Two Indian-origin US professors developing 'general-purpose brain' for robots

Spike Jonze’s Her, a 2013 film about a lonely writer who falls in love with an advanced operating system, explores a poignant relationship between a human and an Artificial Intelligence entity. The idea seemed farfetched with the Joaquin Phoenix-helmed film depicting a fictional world where the AI entity Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, can feel emotion, as robots portrayed in the movies do not reflect real life.

In reality, they aren’t as advanced and the failure rate for performing basic tasks is much higher. However, a Pittsburgh-based robotics startup aims to build the world’s largest foundational robotics model, making robots more functional and intelligent. Founded in 2023 by Abhinav Gupta and Deepak Pathak, IIT-Kanpur graduates and Carnegie Mellon University professors, Skild AI is creating a general-purpose brain for robots that can outperform the individual hand-designed systems currently deployed. Pathak says the idea for Skild AI was sparked by the shift in robotics from lab demos to live demonstrations, indicating a readiness for real-world applications. Pathak and his team saw the potential to bring robots into everyday tasks, leading to the founding of the startup.