Digitized | Spotlight
00:13:24 · Michael Cho
[00:13:24] S2: Yeah. I would say there are few distinct... Very different different distinct groups there who are very interested in what we're building. So you have one group who are just gamers who who who just treat it like a pure game. I kind of think of it myself mostly falling into that group. You know? I... I'm wrestling with the... Because I really love the game. And then you have folks who are interested in the hardware. So these are the hardware makers who look at it as a as a as a hackable thing, you know, that that you can do. I can also say we're open sourcing the hardware very very very efficient. So so you have that group as well. And then you have the researchers. So researchers look at it as, again, like a very cheap, affordable data collection device that can be used to other data that they will then use to train the model. And so we have a lot of, I'll say, world class researchers doing urban application, like, you know, model building, that kind of thing, who are very involved on the platform. So you have these kind of different distinct groups. And, of course, you have the the top people who look at it as a potential deep in thing. Yeah. I mean, right now, we don't have the token as a lot live yet. So I I think it's it's quite interesting to to get all these different people getting involved for these different reasons and... But I I think it's it's... Yeah. It's it's quite cool. Maybe maybe, Amanda, you guys talk about about the Seesaw app as well. Think that one is quite cool as well. Very different from the Sour Robot.
00:14:49 · Amanda, Winnie
[00:14:49] S0: Yeah, definitely. So, Seesaw is focused on egocentric video and capturing this via iPhone. It's a subnet that was launched a month ago by Virtuals. And essentially, they've gotten like a ton of demand so far. I think almost 300,000 tasks have been submitted. And these are tasks like, you know, unload the dishwasher, fold laundry. So the response has been, really strong from the community. Who's submitting these tasks? So any anyone can download this iPhone app. So you just need an iPhone. So people around the world are some are submitting these tasks. [00:15:25] S1: And I guess, like, what is virtuals? I'm curious, like, their involvement in kind of helping launch a subnet. What is, like, kind of their thesis or their strategy there? I hadn't known they were doing this. That's very cool to hear. [00:15:37] S0: Yeah. So I think for... So FrodoBots Labs, which is essentially the development studio of BitRobot, started off as building the sidewalk robot game, which we call the subnet one EarthRover. And so so Michael and his team are creating a bunch of subnets and helping launch, other subnets within the ecosystem. But the idea here is like, we want to be bigger than just ourselves. Right? And so we want to attract ecosystem teams, either robotics startups and manufacturers, startups to also launch subnets. And so virtuals is one of those teams.
00:15:37 · Amanda, Winnie
[00:15:37] S0: Yeah. So I think for... So FrodoBots Labs, which is essentially the development studio of BitRobot, started off as building the sidewalk robot game, which we call the subnet one EarthRover. And so so Michael and his team are creating a bunch of subnets and helping launch, other subnets within the ecosystem. But the idea here is like, we want to be bigger than just ourselves. Right? And so we want to attract ecosystem teams, either robotics startups and manufacturers, startups to also launch subnets. And so virtuals is one of those teams. [00:16:15] S1: Love that. Cool. And I think for the past few years, I also read that you guys have been organizing this, Earth Rover challenge, which is a real world urban navigation competition with researchers from, like, Google DeepMind, Meta, and a lot of academia folks. Maybe tell us a little bit more about what that is, what led you to start this competition, and what have been some of the learnings and research and stuff to come out of it.
00:16:39 · Michael Cho
[00:16:39] S2: Yeah. That's... Yeah. Well... Yeah. So the the competition basically, fundamentally, we we take the top human gamers who play our game to take on AI models that are built by all these different labs. Know, this could be universities like UT Austin, National University of Singapore, Seoul National University, basically like labs that do this kind of research. So they built AI models that basically take on the same game as a human gamer. So if you think about it, it's basically humanity versus AI playing the same basically Pokemon GO game, something like that. And so like I mentioned earlier, the researchers are very interested in this platform because this is... We have basically one of the largest... Mean, far... Actually by far the largest dataset of its kind already, and many of the research team takes take advantage of that to build the models. And then more importantly, because these robots that we've built are really affordable, cheap, therefore a lot easier for them to actually start experimenting versus some of these other traditional robot like you know they're very fancy, way more capable than ours, it's just that they're damn expensive. Yeah it's so I'm really happy to see so now there are like academic papers that have been being written. Many of them have been published and more on the way, and so we are... I feel that we are really making a meaningful difference already through the data set and also through through this competition. By the way, like, the humans are way better than the AI in industry marketing. So so so the AI is still pretty shitty.
00:18:23 · Winnie, Michael Cho
[00:18:23] S1: We're not quite there yet. Our job is still backstage from AI. [00:18:28] S2: Yeah. I mean, the urban navigation... Business sidewalk driving is in many ways the same kind of like stack as a problem set as self driving on the road. It's just that way more resources and also way more data have been gathered on the road and so cyber robot in a way is way behind. So but hopefully, through what we've been doing, are getting a lot of these researchers to push further ahead. I think if you look at the universities and also some of our co organizers, many of them actually, like you mentioned, from researchers from DeepMind, Meta AI, and and universities. So I think for them to be involved with us, I mean, speaks volume about, like, this is very much needed in the research world, and and I think we we are already providing value even at this stage. Yeah. [00:19:23] S1: Yeah. No. I think you also run a podcast with... Where you kind of talk a lot about and interview some of these top researchers, correct, in robotics. What are some, like, exciting frontier things? I guess a lot of what you're doing is already quite frontier, but, like, what are some interesting research pathways or, you know, exciting things that you guys have been discussing lately that you can share?
00:19:23 · Winnie, Michael Cho
[00:19:23] S1: Yeah. No. I think you also run a podcast with... Where you kind of talk a lot about and interview some of these top researchers, correct, in robotics. What are some, like, exciting frontier things? I guess a lot of what you're doing is already quite frontier, but, like, what are some interesting research pathways or, you know, exciting things that you guys have been discussing lately that you can share? [00:19:46] S2: Yeah. I mean... So... Yeah. Me me and this guy, Chris Paxton, shout out to Chris. He... He's a real expert. He himself is a top researcher. So I I feel very privileged to do the podcast with him. I think both of us, I mean it's, I mean you can tell me I'm very geeky, read like research papers for years and people are going to sleep so I've been doing it for ages. [00:20:07] S1: I mean you spent COVID building robots so.