MONTREAL & HONG KONG-- April 12, 2021 -- Immervision Inc. announced a new partner for JOYCE, the world's first humanoid robot to unite the computer vision community. Hanson Robotics Limited, the creator of the renowned humanoid robot Sophia the Robot will work with Immervision’s JOYCE to further evolve machine perception to help deliver human-like vision and beyond.

Hanson Robotics will use its expertise gleaned from Sophia to create a state-of-the-art humanoid body for JOYCE. This body will be equipped with a visual cortex based on Immervision’s panomorphEYE, which boasts three ultra-wide-angle panomorph cameras. Sophia will also be upgraded with the same visual cortex.

“We are very excited to be partnering with Immervision on the JOYCE project,” said David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics. “I believe that strong computer vision like Immervision's products, combined with embodied cognition of a social robot like Sophia and her little sister JOYCE, will produce in huge leaps forward in useful AI and robotics.”

“The technology created and implemented in Sophia really illustrates how advanced Hanson Robotics is,” said Pascale Nini, CEO of Immervision. “Collaborating with David Hanson’s talented team, we will integrate innovative third-party computer vision technologies into JOYCE and enable exciting new use cases.”

Immervision is actively seeking additional members from to join the JOYCE partnership. To facilitate this collaboration, Immervision will be making a development kit available to developers, universities, and technology companies. This kit will allow partners in the JOYCE program to add additional sensors, software, and AI algorithms to enhance JOYCE’s perception and understanding of her environment to solve computer vision challenges.

Equipping machines with human-level perception, especially vision, will have a massive economic impact across a wide range of industries. Immervision encourages the computer vision community to become collaborators in the JOYCE partnership, to use their technologies to upgrade JOYCE, and to reap the benefits of an exciting future.

Machine perception is truly a superpower that will help to transform the world.