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Verdie uses AI to edge and trim lawns and bushes and to blow leaves. | Source: Electric Sheep
Electric Sheep Robotics Inc. today launched Verdie, a new robot using its proprietary artificial intelligence and software. It said it aims to be the first large-scale outdoor maintenance company powered by AI and robotics.
The San Francisco-based company said Verdie can autonomously edge and trim lawns and bushes, as well as blow leaves. Electric Sheep added that its AI agent, ES1, enables Verdie and its RAM lawnmowing robot “to operate in any outdoor setting with zero teaching.”
“The debut of our Verdie robot is the first AI robot for tasks like trimming and edging in the world of landscaping, and it’s exciting to see our ES1 technology power multiple robots that can work alongside a crew without an engineer on-site setting a specific path for them,” said Nag Murty, co-founder and CEO of Electric Sheep, in a release. “We will be rolling out the Verdie to our customer sites throughout 2024 and continuing to build out this fleet of robots as autonomous agents trained on outdoor services.”
ES1 operates like ChatGPT but for spatial reasoning
Based on recent advances in generative AI, ES1 is a learned-world model that enables reasoning and planning for both of Electric Sheep’s robots. To execute tasks like mowing and inventory management, ES1 needs to understand the semantics of the world, create a map that can be used for coverage planning, and highlight the edges of the workable area, the company explained.
ES1 can do all these things through dense prediction of a world state with a single model, claimed Electric Sheep. ES1 is similar to ChatGPT, but it works with spatial AI instead of language, it said. As a result, Verdie can start working out of the box, said the company.
Electric Sheep said it designed both of its robots to start working once they’re on a property and turned on. Verdie and RAM use AI to understand the lawns around them and efficiently care for them, it said.
Because the robots don’t need on-site engineers to operate, they can simply be shipped to a campus, homeowners association (HOA), or park and begin tasks alongside the crew. The company credited its full-stack data channel and the large volume of data that the robots are continually trained on.
Electric Sheep is currently running the ES1 agent on a fleet of 40 RAM robots in hundreds of yards across North America. It said it plans to deploy Verdie with customers in the second quarter of 2024.
Electric Sheep touts business model as differentiator
Electric Sheep said it has acquired traditional outdoor service providers to progressively transform operations by deploying its software and robots. Electric Sheep acquired two of these landscaping companies in October 2023, and then acquired two more just a few months later in December.
The acquisitions are also a way to acquire data that the company can use in a reinforcement learning (RL) operational sandbox. In that sandbox, Electric Sheep can build on its foundational model and apply it to its Verdie and RAM robots, according to Murty.
“We are building an RL reinforcement learning factory to train autonomous AI agents to do sustainable outdoor work,” he said.
The acquisitions also allow Electric Sheep to start making money from Day 1, as it operates existing businesses with existing customers. The company, which has funding from Tiger Global and Foundation Capital, has grown its revenue by eight times since implementing this model.
Electric Sheep asserted that its growing pipeline of interested businesses will enable it to grow by 10 times in 2024.
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