Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have announced a new partnership aimed at advancing research in robotics, combining their expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and humanoid robot development. The collaboration seeks to leverage Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot and TRI’s Large Behavior Models (LBMs) to enhance general-purpose humanoid robotics. This joint research initiative is designed to accelerate progress in AI-driven robotics by integrating TRI’s state-of-the-art machine learning capabilities with Boston Dynamics’ advanced robotic hardware.
According to Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, the partnership brings together two companies with strong research and development foundations to address complex challenges and create robots that can solve practical problems. Gill Pratt, CEO of TRI, highlighted the potential of AI and machine learning in advancing physical intelligence, emphasizing the opportunity to apply TRI’s AI models to Boston Dynamics’ hardware.
Boston Dynamics, known for its innovations in mobility and manipulation, has developed the Atlas robot over several years, refining its hardware and software for bimanual manipulation and whole-body behaviors. The Atlas platform is seen as ideal for testing AI-based manipulation techniques. TRI, recognized for its advancements in LBMs, has contributed to AI applications in dexterous robot manipulation, diffusion policy, and open-source robot models. Their work aims to develop multi-task, vision-and-language-based foundation models for robotics.
The joint research will focus on deploying the electric Atlas robot across various tasks, gathering data to improve the training of LBMs. The goal is to enable the rapid acquisition of robust manipulation skills and explore fundamental issues related to human-robot interaction, safety, and whole-body sensing. The partnership will be co-led by Scott Kuindersma, senior director of Robotics Research at Boston Dynamics, and Russ Tedrake, vice president of Robotics Research at TRI.
Both companies bring distinct expertise to this venture, with Boston Dynamics specializing in advanced mobile robots for industrial environments, and TRI focusing on enhancing human abilities through AI and robotics technologies.
