May 2025

We moved in to Founders Inc (website) in SF this month. The new robot is a pair of floor lamps (we're calling it Lume right now) connected at the base. When you need them, they unfold into robotic arms that fold laundry. Otherwise, they sit quietly as lamps. The goal is to make it feel like an appliance. It does its job, then disappears into the background. Here is an early CAD design (video). To build fast, we started by retrofitting off-the-shelf robotic arms to behave like lamps. We also put together a quick demo inspired by the Pixar lamp to show how the robot might move and interact. Expressive motion is key to our vision: ambient robots that not only blend in but feel thoughtful and alive when they engage with you (demo).

April 2025

April was a key moment. After March’s in-home demos, we got clear feedback: the robot felt out of place. People liked what it did, but not how it looked or fit into their lives. So we scrapped it. We ran more interviews and reframed the problem. The new insight: the robot shouldn’t feel like a guest. It should feel like it’s always been there. That led us to ambient robotics: products that do the work without drawing attention. We also moved to Palo Alto to be closer to early users, investors, and the right kind of urgency.

March 2025

In March, we started testing the robot with real users in our condo building—one resident per week. This slow rollout helped us catch issues early and get meaningful feedback. The biggest takeaway? Non-technical users were hesitant. Most concerns were around privacy and safety, which makes sense when you're introducing a robot into someone's home. So now we're focused on making the robot feel safer, more transparent, and generally easier to trust. On the tech side, we kept improving the robot's movement and behavior to make it smoother and more predictable. That's been helping build confidence with users too. These learnings are now shaping how we think about both the product and the experience around it.

February 2025

February was all about refining our robot's software and testing it in real homes. At the start of the month, we focused on fine-tuning the manipulation software (i.e., getting the robot to move more smoothly, grasp objects more reliably, and generally just not look so awkward while doing simple tasks). By mid-month, we finally got to test it in a real domestic setting (e.g., a condo). It was pretty exciting (and nerve-wracking) to see how it performed outside of our controlled lab space. The robot managed to clean a toilet seat, sort some garbage, and even wipe down a counter. It wasn't perfect, but it actually got the job done (demo)! By the end of the month, word started spreading in our own condo building, and now we're starting a waitlist of people who want to see if the robot can clean their unit.

January 2025

January was a big month for both hardware and software. We kicked things off by making our robotic arm stronger and more reliable, tweaking the design to make sure it wouldn't randomly give up mid-task. Midway through the month, we hit a major milestone, our prototype was finally robust enough to complete tasks autonomously! Naturally, we jumped straight into developing the software for bathroom cleaning. And since some of us are huge chess nerds, we took a weekend to build a quick chess-playing demo with the robot. Why? Because we could (demo). By the end of January, we got the robot to clean a toilet seat and take out the trash on its own (no human intervention needed!) (demo).

December 2024

December was all about the robotic arm. We started the month by motorizing it and getting it to move in 4 degrees of freedom (demo), which felt like a big win. Around the same time, we visited the Toronto Pearson Marriott team to learn more about their housekeeping workflows (photo). Mid-month, we kept improving the arm's precision. By the end of December, we cracked inverse kinematics (IK), which basically means the robot could now move its arm with way more precision. We ran a successful pick-and-place test (demo), and everything is starting to come together!

November 2024

November was all about laying the groundwork for this whole project. We built tech demos, designed hardware, and figured out our next steps. Oh, and we also officially finished our PhDs, so that was a nice bonus. Early in the month, we showed off some demos, like using VLMs to find objects in a hotel lobby (demo) and controlling the robot with gestures and natural language (demo). We also spent time talking to housekeepers and hotel staff at a Marriott to understand their workflows. Midway through November, we started working on software for robotic cleaning. Our first big test was getting it to clean a mirror (demo). Meanwhile, we designed our first hardware prototype (demo) and, by the end of the month, we had 3D-printed the first batch of parts and started assembling the robot (demo). Things are moving fast!