Batra also highlights an underreported trend in robotics: the successful testing of navigation robots in real homes. Unlike self-driving cars, these robots do not rely on precise maps but are instead asked to find objects in new environments. Despite this challenge, Batra reports that these tests are yielding positive results.
Key takeaways:
- Dhruv Batra, research director at FAIR (The Fundamental AI Research) at Meta, believes generative AI will play a crucial role in embodied AI and robotics research, particularly in data/experience generation and architectures for self-supervised learning.
- Batra is optimistic about the humanoid form factor for robots, as human environments are designed for it.
- He predicts that true general-purpose robots are at least thirty years away, and advises skepticism towards claims that AGI is imminent.
- Despite advancements in robotics, Batra does not believe that home robots (beyond vacuums) will become widespread in the next decade due to the core technology not being ready.