The download: Google Deepmind's plans for robots and changing technology sector in Eastern Europe

The news: Google Deepmind has published a new model, Gemini Robotics, that combines its best large voice model with robotics. Inserting the LLM seems to give the robots the opportunity to be clever, work out of natural commands and to generalize tasks. All three are things to which robots have had trouble so far.

Why it is important: The team hopes that their work could initiate an era of robots who are far more useful and need less detailed training for every task. The inclusion of LLMS in robotics is part of a growing trend, and this can be the most impressive example so far. Read the whole story.

– Scott J Mulligan

If you are interested in how researchers make robot more useful, you should look at these stories:

+ The robot race promotes a fight for training data. AI provides the way in which robots learn and leaves companies and researchers more data. Read the whole story.

+ It is becoming increasingly easier to train robots with sound, which helps you to adapt to tasks and environments in which visibility is limited. Read the whole story.

+ To be more useful, robots have to be lazy. More intelligent data processing could make machines in the real world more helpful and energy efficient. A good way to test this principle is to let robot play football.

+ Gen-AI models are not only good for creating images in good-sie can also be fine-tuned in order to generate also useful robot training data. Read the whole story.

With Technology Review says: How the Ukraine-Russia War changes the tech sector in Eastern Europe

Startups in Latvia and other nearby countries see the mobilization of Ukraine as a warning and as inspiration. They now change consumer products – from scooters to leisure drones – for use on the battlefield.