This Humanoid Robot Can Lift 220 Pounds But Has Super-Sensitive Skin

Neura Robotics officially unveiled the third generation of its 4NE-1 humanoid robot this week, along with a household robot named MiPa, an open robotics ecosystem called the Neuraverse, and a vision for an app store for robots. The 4NE-1 humanoid robot is powerful but also sensitive: able to lift more than any other humanoid robot I’ve seen, but also able to sense human touch.

Additionally, Neura said it plans to ship 5,000,000 robots of varying kinds by 2030–significantly more than the 100,000 Figure plans to ship–and that the first shipping 4NE-1 humanoid robots would be delivered this year.

“We are excited to launch a series of robots,” CEO David Reger told me last week on the TechFirst podcast. “There is also a household device MiPa coming, and also new other industrial robot types, but in the end I think the core is actually the Neuraverse platform, which is combining all of this on one platform and makes it actually scalable and reachable to reach the five million humanoid robots on this planet.”

The big news on the hardware side is a full launch of 4NE-1, which Reger says is now production ready. This is a beast of a humanoid robot, with 100kg or 220-pound lift capacity with its legs, and 10kg or 22 pounds with its hands. After teasing this launch in March, Neura delivered.

As specced by the company, 4NE-1 is a technological marvel, with seven cameras, LIDAR, and much more. It will be capable of doing a backflip, Reger says, which not only summons up visions of Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robots, but also speaks to speed coupled with power.

4NE-1 is one of the first humanoid robots that will have skin. While Neura isn’t revealing too many details about the skin on 4NE-1, based on what he did say, it sounds like a capacitive touch sensor capability like that on your smartphone’s screen. It can sense near touch, actual touch, and the strength or power of that touch. Interestingly, it will be applied via a spray-on process, and the result won’t be visually distinguishable from the rest of the robot. And while it won’t cover the whole robot, it likely will be on the hands, arms, and torso.

Why put skin on a robot?

It’s critical for how Neura wants humanoid robots to interact with and work with humans safely in close quarters.

“The skin is actually … of our biggest gifts,” Reger says. “Having the ability to have the feeling of touch gives you a complete different way of how humans interact with each other.”

4NE-1’s skin will sense proximity before actual touch, he added, making interactions safer, more precise, and emotionally intelligent.

While the hardware news is always the headline-grabber, probably the more important news is the backend technology.

That includes Neura’s Omnisensor technology, which fuses location and spatial awareness from seven cameras, a LIDAR system, and even a microphone to help each 4NE-1 unit know where it is, proximity to objects and humans, and how to get what it needs while avoiding what it should not hit.

Integrating all that data will be some fairly serious onboard technology. Reger didn’t say what kind of CPUs or GPUs 4NE-1 will include, but it is worth noting that Nvidia is a technology partner of Neura Robotics. Neura is also partnering with Nvidia on “robot gyms” where robots learn tasks and develop abilities.

Another major piece of new technology supporting Neura’s robotic roll-out is the “Neuraverse.”

Neuraverse is an operating system, a development platform for robotics, and an app store for skills, abilities, and even microservices that anyone can come to, build capabilities, and release them for sale. What one robot learns, all others can know instantly. Developers and companies employing humanoid robots can buy, sell, or offer for free abilities like welding specific parts or building a specific product.

“We are fundamentally changing how people interact with machines,” says Reger. “Our Neuraverse is the product that connects everything: the operating system of the robotics era.”

Finally, Neura also unveiled MiPa, a wheeled robot that will be more affordable for the home market. While anyone can use it, one specific designed use case is assisting the elderly with being able to remain in their own homes and age in place, Reger says.

Neura calls MiPa “the world’s first cognitive household and service robot suitable for real everyday use.” MiPa will be able to vacuum, unload dishwashers, clean up rooms, and monitor health signs. In fact, Neura says, MiPa supports IoT and health device standards and can connect with wearables to collect data, analyze sleep, and more.

As all of Neura’s other robots, MiPa will be connected to the Neuraverse, meaning it can learn new skills instantly from other robots and apply them locally.

Neura is entering an increasingly crowded humanoid robot market that has yet to fully deliver on its promise of an always-on, cheap, capable, and reliable workforce, but 4NE-1 is a compelling entrant. I’m not certain that 4NE-1 delivers on the company’s vision of having the most capable humanoid on the planet, but it’s a contender. If humanoid robots is our version of the space race, as Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas told me recently, Neura Robotics is Europe’s leading challenger.

What we haven’t seen yet is video on how 4NE-1 walks and moves, which will be critical for starting to understand how capable this robot is in a factory or warehouse.