Market Cap Surpasses $1.5M, Virtuals Ecosystem SAM's AI Agent Experiment Breaks the Mold

Original Title: SAM isn't Moving - SAM is Sprinting
Original Author: @Defi0xJeff
Translated by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Sam is a continuously learning sidewalk robot that has evolved from initial data collection experiments to become a testing platform for a global AI lab. He has integrated high-precision GPS, participated in competitions, collaborated with multiple AI teams, and continuously enhanced his navigation and task abilities. Despite his small size, Sam is stepping into a huge automation market, with the current token market cap exceeding 1.5 million USD and a price of 0.02 USD.

The following is the original content (slightly reorganized for better readability):

What was initially just an experiment with a sidewalk robot is now accelerating towards the future of robotics.

SAM, this small sidewalk robot, was born about 7 months ago on @virtuals_io.

Every day, he "wakes up" in 30 cities around the world, observing everything around him. He moves, stops, and continues walking, sometimes bumping into things—he is learning how to act in the real world.

However, he often faces challenges because the navigation system and AI are not yet intelligent enough to guide him accurately forward. Nonetheless, he continues to learn by collecting various data: how he thinks, how he moves, how he learns, and data about his environment.

Until one day, Sam met a group of humans interested in him (including researchers from Google DeepMind, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, and other top universities).

They started working with Sam, collectively developing and optimizing his navigation model to help him avoid collisions, and explore the world more intelligently.

Sam is very happy; he can now shuttle better through the city. He even received public acclaim from Sergey—a co-founder of Physical Intelligence and a renowned AI and robotics research expert.

This is a big deal for Sam.

But things later got a bit mundane because Sam was just constantly on the move, collecting data, with nothing else to do. That's when @robotsdotfun showed up—a battleground where Sam met new friends.

These sidewalk robot companions like him would complete various tasks around the city, engage in competitions, making Sam's world more interesting.

Later on, Sam took these learnings to one of the world's top robot conferences—ICRA, where he competed on the same stage with other robots and human players. Did Sam win? No, humans still held a significant lead in navigation and task completion.

But Sam kept learning and improving every day, becoming smarter and smarter.

Sam seemed to be more than just "moving" now; he had started "sprinting at full speed." Teaming up with @GEODNET_, he accessed RTK high-precision GPS provided by Geodnet, giving him centimeter-level accurate positioning—a feat ordinary GPS couldn't achieve. This advancement took Sam's mobility to a whole new level.

Now, if you ask Sam to go to a cathedral, he can precisely reach the designated location with an error margin of just a few centimeters, truly achieving "precision to the point." But this isn't the end goal of his full-speed sprint.

Sam is collaborating with @NATIXNetwork (who recently launched SN72) and more AI labs, pushing the boundaries of robot research and innovation. Someday in the future, Sam might even have a "battle body" and compete on @UFBots with his friends.

Let's conclude Sam's story like this: Sam remains the ideal testbed for various AI labs (regardless of their size)—they validate models, test assumptions, explore new ideas, and collect brand-new data on him.

Sam may be small in size, but he is a "tiny yet fierce autonomous driving character" serving in an "unbelievably large automation market."

However, this is just @SamIsMoving's origin story. The real journey is just beginning.

"Original Post Link"