On April 26, 2024, Stardust released its own AI robot, the Astribot S1, which is said to have the best operating performance of its kind.
It learns by imitating and can perform many complex tasks with agility, flexibility, and smoothness that match an adult’s abilities. The S1 robot is expected to be commercialized within 2024.
Unlike other humanoid robots, Astribot is not entirely humanoid but uses a design that combines a wheeled base with the upper body of a humanoid, mainly aimed at research and other scenarios. They call this the “Bionic Robot Project.”
In a video played at normal speed without any speed-up processing, the S1 robot demonstrated its outstanding performance in home and work environments by completing a series of complex tasks such as folding clothes, sorting items, flipping pots for cooking, vacuuming, and competitive cup stacking.
Stardust focuses on safe interaction, using an innovative design approach that allows the S1 to safely control interactions with humans, objects, and the environment, ensuring it does not cause harm to people, objects, or itself during movement.
For the software, Astribot supports multiple data collection methods such as video, motion capture, and remote operation, and it can learn and train using techniques like reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and multimodal large models. The robot can continuously improve its intelligence and ability to generalize across multiple tasks with software updates.
On the hardware side, the self-developed high-performance motor transmission system has undergone several iterations, integrating control, sensing, transmission, and driving into a complex system.
This provides the S1 robot with agile, flexible, and smooth dynamic operating capabilities, approaching the speed and precision of industrial robots.
Additionally, the head, hands, and torso are designed to be modular, allowing for flexible assembly or disassembly based on different needs, and enhancing task adaptability.
About Stardust & Astribot
Stardust was established in December 2022 in Shenzhen, China. The robot’s name, Astribot, comes from the Latin proverb “Ad astra per aspera,” which means “Through hardships to the stars.”
Stardust aims to provide billions of people with AI robotic assistants. The company is developing a new generation of AI robots that can learn, think, and work like humans, use human tools and equipment, and handle tedious, difficult, or dangerous tasks.
The founder and CEO is Lai Jie, who was the first employee at Tencent’s RoboticsX. He has decades of experience in robotics development, having worked at Tencent RoboticsX and designed several types of robots.
The other core founding team of five also came from Tencent RoboticsX. Another co-founder, Dai Yuan, earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her PhD from UCLA. Like Lai Jie, she joined the newly established RoboticsX in 2018.
About RoboticsX
Tencent’s RoboticsX was established in 2018, focusing on the development and application of the next generation of robots for human-robot collaboration.
The lab primarily concentrates on three general areas: mobility, dexterous manipulation, and intelligent agents, with a special focus on developing multimodal mobile robots.
In 2022, the lab released the second-generation Max robot, a multimodal quadruped robot that integrates legs and wheels. Max can recognize complex terrains and plan its movements in real time to avoid risks like misstepping, slipping, or falling.
Get weekly AI startup funding news. Sign up for free.
