Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics 2 on Thursday, and the clip everyone will replay shows an Apptronik Apollo 2 crossing a room, crouching and setting a watering can on a low shelf. Google also published a table of success rates for the model, measured on hardware built by other companies. Lifting an object off a shelf lands 76.3 per cent of the time. Off the floor, 45.7 per cent. Sealing a ziplock bag, 40 per cent. Google measured those figures itself and chose to print them on launch day, which is how a company behaves when it is selling something other than a finished robot. It is selling the brain, to anybody with a body to put it in.About The AuthorAt heart, I am a storyteller drawn to the watershed moments that bend the technology landscape. I braid narrative with data, humanise statistics, and trace the arc from first spark to world-changing impact. My reportage, features and reviews are witty, sardonic, visual and vivid, using anecdote to illuminate rather than eviscerate.
As a technology journalist with over sixteen years of experience, I have travelled the world and the seven seas, covered every major tech conference worth its lanyard, chronicled the defining breakthroughs of the last decade and a half, and played a pivotal role in launching some of India’s most important technology publishing platforms across web, print and TV.
