2022: A major revolution in robotics

For a while now, those who track robotics development have taken note of a quiet revolution in the sector. While self-driving cars have grabbed all the headlines, the work happening at the intersection of AI, machine vision, and machine learning is fast becoming the foundation for the next phase of robotics. By combining machine vision with learning capabilities, roboticists are opening a wide range of new possibilities like vision-based drones, robotic harvesting, robotic sorting in recycling, and warehouse pick and place. We're finally at the inflection point: The moment where these applications are becoming good enough to provide real value in semi-structured environments where traditional robots could never succeed. To discuss this exciting moment and how it's going to change the world we live in fundamentally, I connected with Pieter Abbeel, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and co-director of the Berkeley AI Research lab.