00:17:09 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:17:09] S0: So what percentage of, like, the software that you're building automates, like, back office work? And then what percentage of the software that you're going to build will automate, like, the actual work being done, which is, like, the digging of it [00:17:19] S1: is on the the second part. So Oh, really? Digging and the operating chemical facilities. [00:17:25] S0: Yeah. [00:17:25] S1: So, like, one simple way to think about it is, if you think about, like, any of the heavy equipment that is used in a mine Uh-huh. So most modern equipment is digital Right. Fundamentally. It's simply... There's something called the can bus, which is basically... And your car is the same way. Uh-huh. There's, like, a computer that sits inside there and that translates from the analog, the analog signals into the digital signals, and then you can just tap into that, right? And then you've now given yourself like a little robot, or a big robot in [00:17:48] S0: our case. And you're automating that, basically? [00:17:50] S1: We are... Well, we're tapping into those signals and then we are, you know, autonomously controlling Okay. The equipment. [00:17:56] S0: It's a remote kind of drone that you're... [00:17:59] S1: Would think about it more as just like if you had to like take and make like, you know, mining self driving. This is how you... [00:18:06] S0: Pretty cool. [00:18:07] S1: Yeah. So... Gonna do with
00:18:07 · JC Lozano, Ryan Deng
[00:18:07] S1: Yeah. So... Gonna do with [00:18:08] S0: those those materials that you're getting out the ground, like the ore? Yeah. What is the future that you envision for kind of what those materials can be used for? Because obviously like, you know, before I did our interview, I read that China does control majority of the the mining and the refineries that's occurring in the world, so. They control a lot of the mineral refining. [00:18:27] S1: Mhmm. That's for sure. Yeah. Mining is pretty distributed Mhmm. Because the resources are tend to be distributed. So we mine the material in The US right now, and then we have our own processing plant. So you've like mined this stuff, this material from underground, bring it to the surface and then you need to process it. And like mineral processing or mineral refining is basically this sequence of chemical operations. Does the money [00:18:51] S0: that you've raised go by fast in an industry like yours? Because to me, seems like it's, like, relative. Right? Like, whatever industry you're in, we have to raise a certain amount to be able to perform and operate [00:19:00] S1: Yeah. The company. Yeah. So, like, part of the thing we're focused on is, like, we wanna use VC dollars to fuel kind of the research Uh-huh. And, like, innovation. Yeah. And then we actually raise the majority of the funding for the actual mine, like, the actual CapEx funding. Actually That comes from like a different pool of investors. So that it invests in the project correctly. [00:19:21] S0: Okay. [00:19:21] S1: Yeah.
00:19:21 · JC Lozano, Ryan Deng
[00:19:21] S1: Yeah. [00:19:22] S0: Well, VC is different than like the actual expenditures of like operations. [00:19:26] S1: Well, yeah. So you're in accounting. So... [00:19:30] S0: Hope not anymore. Let's let's not go back to accounting, Juan. If this garbage truck doesn't stop. I'm kidding. Kidding. Kidding. I do wanna talk more about robots because I find this subject fascinating, especially as we're seeing hardware evolve into a space where, hey, there's general purpose robots for homes. Sure. Right? There's specialized robots in like manufacturing plants like pick and pick, you know, pick and place Yes. Whatever. Like [00:19:53] S1: Those have been there for a while though. Been there for [00:19:55] S0: a while. Okay. [00:19:55] S1: Yeah. [00:19:57] S0: Mining robots.
00:19:59 · JC Lozano
[00:19:59] S1: Well, so like the... Like think about a Waymo. Right? Like Waymo didn't actually like... They don't build the vehicle. Right? Like they took an existing vehicle, they tapped into it and then they like essentially retrofitted it. Right? So they added a bunch of sensors, they added a bunch of cameras, sensors, they had some actuation points so they could actually control the vehicle. And most of it's actually digital. Right? Like you don't see like an actuator on the steering wheel that's like Right. You know, it to turn. Uh-huh. You don't see like a linear encoder on the gas pedal that's telling it how far the gas pedal is pressed down. Right? That's because most of the, like, modern cars, right, are powered by a computer Mhmm. That translates, like, the analog signal from, like, you pressing the gas pedal into a digital signal and back into an analog signal to power parts of the engine or to take control. So it's kind of the same thing. Right? Like, you have all this large scale mining equipment. It's actually, you know, like, there's a ton of engineering that goes into it, and most of it is is controlled by an onboard computer, and it flows through something called the CAN bus. And so, like, this is a digital computer that's sitting on a large piece of equipment. So you can just, you know, hack in... Well, you don't need to hack into it. You just tap into that thing Uh-huh. And then you can put an onboard computer there. So a GPU, a CPU, some memory, a way to communicate, and then you can, you know, do some electrical engineering, some controls engineering. Mhmm. It's like wired directly into the the canvas. And then you can actually read the signals coming off the canvas that are telling you, here's how far the gas pedal is pressed down, here's the angle of the steering wheel....
00:21:20 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:21:20] S0: And everything inside the vehicle. [00:21:22] S1: Well, they come with the vehicle. [00:21:23] S0: Come with the vehicle. Okay. So it's already there. [00:21:25] S1: It's already there. And the same thing's [00:21:26] S0: in your car, [00:21:28] S1: by the way. Like, is how... And so you just, like, you read all the signals off Mhmm. And then you can also send signals back into that computer, which will take action on the robot, right, on your piece of equipment. Mhmm. So it's actually like, you you could think about like, you know, equipment as just like a bunch of like robots sitting there without a brain. Oh. And so you can just like put some computers on there, you can put some models on there and and start controlling them. [00:21:52] S0: Are you just using, like, general models that are available, like, just traditional LMs?
00:21:52 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:21:52] S0: Are you just using, like, general models that are available, like, just traditional LMs? [00:21:57] S1: Yeah. It's a great question. So we are doing kind of a a variety of approaches. We're... Okay. So we're vertically integrated. Right. And so... But that doesn't actually mean you do everything from scratch. Like, we don't actually build necessarily all of our own equipment. That doesn't necessarily mean we do all of our own autonomy. So right now, we're partnering with a couple of autonomy companies Mhmm. To automate some of the parts of equipment, and we're doing some of it in house Mhmm. To to understand how it works. And so the approaches that folks takes are are pretty varied. There's, like, classical robotics approaches where you sort of do, like, your traditional sensor fusion and route planning and mapping, and then there's more data driven approaches like VLAs, like from physical intelligence. [00:22:34] S0: And and remember, our audience is nontechnical, so Okay. We're probably hearing a little bit of a Okay. A buzz buzzwords k. Buzzword alert.