Following the opening of an AI research center in Toronto last year, Nvidia now plans to drive development in Seattle. The number of employees at the company’s robotics AI research center in Seattle is set to increase from 14 to 50. The majority of the dozen or so research projects here focus on collaborative robots (cobots). Nvidia wants to develop methods for evaluating sensor data and controlling robots using AI at system level. The results will be pooled in a generic software model for collaborative robots.

Nvidia has built a kitchen set-up that will act as the research environment, around which the cobot can move, to test how the system copes with unknown objects and how it can collaborate with a chef. The idea is that the use of AI-based algorithms here should help the cobot also learn how to react to and in unfamiliar situations.