00:58:51 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:58:51] S0: X-ray. [00:58:52] S1: Yeah. X-ray. I mean, there's so many different ways. Like, you're using everything. Is there one, one path that you found specifically, valuable?
00:58:52 · John Coogan, Bernt Øivind Børnich
[00:58:52] S1: Yeah. X-ray. I mean, there's so many different ways. Like, you're using everything. Is there one, one path that you found specifically, valuable? [00:59:02] S5: So I think, actually, it starts from, like, starting with first principles. Right? So, Womx has always been about we want to design robots that are safe so they can live and learn among people. Mhmm. But also because safety is what allows us to learn. So we probe the world for truth and of course if our fingers break while doing that or we break whatever we're trying to touch, it doesn't work. So you need to design this beautiful kind of like compliant soft systems that force can flow both ways because you're both seeing with your hands and acting with your hands. And that's really what this is all about. So like, how do you create that? And you kind of have to look at how nature works, like our muscle, nothing really moves fast. There's no gears, no nothing like this. So we've designed this from these first principles. But we go way deeper than that. I think what we haven't talked enough about yet, and we'll share more about this later, is like how incredibly seriously we take closing the gap towards a human. And it's not to look like a human. It's because we want the work system to work like a human. So even like if you look at Neil's hand behind me here, we worked so deeply on how do you make these fingers nonlinearly just like be compliant exactly like a human finger? Because if you get all these details right, you can take all of the video that's out there on the Internet. You can train
00:59:02 · Bernt Øivind Børnich, John Coogan
[00:59:02] S5: So I think, actually, it starts from, like, starting with first principles. Right? So, Womx has always been about we want to design robots that are safe so they can live and learn among people. Mhmm. But also because safety is what allows us to learn. So we probe the world for truth and of course if our fingers break while doing that or we break whatever we're trying to touch, it doesn't work. So you need to design this beautiful kind of like compliant soft systems that force can flow both ways because you're both seeing with your hands and acting with your hands. And that's really what this is all about. So like, how do you create that? And you kind of have to look at how nature works, like our muscle, nothing really moves fast. There's no gears, no nothing like this. So we've designed this from these first principles. But we go way deeper than that. I think what we haven't talked enough about yet, and we'll share more about this later, is like how incredibly seriously we take closing the gap towards a human. And it's not to look like a human. It's because we want the work system to work like a human. So even like if you look at Neil's hand behind me here, we worked so deeply on how do you make these fingers nonlinearly just like be compliant exactly like a human finger? Because if you get all these details right, you can take all of the video that's out there on the Internet. You can train [01:00:18] S1: Sure.
01:00:18 · John Coogan, Bernt Øivind Børnich, Jordi Hays
[01:00:18] S1: Sure. [01:00:18] S5: Huge role models based on this, and it just works on a robot. And that's what the VODEX role model lab is about. So to enable that general intelligence for robotics, you need to design the robot so that it interacts with the world exactly like a human. And then you wanna do that with the least amount of complexity possible, and that's essentially what we have here. But of course, the complexity of that is pretty high because you're you're mimicking a human head. [01:00:37] S1: Let's talk about grip strength. We got grip strength testers here in the studio. Is this an important benchmark? Clicking these together, how strong is the hand currently? Where do you wanna go? Because it feels like there's a trade off there where if the hand like, the stronger you make the hand, the heavier, the more, the more dangerous it could potentially be. At the same time, there's certain tasks that you expect a certain level of grip strength. [01:01:02] S0: Also yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it'd be interesting to understand how often tasks come up in your daily life where you need, like, insane grip strength. [01:01:11] S1: Yeah. Right? It's pretty rare, I think. But certainly in, you know, industrial capacity or even around the home, picking things up, moving a chair, you need to be able to grab it without dropping it. It's a safety issue at the end of the day.
01:01:11 · John Coogan, Bernt Øivind Børnich
[01:01:11] S1: Yeah. Right? It's pretty rare, I think. But certainly in, you know, industrial capacity or even around the home, picking things up, moving a chair, you need to be able to grab it without dropping it. It's a safety issue at the end of the day. [01:01:24] S5: Yeah. I think it it actually appears quite often, but you don't think that much about it because you don't do it for a long period. Like Yeah. Yeah. You're not grasping that hard, but then something starts slipping and you tighten your grip more like it, you're actually using quite a bit of force. So the hand is roughly the same. Yeah. That's a good one. The hand is roughly the same strength as an average human. Really? So and that's so, I mean, it needs to be able to do the full capabilities of a robot, right? So the robot can deadlift 150 pounds. [01:01:51] S1: Yeah. So the [01:01:51] S5: hands need to hold the bar of 150 pounds. Yeah. Not because deadlifting is useful in everyday life, but because it's a good metric for like how capable we are. [01:01:59] S1: Yeah.
01:01:59 · John Coogan, Bernt Øivind Børnich
[01:01:59] S1: Yeah. [01:01:59] S5: So we really worked hard to make that kind of power to weight ratio also about the same as human. Mhmm. So if you look at the general hands in the market right now, this thing is roughly three times, as high force as the other hands. Yep. That is really also something that's going to enable a lot of new applications. Because in the end, your AI will be as smart as the diversity of the experiences that you have lived and experienced. Diversity of data is directly correlated with the intelligence of your model. And if you are as a third as strong as a human in your hands, there's a lot of tasks you just can't do. [01:02:35] S1: Yeah. I have one more. It feels like you have jumped to the frontier of hands specifically. Is, as I saw people joking, can I just buy the hand? Obviously, they're making probably rude jokes. But, is there a world where you partner with other robotics companies to sell a piece of your hardware, maybe just the hand to someone else that already has a wheeled robot, but it needs a hand? Is there a world where you're selling parts of your technology, or do you wanna be vertically integrated from end to end the full experience?