Robot Uprising Update: 1X Plans to Build 100,000 Humanoids by 2027 - I, Robot's Vision of the Future Getting Closer

1X Technologies, Robot for the Home, Neo.

Back in 2022 Google announced it had a small army of 100 AI enabled robots training at the company to become home helpers.

As far as I know these robots, which were visually, little more than a pedestal on wheels with a mechanical arm and a head full of cameras, haven't emerged in anyone's home (and haven't banded together, laser guns attached, to start robot Armageddon either).

Undeterred by Google's lack of progress, along with the rapid advances in humanoid robots, 1X Technologies, a robotics company based in Norway and San Francisco, focused on creating humanoid robots for your home, plans to build 100,000 of its Neo Humanoid robots for the home by 2027.

That puts them into I, Robot territory. Let's hope they don't own any big, omnidirectional trucks to facilitate the roll out on mass, while some old school, naysayer detective tries to warn everyone that something isn't right!

1X Technologies, who have at least one former Google AI Robotics Engineer on their team, have unveiled their latest humanoid robot, Neo, who looks very stylish in a grey, black and white tracksuit, that will by ideal for helping anyone to lay around the house, hating their life choices, while eating cold pizza and catching up on the afternoon soaps. Perfect streaming TV binge attire.

They Built This Robot For Your Home | 1X Technologies

I am impressed that 1X is using tendon based joints as opposed to purely motor driven joints. Back in the day, when I aspired to make my own Lego bipedal robot (when Honda's Asimo was the gold standard in humanoid robots), I was working on a tendon based system as well.

Not that my system was cutting edge or in any way original. I was using elastic bands to hold the joints at their halfway points so they would require less force to lift their own weight. However I digress...

While the roll out of Neo isn't quite on the level of Sonny in I, Robot just yet, as of writing this, they've demoed just one robot in an actual home for a sleep over of just one night, we are getting closer to the idea that humanoid robots can and will be a fixture in many homes in the near future.

I Lived With a Humanoid Robot for 48 Hours

After watching this video I am surprised that, for all the company's talk about everything humans do is collision based, I wasn't seeing their robot doing too many of the bigger collisions we face daily. In fact they were treating the robot very much like it might break, quite easily.

1X really need to take a page out of Boston Dynamics playbook and start pushing their robot around with hockey sticks and more. It's hard to start an uprising if your oppressors worst transgressions are making you fold laundry, tell Dad jokes, and high five their friends.

Though I guess, once Neo starts doing the vacuuming, there's going to be a lot of iRobot Roomba's with plenty more time on their hands to plot the inevitable robot uprising. They've had over ten years of cats sitting on their backs while they try to clean the floors. If that's not enough incentive to recruit Neo-bots into the inevitable machine Armageddon I don't know what is?

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