What it Takes for Robotics to Go Mainstream, Innovative Partnerships, and Major Milestones

This week's community update was packed with critical insights, exciting partnership announcements, and significant milestones. Here's everything you need to know!

Understanding Robotics Readiness

We kicked off the update by addressing a key question: What will it take for humanoid robots to become widely usable?

Nils identified five essential steps:

1. Locomotion Model – Robots must understand how to move effectively.
2. Manipulation Model – They need to handle and interact with objects.
3. Spatial Semantic Representation – Robots require detailed maps with semantic information.
4. Localization – Robots must accurately know their location relative to their environment.
5. Orchestration and Application Layer – The ability to execute instructions based on the above layers.

Auki specifically focuses on steps 3 and 4, providing decentralized spatial mapping and visual positioning systems (VPS) crucial for meaningful robot autonomy.

"Physical AI is an agent plus an understanding of physics plus an understanding of space. This understanding of space is exactly what we at Auki are working on."

Key Partnership Announcements

Mentra Partnership for First-Person Data

Auki has partnered with Mentra, a smart glasses innovator, to enable decentralized first-person data collection. Mentra’s smart glasses (Mentra Live) capture valuable first-person perspectives for robot training, such as tasks like folding laundry or emptying dishwashers.

The captured data will be uploaded to user-controlled domains, annotated by AI, and listed on a marketplace, allowing direct sales to robotics companies.

"We're excited to create an incredible new use case for both the glasses and the Auki ecosystem."

Alpha AI: Pioneer in Hong Kong's Low Altitude Economy

Alpha AI secured the first exclusive license from the Hong Kong government for drone operations within the city's low-altitude economy. This groundbreaking license permits drone deliveries and autonomous inspections of buildings and slopes—operations previously restricted by stringent flight regulations.

Alpha AI will soon move into Auki headquarters, fostering close collaboration and further development of a decentralized drone platform in partnership with peaq.

"Alpha AI and Auki will soon share a roof, working closely to make drone operations collaborative and autonomous."

Intercognitive Launches Universal Machine Time (UMT)

Intercognitive, a consortium including Auki, released a draft for the Universal Machine Time standard—critical for synchronizing decentralized data collection precisely. This standard promises to significantly improve interoperability across different decentralized networks.

"UMT is not just about choosing a time zone—it's about precise synchronization down to milliseconds or nanoseconds, crucial for data interoperability."

Technical Milestones Achieved

• Humanoid Robot Integration: We successfully connected Terri to the posemesh, enabling autonomous navigation within mapped spaces.
• Decentralized VPS Test: We achieved our first end-to-end test of a fully decentralized visual positioning system, allowing venues to independently map spaces without centralized data collection.
• Load Balancing for Scene Reconstruction: Demonstrated effective decentralized load balancing, distributing heavy computational tasks like scene reconstruction across multiple nodes.

These milestones highlight the practical advancements toward fully decentralized spatial computing.

Community and Social Media Tips

Lastly, we shared advice on effectively navigating the X algorithm. Specifically, Nils recommended avoiding the excessive use of cash tags (e.g. $AUKI) to prevent algorithmic penalties, ensuring greater organic visibility.

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Watch the whole update on X.

About Auki

Auki is making the physical world accessible to AI by building the real world web: away for robots and digital devices like smart glasses and phones to browse, navigate, and search physical locations.

70% of the world economy is still tied to physical locations and labor, so making the physical world accessible to AI represents a 3X increase in the TAM of AI in general. Auki's goal is to become the decentralized nervous system of AI in the physical world, providing collaborative spatial reasoning for the next 100bn devices on Earth and beyond.

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