Amazon creates a new user-centric simulation platform to develop embodied AI agents

AI-powered robots are generally trained in simulation environments before they are tested and introduced in real-world settings. These environments allow developers to safely test their machine learning techniques on a variety of robots and in numerous possible scenarios, without having to purchase hardware, assemble robots and then bring them to remote locations, or compromise on real-world safety of the deployed systems. Amazon Alexa AI recently created a new simulation platform specifically for embodied AI research, the field specialized in the development of autonomous robots. This platform, dubbed Alexa Arena, was presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv and is publicly available on GitHub. "Our primary objective was to develop an interactive Embodied AI framework to catalyze the creation of next-generation embodied AI agents," Govind Thattai, the lead scientist for Arena platform, told Tech Xplore.