California-based outdoor maintenance company Electric Sheep, which develops solutions powered by AI and robotics, has launched a new robot that it claims can operating in ‘any outdoor setting’ without prior teaching.
Named Verdie, the solution is powered by the company’s AI-driven system, with developments in the technology being catalysed by generative AI.
The company’s AI model, named ES1, is a learned world model. Solutions fitted with ES1 are capable of reasoning and planning edging, trimming lawns and bushes and blowing leaves.
These applications work by ES1 building an understanding of the setting in which it operates, including semantics, then creating a map to help with coverage planning and determining the limits of the workable area.
According to Electric Sheep, ES1 achieves this through dense prediction of a world state with a single model – similar to ChatGPT for language – but for spatial AI.
The company plans to build deep tech for the landscaping sector and believes this, in combination with intelligent mergers and acquisitions, can be used to transform ‘a historically low-margin business’.
Verdie was developed to be deployed, turned on and then to autonomously navigate its environment and complete common landscaping applications.
Electric Sheep’s solutions reportedly don’t require an on-site engineer, with the robotics firm currently operating ES1 on a fleet of 40 robots across the USA, with plans to deploy the new Verdie robot to customers in Q2 2024.
“We are building an RL factory to train autonomous AI agents to do sustainable outdoor work,” said Nag Murty, co-founder and CEO of Electric Sheep.
“The debut of our Verdie robot is the first AI robot for tasks like trimming and edging in the world of landscaping, and it’s exciting to see our ES1 technology power multiple robots that can work alongside a crew without an engineer on-site setting a specific path for them.”
