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Vancouver-based Sanctuary AI has partnered with Japanese materials manufacturer Zeon Corporation to develop rugged elastomeric components, addressing a critical hardware bottleneck as the robotics company pushes for real-world deployments in 2026.
Sanctuary AI has demonstrated successful zero-shot transfer for in-hand manipulation, allowing a policy trained entirely in simulation to reorient objects on physical hardware without real-world fine-tuning.
A PatentVest analysis reveals a significant disconnect between venture capital funding and intellectual property defensibility among humanoid robotics startups, raising questions about long-term viability in a rapidly evolving market.
Executives from Agility Robotics and Apptronik discuss the drivers, challenges, and future outlook for humanoid robots. Key topics include labor shortages, AI integration, safety standards, deployment hurdles in workplaces vs. homes, and the path toward commercialization in logistics, manufacturing, and potentially eldercare.
Sanctuary AI demonstrated its hydraulically actuated, five-fingered robotic hand performing in-hand object reorientation using a reinforcement learning policy trained in simulation. The company highlights the successful sim-to-real transfer, even under an unexpected 500g load, attributing the success to its proprietary RL approach and high-DoF hand hardware.
Schaeffler partners with Accenture, NVIDIA, and Microsoft to optimize future factory operations using digital twins on NVIDIA Omniverse. The collaboration involves simulating various automation scenarios, including the use of humanoid robots like Agility's Digit and Sanctuary AI's Phoenix, and leveraging Microsoft Fabric for data analysis to bridge virtual testing with real-world performance.
