It’s my second year hunting robots at Nvidia GTC, and I met several for the first time.
Right when I entered the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, I was greeted by a small robot from IntBot working the crowd, powered by an AI chatbot and controlled by nearby humans for safety. Another larger IntBot robot was behind the information desk, giving directions in multiple languages.
Humanoid, a UK-based company, brought two of its wheeled HMND 01 Alpha robots for a demo of «fleet control,» a way for one person to command multiple robots with ease. I ordered a drink and a snack via a touchscreen, and the robots got busy at the same time, one grabbing my drink and the other grabbing my snack.
This demo was a very simple proof-of-concept for something that several players in the robotics industry are working on simultaneously. The ability to activate multiple robots with a single command will certainly be useful for people working closely with them. However, it also conjures fears of a robotic army and the mayhem they might cause.
Noble Machines brought its bulky Moby 3 robot, designed to lift and carry up to 50 pounds. Its demo was very similar to the one Boston Dynamics showed at CES earlier this year. The robot performed basic industrial tasks autonomously, and a teleoperator stood by with a VR headset to assist the robot whenever it encountered trouble. A nearby screen showed onlookers in real time whether the robot was operating autonomously or under operator control.
Moby 3 prioritizes cost-effectiveness, even using a $1 dog chew toy as its grippers instead of the more expensive and heavily engineered hands seen on other robots. The company says the grippers do everything they need them to do and make them cheaper and easier to replace when needed.
I also got to try out an OpenClaw AI assistant running on a DGC Spark, which was given added personality by a Reachy Mini Desktop robot that moved around while the AI agent read out its answers. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted OpenClaw AI agents would make their way into robots in some form or another, and this seemed like a basic illustration of that.