Sanctuary AI releases next generation of Phoenix general-purpose robot

Sanctuary AI recently unveiled the seventh generation of its general-purpose robot Phoenix. The latest generation robot and its AI control system, Carbon, draw even closer to that of a person, according to the company. The newest Phoenix releases comes with wide ranging improvements to both the hardware and AI software.

The announcement comes less than 12 months after Sanctuary AI’s sixth-generation robot was launched, and less than 16 months after its fifth-generation robot was first commercially deployed in January 2023.

Improvements to Phoenix

According to Sanctuary AI, this generation of Phoenix is one of the most sophisticated human behavioral data capture technologies available today, providing Carbon with some of the highest quality and highest fidelity training data available. The changes include:

• Increased uptime, making robots more available for training and data capture
• Increased build and commissioning speed, allowing the company to bring more units online faster
• Reduced bill of materials, lowering manufacturing costs
• Significant hardware improvements, increasing range of motion in the wrists, hands and elbows and increasing hand durability
• Further miniaturized hydraulics, reducing the weight, power consumption and complexity with increased hardware and software measures that exceed specified safety standards
• Improved visual acuity and tactile sensing, leading to higher-fidelity data to train the AI control system
• The time it takes for new tasks to be automated has gone from weeks to less than 24 hours, marking a major inflection point in task automation speed and autonomous system capability

“It’s incredible to see the progress that has been made in just 11 months,” said Geordie Rose, CEO and co-founder of Sanctuary AI. “With Generation 7, we have a system that we believe is the most closely analogous to a person of any available.”

In March 2024, Sanctuary expanded its footprint in the automotive manufacturing industry. Sanctuary AI announced a strategic partnership with Magna, a global mobility technology company. Magna, according to a release, is one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world and a significant buyer of industrial robots.

“We see this as not only the cornerstone of general-purpose AI robotics but a critical step on the path to artificial general intelligence, and we’re thrilled to be leading the charge on it,” Rose added. “This all adds up to being able to capture increasing quantities of higher quality, higher fidelity human behavioral data, which in turn will expedite the development of foundational AI models and customer deployments.”