Oh, what a feeling: Toyota building robots that get better with practice

Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced on Wednesday they're partnering to combine the former's multi-jointed athletic humanoid, Atlas, with TRI's large behavior models (LBM).

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter enthused that he was looking forward to accelerating "the development of general-purpose humanoids," while TRI CEO Gill Pratt cheered that "recent advances in AI and machine learning hold tremendous potential for advancing physical intelligence."

As a reminder, this is Atlas:

Youtube Video

TRI's LBM work includes the generative AI technique known as diffusion policy, which allows robots to acquire new dexterous behaviors by having them demonstrated, rather than programmed. What that means, according to one video, [VIDEO] is that robots can learn to do tricky things like peel potatoes and flip pancakes.

Diffusion policies help a robot learn how to perform fine motor skills by generating small, sequential actions that gradually build up to a ...