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Verdie uses AI to edge and trim lawns and bushes, blow away leaves, and more. | Source: Electric Sheep
Electric Sheep Robotics Inc. today launched Verdie, a new robot using proprietary artificial intelligence and software. The company said it aims to become the first large-scale outdoor maintenance company to leverage AI and robotics.
The San Francisco-based company says Verdie can autonomously edge and trim lawns and bushes, as well as blow away leaves. Electric Sheep added that the company’s AI agent ES1 allows Verdie and his RAM lawn mowing robot to “operate in any outdoor environment without any teaching.”
“The debut of our Verdie robot is the first AI robot to perform tasks such as trimming and edging in the landscaping world, allowing our ES1 technology to work alongside workers on-site without any specific configuration by engineers. “It’s exciting to see them powering multiple robots that can perform tasks on their own,” Nag Murty, co-founder and CEO of Electric Sheep, said in a release. “We plan to deploy Verdie at customer sites throughout 2024 and continue to build this fleet of robots as autonomous agents trained in outdoor services.”
ES1 works similarly to ChatGPT, but is intended for spatial reasoning.
ES1 is based on recent advances in generative AI and is a learning world model that enables both of Electric Sheep’s robots to reason and plan. To perform tasks like mowing grass or managing inventory, the company says ES1 needs to understand the semantics of the world, create maps that can be used for coverage planning, and highlight the edges of workable areas. explained.
Electric Sheep claims that ES1 can do all of this through a single model’s precise predictions of the state of the world. ES1 is similar to ChatGPT, but works with spatial AI instead of language. As a result, the company says Verdie can be started immediately.
Electric Sheep said it designed both robots to begin operating once they are on-site and powered on. Verdi and RAM say they are using AI to understand the surrounding grass and care for it efficiently.
The robot doesn’t require an on-site engineer to operate, so you can simply transport it to your campus, homeowners association (HOA), or parking lot and start working with your crew. The company credits its full-stack data channels and the large amounts of data on which the robots are continuously trained.
Electric Sheep currently runs the ES1 agent on a fleet of 40 RAM robots located in hundreds of yards across North America. The company said it plans to introduce Verdie to customers in the second quarter of 2024.
Electric Sheep touts business model as differentiator
Electric Sheep said it acquired a traditional outdoor service provider to gradually transform its operations by introducing software and robots. Electric Sheep acquired two of his landscaping companies in October 2023, and then just a few months later he acquired two more in December.
The acquisition is also a way for the company to acquire data that can be used in its reinforcement learning (RL) production sandbox. In its sandbox, Electric Sheep can build its base model and apply it to the Verdie and RAM robots, Marty said.
“We are building an RL reinforcement learning factory to train autonomous AI agents to do sustainable outdoor work,” he said.
The acquisition also allows Electric Sheep to start generating revenue from day one as it operates its existing business with existing customers. The company, which is funded by Tiger Global and Foundation Capital, has seen an 8x increase in revenue since implementing the model.
Electric Sheep claimed it could grow 10x in 2024 with a growing pipeline of businesses of interest.
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