Sanctuary AI develops Phoenix humanoid robots and Carbon, its AI control system. Its announcements show a progression from a general-purpose work platform to hardware designed to collect robot training data, followed by further advances in touch sensing.
Phoenix generation timeline
- 16 May 2023 — Phoenix and Carbon unveiled. Sanctuary introduced Phoenix as its sixth-generation robot alongside Carbon. Specifications from this launch describe that generation and should not be transferred to later hardware. Phoenix and Carbon launch
- 25 April 2024 — Seventh-generation Phoenix announced. Sanctuary described improvements in uptime, perception, tactile sensing, hand durability, range of motion and manufacturing. Its retrospective confirms the announcement date. Seventh-generation announcement; dated retrospective
- 16 December 2024 — Eighth-generation Phoenix announced. The company emphasized improved cameras and telemetry for training-data capture, a wheeled base and simpler manufacturing. Eighth-generation announcement
These are company announcement dates, separate from this Robotico article’s publication date. They describe particular generations rather than establishing which hardware is currently shipping.
Dexterity and the sense of touch
On 26 February 2025, Sanctuary announced that it had integrated new tactile sensors into Phoenix. It described sensing that supports teleoperation, manipulation when vision is obstructed, slip detection and force control. This is a later milestone, not a feature announcement that should be backdated to the Generation 8 unveiling. Tactile-sensor integration
The research connects hand dexterity with the quality of data available for robot learning. Sanctuary’s Generation 8 announcement describes the hardware and data-capture approach; the later tactile-sensor announcement explains how touch contributes additional information during manipulation.
Source review: 13 October 2026.
