Alphabet, Google’s parent company, Launches “Intrinsic”, a Startup That Makes Software For Industrial Robots

Alphabet has announced the launch of a new robotics software company that aims to make industrial robots cheaper and easier to use. The new venture, named Intrinsic, will be spun out of X, the moonshot lab from Alphabet that builds autonomous vehicles and delivery drones. 

The software is designed to give automated robots the flexibility to become more popular in small businesses. 

The company noted in this blog post that it once used this software to train a robot in two hours to perform a USB connection task that would have otherwise taken hundreds of hours to program.

Another instance was when it used the software to also train multiple robot arms to assemble architectural installations and build furniture. 

“None of this is realistic or affordable to automate today,” Wendy Tan-White, Intrinsic’s chief executive, wrote. “And there are millions of other examples like this in businesses around the world.” 

Robots perform a limited number of tasks and can be expensive to purchase, build and operate. In some cases, professional programmers can spend hundreds of hours programming robots to perform specific tasks. Industrial robots have traditionally lacked the perceptual or touch skills required to perform certain tasks, such as grinding objects of various shapes and sizes.

Faced with this challenge, the Alphabet X team believes that innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence can be used to rethink the capabilities of industrial robots. 

And so the company has hired a team of leading experts in robotics, computer perception, mechanical design and even film production. It has cultivated this technology for over five years. The team includes many people who have worked for robotics companies that were acquired by Google in the past.

Intrinsic uses sensor data from a robotic environment to develop software and artificial intelligence tools that can capture, explore, and adapt to the real world. 

The company is leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and low-cost sensor technology to make its dream come true, and its main goal is a suite of software tools that will make industrial robots easier to use, more expensive, more flexible, and enable new products. business and services.

But the real advantage of these robots is their impact on climate change. In theory, industrial robots could allow factories to manufacture products in a smaller space or manufacture products closer to consumers, reducing travel times and transport-related emissions.

The internal team is led by Wendy Tyne White, former Vice President of X. The Company will be led by AI expert Torsten Kroeger, who will become CTO, and Engelberger Award winner Martin Hegele, along with other experts in robots and AI.