Culture 3.14 · Laboratory
Physical operations
When an operation leaves the screen.
The branch of the Laboratory where the system perceives and acts through sensors, controllers and physical mechanisms: vision, state estimation, navigation, planning, manipulation and edge.
A digital operation modifies a record through an API. A physical operation moves a machine, transports an object or changes an environment.
Physical Intelligence extends operational intelligence into the physical world from the Laboratory. Here we publish which state each area is in and what we have learned.
It is the youngest part of our work, and the one that has the most limits to declare.
Constraints and areas of work
01
Incomplete perception
The sensor delivers a noisy measurement, not a state. The system estimates, and it has to know what to do when the estimate is not good enough.
02
Time, geometry and wear
A movement takes up space, takes time and alters the very mechanism that executes it. The same command does not always produce the same effect.
03
Actions that are hard to reverse
Undoing a record is cheap; undoing a movement rarely is. Safety is designed before performance.
04
Vision and sensing
Detection, segmentation, calibration and signal fusion. In exploration, over controlled scenes.
05
State estimation
Filters and models that hold a hypothesis about the environment between two measurements. In experiment.
06
Navigation and planning
Possible routes under geometric, temporal and safety constraints. In exploration.
07
Manipulation and coordination of machines
Grasping, manipulation sequences and sharing work out between several machines. In exploration.
08
Edge computing
Which decisions stay local when the link may drop, and what is synchronised afterwards. In experiment.
A physical operation ends when the environment allows its effect to be observed.