Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics) header
Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics) profile picture

Head of Robot Operations at Rhoda AI. Former Google DeepMind, Google X, Jabil. Harvest Automation, Adept Technology

San Jose, CA
Joined April 2010
Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)Photo by Travis Armstrong (@RandomRobotics)
Humans don't rely solely on vision, why should robots? Enabling our robots to learn and use touch unlocks even more opportunities. Really exciting!
What can a robot do without vision? We gave our robot a sense of touch and showed it can recognize and retrieve objects with its cameras blindfolded. Introducing Rhoda’s new tactile sensor—it feels pressure, texture, vibration, slip, and temperature, just like your fingertips.
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More industries. More real customer work. Introducing RhodaAtWork, a series on the customer workflows our robots are learning to handle across manufacturing and logistics. First up: unpacking, scanning and stacking component reels for electronics manufacturing.
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Internet video is diverse, passively collected, and virtually inexhaustible. Previously, we showed that pre-training purely on web video can enable robots to solve complex real-world tasks. Now, we show how that approach scales: with both model size and training duration. rhoda.ai/research/scaling-we…
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1/ We are speed running industrial robotics. It took us just 19 days from the first day of data collection to filming a 2.5-hour continuous run of our model autonomously breaking down industrial containers — zero human intervention. The data efficiency of our DVA model is fundamentally changing how fast we bring robots out of the lab and into the factory. Autonomous operation with 3 hours of data collection at a customer factory.
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To bring generalist intelligent robots to the real world, we have to overcome the data scarcity problem. At Rhoda, we are solving it by reformulating robot policies as video generation. Today, we introduce the Direct Video-Action Model (DVA)
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Observe. Predict. Act. Repeat. In closed loop. We call this the Direct Video-Action (DVA) model, and it’s why Rhoda can operate beyond lab conditions in real production environments.
After operating in stealth for the last 18 months @rhodaai , we’re excited today to finally show the world what we’ve been working on. We believe we’re on a path to physical AGI with the launch of our brand new foundation model, the Direct Video Action (DVA) model.
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The gap between robotics in the lab and robotics in the real world has been one of the hardest unsolved problems in the industry. We’re excited to come out of stealth and show the research community how we’re tackling the issue. Bloomberg article in comment.
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03.10.26
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Too many robots end up in the “Automation Graveyard” but with AI we can build intelligent automation that lasts.  #Automation #EmbodiedAI #Robotics
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Humanoids in the home make for viral demos, but factories are the real proving ground. The path to a humanoid in your house starts on the industrial floor, where environments are engineered for success and the ROI is proven. #robotics #automation #AI
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The real business case for robotics: cheaper, faster, better. The rest is just a demo. #Robotics #AI #Innovation #Automation #Tech #Operations
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Great tour of the @GoogleDeepMind robotics lab! 🤖🦾 Proud to have led the team that built the ALOHA workcells and scaled up data collection efforts for the first Gemini Robotics models. Excited to see the fleet in action! 🚀#Robotics #AI youtu.be/UALxgn1MnZo
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Huge news - we've joined forces with @GoogleDeepMind's robotics team!🧠🦾 We’ll combine best-in-class #AI with cutting-edge robotics hardware to create advanced AI-powered humanoid robots. Get ready for a new era of helpful robots in dynamic environments. apptronik.com/news-collectio… #apptronik #humanoid #humanoidrobot #robotics
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Meet our AI-powered robot that’s ready to play table tennis. 🤖🏓 It’s the first agent to achieve amateur human level performance in this sport. Here’s how it works. 🧵
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Anybody else in #SanJose lost @Xfinity @comcast Internet and cable today? Been out since 1pm today and they claim it's back on but it isn't.
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Once again @Sunrun backup battery system has failed. Have I mentioned that they're garbage?
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Shopping for a new couch. Why can't I scan my room with a camera, turn that into a virtual environment, and swap in a dozen different models from different vendors? I thought #AugmentedReality would be general use by now, but doesn't seem to be. What about NeRF?
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