Sanctuary AI says its new robot is ready for real work.
The Vancouver, B.C., company unveiled what it describes as the first commercially available, general-purpose robot of its kind: a 5-foot, 7-inch working machine named Phoenix, powered by an advanced AI software system called Carbon.
Phoenix features dexterous hands intended to perform tasks ranging from stocking shelves to unloading a truck to working a register.
It is Sanctuary’s sixth-generation robot. The announcement follows a successful pilot deployment of the company’s fifth-generation robot at a Canadian Tire Corp. store, where it was able to successfully complete more than 110 different tasks, or 40% of all the tasks that need to be performed at the store.
Sanctuary wants use general-purpose robots to fill gaps in the labor market, using a “labor as a service” business model in which robots integrate seamlessly into a workforce. It says customers will pay negotiated rates for the work the robots complete, without any upfront capital investments or changes in their operations.
“We want them to feel like they’re bringing on a new employee, with all of the systems that they have in place that they would use for people, just applied to this new technology,” said Geordie Rose, Sanctuary’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview in advance of the Phoenix unveiling Tuesday morning.
Rose described the Carbon control system as the company’s “crown jewel,” and said its software system overall has benefitted “considerably” from the new era of generative AI. Sanctuary had developed a system that can query any publicly available large language model, including those from ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
“There’s ways to use those systems to solve problems that before were very difficult to solve,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve unlocked, at least in our case, anything fundamentally new. But they did make the systems better in several dimensions, including speed. The responses that you get back from these large language models are much faster than the techniques we were using before to do the same kind of functional things.”
The broader market for general-purpose robots faces challenges including battery life, manufacturing costs, and public acceptance of robots working in their midst, as detailed in a November 2022 Goldman Sachs report.
The Goldman Sachs researchers estimated, conservatively, that there will be a $6 billion global market for humanoid robots in the next 10 to 15 years, but said the number could reach as much as $154 billion by 2035 in a “blue-sky scenario,” in which all of those challenges are completely overcome.
Sanctuary, formally known as Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corp., was started in 2018 by past founders of quantum computing company D-Wave, AI robotics company Kindred, and the R&D nonprofit Creative Destruction Lab.
Its team includes veterans of companies such as Amazon, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Samsung.
The company is backed by investors including Verizon Ventures, Workday Ventures, Bell, Evok Innovations, Magna, and SE Health. A contribution of CAD $30 million from the Canadian government last year brought the company’s total funding to more than CAD $100 million.
Competitors include Boston Dynamics, known for its eye-popping demos of agile humanoid robots; and Agility Robotics, a Corvallis, Ore.-based company, backed by Amazon and others, that makes humanoid warehouse robots.
“There’s a lot of people working on aspects of this problem,” Rose said. “Where we are strongest is in the connection between the cognitive part of the system — the brain, if you will, the Carbon control system — and the physical hands of the robot.”
Rose also cited another point of differentiation: Sanctuary is not attempting to supplant existing robots or machines in the traditional automation sector. Instead, it’s looking to deploy robots that can operate seamlessly alongside customers and human workers, with a sense of intelligence about the physical world.
“All the properties of brains, human and otherwise, derived from the central notion of being an organ of movement,” Rose said. “So our thesis has always been that if you want to build a truly intelligent software system, it has to be the control system of a robot.”
Retail deployments are a key focus, offering a wide variety of tasks for the robot, including cleaning, restocking shelves, unloading delivery trucks, operating checkout stations, and giving customers detailed information about products in the store.
Sanctuary showed some of the tasks in this video of its previous-generation robot.
The Carbon system gets regular software updates to fine-tune its performance.
Rose declined to disclose Sanctuary’s projected roadmap or expected number of Phoenix deployments, but said it will be comparable to the approach taken by, for example, an electric vehicle maker rolling out a new supercar.
Sanctuary is being geographically strategic in its rollout, starting with customers close to its headquarters in Vancouver, B.C. Rose described it as an easier approach to take with such complex systems. The approach has also led to some serendipitous moments in his interactions with people around town.
At a recent dinner with other leaders from Vancouver’s business community, he was asked when they would see one of Sanctuary’s robots. Rose looked out the window and directed their attention to a nearby sporting goods store.
“Do you see that Sport Chek right there?” he asked. “There’s a robot in there right now.”
