, Porter says. When a worker says “Go to Dock 3 and grab the cart from the door,” the robot will respond accordingly. The company is also pursuing the development of algorithms that allow for more sophisticated forms of manipulation.
Proxie may seem remarkably simple at a time when many companies are rushing to develop humanoid robots. But Porter says that while Amazon is working with a startup, Agility Robotics, to test its humanoid robot, the technology is simply too expensive and crude to deploy widely, he says. Some humanoids on the market cost tens of thousands of dollars, while others cost many hundreds of thousands. But autonomous capabilities vary wildly, as does reliability, making them more expensive to implement.
“At Amazon, we look a lot at humanoids,” Porter says. “There are real problems to solve with something more capable of being human, but jumping to a humanoid is super complicated. “AI is not there yet.”
Instead, Proxie could replace more and more menial tasks that humans often don’t want to do. Erez Agmoni, a general partner at Interwoven Ventures who was involved in bringing the Cobot pilot to Maersk, says it has been very promising and has potential to scale up.
“The main reason is their ability to use collaborative robots to support teams without major modifications to the current warehouse or equipment,” he says. “The team hated pushing the carts, which are very heavy, and they appreciate that the robots do it.”
Fady Saad, founder of Cybernetix, a Boston-based venture capital firm that specializes in robotics, says Cobot is pursuing a big new category of work that involves moving goods on carts and that can be addressed using recent advances in robotics. . He adds that it’s important that Proxie can evolve into something more capable.
“Porter is trying to build a platform that could evolve into a humanoid in the future,” Saad says. “I think that’s the right approach.”
Porter isn’t the only robotics luminary pursuing something simpler than humanoids. Rodney BrooksA pioneering researcher and co-founder of iRobot, he is now the CTO of Robust.AI, a company that makes collaborative mobile robots capable of assisting human pickers inside factories and warehouses.
“There’s a real need in factories and warehouses to move things, but to think humanoids are going to do it anytime soon is crazy,” Brooks says. “Wheels were invented for a good reason.”
What kind of minor tasks would you like a robot to help you with? Would it make any difference to you if the robot was humanoid or not? Write to me at hello@wired.com to let me know.