Not long ago we were talking about LiDAR sensors as ideal for improving autonomous driving or, at least, advancing in it. Well, now they present One, the first delivery robot of Vayu Robotics And the first on the forehead: it uses a new low-cost vision system plus AI training to navigate without previously mapping the route, eliminating expensive sensor arrays.
He One “It can follow staff around stores to pick up customer orders, before autonomously moving through city streets at speeds of up to 32 km/h to deliver goods. In 2022 Vayu Robotics launched a camera sensor that will enable its autonomous delivery robots to operate without LiDAR sensors, combining low-cost, dense CMOS image sensors with modern computational imaging and machine learning techniques.”
The company claims that this technology outperforms typical RGB cameras and LiDAR. It results in a cost-effective, high-resolution robotic vision system with high-resolution depth perception, object detection… while being effective in harsh conditions. Then came the AI model called Vayu Drivewhich is trained using simulated and real-world data. It eliminates the need for HD maps, localization technology or LiDAR – it relies on the Sense vision system.
“It is an end-to-end neural network. The input is multimodal: image tokens from the cameras, instruction tokens for the instruction that the robot has been told to perform, route tokens to show it the navigation route at road level,” the company says. Its difference is that it has a notion of ‘state’‘ which is built over time and updated with each additional input frame. This allows for context windows without the slowdown that occurs with large contexts.
The four-wheeled electric delivery pod measures 1m high, 1.8m long and 0.67m wide, so it shouldn’t present too many obstacles to other traffic as it makes its way to customers at speeds of up to 32km/h. It claims a 110 km of autonomy maximum per load. It can pull up to the curb or driveway, stop, open the side door and pull out the assigned package with its robotic arm. It is capable of storing up to 45 kg of goods inside its storage compartment, although with some adjustments it could increase to 90kg, the company says.
The One is being tested by an as-yet-unnamed “major e-commerce player” who plans to roll out 2,500 robotsstarting in California before expanding to other cities in the US. Vayu also wants its technologies to be used in other robots: “Vayu’s software technology will enable the movement of quadrupedal and bipedal robots, allowing us to expand into those markets as well,” company co-founder Anand Gopalan revealed.
