Nvidia opens up new robotics lab in Seattle

Global chip firm Nvidia has unveiled its latest computer lab in Seattle, Washington. The new 13,000 sqm lab will focus on the field of robotics in conjunction with the University of Washington's science faculty. Despite Nvidia's prominence within the gaming GPU field, it has also been working toward the integration of AI, deep learning and robotics in the workplace too. The goal of this most recent lab is to develop more intuitive robots capable of working with humans in a variety of open-ended environments, such as in a kitchen: The lab's 50 researchers are a mix of 20 members of Nvidia's staff and 30 faculty members from the University of Washington, including the lab's director, Dieter Fox. The lab also hopes to benefit talent-wise from its proximity to the headquarters of both Microsoft and Amazon. Speaking to VentureBeat, Fox elaborated on the lab's goals: "The kind of robots that are going to come up that I think are going to be like the next generation of robot, the robot that can perform manipulation task alongside people, which means far more unstructured environment robots, for example, that help people with physical disabilities.