German Startup Trains Its Robots Using Humans Filming Themselves

Germany’s Agile Robots is training its machines by filming humans performing tasks, in a bid to compensate for a shortfall of data that is holding back industrial automation, according to its chief executive officer.

Its Robot Academy comprises workers who film themselves performing certain tasks, capturing the way their hands and fingers move. Agile Robots combines that information with additional training data, and robots practice the movements in simulated environments, Chief Executive Officer Zhaopeng Chen said Thursday at the Wave by Vento technology event in Turin, Italy.

“If human beings can learn from school, why can’t robots?” he said.

A wave of startups has emerged in Europe and elsewhere seeking to put humanoids and other robots into factories to boost productivity and cut costs. These environments often involve repetitious tasks that lend themselves to automation more quickly than other real-world settings. But adoption has been hampered due to the machines struggling with basic tasks, in part due to a lack of training data.

Neura Robotics, another German humanoid-maker, has said it’s developing a robotic training facility with the Technical University of Munich.

Robots can require thousands of attempts to master a job and may need to learn it again after even small changes, Chen said. Skilled workers draw on experience acquired throughout their lives.

Read More: Workers Are Teaching AI-Powered Robots to Take Over Their Jobs

Agile Robots, formed in Munich in 2018 by researchers from the German Aerospace Center, has deployed more than 20,000 systems, according to the company.

The company has raised $1.5 billion in financing to date, Chen told journalists last month. He declined to comment on future funding but said more is coming “very soon.” The company is in discussions to raise a further $800 million with involvement from SoftBank Group Corp., Bloomberg News reported in June.