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.

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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.