Teradyne, Sereact Expand Physical AI From Research to Industry

BERLIN -- Teradyne Robotics and German physical AI startup Sereact have joined forces to expand industrial robots controlled by AI, integrating academic research into practical applications in logistics and manufacturing.

The two firms announced their collaboration Oct. 21, which sees Sereact's Cortex AI platform combined with robot arms from Teradyne's Universal Robots. The solution is designed to handle objects of different shapes, positioning and packaging without any separate programming.

As the companies claim, hundreds of Universal Robots arms have already been shipped as parts of dual-arms solutions to European customers. This collaboration will help boost sales through Teradyne's global distribution and integration network.

Applications of the solution so far include sorting of fashion return products at CEVA Logistics sites in Greven, Germany, and Świebodzin, Poland. The robots recognize, grasp and sort returned products that pose challenges due to their irregular packaging and dynamic positioning.

Sereact was founded in 2021 by Ralf Gulde and Marc Tuscher, both former researchers at the University of Stuttgart's Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units.
Their work was concerned with machine learning for robotic manipulation, including simulation-based training. Models for Sereact were then created to be able to deal with unknown objects and tasks.

Sereact is defined by the university as a spin-out, but the Teradyne collaboration is a commercial venture rather than an academic one.

Cortex trains its models using NVIDIA Isaac simulation software and Cosmos models, with reinforcement learning in Isaac Lab. In practice, the software is running on NVIDIA Jetson Thor.

Teradyne will provide models for Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots products for NVIDIA's SimReady Central Library.

At the beginning of October, Teradyne has been investing in Bright Machines to research integration between robots, automated manufacturing equipment and factory data, as ROBOT24.com has previously reported.

In contrast with this yet-to-be-done integration, Sereact's solution is already working in specified logistics facilities. The partners plan to expand to order picking, replenishment and manufacturing applications. Financial and production details were not disclosed.