Like much of the United States, the Automated newsletter is taking next Thursday off to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. There will, however, be no slacking for the podcast. The lucky number thirteenth episode will arrive at its usual time, bright and early Wednesday morning. In fact, we’re spoiling next week’s episode ahead of time with one of the below features.
Along with a feature about open-source robotics hardware startup, Innate, you’ll find a new piece Dusty Robotics Founder and CEO, Tessa Lau. Like some of our early podcast episodes, the interview was recorded a while back. In fact, it wasn’t long after Lau gave this presentation at ICRA.
The combination of both Lau talks paint a full picture of the company’s early struggles and triumphs launching a new robotics category in the dark ages of 2018. It’s a far cry from the current market, which she refers to as a “Cambrian explosion of robotics companies” during our chat.
This week’s episode, on the other hand, strays a bit from the podcast's steady stream of roboticists. After Dianne Eldridge appeared on an AI panel I moderated at this most recent Automate, it was clear we had to book her for our pre-launch show. Like Lau, her episode takes us through a personal and professional journey, and it’s the intersection between the two that perfectly sets us up for this Thanksgiving holiday.
The Google AI exec (Mazel Tov on the new gig) moved out West from China to pursue new opportunities. She first landed in Canada (happy belated Thanksgiving, friends) before settling in Texas. During that time, she’s worked for AWS, Emerson Automation, Schneider, and now serves as an Industrial AI executive at Amazon.
She describes her mother’s struggles to attain higher education, first in Indonesia, and then China, finally becoming a chemical engineer. It’s a journey she’s seen mirrored in herself and her own daughter.
“I got a scholarship in Canada,” she says. “I went there, by myself, with no money. I went in search of a better life for our family. It’s almost 25 years later, and here we are. I’ve raised another girl that’s going through that. Our life is progressively easier, but you can see a theme — looking for independence, looking for a better life for yourself and your family.”
It's a conversation I'll be thinking of, heading into the holiday, and a perfect data point for what we talk about when we talk about the "American Dream."
The early days of every startup are defined by close calls. There’s the funding that nearly didn’t come through, the talent that was nearly poached, the customers who were days from backing out. Enough time — and subsequent success — transforms them into anecdotes you don’t mind retelling in front of a couple thousand people.
Speaking to a crowd at ICRA in May, Dusty Robotics founder and CEO Tessa Lau recounts one particularly ill-fated real-world product test, months after the construction startup pieced together its first system. In mid-2019, the engineer-turned-executive notes, the young startup was granted the opportunity to demo its robot on a “forward-thinking” federal contractor’s jobsite.
The omen, Lau says, popped up immediately on the day of. The construction site was only accessible via a "makeshift" ladder, leaving the team scrambling for ways to transfer a 100-pound robot down a flight. The answer, of course, is “very, very carefully.” Rope was secured to the robot’s box, which was then lowered to the ground below.
Reflecting on what an improper dismount could mean for Dusty’s fortunes, Lau casually noted, “That might be the end of our company.” It wasn’t, of course, as the relatively fragile pre-production system made it to ground without issue. Nor, however, was it the end of the young startup’s fate altering fortunes, standing on the site of what would soon become San Francisco’s latest Whole Foods location.
Innate is two months removed from the Palo Alto garage that formed the backdrop for the company’s early-September launch video. As with various Homebrew Computer Club members four decades prior, the startup simply grew out of the space.
In keeping with many Computer Club vets, Innate has yet to stray from the Peninsula, transferring operations to a nearby Palo Alto office space that once housed a young enterprise startup called Cloudflare. Despite an abundance of new room, cofounder and CEO, Axel Peytavin, has secured a particularly snug spot from which to take my call, setting up a makeshift office under a desk in the company’s new hardware lab. He’s adopted the unexpected backdrop so as to not disturb an on-going staff meeting.
Early into our conversation, Peyvatin quickly touches on parallels between robotics in 2025 and the nascent days of the personal computer, echoing the narrative of that recent launch video.
“You had these PCs that people were making in Silicon Valley, but they kept changing and you didn’t actually have a proper experience for how to actually program on a computer,” says Peytavin. “We think this is the same today and [robotics] developers deserve a good platform that feels like a good quality product but is also extremely simple to develop with and powerful. That’s the reason behind everything we’re doing. We don’t want this technology to be developed by a corporation that’s just going to use this technology vertically and not give people the power to use it.”
Waymo this week confirmed five additional cities for its ever-expanding fleet. As previously suggested, taxi service is self-driving its way across the American South, to Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Miami is up first, with operations spinning up this past Tuesday, with the remaining four getting their chance in coming weeks. “Operations,” mind, doesn’t mean passengers. Those won’t start up until some point next year — no doubt a fair bit of prepping needs to happen, even with the service already rolled out in several cities. Though the company says the number of idiosyncrasies shrinks with every subsequent locale,
We compare our driving performance against a proven baseline to validate the performance of the Waymo Driver and identify any unique local characteristics. As needed, we then refine the Waymo Driver’s AI to navigate these local nuances —which are becoming fewer with every city. This data feeds into a flywheel of continuous improvement, bolstered by rigorous validation through real-world driving and advanced simulation, then implemented through regular software releases.
The new city announcement comes a week after the Alphabet-affiliated firm announced that it was opening rides to include San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles freeways, at an average speed of two to five miles an hour (based on my anecdotal experience commuting in those areas).
San Francisco ride hailers, meanwhile, are a mere waitlist away from another autonomous option. Zoox this week announced an “early rider initiative” — effectively a beta by the Bay, as public riders will get their first chance to ride in the funky little buses. Essentially, Zoox is moving beyond the dogfooding phase to get input from regular San Franciscans. That said, the vehicles are hardly a new sight on the city’s hilly streets, as the company has actually been testing them there since 2017. The first batch of riders will be relegated to the “majority” of the SoMA, Design District, and Mission neighborhoods, the last of which will put you in the immediate proximity of some of the nation's finest burritos.
Cruising around on your superyacht is all well and good, but how are you and your $244 billion net worth going to fill the other 23 hours in a day? Might as well found and run a new company. Having already taken on shopping and space, Jeff Bezos is reportedly moving on to physical AI, as the co-CEO of the not ominously named Project Prometheus. Named for either the Greek Titan currently having his liver pecked out by an eagle after stealing fire for humans or a 2012 Alien prequel that has admittedly grown on me (much like an eagle-pecked liver), the firm is starting life with $6.8 billion in funding. Project Prometheus is playing it very close to the vest, though a report from The New York Times suggests it is building AI for manufacturing, targeting aerospace, automotive, and computers.
From Peking University comes this underwater exoskeleton. The waterproof wearable assists knee movement, significantly reducing the energy exerted during dives. That, in turn, should substantially reduce the amount of oxygen required. The research was conducted with six divers, prior to publication in the October edition of IEEE’s Transactions on Robotics. “When they wore the powered exoskeleton,” the school notes, “their air consumption decreased by 22.7%, quadriceps activation by 20.9%, and calf activation by 20.6%, compared to normal diving without the exoskeleton. The divers adapted well to the assistance, displaying natural movement patterns and improved energy economy.”
This little guy is a drug-filled microbot, coated in magnetic particles, design to cruise through and ultimately combust inside the human bloodstream and/or brain. The idea at the heart of the ETH Zurich project is to deliver medication to the source of a potential stroke. The doctor injects the robot into the blood or cerebrospinal fluid using a catheter, before guiding it to the proper location using a modular electromagnetic navigation system. Once the robot is where it needs to be, another high-frequency magnetic field is used to heat up the magnetic surface particles, dissolving the shells, and releasing the medication inside. Future versions of the system could be used to target tumors. The team behind the research notes that “[t]he next goal is to begin human clinical trials as quickly as possible.”
Dianne Eldridge (Google AI) - The Google AI leader knows how to cut to the heart of the matter when discussing industry, society, and her personal journey.
Ken Goldberg (UC Berkley/Ambi) - Longtime U.C. Berkeley professor and Ambi cofounder, Goldberg is familiar with robotics' promise and what it will take to get there.
Helen Grenier- A crush on a fictional droid set Helen Grenier down a path toward cofounding iRobot and leading startups, Tertill, and Cyphy Works.
The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) is North America’s largest automation trade association representing more than 1,400 organizations involved in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine vision & imaging, motion control & motors, and related automation technologies.
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