Check out Boardwalk Robotics’ addition to the humanoid workforce

Boardwalk Robotics announces its entry into the increasingly crowded commercial humanoid space with Alex, a “workforce transformation” humanoid torso designed to work in manufacturing, logistics and maintenance.

Before I talk about Alex, let me take a minute to clarify the connections between Boardwalk Robotics and IHMC, the Institute for Human Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. IHMC is, I think it’s fair to say, somewhat legendary when it comes to bipedal robotics—its DARPA Robotics Challenge team took second place in the final round (using a Boston Dynamics DRC Atlas), and when NASA needed someone to teach the agency’s Valkyrie humanoid how to walk better, they sent it to IHMC.

Boardwalk, founded in 2017, is a commercial partner of IHMC in building robots. The most visible example to date is IHMC’s Nadia humanoid, a research platform that Boardwalk collaborated on and built. There are obviously many commonalities between IHMC and Boardwalk in terms of institutional knowledge and experience, but Alex is a trading robot developed entirely in-house by Boardwalk.

“We’ve used Nadia to learn a lot about dynamic locomotion research, and we’re going to integrate it all into a manipulation platform that’s ready for commercial work,” says Brandon Shrewsbury, CTO of Boardwalk Robotics. “With Alex, we’re focusing on the manipulation side first, getting it right. Then we’re choosing the mobility based on the task.”

The first thing you’ll notice about Alex is that he doesn’t have legs, at least not yet. Boardwalk’s theory is that for a humanoid to be practical and profitable in the short term, legs aren’t necessary, and that there are plenty of jobs that offer a good return on investment for which a stationary pedestal or glorified autonomous mobile robotic base would be perfectly suited.

“There are some problems that will require legs, but there are a lot of problems that don’t,” says Robert Griffin, a technical advisor at Boardwalk. “And there aren’t a lot of problems that don’t require moderately decent manipulation capabilities. So if we can design manipulation well from the beginning, then we won’t need legs to make a functionally useful robot.”

It certainly helps that Boardwalk isn’t at all worried On leg development: “Every time we bring out a new humanoid, it’s about twice as fast as the last time,” Griffin says. This will be the eighth humanoid that IHMC has been involved in. I’ll tell you more about these eight humanoids, but some of them are so secret that even I I don’t know anything about them. The legs are definitely on the roadmap, but they’re not finished yet, and IHMC will be involved in their development to speed things up: it turns out that already having access to a working locomotion stack (high-end, really) is a big advantage.

Alex’s actuators are all designed in-house and the next version will feature new grippers that will allow for faster tool changes.Robotics on the promenade

While the humanoid market is currently very open and competition isn’t much of an issue, Boardwalk sees safety as one of its biggest assets, since it doesn’t have legs, Shrewsbury says. “For a full humanoid, there’s no way to make it completely safe. If it falls, it’s going to crash into its face.” By keeping Alex on a stable base, it can work closer to humans and potentially move its arms much faster while still maintaining a dynamic safety zone.

Alex is available for purchase to researchers immediately.Robotics on the promenade

Despite his research background, Alex is not meant to be a research robot. can Buy him for research purposes if you wish, but Boardwalk will sell Alex as a commercial robot. Boardwalk is currently running pilot programs with Alex Boardwalk partners with select clients, with the ultimate goal of moving to a service model. Boardwalk’s initial target sectors include logistics (because, of course) and food processing, although, as Boardwalk CEO Michael Morin says, one of the earliest pilots is (appropriately) in aviation.

Morin, who helped commercialize Barrett Technologies’ WAM arm before spending time at Vicarious Surgical during that company’s IPO, joined Boardwalk to help them turn good engineering into a good product, which is arguably the hardest part of making useful robots (on top of all the other hard parts). “A lot of these companies are new to humanoids,” Morin says. “It makes for a longer customer journey. But we’re trying to educate them on how this could be implemented in their world.”

If you’re interested in having your own Alex, Boardwalk is currently selecting commercial partners for a few more pilot projects. And for researchers, the robot is available now.