ChainThink News, April 14: According to 1M AI News monitoring, Google DeepMind has released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, positioned as a high-level reasoning model for robotics. This model demonstrates significant improvements in spatial reasoning and multi-perspective understanding compared to its predecessors ER 1.5 and Gemini 3.0 Flash, and is now available to developers via the Gemini API and Google AI Studio.

Core upgrades include three key capabilities: first, enhanced pointing accuracy enabling precise object detection, counting, spatial relationship reasoning, and motion trajectory planning, while correctly rejecting pointing to objects not present in the visual field; second, improved multi-view detection allowing comprehensive assessment of task completion across multiple camera feeds, maintaining accuracy even under occlusion or dynamic conditions; third, newly added instrument reading capability enabling interpretation of industrial instruments such as circular pressure gauges, vertical level indicators, and digital displays, leveraging agentic vision for step-by-step reasoning.

This instrument reading capability stems from a collaboration between DeepMind and Boston Dynamics. On the same day, Boston Dynamics announced that Gemini and Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 have been integrated into the Orbit AIVI-Learning product, rolled out to all AIVI-Learning customers as of April 8. The integration adds dashboard support, allowing the quadruped robot Spot to autonomously inspect industrial facilities and read pressure gauges and other instrumentation.

Boston Dynamics stated that, powered by Gemini’s reasoning capabilities, AIVI-Learning has achieved improved baseline performance and higher accuracy on existing tasks including visual inspection, pallet counting, and liquid accumulation detection. DeepMind emphasized that ER 1.6 is their "safest robotics model" to date, demonstrating superior compliance with safety instructions in adversarial spatial reasoning tasks compared to ER 1.5; in safety risk identification tests based on real injury reports, ER-series models outperformed Gemini 3.0 Flash by 6% in text scenarios and 10% in video scenarios.