Generative AI-Powered Robotic Arm Is Self-Learning, Adaptive

Californian startup Orangewood Labs has created what it says is a world first – a robotic arm programmed by generative AI.

The company began by developing robotic arms to help people sand and paint furniture, before turning its attention to use cases into industrial and manufacturing applications. 

Its platform, RoboGPT, comes as part of this expansion, leveraging generative AI to allow users to program the robotic arms with their voices.

The generative AI-enabled system is also designed to be self-learning and adaptive, continually learning from its environment. 

The company says its RoboGPT is engineered to be adaptive, attempts to account for edge cases and continuously learns from and about its environment.

Orangewood said its goal is to improve the accessibility of robots for smaller businesses and independent workers. According to CEO Abhinav Das, the main obstacles to robotic arms being seen everywhere are cost and programmability, two things that Orangewood seeks to address.

By harnessing large language tools, Orangewood said its robotic arms are significantly easier to program, while the materials used are partially selected for their affordability, pushing down their price point.

“Robots have historically been inaccessible to most small businesses and everyday people,” the company said. “This is because the cost was too high and it was difficult to program them. For small businesses in particular, if these challenges are overcome - it can drastically reduce manufacturing costs by more than 10x! RoboGPT allows small businesses to modify assembly and processing lines within minutes.”

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Orangewood recently raised $4.5 million in a funding round led by Y Combinator, with participation from 7percent Ventures, Schox Ventures, VentureSouq, KSK Angel Fund and several angel investors.

The company said it plans to use the funding to continue expanding its RoboGPT pipeline and take its robot arm into more use cases.