Will a dice-playing robot eventually make you tea and do your dishes?
CNN
Chinese-made humanoid robot AlphaBot 2 uses embedded AI to learn. Is this the tech that will finally bring helper robots into our homes?
AlphaBot 2 wants to beat humans at their own game. When the robot is asked if it wants to play dice, it can interpret the question and jump into action – pressing the button on an automatic dice roller, which spins a die. It can even react to its opponent’s score with a thumbs up if they win. The humanoid, created by AI² Robotics, based in Shenzhen, China, displayed its skills at the recent Beyond Expo in the Chinese special administrative region of Macao, where it played the game with attendees of the tech conference, including CNN journalists. The robot’s ability to understand instructions was made possible by embodied artificial intelligence (AI) – the integration of AI systems into physical entities – allowing it to interact with and learn from the world around it. “In the last era of robots, people needed to program them to tell them what to do,” Yandong Guo, CEO of AI² Robotics, told CNN correspondent Kristie Lu Stout on the sidelines of the conference. “Now you just tell them what to do, and the robot can understand the environment.” Guo adds that it took the robot just minutes to learn to play. “We just show the robot what to do, maybe five to 10 samples, and the robot can learn.” While AI chatbots like ChatGPT have become familiar, many experts say that embodied AI is the next big thing in the field.
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