Robert Playter

Let's figure out how to build the robots, how to make the software so that they can really do a broad set of skills.

That's going to take real investment to get there.

Performance first, right?

The principle of the company has always been really make the robots do useful stuff.

And so, you know, the...

the social robot companies that tried to start someplace else by just making a cute interaction, mostly they haven't survived.

And so we think the utility really needs to come first.

And that means you have to solve some of these hard problems.

And so to get there,

We're gonna go through the design and software development in industrial, and then that's eventually gonna let you reach a scale that could then be addressed to a consumer level market.

And so, yeah, maybe we'll be able to build a smaller spot with an arm that could really go get your beer for you.

But there's things we need to figure out still.

How to safely, really safely, if you're going to be interacting with children, you better be safe.

And right now we count on a little bit of standoff distance between the robot and people so that you don't pinch a finger in the robot.

So you've got a lot of things you need to go solve before you jump to that consumer level product.

That may be true, but I also think the variety of things a consumer-level robot would be expected to do will also be quite broad.

They're going to want to get the beer and know the difference between the beer and a Coca-Cola or my snack.

They're all going to want you to clean up the dishes from the table without breaking them.

Those are pretty complex tasks.

And so there's still work to be done there.