Phoenix

Phoenix

Sanctuary AI Vancouver, Canada

Description

Phoenix is the first general-purpose humanoid robot powered by Carbon, a cognitive AI developed by Sanctuary AI. With 20-DoF hands and haptic feedback, Phoenix stands 170 cm, weighs 70 kg, and has 75 DoF in total. Carbon is designed to mimic human cognition, enabling Phoenix to understand and execute tasks in unstructured environments. Phoenix is controlled by Carbon, Sanctuary AI's proprietary cognitive AI architecture that represents tasks as programs in a custom intermediate language allowing the system to generalize new instructions by composing known sub-routines rather than requiring additional training data. Sanctuary AI partnered with Magna International, one of the world's largest automotive parts suppliers, to deploy Phoenix in real manufacturing environments among the earliest confirmed commercial humanoid deployments in Canadian industry. Phoenix's 20-DoF hands with haptic feedback have been demonstrated executing data entry, package sorting, and parts assembly without task-specific hardware modifications, supporting Sanctuary's general-purpose positioning.

Taken together, Phoenix reads as a platform built around height of 170 cm, weight of 70 kg, and hands of 20 DoF + haptic, with Carbon cognitive AI for task understanding, Hands with 20 DoF and haptic feedback, and Multi-sensor visual perception supporting Industrial manufacturing and assembly, Retail and customer service, and Logistics and warehousing. That makes the profile feel more grounded in how Sanctuary AI Vancouver, Canada is positioning the robot for real operating environments rather than as a one-off demo.

Specifications

Height
170 cm
Weight
70 kg
Total DoF
75
Hands
20 DoF + haptic
AI
Carbon (cognitive)
Battery Life
~4 hours
Origin
Vancouver, Canada

In practical terms, these figures describe a robot optimized for Industrial manufacturing and assembly, Retail and customer service, and Logistics and warehousing, while Carbon cognitive AI for task understanding, Hands with 20 DoF and haptic feedback, and Multi-sensor visual perception define the balance between mobility, perception, and manipulation. The specification set also helps explain the scale of tasks Phoenix can realistically handle today.

History

Overall, the timeline shows how Phoenix moved from research or early unveiling toward clearer operational intent, with each stage tightening the link between height of 170 cm, weight of 70 kg, and hands of 20 DoF + haptic and the jobs it is expected to perform. It also shows how the project matured from concept validation into a more deployment-oriented platform.

Use Cases

Across these roles, Phoenix is being framed less as a general-purpose android and more as a system that can repeatedly deliver value in Industrial manufacturing and assembly, Retail and customer service, and Logistics and warehousing. Carbon cognitive AI for task understanding, Hands with 20 DoF and haptic feedback, and Multi-sensor visual perception are the pieces that make those scenarios believable, because they connect sensing, planning, and physical execution into one workflow.

Technical Details

The Sanctuary AI Phoenix Gen 8 humanoid robot features hydraulic actuators in its hands with 21 degrees of freedom per hand and electric actuators for the body, enhanced with tactile sensors sensitive to 5 millinewtons, improved depth/vision cameras, force-torque sensors, and an upgraded audio/telemetry suite for high-fidelity data capture. Powered by the Carbon AI system, a hybrid of symbolic reasoning, LLMs, deep learning, and reinforcement learning enabling natural language control and new task automation in under 24 hours, its key capability is industry-leading dexterous manipulation for industrial tasks like blind picking and in-hand reorientation.

Taken together, this stack suggests a machine whose real advantage comes from how Carbon cognitive AI for task understanding, Hands with 20 DoF and haptic feedback, and Multi-sensor visual perception are coordinated around height of 170 cm, weight of 70 kg, and hands of 20 DoF + haptic. The result is a platform that can convert perception into stable motion and task execution with less operator intervention than a simpler scripted robot.

Technologies dream

Human-level cognition via Carbon 3.0, creativity and abstract problem-solving, authentic artificial empathy from contextual understanding, 50-DoF hands capable of surgery, continuous learning without catastrophic forgetting.

Past

Sanctuary AI built five generations of hands before creating a full humanoid, accumulating the world's largest dexterous manipulation dataset through teleoperation.

Present

Carbon AI system (general-purpose intelligence), 400+ manipulation skills, hydraulic hands with human-level dexterity, commercial teleoperation-to-autonomy pipeline.

Future

Artificial general intelligence in physical form a robot that can learn any manual task a human can perform, deployed across all industries.

Technologies

Together, these technologies show that Phoenix depends on a layered architecture rather than one breakthrough component. Carbon cognitive AI for task understanding, Hands with 20 DoF and haptic feedback, and Multi-sensor visual perception provide the core capabilities, while the surrounding stack determines how well the robot can perceive context, stay stable, and complete tasks without fragile scripting.