Genesis AI unveils GENE-26.5 robotic brain that enables human-level physical manipulation

Global full-stack robotics company Genesis AI announced GENE-26.5, which the company said is the first robotic brain to give robots human-level physical manipulation capabilities.

Alongside it, the company also introduced what it said is a first-of-its-kind system to unlock unlimited amounts of data and train GENE-26.5 at scale.

Gensis AI said that the system combines two proprietary components: a human-scale dexterous robotic hand that enables direct skill transfer from humans to robots, and a powerful new data engine.

Reimagining robotic intelligence

Together, Genesis AI said that these innovations overcome the fundamental bottleneck in data that has constrained robotics foundation models, paving the way for a new generation of highly-productive general-purpose robots.

“The brain and hand are the two most valuable and complex pieces of robotics, and today we are presenting the industry’s most advanced versions of both,” said Zhou Xian, co-founder and CEO of Genesis AI. “For the first time ever, we’re enabling robots to do what only human hands could, and do it reliably, at scale.”

The company said that GENE-26.5 is an AI foundation model, purpose-built for robotics and designed to absorb massive amounts of data and environments. It enables robots to perform complex, long-horizon tasks with unmatched dexterity, replicating human-level capabilities.

With GENE-26.5, Genesis AI said that it is advancing a future where robots can be instantly deployed and adapt to new environments and unfamiliar tasks.

The company showcased the following capabilities in a video (below), showing how GENE-26.5 masters the following difficult activities with human-level control and accuracy, demonstrating fluid, human-like dexterity, and precise, coordinated hand movements:

• Cooking a 20-step meal, including chopping tomatoes, one-handed egg cracking and seamless two-hand coordination.
• Preparing a smoothie, including ingredient handling, pouring, blending and mid-air serving with coordinated two-hand control.
• Conducting high-precision lab experiments with delicate instrumentation, including pipetting, liquid transfer and mid-air manipulation.
• Wire harnessing, arranging and securing wires into organized bundles, one of the most difficult electronics and electrical engineering tasks.
• Solving a Rubik’s Cube, using continuous in-air manipulation requiring coordinated, high-speed reasoning and precise wrist control.
• Single-handed multi-object grasping, simultaneously handling four objects of varying sizes and sorting them into designated bins.
• Playing the piano at a human level, performing an ultra-fast, highly complex composition.

“General-purpose robotics stands to reshape the global economy while opening an entirely new chapter for AI,” said Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and Genesis AI investor. “Genesis is introducing a paradigm shift in robotics. This marks an important milestone for their team and the robotics industry more broadly.”

Learning powered by unlimited human data

According to Genesis AI, the embodiment gap, or the difference between the human form and robotic form, has always drastically limited robots’ performance and ability to learn from human data. Genesis AI said that it is shattering those limitations with its proprietary hardware that exactly matches the human hand.

The company said that its dexterous robotic hand mirrors the human hand in form and function, and pairs with a data collection glove equipped with tactile-sensing electronic skin.

When worn by a human, the company said that the glove allows for a 1💯1 mapping between the glove itself, the human’s hand and the robotic hand. Genesis AI said that this allows humans to seamlessly provide GENE-26.5 with high-quality data at scale that translates into robotic skills, resulting in natural, human-like movement that generalizes reliably across complex physical tasks, use cases and environments.

Genesis AI said that its glove is 100 times cheaper than typical options in terms of hardware cost, and in internal testing, it has demonstrated up to five times greater data collection efficiency with better quality, compared to traditional teleoperation methods.

To put this data collection into action, Genesis AI said that it is engaging with partners to deploy the glove in real-world work environments. By wearing the glove while working as usual, the company said that everyday tasks performed at real facilities become abundant sources of new training data, unlocking new categories of data collection directly on the job, and helping Genesis AI build the world's largest human skill library. 

“At Genesis, we believe winning in robotics requires excellence at every level,” said Theophile Gervet, co-founder and president of Genesis AI. “That’s why we’re obsessed with innovating across the full-stack, from AI to hardware. By controlling every layer, we can build a cohesive system and solve the problem holistically. Our approach gives us a huge competitive advantage by harnessing unprecedented amounts of data as that ultimately defines what foundation models can achieve.”

Genesis AI’s simulation accelerates GENE-26.5 

While robots exist to automate the physical world, the company said that robot development has always been one of the most manual processes in engineering. Genesis AI said that it is changing this with its next-generation simulation system.

Genesis AI said that its simulation delivers a never-before-seen level of realism, narrowing the sim-to-real gap, which has historically limited the usefulness of simulated training. By creating a uniquely accurate and reliable representation of real-world conditions with a rendering engine and physics that are hyper-realistic, the company said that robots can perform similarly in the simulation as they do on the same tasks in the real world.

“Genesis is changing the trajectory of robotics, bringing us closer to AI that can operate in the real world,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures and Genesis AI investor. “Genesis’s groundbreaking foundation model powered by its human-centric data engine and its first-of-its-kind simulation are poised to dramatically increase development speeds and enable instant deployment with commercial customers.”

Genesis AI said that it will soon unveil its first general-purpose robot that will serve as the ultimate culmination of the aforementioned technology. The company raised $105 million in seed funding, backed by Eclipse, Khosla Ventures, Bpifrance and HSG, among other investors.