Meta says the new tactile fingertip, dubbed Digit 360 will enable AI
Meta, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp recently announced that it is working to commercialise tactile sensors for AI.
Developed in partnership with GelSight and Wonik Robotics, the new Meta devices aren’t designed for consumers but instead cater to scientists so they can train AI to “perceive and interact with their surroundings as well as coexist safely with humans.”
The company says it worked with GelSight to develop Digit360, “a tactile fingertip with human-level multimodal sensing capabilities.” This technology allows AI models to sense and detect changes in their surroundings.
Digit 360 also features on-device AI models that enable the sensor to process information locally and reduce latency when responding to touch. Meta is publicly releasing the code and design for Digit 360, which it says might help in the development of more realistic virtual environments.
Meta also released Planning And Reasoning Tasks in humaN-Robot Collaboration (PARTNR), which serves as a benchmark to evaluate the effectiveness of an AI model when used with humans on common household tasks. Developed using Meta’s simulated environment – Habitat, PARTNR features 100,000 natural language tasks involving 60 houses and 5,800 plus unique objects.
The company also announced the launch of Digit Plexus, a hardware-software solution that can use and integrate various fingertip and skin tactile sensors on a single robotic hand and transmit the data to a host computer.
While GelSight will manufacture and distribute Digit 360, which will be available sometime next year, the South Korean company Wonik Robotics will be responsible for the fully integrated robotic hand dubbed “Allegro Hand”, which uses the Digit Plexus platform.
