The sci-fi world of house robots is within the practical realms, literally. The days when we would watch a humanoid or cyborg in movies or comics and wish to have something so advanced is now a reality. While there are still a few kinks for companies pursuing cybernetics and robotics, many leading names have achieved significant success. With names like Tesla, Robotic Era, Figure, and Boston Dynamics flaunting their feats in humanoid robots, San Francisco Bay-based Norwegian firm 1X Technologies has also unveiled its humanoid NEO Gamma. This robot will perform your household chores, so you can relax and focus on other things.
1X first unveiled the blueprint for NEO Gamma in 2024 with its NEO Beta, a prototype of its bipedal humanoid designed for home use. Similar to Beta in many aspects, the new android comes with certain upgrades including NEO’s hardware and AI.
NEO Gamma has a bio-inspired design just like its predecessor that could freely move and safely work in a household environment. To make it better than the earlier model, 1X outfitted its latest humanoid with Emotive Ear Rings, a multipurpose whole-body controller, soft covers, enhanced general-purpose manipulation, and a new in-house language model. Let’s walk you through these improvements and what they mean while you are in the house.
The latest model has Emotive Ear Rings to improve communication. This will “provide real-time visual feedback for a more intuitive and interactive experience.” 1X CEO Bernt Børnich stipulated that humanoid robots must be developed alongside humans to be able to truly integrate into human lives and homes.
Compared to the competitors, NEO Gamma’s design aesthetic is minimalistic and fits into the home’s environment rather nicely. It dons a suit 3D printed from durable and soft nylon using a Japanese Shimaseki machine. The fabric conforms to the robot’s body without hindering its functions and gives it a true human-like appearance. To make the robot safer for a home setting, it features the firm’s Tendon Drive for joint actuation, encased in soft covers.
NEO Gamma has several hardware upgrades to make it quieter with a 10 dB noise reduction, thus rendering it more reliable and user-centric. The robot has four microphones with beamforming and echo cancellation to ensure clear audio capture. There is also a three-way speaker system, one in the chest for AI voice interactions, and two outward-facing speakers in the pelvis for bass, 360-degree sound effects, and mid frequencies.
With its multipurpose whole-body controller, NEO Gamma can walk with a natural human gait, do arm swings, squat down to pick up things from the ground, and sit in chairs. The robot perfectly maintains its balance and has dynamic control skills. This enhancement allows NEO Gamma to perform household chores like preparing and serving the coffee, vacuuming the floor, or simply conversing with you.
The android is also capable of picking up a variety of objects in a household setting, even in environments not engaged in during its training. It leverages neural networks trained to envisage teleoperated actions directly from raw sensor data.
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NEO Gamma includes a Companion feature set to facilitate a conversational voice interface, which allows the users to conduct natural conversations with a 1X-developed language model. This upgrade helps bridge the gap between humanoid robotics and daily life’s grid. 1X wants to create a safe, intelligent humanoid that’ll offer physical labor. Although NEO Gamma is still far from being commercially produced to help you with your household chores – or any other androids out there for that matter – it does mark a new era of house robots to help free your time for other tasks.
NEO Gamma is the first step in creating fully autonomous humanoids by enabling natural conversation and body language. The next step in this process will be to make them more considerate toward home environments by teaching them nuances of human life. It may soon be able to open the door for the elderly to move carefully around pets or kids, and adapt to the unpredictability of the world surrounding them. Given the exponential robotics development, that world may not be as far away as we presume!
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