Sanctuary AI Leads the Industry in Controlling Advanced Hydraulic Hands Using Reinforcement Learning
Sanctuary AI has demonstrated advanced manipulation skills that showcase our industry-leading ability to train dexterous policies for our unique, high-performance hydraulic hands, which feature exceptional strength, speed, and a high degree of freedom. The training session objective is to create a policy that enables our system to autonomously achieve a certain goal (e.g. grasping and turning a cylinder without dropping it) in real life.
The intricacies of hands make them challenging to code: simulation and reinforcement learning techniques offer a clearer path to achieving industrially relevant behaviors for in-hand manipulation. In this video we showcase an in-hand reorientation policy trained in simulation being executed in the real world, against gravity and with 500 grams of weight added. The success of this transfer speaks to the capability of our hydraulic hand.
Many companies have successfully used Reinforcement Learning in simulation to learn complex policies for quadruped robots. Compared to locomotion, however, there has been limited success in training and transferring dexterous manipulation policies with five-fingered hands. Our proprietary Reinforcement Learning approach has enabled in-hand reorientation under an extreme disturbance (a 500g load that was not encountered during training), making this the first of its kind. What makes this case different is the strong and dexterous hand hardware that serves as the vehicle for effectively conducting dexterous, physical work.
What sets our proprietary robotic hands apart is the large number of active degrees of freedom, which enables finger abduction and advanced in-hand manipulation—features unavailable in other commercial robotic hands. Additionally, our use of hydraulic actuation offers superior strength, speed, and control, while our compact hydraulic valves offer a promising path to achieving human-level dexterity.
About Sanctuary AI
Founded in 2018, Sanctuary AI is an award-winning general purpose robotics and physical AI company based in Vancouver, Canada, widely known for “Phoenix,” its general purpose robot unveiled in 2022. Sanctuary AI is focused on creating dexterous intelligence for autonomous labor to help address the labor challenges facing many organizations today. The commanding IP portfolio of Sanctuary AI–ranked third globally–along with their proprietary dexterous hand technology, uniquely positions the company as a leader in the field.
Sanctuary AI's growing list of customers and investors represents a wide variety of industries across Canada, the US, Japan and other countries around the world.
