Nvidia Unveils AI-Powered Humanoid Robot Project

Nvidia is entering the humanoid robotics field with its new foundation model, Project GR00T.

The company announced the artificial intelligence (AI) system at its developer conference this week, saying that it is versatile enough to handle a multitude of tasks, including generating text to produce videos and images.

Project GR00T (Generalist Robot 00 Technology) is designed to enable humanoid robots to understand natural language and create human movements by observing and learning from human actions. This allows robots to quickly acquire the skills — like coordination and dexterity — needed to navigate, adapt to and interact with the human environment.

“Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said during the conference. “The enabling technologies are coming together for leading roboticists around the world to take giant leaps towards artificial general robotics.”

In addition to Project GR00T, Nvidia has also introduced two contributions to its Isaac robotics platform: the Isaac Manipulator, a collection of foundation models for controlling robotic arms, and the Isaac Perceptor, which gives robots advanced visual capabilities.

Nvidia also rolled the Jetson Thor computer, a central processing unit for humanoid robots, useful for facilitating complex tasks and ensuring smooth and safe interactions between people and machines.

PYMNTS earlier this week examined Nvidia’s B200 chip, which experts say could reshape the commerce industry by allowing AI applications to run faster and more efficiently.

Thanks to the new chips, AI products could become more affordable and thus more widely available in the future. Abdullah Ahmed, founder of Serene Data Ops, told PYMNTS that this is due to something called “cheaper inferencing.”

From now on, more companies might begin to use basic AI models, powered by chips like B200, that work well enough for their needs, Ahmed said. They can then concentrate on improving their products and selling them.

This means that even smaller companies might be able to turn to AI products without needing as many costly GPUs, which in turn means that developing and using AI tools could cost less, making them more affordable for businesses and consumers.

“However, this depends on Nvidia’s ability to keep lead times reasonable in the face of overwhelming demand,” he said. “The B200 is laser-focused on the large language model craze such as OpenAI’s GPT4, which fuels ChatGPT.”