Alibaba Group Holding’s mapping unit has unveiled an upgrade to what it calls the world’s first technology framework that unites a robot’s “feet, hands, brains, central nerves and motor nerves” into a single system.
Amap’s ABot system marks the latest move in Chinese tech players’ race to harness
models to make robots more capable. Referred to as embodied intelligence, the effort aims to equip machines with the “brains” and other elements required to navigate and complete tasks in complex physical spaces.
With five new specialised foundation AI models working together, ABot aimed to address a systemic problem in the industry, according to Amap: the lack of a complete, self-evolving system.
“The industry has long focused on breakthroughs in single models – better navigation models, more powerful operation models and smarter reasoning models – but these models operate independently without shared data and experience,” it said in a social media post on Wednesday.
With its five models – ABot-N1, ABot-M0.5, ABot-ER, ABot-AgentOS, and ABot-C0 – working in concert, the Amap system sought to shatter those silos, according to the firm.
The ABot-N1 model employed an “eyes guiding feet” approach, enabling a robot to handle city-scale autonomous navigation with a 92.9 per cent outdoor success rate using only standard cameras and basic road networks, Amap said on Wednesday, adding that this bypassed the need for costly high-definition maps.
Meanwhile, ABot-M0.5 allowed a machine to “use hands and feet simultaneously”, divorcing movement functions from manipulation tasks so a robot could seamlessly grasp objects while walking, the company said.