Agile Robots Trains Industrial Bots Using Worker Hand Videos

Agile Robots is training industrial robots by recording workers' hand and finger movements on video and using those recordings as the initial machine-learning dataset.

Chief executive Zhaopeng Chen announced the launch of a section called the Robot Academy at the Wave by Vento technology event in Turin, Italy, and Bloomberg reported the remarks. Chen said machines rehearse the recorded movements in virtual environments before they are deployed on production lines.

How the academy works

According to Bloomberg, Agile Robots asks workers to film how their hands and fingers move while performing tasks to create labeled motion data for training. The company then simulates those motions in virtual environments so robots can practice recorded sequences prior to physical deployment. Chen explained that while skilled human workers draw on accumulated lifetime experience, automated systems often need thousands of repetitions to master a single task and must repeat the learning process even after small changes.

Industry context and partnerships

European startups have been pushing humanoid robots into factories to increase productivity and reduce costs, but full implementation has been slow because robots struggle with fundamental tasks and training-data shortages. Neura Robotics, another German humanoid robot maker, has launched a joint project with the Technical University of Munich to establish a robotics training center.

Agile Robots was founded in 2018 by researchers from the German Aerospace Center in Munich. The company says it has deployed more than 20,000 systems worldwide and has raised 1.5 billion dollars in funding. Negotiations with SoftBank for an additional 800 million dollars in financing are under way.