Google's New Robot AI Can Fold Delicate Origami, Close Zipper Bags

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Google DeepMind announced two new AI models designed to control robots: Gemini Robotics and Gemini Robotics-ER. The company claims these models will help robots of many shapes and sizes understand and interact with the physical world more effectively and delicately than previous systems, paving the way for applications such as humanoid robot assistants. Google's new models build upon its Gemini 2.0 large language model foundation, adding capabilities specifically for robotic applications. Gemini Robotics includes what Google calls 'vision-language-action' (VLA) abilities, allowing it to process visual information, understand language commands, and generate physical movements. By contrast, Gemini Robotics-ER focuses on 'embodied reasoning' with enhanced spatial understanding, letting roboticists connect it to their existing robot control systems. For example, with Gemini Robotics, you can ask a robot to 'pick up the banana and put it in the basket,' and it will use a camera view of the scene to recognize the banana, guiding a robotic arm to perform the action successfully. Or you might say, 'fold an origami fox,' and it will use its knowledge of origami and how to fold paper carefully to perform the task.

In 2023, we covered Google's RT-2, which represented a notable step toward more generalized robotic capabilities by using Internet data to help robots understand language commands and adapt to new scenarios, then doubling performance on unseen tasks compared to its predecessor. Two years later, Gemini Robotics appears to have made another substantial leap forward, not just in understanding what to do but in executing complex physical manipulations that RT-2 explicitly couldn't handle. While RT-2 was limited to repurposing physical movements it had already practiced, Gemini Robotics reportedly demonstrates significantly enhanced dexterity that enables previously impossible tasks like origami folding and packing snacks into Zip-loc bags. This shift from robots that just understand commands to robots that can perform delicate physical tasks suggests DeepMind may have started solving one of robotics' biggest challenges: getting robots to turn their 'knowledge' into careful, precise movements in the real world. DeepMind claims Gemini Robotics 'more than doubles performance on a comprehensive generalization benchmark compared to other state-of-the-art vision-language-action models.'

Google is advancing this effort through a partnership with Apptronik to develop next-generation humanoid robots powered by Gemini 2.0. Availability timelines or specific commercial applications for the new AI models were not made available.

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