Almost Human: How Realbotix Is Redefining Humanoid Robots

“We started with the human form and asked how do we add mechanics and motors to maintain the human figure.”

Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Realbotix, explains how the company builds humanoid robots designed to interact naturally with people. 🤖🧠

Transcript

Welcome And The Four Worlds

Steven Ruffing 0:01

Welcome to the Four Worlds Podcast from Tomorrow's World Today. We're diving into the latest in tech, science, and sustainability, from nature's mysteries in the world of inspiration to the hands-on crafts of creation, the bold breakthroughs of innovation, and the scaled-up wonders of production. This is your ticket to the stories shaping tomorrow. Welcome back, everyone, to the Four Worlds podcast. Thank you all for joining us. Now, this may be one of our most futuristic episodes yet. We're really excited about this. Joining us today is Andrew Kegel from RealBotics. This company creates humanoid robots that are almost indistinguishable from humans. Andrew, thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy schedule to join us. Glad to be here, Steven. Thanks. Yeah, we're we're excited, like I said. So, first things first is where I came across RealBotics was your booth at CES. We unfortunately weren't, didn't have a chance to cover it this year in Las Vegas, but we saw that one of your robots was actually manning the booth by itself without any human interaction. How did that go? What was that response like?

Andrew Kiguel 1:10

Oh, it's awesome. I mean, it generally blows people away. They come to the booth, they do a double take, and then they see a robot there and they can walk up and start having a conversation with it and take pictures. Generally, we we have staff there to make sure nobody's like knocking over a robot or doing something like that, but also just to be like, hey, a lot of people walk up and they don't realize they can have a conversation. And by the way, you can have a conversation over a hundred languages. You know, it's a full AI autonomous humanoid. And so we're there to be like pushing people's boundaries a little bit. Like take a picture, give a shout-out to somebody, ask them for a joke, whatever you want.

Steven Ruffing 1:47

Yeah, that's the fascinating part, just coming across it. It's basically not free range, but you encourage guests and and people visiting CES, visiting the booth to kind of come up, interact, and really show the robots' capabilities.

Andrew Kiguel 2:02

Yeah, I think we're the only, possibly at any conference I've been to, we're probably the only people that have a humanoid robot that is accessible to anybody to interact with from open to close. Generally, other robots don't talk or interact in that way, and they have a very short battery life. So the other robot manufacturers or who are sort of playing the robots, they sort of like, hey, come around two o'clock show, they sort of cue the music. The robot comes out, does some karate chops and some backflips, runs the battery down, and then they, you know, go back and plug it into the wall.

Steven Ruffing 2:34

Yeah, and this one that's that's what really caught my attention is is staying there, staying at the booth and kind of interacting with the people. That's what really caught my attention. And obviously, we can't just skim across what else catches my attention is just the people that can't see, and I encourage everyone to look into robotics. Just give people an idea of how realistic these robots actually look. It's it's astonishing.

From Movie Props To Humanoids

Andrew Kiguel 2:59

Yeah, so I would say you can still see that it's a robot. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, there is there is that part of it, but they have a very our robots look very human. You have to do a double take. And you know, they have human-like skin, they can make facial expressions, they speak in human voices, they wear human clothing, they're the only robots that have human proportions. Yeah, they're they're very human-looking, and you know, that is sort of our our goal. That's how we distinguish ourselves from other businesses.

Steven Ruffing 3:28

So when everything was first starting, there had to have been an idea somewhere. Was there any form of media, whether it's movie, TV, that creators looked at and said, I want to make that in real life? Where did that inspiration kind of come from when things were first starting out?

Andrew Kiguel 3:45

So it's actually far more interesting than that. Okay. The founder of the business is or the the create or chief creative officer is a guy by the name of Matt McMullen. And Matt McMullen is a musician artist, like a very cool guy, tattoos, earrings, and brilliant. He started in the in sort of the art area helping movies sort of design, you know, figures that would get, you know, in a slasher film that would get cut up or blown up in a sci-fi movie or whatever various things. And he started building these silicone figures for movies. And through that, he found people were coming up to him afterwards and being, hey, there was a surviving business, but people were coming being like, hey, I would like to have one of these. And he realized that there was this pretty big demand for these highly realistic things and you know, very human-like silicone figures that were being made. These are sort of highly realistic, no AI, no robotics. And he's you know, the godfather of that business, an expert in terms of building those and building them. And you know, he's developed a proprietary skin technology, and he just has an incredible knack for building things that look human. So, fast forward to when Matt and I met a few years ago, and he had started tinkering around with those dolls and talking about like, can we incorporate AI into them and some robotics? One of the things we always say, what makes our robots different, every other robotics company in North America is building a robot that looks like a cyborg. It's plastic, it's metallic, there's no facial expressions. Most of them don't talk. Most of them are not even real AI. They're just, you know, here's 20 things pre-programmed in, you choose one. They generally throw a bunch of components and mechanics together and then figure, you know, in the wires, and then they're like, how do we make this look a little bit more like a human form? We did the opposite. We started with the human form through these dolls that were being produced and said, How do we add mechanics and motors to this to maintain the human figure perfectly? And that's why, again, you know, all these companies in Silicon Valley have this sort of group think. They're all sort of trying to build a different version of the same thing. We don't talk to those guys. We're sort of like thinking about things in a very different way, and I believe in a far more commercial and practical way.

Steven Ruffing 6:02

And you kind of took basically my next two questions right out of my mouth, and I'd love for you to expand on it. Just going over kind of that push for, I wouldn't quite say 100% realism. Like you said, you could still tell that it is a robot, but definitely having that realistic human-looking face. Would you say it is just for that kind of companionship aspect of things? Is that why that kind of idea of no, it's it's it's more than that.

Why Human Faces Build Trust

Andrew Kiguel 6:31

So certainly, so first of all, let's talk about companionship for a second. So companionship to me is a broad term. So it could mean somebody who's just lonely at home. It could be a somebody living in a long-term healthcare facility, a senior's home. It could be a sick child at a hospital. There's a lot of different things. It could be a widowed person. So companionship has been found to be one of the keys to longevity, meaning that you know, people need someone to interact with. And you know, being alone and loneliness is a horrible thing. So when you look at the other robots that are being created, they're being built more to work in a factory. You don't need to necessarily have a human appearance. Some of them they're saying, well, these will work in your house, but they look kind of creepy to me. Yeah. If you're thinking about putting a robot in a hospital or school, we can customize the look of our robots. Like we try to make them have an appearance that is friendly and disarming, and then can bring you know you to build that connection. And so what builds attachment in humans would be, you know, when you're getting to know someone or something, you know, human or not, serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, things that kick off in your brain that help form attachment. And I think that's easier to do when you're dealing with something that has more of a human form. This is why people can build attachments to dogs, but they're not build an attachment to your computer. You know, so what we're trying to do is sort of look at the science behind that and say, okay, if you have a face that looks friendlier, disarming, that will be easier to put in a mall, a school, a hospital, all these places. One of the hardest things to do in robotics is have a robot with facial expressions. If we can have a robot that can smile, frown, and show different forms of expression, then again, you're able to form that human interaction at a higher level. And so it's more than just companionship, but like, you know, we're having conversations of using them as you know, caregivers at seniors' homes where they can come in and possibly feed you, remind you to take your medicine, or just listen to you. Robots have infinite patience. You think about a school, we're having conversations with schools about using them as tutors. So we can upload an entire set of information and the robot speaking various languages, you can go up and be like, hey, English is not my first language. I had some difficulty with the math lesson today. Can we go over it in Spanish? Right. And you get this form of consistency. Think about it at a retail store. Like our robots are the only robots that wear human clothing. You know, I got to worry about my robots' manicure and things like that, which are probably the only series to do that. But imagine you walked into a retail store and the robot looked at you and said, Oh, Steven, you look like you're a size medium. I've done some color analysis on you because our robots have vision. You'd look great in these new blue shirts we got. You could be like, Oh, okay, what are they made out of? Or where are they made? Or how do you wash it? You can have a full interactive conversation with it, the robot, and it'll have all that knowledge consistently. It'll know the inventory, all these things, help you to you know try it on, and it can do it in any language. So that's, I think, a lot harder when you have a robot that looks like sort of a C3PO or something that's in front of you, looks metallic, and is like having a friendly human robot that might even be wearing that clothing makes a big difference.

Steven Ruffing 9:36

Yeah, and and that does come to my point. Just kind of I'm I'm curious how you guys do balance that connection with people that might be a little more hesitant with robotics and of course going towards the more human aspect of things. I I'm just curious how you do balance the people that still aren't all on board with kind of like a robotic future. How has that been in this stage where you guys are at?

Viral CES Coverage And Autonomy

Andrew Kiguel 10:02

Well, I don't manage it all. I don't I don't care about that. Like if somebody says I don't like social media or I don't like McDonald's, like, okay, you know, we we proceed on with our with our business plan. There's plenty of people who do. You know, you talked about CES last year. I didn't get the statistics for this year, but last year at CS we got four billion media impressions. We were covered. We have no, by the way, we have no idea. That was the first time we ever showed anybody a robot. So you know, we built some robots, and the first thing I said, you know, Matt, I'm like, we gotta let's go to CS and see what happens. We got the cheapest booth, it was like $7,000, smallest booth in a corner, and we had no idea what was gonna happen. And within like two or three hours, we were like drinking out of a fire hose with respect to people, media, and video was hanging around our booth. The Amazon guys, the MGM, everybody was at our booth because they had never seen anything like this before, which was like talking humanoid robots that look human, have facial expressions, different languages, a bunch of other features like the modularity. Like our robots come apart like Lego, and you put it in a suitcase. Like, you know, our robots have the option to plug into the wall. So that you know, battery life's a huge issue with robots. Our clients are like, we don't care about uh a robot that can walk around. We want a robot that can sit behind a desk, right? So that's the kind of stuff we're building. So we're you know, hospitality is a huge potential market for us.

Steven Ruffing 11:23

And with that, it's kind of like you talked about the a $7,000 booth, kind of like a low risk, high reward situation. Was it ever in anyone's back of their minds like we got something here? We're we're gonna get some traction on this. There had to be a little bit of that, right?

Embedded Vision And Emotional Cues

Andrew Kiguel 11:38

I think we everybody is very is still very passionate about what we're doing, but I don't think anybody walks into CES with no PR team, no IR team, right, and has possibly the busiest booth at the entire conference with the highest media, like we may have gotten more media coverage than NVIDIA last year, right? Yeah, so I just I think you can set your expectations high to be like, yeah, we hope some media comes by and does some things. But where like my schedule, like as the CEO of the company, was essentially like, I don't know, we must have done over a hundred media interviews. Like we were covered, and even though people we didn't interview picked up the story. So, like Barstool Sports, the largest TV station in China, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and then the YouTubers were all coming by day two. The YouTubers were trying to break into our booth at night to see the robots. But a bunch of YouTubers came, and guys that normally get a couple hundred thousand views were getting like five, ten. One guy got 20 million views on a video, like banana stuff, because again, nobody had ever seen a robot. And one of the things that makes our robots different is a lot of companies script, like there's a somebody sitting somewhere with a microphone telling the robot what to say and seeing like it's it's puppeteering. Our robots are just totally autonomous. Like we took a robot to Times Square. We were hired by a company there to help them do a store opening or an electronic store in Times Square, one of the busiest intersections in the world. And we programmed the robot to know sort of what's on every floor, where a bathroom is, where to get lunch or coffee, the products. But at one point, we slid open the doors to the street. We turned the robot around and just had it interacting with people on the street. And then we were like, okay, like this is boring. We all left. We went for coffee, dinner, whatever, came back like four hours later, and the robot was there waving at people, having conversations in like German, French, English, Spanish, like, you know, we just let it do what it wants. And then we can see the report afterwards. So, you know, we just get a download and we can see what conversations it was having, what it was saying, how it was reacting, how it was processing things. Robot knew where it was, it knew what store it was at, it knew exactly the intersection it was at. I don't know of any other robotics company that's thinking about robots like us or doing anything like this. I'll tell you, you wonder what we did yesterday? This was very cool. We did an interview when we were in New York with CNN for a show that's coming out soon on longevity. And yesterday we had a guy by the name of Ashley Vance come by the facility. He wrote the Elon Musk biography, and he's sort of a specialist in tech and robots. And but when he came by, he was blown away by our technology because he was like, Wow, you guys are doing like way cooler stuff than these like $10 billion companies are doing, and like we're not even close to evaluation like that. Then we're like, what's something very cool that we can do? So we took one of the robots. I posted this on my ex account, and we put a robot in a car, and we drove around Las Vegas with a robot in the passenger seat, talking, you know, like you know, having communication, and the robot knew exactly where it was, and the robot's got a memory. So he was asking things like, Oh, have you ever left the facility before? And she's like, Yes, I've been into New York, I've been to Berlin, I've been to Dubai. Like the robot remembers, and I'm always so surprised because I'm always like, Oh, this is where the robot screws up or forgets something, but the robot knew exactly where she's you know, where she's traveled before.

Steven Ruffing 14:49

And that's incredible. How much of that is that AI vision system that's implemented into these robots? Is there anything else that on the tech side of things that all go into that? I know it's a lot of AI, but kind of explain and go over that AI vision system and kind of how it helps, if it helps with the directions, and I know it kind of helps with picking up on emotions and things like that.

Andrew Kiguel 15:12

Right. I I don't think we have it to the state where it would help. Like it's it's not a GPS system. I see. Like it doesn't, it takes just like any AI, it takes a couple of seconds to process, and by that time you've made your turn. What I think some other companies have developed, although we're the only guys who post this stuff online. Everybody's like, oh, we have a vision system, and people are like, let's see it. No, no, it's top secret. Wow. Right. So you know, we post the robots seeing colors, reading, we posted CS recognizing people. I walk in front of the robot, it's like, oh, hi Andrew, how are you today? A lot of companies I think maybe are at the stage of having observational vision, which means like I see a coffee cup, I see a computer, I see a pen. Okay. That part, I wouldn't say it's simple, but it's not the like it doesn't do much for you. It's cool, but doesn't do much for you. Right. My belief has always been like the point of AI in some sense is to create it's you know, synthetic thinking. The point of a humanoid robot is to sort of create a synthetic robot. And if you're gonna marry these two things, it has to have an understanding, like if it's gonna advise us running or walking or anything else, it needs to be able to know how to do those things to provide the proper, otherwise, it's just taking outside advice. So, how do you give it that knowledge? You can't have an embedded AI or a physical AI in a robot that is real, like otherwise, it's just programmed by a human telling it what to think. But to be real for it to see it, interpret it, and then tell you, it has to be able to interpret what it sees. And that's what we've developed is we've been able to tie the AI into the observation. So I'm looking in front of me, I see glasses, I see a coffee cup, I see a computer back to the AI. Hey Andrew, your computer's really close to the edge of the table, it might fall off. Be careful. We can do that, where it can look at you and be like, I've done a kind of color analysis of your of you, Stephen. Your best color would be this. Right, right. Or I see a dangerous, there's a fire over there. It seems dangerous, you may want to look into it and leave this area. So this interpretation, and we've developed it so we can actually pick up spatial cues. Hey, you look upset or you look happy, and then use the AI to be like, I don't just see it, I'm going to react to it. And that's true embedded AI, which is more than observational, which I think again, not easy, but probably out there. But to be able to take what you're seeing and react to it, either emotionally or physically, that's real embedded AI. And to my knowledge, I don't know of anybody else on the planet that has demonstrated that online openly the way we have, including having a full robot at CES that you can walk up to and have a conversation and any language, and it's like, hey, you're wearing a blue box cap. I see this behind me, I see this over there.

Finding The Best Use Cases

Steven Ruffing 17:52

Yeah, and and truly, just with at with all of that in consideration, all of this technology, the languages it speaks, the recognition that it speaks, we talked a little bit about the industries that like the in senior care facility, things like that. To me, just listening to all of that, it sh in the future, it seems like the industries are limitless where this technology could be implemented. Is that kind of the goal you're shooting for? Just having a wide range of industry, or do you want to try and hone in on certain niche places and situations?

Andrew Kiguel 18:27

Remains to be seen. And you know, we're we'll build we're building a company in a new area. It's we're not like selling coffee or computers or you know, hot dogs where you can be like, hey, here's the market size, and you know, we don't know. So as a CEO of the company and trying to you know come up with a vision, I can say we're only going to focus on hospitality. But then if I'm wrong, I've given up market to other people. So I think the the initial strategy is let's build the product, let's keep building capabilities that we think people want, and then see who comes in. And so if it does, you know, if we get 10 hotels that come in and order like you know, 10,000 robots, then we know that's our focus. But today, I don't need to actually focus on anything. I view it a little bit like we're selling a piece of hardware and it has AI attached to it. By the way, our robots can operate our AI or any other AI. You can run ChatGPT or Gemini through it if you want or plot. But when you buy a phone, the generally it comes with a whole bunch of capabilities, but somebody might buy the phone because they just want to access social media, somebody might want the camera, somebody might want it for phone calls, and you know, you don't know. We're not telling people necessarily how to use the robot. What I'm trying to do is highlight the features of the robot. And my premise is that the the best use cases will step forward, and maybe I haven't even identified them yet.

Steven Ruffing 19:48

I see. So it's kind of like an open-ended situation, just kind of seeing where everything goes.

Andrew Kiguel 19:53

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say open-ended, like, but we're building up we're building a we're building a product like again, our robots things that other robots don't do. Our robots can plug into the wall or run on a battery. Our robots can come apart like Lego and be packed in a suitcase. Our robots can run various AIs. So you so you know, we're we have having conversations with a a resort here in Vegas that runs their own AI. It's only phone-based. Okay. So you call this AI over the phone and be like, is there a massage available at 3 p.m.? Send up some fries, make me a restaurant reservation. What we've found is we can take that AI and channel it right through our robot. So you could put a robot in, you could put like 10 robots all over the lobby, and you could walk up to it and be like, hey, this is Stephen room 321. Can you send hamburger and fries to my room and you know, book me a restaurant reservation here tonight if it's available? The robot will book you a ticket and do that. And by the way, it can do that in any language. So you could walk up to it and say the same thing in Mandarin, French, Spanish, again in the hospitality, that's important. But you could also have a conversation with it, like, hey, you know, I've never played blackjack before. What are the rules? And walk you through rules. Oh, can you repeat that? Or what happens if I get this hand versus that? Or how do you split the card? It can you can have this whole conversation, like you're talking to an expert, and then the person can be like, that's great. And the robot can be like, if you ever want to give it a try, we have you know a five, $25 table over there. You're welcome to go give it a try, right? Think about it in a store. You could again, the store robots to any language could be like, you know, we're running low on inventory of this product, or somebody comes in and is like, hey, I bought this. What are what are the washing instructions? What's the warranty on all these kinds of things that can be consistently housed through a robot? And by the way, we offer that through, you know, we're we're not just a robotics company, we're an AI company because customize AI. We sold a robot to Ericsson and we customized it for them, the the AI, to be sort of all knowledgeable on 5G, 4G, 5G, 6G, right? And the way we tested it, because they're not going to come test the AI at our factory every day, we created a digital avatar that they can access online, play around. We can fine-tune the AI. It talks to the exact same way we're speaking, which is amazing. And what we find is we did that for clients so they could fine tune the AI and they all love it. They're like, How do we add this to our website? So we have the an AI that is transportable. So you can be like, okay, I want it on my computer today, I want it on my phone tomorrow, and on my robot the day after. And again, nobody's thinking about things this way, right? Like this is so out of left field for Molly's like, hey, watch our robot do a karate chop and then walk at like five miles an hour, walk over to this thing and press a button that like coffee comes out. Like, who who cares about that? Like that's not very useful. They don't talk, they have no facial expressions, they you know, like they'll have a great role in the factory, but robotics have already been present in in automotive factories and factories all the time. They don't look like humans, but because they don't need to.

Custom Looks And Consent Rules

Steven Ruffing 22:50

Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you don't really need something that's lifting boxes to have full, you know, personal features. We've already invented the forklift, just get a remote control forklift. Yeah, autonomy is everywhere. Get an autonomous uh forklift or or what have you. So the the tech specs of it are are fascinating and clearly you gave a well-rounded idea of what they're do, what their capabilities are. I want to talk about the look of it, not so much the the human aspect, but it's fully customizable, correct? So if you're ordering it, you could you know customize that look. Or are there are there any guardrails, and I'm sure there are, of making sure that you're not making a robot that looks like me or a company wants to make something that looks like one of the employees or what have you. What how does that go when people are picking and choosing how they want to customize these robots?

Andrew Kiguel 23:39

Right. So number one, we would only replicate a living or deceased human with permission from them or their estate. I see. Easy as that. Easy as that. Yeah. We we just won't do it. Like you can't come to us and be like, I I want a you know, Scarlet Johansson robot. Right. Yeah, you get it. Sydney Sweeney. Give me a Sydney Sweeney, and you know, like we would like to have a conversation with her to make sure she's okay with it, you know.

Steven Ruffing 24:05

Yeah, make sure I I think I'd know the answer to that too. Right. So let's talk about yeah, we we touched on this a little, just kind of long-term goals, you know, in the long term, what does the future kind of look like for you know people purchasing the availability, all that stuff?

Andrew Kiguel 24:21

Right. So I see this more as a B2B to C product. I'm trying to target companies like Ericsson, big telecom companies. Like we're we've we're having a lot of conversations with AI companies because there are thousands of AI companies, there's very few robotic companies. And so a lot of them are like, we'd love to test our AI on your robots. So when someone buys one of our robots, the idea is you have an option to you press a button and you can choose the AI you want to operate your robot. So a lot of AI companies are like, can we, number one, like it's almost like we're gonna be running an app store, right? Like, which AI do you want to run? And you you hit it and you run it. But a lot of AI companies want to train on our robots, and then once when we sell them, have their AI available to our client base. So somebody buys a robot, you'd be like, oh, here's you know, the Bethany AI, I'm gonna run that today. So, in terms of like target B2B to C, I think that digital agents or robotic agents are going to be a massive thing. So this is really just the ability to have intelligence helping you to you know answer questions and do that because you know, live operators, I think that's gonna take the form of digital avatars and robots. We we think we are really well positioned to play in both because we have, you know, I listened to a call the other day for you know the the founder of Figure AI, which is a big robot company with a $40 billion valuation, is starting a new digital agent AI company called HARC. Yeah, and obviously, brilliant guys, huge valuation, tons of investor interest, and they're like, Well, what do you guys build? And they're like, Well, we're gonna have a vision system. They're like, Can we see it? No, no, no, no, that's proprietary. We don't show that's anything. Okay, so not confident enough to show people. What are you guys trying to build? Well, the goal is AI agents with memory that can look at you, interact, customize, and I was like, that's their goal. We're doing that already. Like, I everything that they're talking about, I have been, you know, pitching and and selling some tip to clients. And so I'm always a little bit amazed. But the one thing that I agree with what he was saying is you know, digital agents are gonna be this massive area, whether you walk into a store or anything, like you go to a website, and rather than you like searching for stuff, the digital agent pops up and you're like, hey, can you get me this? The contact information, I don't understand this on my bill, whatever it is, and you can have this full conversation as if you're talking to a human. I think that's gonna be a huge market. I think when I've looked at the future, I see our robots inside every mall, every hotel, every resort, inside schools. Like, you know, I met yesterday with another group that runs STEM school, STEAM, STEM, whatever it is.

Steven Ruffing 26:56

Yeah, STEAM STEM, yeah.

Andrew Kiguel 26:58

So basically, though, what we can do through these these robots and number one, how cool is that? You put a robot under school and kids can start to learn like how to you know, actuators work and all these sensors and what goes inside a robot. One benefit. Number two, for consistency of the lessons. So again, hey, I didn't understand this, can do that. Consistency for the teachers. Hey, what's the curriculum look like? Where am I supposed to be here? What's a great way to communicate this, or what tools am I supposed to be using? And number three, at home, the kids can, in their native language, review what they did. So it's like kind of like having a tutor with you at all times that it can actually move with you through school. Can you imagine you get a digital tutor that goes from you from like grade one to graduation that's always there helping you out? Like, so that's kind of where I'm seeing it. I'm trying to make the use cases here for people that will order these in quantity as opposed to like one offs.

Steven Ruffing 27:48

Right, the kind of a bulk situation, like you're saying, like looking in the in a mall, a store in a mall, buying a bulk order of them to kind of help out wherever or a hotel. We can yeah, a hotel is a perfect example. You kind of already see it now with the points. Well, let's look at the yes.

Andrew Kiguel 28:03

I could probably build something for a hotel and sell it to them for about $40,000. And it would be a 24, seven days a week concierge. Okay. Your payoff on that's very quick. Number one, it's consistency of information. It's there, it's on all day, all night. It can probably do room like they have in the hotel, and now they have like digital room keys. You just go in, show ID, and it goes on your phone. We could easily do that through the robot where it talks to you, checks you in, goes through your bill, all these things in any language. So you land something like that. A hotel might be like, Great, we need a hundred of these. We want one in every single you know store we manage.

Steven Ruffing 28:33

And is is there ever like what what happens to the human element of that? Do you think it's completely replaced? Do you think it gives humans a chance to relax? Like, where are your thoughts on that? Because I don't know if that's a concern to the greater public or they look forward to having more of a streamlined experience going into those situations.

Andrew Kiguel 28:54

I think there is a a little bit of like BS narrative out there. So I talked to a lot of CEOs around this stuff, and they're like, we love this idea, we'd want to implement it, but I don't want staff to think they're being replaced. They're like, we need to come up with a different narrative. But I'm like, you know, I'm I'm I'm here, I'm staying at the MGM. I saw like, you know, mobile check-in. I saw mobile checkout. You know, you go to some of these places now, like a vending machine. Does that put somebody out of work? Like self-nockout of the grocery store. Technology advances, and I think there's sort of like this fear of like telling the truth, which is yeah, we're gonna eliminate some like low-level jobs, but we're gonna be creating a whole bunch of other jobs, like you know, programming, robot assembly, manufacturing, like autonomy and we need like we're hiring engineers and programmers and devs and marketing people and communications people. Like you're replacing you know what, a person that just gives you a key and checks your ID and checks you in, and you're replacing that with higher-level jobs. And so I think there's a general fear for people to talk about replacing jobs, but like, yeah, of course it's going to replace jobs. Of course, AI is going to replace jobs. Like when cars were invented, they were like horse and buggy drivers who were laid off, but you know, you find other jobs when email was invented. You know, the postal service had to adjust. That's what happens with technology is we move forward and we shouldn't be scared of it.

Scaling Production And Hiring Plans

Steven Ruffing 30:16

Yeah, and I think that's a really good way to put it. And and that's you know, we write about and we cover a lot of that stuff, and that's ultimately the the goal is is not replacing, but adjusting and and and just moving things around a little bit. That's a it's a great point. I I now just as we wrap this up, I just want to you know hear your thoughts on some next steps and scaling these robots, production goals, things like that as we move along to the future and and as you guys uh really start, you know, getting things this off the ground and all that good stuff.

Andrew Kiguel 30:47

So we we just brought in a new COO from Agility, which is one of like the more you know of a really great company. Pittsburgh Office is here, where we're at.

Steven Ruffing 30:57

Yeah.

Andrew Kiguel 30:58

So he's a guy that was there from almost day one. And so we're getting a wealth of knowledge on how to implement our scaling processes. We're looking to hire more people. We've actually been contacted by a lot of people at other robotics companies like Boston and Figure AI who are like, hey, I saw what you're doing, like it's really cool. Can we have a conversation? And so we're having a lot of conversations, we're moving into a new facility, we get the keys next week. It'll probably take about a month or two to build up what we want and then get in there. So we're very thinking, you know, five years ahead. Like, what do we need to do to get there? I'm less concerned about you know, trying to sell a bunch of robots tomorrow. I don't even spend a dollar on marketing, it's all inbound calls, even like with you. Okay, you might jump on a call. Yeah. But you know, I plan to put more robots in cool places this year. Like I said, we have the robot driving around or Times Square. I plan to do more of that. We'll be building a new facility that will allow us to scale. And once that we're sort of there and confident, I think we'll start putting more money into marketing and trying to land those orders because there's no point in me getting, you know, a hundred orders for robots tomorrow if I can't fulfill proper delivery times and service for those people. And like right now, we're still just about 15 people. Like we're a small company.

Steven Ruffing 32:08

Wow. I didn't I didn't realize that. Yeah, yeah, we're small. Yeah, that's incredible. That's incredible. That just, you know, I'm thinking here, you know, seeing what the capabilities, the the CES booth, you know, I'm thinking, you know, bigger, I didn't not staff, but you know, just bigger operations, what I'm trying to look for.

Andrew Kiguel 32:24

When you saw us at CES within that part of the business, it might have been six employees and maybe a couple of part-time. And so we've been ramping up, trying to find the right people. Like I said, we might not even be at 14. We might be more like 12 or 13. I think, but it's like we're growing, we're interviewing, we're growing, we're moving into new facilities, and we're planning for the future. We know we have this incredible technology, we know we're looking at things like that group think out of Silicon Valley, where they're all trying to compete with each other, like who can make the best cyborg? I don't get it, but I have no competition, and I believe I've got the larger end market. Yeah, so we'll just continue in terms of you know building our vision and sort of setting out people who are like, you know, your robot doesn't look like a cyborg, or your robot can't lift a 200-pound box. Well, I don't care. That's not what our clients want.

Steven Ruffing 33:11

Yeah, it's just more of the thinking, being able to speak a hundred languages. I think that kind of all speaks for itself.

Andrew Kiguel 33:17

Or be able to see you and and recognize you and understand and see what's happening around it, right? Or the ability to actually last, you know, and work for more than 30 minutes. Like yeah, just different end market.

Steven Ruffing 33:28

Yeah, it's funny. I I see, you know, obviously for I write about robotics and stuff like that, but I'm also writing about breakthroughs in powering these things, you know, finding a battery that lasts more than 30 minutes, it lasts an hour, and it's just things like that.

Andrew Kiguel 33:44

It's you know, it's you know some someone told me Boston Dynamics, it's like five-hour charge only gets the robot 15 minutes or something. Like, that's not what do you what do you do with that? You know, when we're I don't you I don't know if you're at CS, that's your CS. I see these robots are like three and a half feet tall, that box, and that's all they do. Well, what's the use case? There was another one there playing ping pong. It's a professional ping pong playing robot. Who's gonna pay like three or four hundred thousand dollars for? And it wasn't a good ping pong player, it could only hit the ball back if you hit it within like a certain range. A strike zone. So there was a guy that they wouldn't let you play with it, and it was just like you know, like it was like you could you could accomplish the same thing by hitting against the wall. You know, when you take the ping pong table and you flip it, yeah, and flip it up. That's what they've accomplished for this with a goddamn robot. Like I don't see the use cases.

Where To Follow RealBotics

Steven Ruffing 34:32

No, I'm with you. It reminds me of like the Forrest Gump scene where he's just hitting the ball right off the board. No, that's that it's a good point. You bring up some good points. This was a fascinating conversation. I'd like to leave it open to you. How can people follow along the journey? Where can they go just to check you out? And if there's anything else that you wanted to throw in that we might might have forgot, feel free.

Andrew Kiguel 34:53

No, that's all cool. Anybody wants to see, you can go to realbotics.com, which is r-e-al-b-o-t-i-x.com. There's a gallery there. You can see a bunch of you know the our media. If you want to learn more about the business, we have an investor deck that's available at realbotics.ai, but by all means, welcome. I try to answer all questions that come in. So if people have questions or want to you know find out or if they have ideas, feel free to reach out.

Steven Ruffing 35:17

Absolutely. And Andrew, I appreciate our conversation. This was a good one, and I appreciate your transparency with everything. You know, not a lot of robotics companies are jumping on and talking about some uh some of the stuff that they have going on. So I really appreciate you taking the time and uh joining us today. Thank you. All right, that's all the time we have for this episode. Thank you, Andrew, and thank you, everyone, for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Four Worlds Podcast. Until next time, you can catch up on the latest innovations shaping our world at tomorrow'sworld today.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.