🤖 The Godfather of Robots Have Spoken

Hello, fellow nerds 🧙

What’s a beauty pageant without people? Is it even a beauty pageant anymore? We ask these questions because the world’s first beauty pageant has officially been announced…

Now honestly, can’t see the point of this outside of who can prompt the most attractive person? Seems a little strange, but welcome to 2024.

Here’s the daily quests in AI to complete today:

• 🤖 The Godfather of Robots Have Spoken

• 🗣️ Magical Talking Heads with Microsoft

• 🔥 Throwback Thursday

• 😮 Robots Have Balls

The Godfather of Robots Have Spoken

The world had all but forgotten about Boston Dynamics (BD), the true Godfather of robot design and innovation. Which, to be honest, is hard to believe because these guys have been at the forefront for over 30 years for cripes sakes.

Well, they certainly proved their status yesterday when they released their new and improved Atlas model. Shockingly, this came a day after announcing the retirement of their first robot, HD Atlas.

If you’re unfamiliar with HD Atlas, bless your eyes with this:

The crazy part about HD Atlas was it had been doing its robot thing for over a decade. From the video, the capabilities of HD far exceeded what any humanoid robot can do that’s been announced recently. The competition really isn’t even close.

But, all good things must come to an end. HD Atlas has said his goodbyes, and retired into his silver years. Just seeing the handful of falls and blown off ankle servos, we’d say it’s well deserved.

We mentioned earlier the new and improved version of Atlas, so without further ado, meet Atlas 2.0.

Not gonna lie, the way Atlas crab legged his way to get up may have given us some nightmare fuel, but from a practical standpoint it definitely makes sense.

Now, the video was super short, so there wasn’t much to be learned about our new robo friend, but here’s a few things that stuck out to us.

• The hydraulic limbs are gone, meaning Atlas 2.0 is all electric

• Actuator joints = a huge range of motion

• A rounder, much different head style

The head brings up a good point to mention. Unlike the other humanoid robots released by Figure 01 and Tesla, Boston Dynamics has kinda shied away from a true human looking robot. Sure, you’ve still got some similarities like the fingers and body shape, but every other design choice moves to support a more practical and efficient robot.

Take the opening scene for example. Every robot on the market now needs assistance to get back up, but not Atlas with its cursed crab legs.

Atlas 2.0 just goes to show, leave it to Boston Dynamics to keep carving the path in robotics. Our word of advice? Don’t be forgetting them any time soon. We’ve got a feeling they’ve got much bigger plans cooking up in the near future.

Magical Talking Heads with Microsoft

VASA-1 creates talking faces with a single portrait photo and speech audio.

The model is the first competitor since Alibaba released EMO.

The eye and facial expressions are a bit lacking. They feel awkward compared to EMO but the lip sync seems to be high quality.

Microsoft’s new technology is promising as it’s only the first version but they only showed minimal examples. For instance, they didn’t demonstrate high quality rapping

By touting their model’s ability for realism and liveliness, they’ve set some very high expectations.

• Issues vary but some include the exaggeration of eyebrow raising.

• The exacerbated facial movements for things like smiles are awkward, kind of like the Limitless CEO in their product launch video.

• Fairly easy to spot AI generated “realistic” models compared to the artistic fake ones.

To use the model, there are some prompt options including:

• Main Eye Contact Direction

  • Forward-facing

  • Leftwards

  • Rightwards

  • Upwards

• Head Distance from Camera

  • All close up, some super close up

  • No body included

• Emotions

  • Neutral

  • Happiness

  • Anger

  • Surprise

Examples of Out of Distribution Generalization (when the data is outside of what was trained, the model has to generalize in order to apply what it has learned in training to an actual request).

• Surprisingly good as long as it isn’t trying to mimic a perfectly realistic human

• Artistic photos

• Singing Audios

• Non-English speech

Overall, Microsoft is jumping into the deep end with emotional avatars and we’re excited to see the next iteration.

⌛️ Throwback Thursday

A little blast from the past.

There was a time where life was simple. A time where man decided to combine two very different products. The question is, was it necessary? Did the invention further mankind in any way? You’re goddamn right it did. Take a look at this ingenuity.

Daily Delight

Just something fun and interesting around the web.

In the spirit of Boston Dynamics showcasing their new robot, we couldn’t stop laughing from this 😂 Definitely a must see!

What’s happening inside the Realm

A list of side quests to explore and more.

• If you’re a Logitech keyboard or mouse user, Christmas has come early because you’re eligible for a free AI upgrade.

• The Anthropic CEO is bullish on AI models being able to replicate themselves and survive in the wild as early as next year.

• Cisco has finally arrived on the AI scene with a new product called Hypershield. It’s their first attempt to reimagine security in an AI world.

• GTA 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is the latest tech company to trim 5% of its workforce. Fingers crossed there’s no GTA 6 delay.

That’s all the quests we have for today. Check back tomorrow for more!

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