«A humanoid robot designed to be the body of new generations of AI.» It is with these words that Matthieu Lapeyre, the founder of Pollen Robotics, presents Reachy 2. A humanoid robot with a torso, two arms and a block for a head, but resting on a rolling base to move on a floor flat in all directions. With around thirty employees, the Bordeaux start-up markets this robot, which is both open source and modular, to research laboratories. It also hopes to attract biology and chemistry manufacturers, because this flexible robot is ideal for carrying out the same procedure, made up of variable tasks, several times a day.
Stronger and tougher than its predecessor
Reachy 2 is more solid than its predecessor, in particular thanks to an aluminum structure and no longer printed in 3D. It also features two new joints to increase dexterity: one for 2D movements of the shoulder and elbow, the other for 3D movements of the neck and wrists. Finally, it is stronger, each arm being capable of carrying up to 3 kg of load. Instead of five-fingered hands, Pollen Robotics opted for grippers, which are less versatile, but more robust. “Their end can be easily changed to adapt the robot to the objects it must grasp», explains Matthieu Lapeyre.
Beyond the mechanical capabilities of the arm and the finesse of the grip, the manipulation capabilities depend on the way in which the robot is controlled. The nugget has formed a partnership with the American giant Meta, the Franco-American start-up Hugging Face, which offers an open source AI building platform, and the French cloud provider Scaleway. The partners are working on a teleoperation system for the robot, to control it and teach it new tasks remotely. It includes embedded AI algorithms, which themselves define the motor commands to be executed to reproduce the action.
The robot can also take into account the variability of its environment thanks to data collected by its sensors, including a 3D vision system. While new players are launching into humanoid robotics, at the heart of the last dedicated exhibition in Beijing, the start-up hopes to benefit from this renewed interest. Whether to attract clients or to finalize the fundraising that she has just started.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
