Cognitive robots: Vodafone to supply 5G for Neura Robotics

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The cognitive robots from Neura Robotics also access a cloud for their functionality – This is why the Swabian start-up has now entered into a partnership with the telecommunications group Vodafone. It is to supply the necessary 5G infrastructure.

Humanoids or cognitive robots, as they are often referred to in connection with Neura Robotics, should be able to take over jobs from humans in the future – for example in industry, care or in the home.

5G modules transmit environmental data

In order for the robots from Neura Robotics to be able to perform such tasks, they need to understand their surroundings, as Vodafone explains in a press release . This is why they are equipped with numerous sensors. The huge data sets that are generated in the process need to be transported and processed as quickly and securely as possible. Vodafone's 5G modules, which are installed in the robots, should make this possible in the future. Vodafone and Neura Robotics are therefore now launching a technology partnership.

Two things are particularly characteristic of a humanoid: firstly, the human-like appearance with arms and legs, and secondly, the AI model to which the robots are often connected in order to process the information they have gathered and call up the appropriate procedure for their respective task.

Neura Robotics' humanoid flagship is the "4NE1", the third generation of which the company has now presented at Automatica in Munich, a trade fair for automation and robotics.

Focus on cognitive capabilities

According to Daniel Reger, CEO of Neura Robotics, the current major challenge in the development of powerful humanoids is to train their cognitive abilities for the respective applications, as he recently explained in an interview with MIT Technology Review. "In order to conquer this market and make it possible at all, it is important to focus on the end effectors –, i.e. the hands – and the upper body of the robot. Because this is where robots perform the value-adding work," said Regner here. The robot must become cognitive – have a brain that makes its own decisions so that it can move autonomously in different environments and solve tasks.

Neura Robotics has been working on corresponding AI models for some time – Vodafone's 5G modules are also likely to play a decisive role here when it comes to uploading the robot's sensor data to a cloud and processing it further. On the one hand, this should be essential for the AI-supported functioning of the humanoid, and on the other hand, the data should also represent valuable potential training material for Neura Robotics. However, Vodafone does not provide any information in its press release about how exactly the data transmitted with Vodafone will be processed by Neura Robotics. There is also no mention of any data encryption.

Target group: industrial and private customers

With their partnership, Vodafone and Neura Robotics want to make the humanoids fit for both the industrial and private sectors. Hagen Rickmann, Managing Director Corporate Customers at Vodafone, believes that the applications for human-like robots are "much greater than we have seen so far". They could provide support in many more places in everyday life if we equipped them with the latest technology such as real-time mobile communications – "on the factory floor, in our hospitals, but also in our own four walls".

In Reger's view, it takes more than just advanced AI for cognitive, humanoid robots to develop their full potential. "A resilient, intelligent infrastructure is needed," says Reger in the Vodafone press release.

Three "process levels" in the cloud

He also made it clear in an interview with MIT Technology Review exactly what this infrastructure could be used for: "If you do everything yourself and train a large model, then at some point you always come across a problem for which a skill or two or three are missing – and then you train again. That is far too complex, far too cost-intensive and totally inefficient."

Instead, Neura relies on three self-defined "process levels": "We have a cloud solution that retrieves the right information from these different process layers. This means that anyone in the world can work on the functionalities and skills of the robots, use them and develop apps from them."

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