Mentee Robotics hasn’t exactly been stealthy. The Israeli company attracted a small wave of press in late 2022, following Tesla’s initial announcement on humanoid robotics. Since it was the startup’s founding year, it didn’t have much to show for it at the time. Despite this, the company made headlines because its co-founder and chairman, Amnon Shashua, founded Mobileye and the well-funded AI company, AI21 Labs.
On Wednesday, however, the company offered a preview of Menteebot, its own attempt in the fast-growing humanoid category. In its current form, the system certainly represents a radically different approach to other systems available on the market. In fact, this is one of those places where the precise definition of what constitutes a humanoid system becomes fuzzy.
It’s worth noting here that the robot on display is largely a prototype, although its creators believe it has made enough progress to warrant its public debut after two years of stealth. Given Shashua’s resume, two things are predictably at the forefront at Menteebot: computer vision and generative AI.
“We are on the cusp of a convergence of computer vision, natural language understanding, robust and detailed simulators, and methodologies for transferring simulation to the real world,” the founder says in a statement. “At Mentee Robotics, we see this convergence as the starting point to design the future multi-purpose bipedal robot that can move anywhere (like a human) with the brain to perform household chores and learn through imitation tasks for which he has not been trained before. .”
Image credits: Mentored robotics
Without a doubt, perception and reasoning are two key pillars that will guide the evolution of the category, and Mentee has a lot going for it in terms of pedigree. In addition to Shashua, the founding team is rounded out by Lior Wolf, CEO and former director of AI research at Facebook, and Shai Shalev-Shwartz, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and current CTO of Mobileye. This team, in part, has helped the company raise $17 million so far, led by Ahren Innovation Capital.
Mentee appears to be starting to cast a very wide net, looking at both industrial and domestic markets. Humanoid creators will usually tell you that home is somewhere on the road map. Warehouses and factories are the first stop, given the need for additional labor and the fact that they have deeper pockets than most consumers and the more structured environments offered by industrial environments.
For now, the company shows how AI models can help the system accomplish tasks.
Mentee Notes:
Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) are used to interpret commands and “think” about the steps required to accomplish the task. The emphasis is on the ability to integrate locomotion and dexterity, that is, to dynamically balance the robot when carrying weights or reaching out.
Mentee plans to release a production-ready prototype around early 2025.
techcrunch
