A massive amount of money is being poured by academic institutes and big tech companies into research in artificial intelligence and machine learning, owing to large-scale benefits in the real world. As a result, we have seen some really cool products and innovations coming out that are certainly unique and one-of-a-kind. From virtual influencers to home-cleaning robots, 2021 saw companies stepping up and bringing out products that grabbed eyeballs.
Let’s look at a few of these cool AI-based products introduced to us this year.
Tesla Humanoid Robot
At the Tesla AI Day, Elon Musk announced that the company is working on a humanoid robot. He added that Tesla would build a robot in a human form that could perform repetitive tasks, and the prototype is likely to be ready by next year. The Tesla robot will weigh 125 pounds and have a walking gait of 5 miles per hour. The face will have a screen to display important information. The code name for the bot is ‘Optimus’.
Moxie
Moxie, developed by Embodied (robotics and AI company), is an animate companion for children to develop emotional, social and cognitive skills through play-based learning. The company says that Moxie allows parents to track their child’s progress through our companion parent application. Children interact with Moxie through drawing, story-telling, and mindfulness practice, among others. It is developed by a team of experts in the fields of child education, natural language processing, machine learning, robotics, engineering, neurology, and design.
GitHub Copilot
OpenAI and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer to write better code. It works with different languages like Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Java, and Go. It can be used as an extension on the desktop or in the cloud on GitHub Codespaces. The company said that with Copilot, the programmer can look at alternative suggestions, choose what to accept and reject, and edit suggested code manually.
JetBot 90 AI+
At CES 2021, Samsung Electronics introduced JetBot 90 AI+, a smart robotic vacuum powered by Intel AI that uses a combination of sensors and AI-enhanced object recognition technology. The company said that it cleans floors with minimal effort. It has a LiDAR sensor that detects distance and tracks location for precise movements. It also comes with a 3D sensor that recognizes the difference between objects. An object recognition algorithm helps to identify different kinds of objects and map the most efficient and safest route.
NVIDIA Omniverse
At NVIDIA GTC 2021, the company announced Omniverse VR, where creators, designers, researchers, and engineers can connect major design tools and assets to collaborate in a shared virtual space. It also revealed Omniverse Avatar, a new platform for creating interactive AI avatars with the help of computer vision, NLP, and simulation technologies. The company also showed us the NVIDIA Omniverse Replicator, a synthetic data generation engine to train deep neural networks. NVIDIA also announced that Omniverse Enterprise is now generally available.
UBTECH AI-Powered Disinfecting Robots
UBTECH Robotics introduced Adibot UV-C Disinfecting Robot. It aims to provide a hospital-grade solution against COVID-19 with the help of robotics and AI from UBTECH with UV-C technology. The robots are available in stationary and autonomous models and have disinfection capabilities with 99.9% accuracy.
Virtual Influencer Reah Keem
While presenting its keynote and showing its products, LG introduced virtual influencer Reah Keem. Reah Keem is a composer and DJ and showcased LG’s advanced CLOi robots at CES 2021. The virtual influencer has an Instagram following and SoundCloud profile as well.
Visual Question Answering (VQA) AI
Toshiba Corporation unveiled Visual Question Answering (VQA) AI that can recognize people and objects, colours, shapes, appearances, and background details in images. It said that this mechanism solves the issue of answering questions on the positioning and appearance of people and objects. It can learn the information required to handle a wide range of questions and answers and find applications to a diverse range of applications without any customization requirements.
