Meet the new humanoid with 'smart skin' (I touched it)

We're here at AMD's Advancing AI Conference with this brand new humanoid with something called

SmartSkin, which I've never seen before. I'm about to get a demo. Let's learn how it works together

Meet Gino-1, the new humanoid robot from Italian company Generative Bionics. On its arms are two different kinds of sensors, which can feel, touch, and detect when something

is nearby. These are time-of-flight sensors, which are constantly sending out invisible light

and measuring the time it takes for that light to bounce back and return to the sensor

They can detect nearby people and objects before they're even touching the robot

So here I'm putting my hand near the proximity sensor on the upper arm

and I'm going to move it out, out, out, and we're going to see just how far away I can get from the robot with it still sensing me

There's also a patch of black material on the robot's arm that feels kind of like a neoprene wetsuit

That's where the smart skin is on this model. And it can tell exactly where the robot is being touched and how much pressure is being applied

All right, and now we're squeezing on, off, on, off, on off on off And you can also it shows whether I squeezing on the top or the bottom You can see on screen that it detecting the difference

And there's also, the blue is darker where I'm pressing harder and

lighter where I'm pressing more gently. So the idea is that this smart skin and

these proximity sensors will help people work more safely with the robots

depending on whether they're in a hospital or an industrial setting, doing some kind of manufacturing or logistics work

We see GENIO1 as a platform. It means modular mechanics and software

from which we can derive application-specific humanoid robots for the different verticals

While some robot companies are working toward a more general-purpose humanoid robot

Generative Bionics plans to customize their robots for different use cases. In this version, the smart skin is on the robot's arm

but depending on the needs of future clients, the smart skin could show up in different places

to serve different functions. We are thinking, for instance, in the hospital

it's going to be really important to have the skin on the chest and also on the forearm

because if elderly want to grab the robot the robot has to feel the touch Or if they want to hug the robot the robot has to be capable of feeling this hug The company is also utilizing AI not only in the robot movements

but also in the design of the robot itself. We do not design the systems by human intervention

but we have basically AI modules that generate also physics, mechanics and control at the same time

So our modules, like our Generative Physical AI, takes into account the customer KPIs

and then we generate for them a specific human robots. The company says its target price for its robots are between 50,000 to 70,000 euros, depending on their use case

So right now we are evolving towards what we call the 1.1 Genie, which is going to be ready by the end of the year

Because I've seen too many sci-fi movies, I also like to ask where's the emergency stop button on these robots just in case

We still have the red button but let me tell you that safety is going to be handled in human robotics and physical life is an issue If for instance a robot understands that he has to be has to shut down the way it falls has to be controlled because if you have a child in front of you you have to somehow reserve the

amount of compute that you need and also you have to act electronically so that that motion is going

to be controlled. So the red buttons are going to be there but we are also working at the new standards

in order to understand how these robots had to somehow go to sleep

Speaking of safety, you may notice the robot reacting to a hand near its proximity sensors

or to someone touching its smart skin. Because we're at a conference with all these people around

these interactions are being triggered remotely for safety reasons. I don't think I've ever seen a robot acting autonomously at a conference around people

Autonomous demos are usually conducted behind a physical barrier, and almost every interactive demo I've seen at events like this has been remotely operated

Perhaps someday we'll see robots autonomously moving around and interacting with strangers

but the technology isn't ready for that right now. But hey, maybe smart skin sensors will help robots get there