Limitless Podcast - Lume: The Bedroom Robot That Folds Your Laundry | Founder Aaron Tan

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

In this episode, we speak with Aaron Tan, founder of Syncere. His latest creation is Lume, an innovative home robot designed as bedside lamps that fold laundry. Aaron discusses its sleek desi...gn, pricing options, and future capabilities beyond laundry, while addressing safety and societal readiness for home robotics. Tune in to explore the exciting potential of Lume, the Syncere Journey, and the future of home technology.------🌌 LIMITLESS HQ: LISTEN & FOLLOW HERE ⬇️https://limitless.bankless.com/https://x.com/LimitlessFT------TIMESTAMPS0:00 Introduction to Lume1:49 Functionality of the Robotic Lamp4:09 Pricing Models7:02 Design Philosophy11:54 Future Developments and Applications17:22 Human-Robot Interaction and Trust22:12 The Role of Robots in Homes25:02 Expanding Capabilities27:46 Manufacturing and Design Confidence31:46 Closing Thoughts------RESOURCESAaron Tan: https://x.com/aaronistanSyncere AI: https://x.com/syncereAIJosh: https://x.com/Josh_KaleEjaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:03 The most interesting robot of 2025 doesn't look like a robot. In fact, they look like two bedside table lamps that morph into robotic arms and fold the laundry that's on your bed. No 6'5 humanoid robot, just clean, decisive robotic arms that do what you want it to do and remove the most hated chore ever. But don't take my word for it. We have the founder, Aaron Tan, of Sincere, on our own. show today that's going to walk us through it. Aaron, welcome to the show. I want to start off pretty hot and straight to the point.
Starting point is 00:00:40 What is Loom and why did you build it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, thanks for the intro and thanks for having me on. Loom, I think, in its simplest form, is it's a robotic lamp. It's designed to not look like a robot at all. We want to sort of get rid of chores for people in a way without making them feel like we're adding robots into their home. And a lamp, based on its silhouette and its form factor, is sort of like the perfect shape to high robotics in plain sight. So that's what we're building
Starting point is 00:01:14 at since here. Aaron, I loved the video. There's some things that when I'm scrolling my timeline, I see and they just kind of break my mind. They break the perception of what it means to be a robot. This was one of them because so frequently I see these things that look like humanoid robots or you see like these kind of robotic cars or vehicles. This was very obscure. It was, it was lamp post that kind of turn into arms that fold your laundry. And it just felt very natural when I saw it. It felt right. There's some things you see and it just feels right. So how does this work? Like, is this possible that it can actually just sit as a lamppost and then it can kind of reach over your bed and do the laundry while you're gone? Can you just explain to me like how
Starting point is 00:01:51 this, how this product functions? It's just going to sit there and do my laundry. Is that really that simple? Yeah, yeah. I mean, no, I'm glad that I'm glad that I'm glad that you like it. And, you know, what it is, it's, we, they're meant so that you could place them sort of anywhere in the home. It just so happens that when we spoke to a lot of people, it's that the bedroom happens to be a place where a lot of people do their laundry. People just dump it on the bed because it's such a large surface.
Starting point is 00:02:17 The closet is usually nearby, so they fold the laundry in front of the bed and they put it away. What the workflow we sort of imagine is that, you know, you do the same things, except now you just get to dump your laundry on the bed. You walk away, you go watch a movie or, you know, have a meal. And then when you come back, it's supposed to feel like the laundry sort of magically folded and sorted themselves. And you only have to handle the part where you put it away yourself right at the end there. And yeah, we're starting with laundry folding. But you can probably imagine what a pair of robotic arms or single.
Starting point is 00:02:49 You could buy them either by itself or as a pair. you can imagine all the kind of like things that it can do depending on where you place them in the home. Okay, so for the listeners of our show that can't see this awesome video that's going on loop right now, they're kind of wondering how on earth this works, Aaron. So right now they're imagining like two bedside table lamps, but can you walk us through how it works?
Starting point is 00:03:13 Like are there like specific claws that like pinch? How do they see things? How do they know when you're out of the room and when you're not sleeping and they're going to like poke your eyes out? How does this work? Yeah, yeah. So you can sort of just imagine a floor lamp. So it's, you know, tall, skinny, single pole.
Starting point is 00:03:30 There are sort of lamp hoods at the top of the lamp that conceals everything that is robotic about this lamp. So obviously there's going to be lights inside the lamp hoods so that it can serve the basic purpose of a lamp. But with those lights, there's also robot grippers in there as well as a camera. A lot of people sort of like wonder about privacy about these things. But the great thing here is that the lamp hoods sort of conceal everything until you've given it permission to fold your laundry or do whatever the task may be. Then it's sort of like almost folds back, reveals the camera, reveals the gripper, detects the clothing, and then goes ahead and folds. Obviously, it will make sure that, you know, no one is laying in bed or on the couch or by the table because, you know, there's a variety of places where laundry clothing can happen. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:21 Okay, and how much does this thing cost? Like, I can imagine that for a troll that I hate so much, I'm willing to pay like a couple grand for it. But yeah, can you tell us how that works? Yeah, yeah. So we, I mean, right now we have some ideas like pricing is obviously a tricky one, but we want to get it to people for as cheap as possible. We're experimenting with two models.
Starting point is 00:04:46 There's sort of two camps just from the people that signed up on the wait list. I'm in direct communication with them all the time. And it's either going to be like a one-time fixed fee sub-2,000 or maybe just a few hundred dollars where you buy the lamp for the lamp itself and then pay like a subscription for the folding. We're still sort of deciding clean a basically like to come in every reason. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So we're still sort of experimenting to see what resonates the most with people. I'm happy to hear actually your guys's thoughts on what you think would be the proper pricing model. Honestly, just off the top of my head, I would be willing to pay it on a subscription level,
Starting point is 00:05:28 like how I would pay. I pay a cleaner to come in now every year, kind of like a couple of weeks and covers everything, including the laundry and the folding as well, which is a massive win. And I was wondering that if I could have something that is aesthetically pleasing to my taste and can do all the job and work for me for the cost of, I don't know, electricity or a Netflix subscription. I'm all game for that. Josh, do you have a conflicting opinion here? Yeah, as you're describing this, actually, I'm thinking about my memberships that I have between my whoop and my aura ring and kind of the differences between the two. With the
Starting point is 00:06:01 order ring, you purchase an expensive ring for about $400, then $6 a month versus the whoop that you get for free, but that you're paying $30 a month. And I kind of actually like paying a little bit more upfront with the expectation that the smaller monthly payment will be in exchange for updates and continuing to maintain the software stack. So if you were to price it maybe closer to $2,000, and instead of maybe $100 monthly fee, a $20 monthly fee, that to me feels a little more exciting
Starting point is 00:06:26 because it's manageable. I don't really have to budget too much for the subscription, and I have paid up front with the promise that, hopefully future software updates will deliver added functionality. So to me at least, that seems like the fun way to price this thing. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I sort of agree with you guys. That's sort of what I'm personally leaning on,
Starting point is 00:06:44 But the thing I'm trying to be cautious of is because I know that a lot of folks have also reached out and told me and they're kind of, you know, just sick of being tied to a bunch of subscriptions. I get where they're coming from because you don't want to feel like you're being nickel and dime for every time you want a chore done. That's not the typical relationship people have with their appliances, like a laundry machine or a dishwasher. So, yeah, I totally see where you guys come from. But we probably have to sort of test it to see what the market says. but yeah. I want to talk about design for a little bit because, I mean, obviously, the first thing that stuck out was the design. This is gorgeous.
Starting point is 00:07:19 And this was not by accident. This was a very intentional design. It looks very friendly. It doesn't look robotic or mean or anything like that. Can you walk me through the design process, how you wound up with this? Because, I mean, at first glance, we're watching the video now. It looks like they're just two fixed lampposts to a bed. There's no sign of it being a robot.
Starting point is 00:07:36 So can you walk us through just like the thought process behind designing these types of robots for the home? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I think, you know, when we set out to build this product, we didn't knew that this was going to be the thing that we built. And in fact, the first thing that we tried to build as a company is me and my co-founder and we have a small team of about six people here right now. We actually were building a humanoid first. Because we were, you know, we had just finished our PhDs and we were, you know, just, we didn't think too much about that idea. We just didn't want to do chores as most engineers, I guess, are pretty lazy. So we went in and we built a humanoid robot, two arms and two wheels, you know, got it into homes, got it into hotels, you know, got it in front of real people.
Starting point is 00:08:20 And it was only through doing that that we realized that the majority of people outside of like the tech bubble or like the, you know, the technical inclined population, which is the majority of people, they don't actually want something that's like pseudo human like. It's almost like a like a sentient being, almost like a robotic roommate that you had to share your home with. And, you know, one thing led to another. You know, people told us it was intrusive, it was been intimidating. There's no way to guarantee it sort of like falling on the child or just hitting things. And there's also mixing with this whole like, it's probably going to be majority teleoperated. So, you know, you're giving cameras and arms to people that are potentially overseas or somewhere else. you know, when all that mixed in,
Starting point is 00:09:08 we just essentially got a lot of pushback from people adopting the human or form factor into the home. So we as a team, we sort of took a step back and we sort of thought to ourselves, you know, it certainly feels like there's all these chores that people hate doing, and it certainly feels like robotics is the way to get rid of these chores, but the way that people have been approaching the problem
Starting point is 00:09:30 feels kind of the wrong way. It kind of feels like everybody is trying to take things that made sense in an industrial setting like a factory where humanoid's could make sense in a factory in my opinion
Starting point is 00:09:42 but that's only because like you could train your staff to be cautious around the robot you can draw yellow tape on the line you could sort of all these like even teleoperation makes sense in a factory because at least the robot gets hurt
Starting point is 00:09:55 that the worker doesn't right so all these concepts they all seem like they make a lot sense in the factory but it's just like when you try to take that and put it into the home it's like everything is wrong You know, again, in the home, people come from all backgrounds, all education, all profession, all different types of upbringing. You cannot possibly train every single person to be a factory employee, essentially, which like makes that whole free roaming system, multi-degrees of freedom, very, very hard to enter the home safely.
Starting point is 00:10:25 And then obviously, tell you operation, which I touched, which I touched on, it's very not private. The home is a very, very private space. The factory is not. It's a workspace. So like all these things made us realize that we needed to sort of think about robotics for the home completely differently. And I want to thank my wife here actually. The whole thing was inspired by Beauty and the Beast. We were watching Beauty and the Beast.
Starting point is 00:10:52 We were watching Beauty and the Beast one night. This is a few months ago actually. And it was like this scene. If you got seen the movie or if anybody listening, we've seen the movie, there's a scene where the furniture comes alive. And that was when we realized that, you know, we should, this is the form factor that people are familiar with. It's the form factor that has a place that it belongs in the home. And we know that nobody wakes up asking for a robot anyway. People just don't want to do chores.
Starting point is 00:11:20 So we sort of designed it into this lamp form factor where it almost feels as if the, you know, like the chore sort of like magically, you know, completes themselves. and there's never sort of like yellow tape added to your home and large cranking machines that added to your home. Yeah, I immediately thought of Beauty and the Beast when I actually saw this video. And the natural question to ask from this is you're starting off with lamps, but like what can we expect next?
Starting point is 00:11:48 Is there like a natural obvious robot that comes after the robotic arms folding laundry on the bed? There is, I will say at this very moment, we have a lot of designs of a lot of different types of robots, but we're not ready to share them yet. The ones that we for sure will build in the coming years is that there's going to be a sort of a suite of lamps. From tabletop lamps to floor lamps to lamps with multiple heads,
Starting point is 00:12:16 different styles, different architectures, we've sort of went on this deep dive of like every single lamp that's ever been invented in the history of time. And we are drawn inspirations from things that's work. you know, hundreds of years ago in terms of like the aesthetics, the designs.
Starting point is 00:12:32 And we're just basically trying to find ways to modernize them, add robotic abilities to them, and basically reinvent the lamp almost in a way, from ceiling lamps all the way down to floor lamps. I have to say, I love this obsession with not just like
Starting point is 00:12:47 singular use robots, but like a singular kind of type of furniture. And it seems pretty embedded in your philosophy for building robots. Would you say that's pretty accurate? for like what the entire company's vision is. Like, are you going to be building single-use robots that do one thing really well? Or are these going to be multi-purpose at some point?
Starting point is 00:13:08 I think they will eventually be multi-purpose. But I think, you know, like the overall mission of the company is to be able to build beautiful robots that blend beautifully into human-made worlds. And right now what that looks like are these lamps that don't look like robots essentially. But, you know, as you know, AI advances at such a, you know, fast pace, hardware does as well, technology is always changing. We don't want to limit ourselves eventually to just single purpose, single use. It's just so that right now that is the only feasible way to deploy such a system into the home in the next few years. I'm curious how you view the difference between the
Starting point is 00:13:47 single use versus humanoid robots, if it's an intermediary step or if it's a permanent fixture, because it feels like the reason we're making so many humanoys is just because the world is built for humans, right? And it's just very easy to integrate something that has the same form as us. And these narrow use feel, at least right now, as kind of an intermediary step where they're just really good at a few things, mostly because humanoid robots aren't that great, and they're kind of, they need to tell operation, like you mentioned before. And there's a lot more maintenance required for a complex humanoid. Do you view these narrow use robots as an intermediate step to humanoid, or do you think they're like a permanent fixture as we move forward and progress with
Starting point is 00:14:22 robots. Yeah, yeah, I think more of the latter than the former. And I have so many thoughts on this, actually. But I'll sort of start with one at a time. Yeah, please. I think that the way I sort of imagine this, how this plays out is that, you know, like the humanoid form factor obviously is great. Like, again, like I see so many benefits of it, especially in a factory setting.
Starting point is 00:14:47 Because there's just so many use cases where it doesn't make sense to sort of have like a single device that handles all. There's always these kind of like last mile type of tasks where you would need an adaptable form factor to be able to handle. But the thing is, you know, the one analogy that I like to use is that in the best case scenario, a humanoid robot, let's just like sort of scale it to the limits. Let's imagine that they are basically as good as us. So they look like us, talk like us, you know, think like us, act like us. I know there's a future where they're actually better than us. But for the sake of this, I just assume that they cap that they cap at exactly like us. Perfect.
Starting point is 00:15:27 And in this world, so they become indistinguishable, right? This is the best case scenario, which in my personal opinion will take a few miracles and probably a few decades to get to. But in this world, I personally think that a version of that world already exists right now. And it's that you guys hire cleaners to sort of enter your home. And these are sort of like, you know, people that you hire to do labor. But the thing is, like, there's this stat, that's the surprising stat that I found in a states, which is that 70% of people, you know, if they're able to afford such a help, they still choose not to. And I used to think that it's because people can't afford it. That's right.
Starting point is 00:16:11 They don't want it. But the truth actually is that 70% of people who can afford it still don't choose to do it. And the reason quite simply is just that humans are territorial. The home is a private space. There's sort of this trust that you're giving to others when they enter your personal space that a lot of people don't find comfortable with. In fact, I think another surprising stat was that I think it was like a quarter of the people if they were given free and home help, they would still reject it for the same reason.
Starting point is 00:16:41 So, you know, when all that blended in together, you know, at best, case scenario, I'm sure that there is a segment of the market that will happily welcome a humanoid into their home. But I'm willing to bet that the majority of the market, at least for the home use case, simply just want tools that they can sort of like control on demand, that they can use. They're still very much the owner of their space and they're not sharing sort of with like a robotic roommate. I mean, that's also one of the reasons why people don't prefer to live with roommates unless it's for companionship, but I don't think that robot companionship
Starting point is 00:17:17 is something that's going to happen. It's not a robot thing. I think it's a human thing. So that's sort of like how I see. We're essentially addressing the market that simply just don't want to share their space, whether it be with another human or a pseudo-human per se. Do you think people are coming around to that idea
Starting point is 00:17:34 as robots become more prevalent in the world to let them into their spaces? Because I think a lot of people, in the case of AI, they have slowly kind of ease their way into it. And then there reaches a point, I mean, I'm thinking of chat GPT when I think of this, where they just fully unload everything. And now they, it becomes their therapist, their psychologist, their personal assistant, everything. It just learns everything about their life. There was some reluctance to get to that point, but eventually they've reached that point. Do you see a similar thing happening here?
Starting point is 00:18:02 Even just with the pre-orders and feedback you've gotten from the product, is this something that people are willing to put in their homes? Or does there still need to be more work in terms of safety. I mean, if I'm thinking, like, I just had a child, let's say, and that child sitting in the bed. Well, no, I didn't. I'm just using a rhetorical example. In the case that I did, let's say that I have one just like laying in my bed over here. And there are two robotic arms sitting there. Do I trust that the robotic arms are not going to harm that child in any sort of glitch? And do you think people are having trouble getting over that idea, or do you see it just being this natural stepping stone and people are on board and ready to go? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think,
Starting point is 00:18:40 you know, the world, the average home has never, I think that even the average person has never even interacted with a robot in their life. I think that this is like a sort of a brand new category of product that will for sure, you know, sort of take some time for people to get used to. I think that, you know, obviously we're going to have the early adopters that come on and they get super excited about such a thing. And the way we're framing our product is that it's both safer and more private than the alternative home robotic solution, simply just because you as a resident in the home
Starting point is 00:19:16 know at all times where the robot is. So, for example, if you had placed your child on a bed and you had a human or a robot, maybe you cannot fully protect that child from the human robot because the human robot sort of has free will to roam. But because you already know that the robotic arms are there by the bed, which is where you place it, it's not going to leave. Maybe the question is more so, like, if you don't trust it, then you probably place your be somewhere else, you know, because you mentally know that that is like a robotic space
Starting point is 00:19:45 almost part of your home. I feel like we're kind of broaching the topic of humans being comfortable around robots. And if I'm being honest with you, Aaron, I was kind of a robot hater like a couple months ago because I was like, what are these like random sci-fi things that they must be all janky? I see videos of them falling over. Josh and I actually watched the. robot Olympics that were held in China over the weekend. And most of them were kind of like fails and they were super entertaining.
Starting point is 00:20:17 I'm kind of trying to figure out whether people are getting more comfortable with these robots and kind of like co-living around them, right? How important or real do you think this phenomenon is? Do you think this is just kind of like a viral trend? And I know like you've got a company that's building these robots, probably for decades from now. But can you help us help our listeners understand the pitch of why we're? robots are going to like essentially take over the world over the next couple of decades?
Starting point is 00:20:45 Yeah. I mean, I hope they don't take over the world, to be honest. I hope that they, I hope that they, you know, make the world a better place, I guess I should say. I think that robots are at the end of the day a tool and they shouldn't be sort of like autonomous self-thinking beings that act on their own behalf with their own interests. I think that that's going to be a dangerous world. And I don't know if I, yeah, personally, I don't know if I want to live in a world like that. For in terms of like, sort of like, you know, getting, getting robots into the home, again, like our main thing is that we want to free people's time. Like when you think about it, it's 24 hours in the day and it's like people sleep for eight hours, work for eight hours. The remaining eight hours of day, probably a good chunk of that is commute or chores or whatever.
Starting point is 00:21:33 So even if you could just save someone like 30 minutes an hour, that's like a good percentage of the time in their day, right? that that's freed up. And I think that's ultimately a good thing. And I think the way that we sort of introduce robots into the home is that we have to be very, very intentional with messaging, which is that, and I think this can only be achieved
Starting point is 00:21:55 with a single purpose we're about to start with, which is that you have to be able to tell people what it can and cannot do. Don't tell people that's general purpose. Don't tell people that it's a human assistant that you can ask anything of. Just say that, you know, at least for us,
Starting point is 00:22:08 is that it will fold laundry, And this is how you interact with it. You dump the laundry on the bed. You walk away. It can be voice activation. It can be a button like a dishwasher. It could be an app that you sort of log into and you give a permission to activate. And only when you do that very, very clearly and you tell people exactly what the workspace is, like something that I like, from like the VR world, you can sort of like draw this boundary around you when you're in the living room.
Starting point is 00:22:34 And as you sort of approach the walls, it kind of lights up and, you know, you know, you know what to go back. it's like similar concept of a robots in the home. Like I think robots need to have like a fixed space that people know where it's operating. You should be able to know when it's on and when it's off. And you should know exactly what it can and cannot do. I think that's how you would be able to manage expectations. And that's how you earn trust. And that's how I think you'll be able to build like a generation of people that might grow up with one of these lamps to have that positive connotation and positive interaction with robotics.
Starting point is 00:23:07 You keep referring to this home, which I love. So let's play a game. Five to ten years from now, what does the average home look like in a world where home robots are a thing? What else are they doing aside from folding clothes? Yeah, yeah. So folding laundry is like our wedge into the home just because it's like a, and I'm sure you already know this, like it's like a very annoying task that people would actually pay money for. And once the internal saying is, you know, success to us is a loom in every room,
Starting point is 00:23:44 which is that we see a world where people own multiple of these lamps. And depending on where they're placed in the home, they'll do whatever task that makes sense in that context. So, for example, a loom that's in the kitchen might be able to help you with meal prepping, whereas a loom that's in your, you know, library might be able to help you with tidying your bookshelf. and the whole idea is that you kind of have these limited range and limited pockets of where the robot is
Starting point is 00:24:11 and yeah it will do whatever we almost wanted to be I sort of mentioned the other interview I said that there will be like an app store almost where you'll be able to be down different apps and you know like gift wrapping is an app steaming is a nap laundry folding is an app meal prepping is a nap
Starting point is 00:24:30 Oh super cool like sorting of knick-knacks around the home, whatever is a nap, and it's all enabled by the same form factor. We see this almost like kind of like the standard, almost the default, the foundational robot platform that exists
Starting point is 00:24:47 in every home that you can now call to get chores. Or get tasks that maybe it's not necessarily chores. So if laundry is the wedge, what comes next? What other cool, weird things can we expect to come from these arms? Well, we're going to keep pushing you on
Starting point is 00:25:04 this iron. Come on. Give us something. There's like a, so the way I see it is there's like almost like three phases. Maybe I'll say this. There's three phases of how we're going to, how we're going to increase the capabilities. And it's all going to revolve around the same sort of form factor. So phase one is, any kind of like sort of inanimate object type manipulation. So laundry floating being one, but bed making or general sorting, meal prepping, tidying, iron, steaming, you know, all that kind of just like random stuff around the home. You know, we want to get really good at this stuff before we move on to the second phase,
Starting point is 00:25:42 which is what I would call like the non-invasive human contact type applications. And those include things like massages, therapy, rehab, things that you could sort of get while you're sitting on the couch or laying in bed. Massages is one big one that people love. So that's something that we're going to go into. But again, anything with human contact, obviously you want to be a lot more careful. That's why we want to be slow with our rollout to make sure that these arms are stable. They're precise.
Starting point is 00:26:08 They're sort of compliant and they're safe. And then ultimately we go towards this like phase three, which I want to say it's more like an invasive human contact. Where we sort of see this world where, you know, here you have these two pairs of robotic arms that's in your home somewhere. And we think that this can open up a world of health care applications. where doctors can remote into these arms and deliver care right in the comfort of your home. So an example could be like, you know, you cut yourself downstairs, you go upstairs, and now there's these like professional arms with a healthcare app or something, and you can get stitched up immediately in, you know, while they're in bed or whatever it is,
Starting point is 00:26:53 without having to drive like two hours just to wait six hours in an emergency room and see a doctor for like two minutes. we think that ultimately, you know, the most scalable way to health care is through the home. And to do that is through, I think, robots that have the ability to manipulate soft objects, started with long-trip voting, have the ability to be careful and have the ability to have already earned people's trust in homes. So when you ask what the future of home could look like, I almost see a world where there's almost like, you know, you have like a kitchen, which is like where you go to cook, you have a living room. you have the bedroom, but there should also be almost like a health hub, which probably is going to be doubled on as your bedroom where you can receive care without having to leave your home.
Starting point is 00:27:40 So that's kind of like the full spectrum of potential things that I think can happen without changing the form factor too much. Okay. Now, I want to talk about timelines, and I know these are really hard and fuzzy, but you mentioned a bit earlier that humanoid robots that look and feel just like humans, that line that we drew, that probably takes decades. So this will take less than. decades, I'm going to assume. And in fact, on the website, it says 2026, by the time we can expect,
Starting point is 00:28:04 I guess, the first version. So what does it look like? I mean, in this category specifically, but broadly speaking, how long is it until the average person do you think can expect to have a robot inside of their home? Is it going to be next year? Is it going to be in the next five years, decade? Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about like mainstream adoption, that's going to take at least a decade, right? I think the last time the home, the home received like a huge sort of like mass tech adoption was in the 50s where things like the microwave
Starting point is 00:28:32 and all these kind of like appliances made like a huge adoption I think I saw a stat that was like before the 50s it was like under 30% adoption after the 50s
Starting point is 00:28:41 it was like above 80% adoption or something like that but it did take over like that decade. For us we will ship our robots actually there's an early beta tester club now
Starting point is 00:28:52 and they're going to get there six months from now and these are primarily folks in the Bay Area that have reached out specifically to me and we're basically try going to install, I'll personally go to their homes and install these systems for them
Starting point is 00:29:03 in the next six or so months. And the goal is that 12 months from now, we have a pretty large wait list, but we're just basically going to sort of like get people off of that main wait list starting 12 months from now at a sort of a slow pace, probably geographically closer to the Bay Area first and then expand sort of nationwide from there. That's exciting. So now I want to, ask how practical is it, are they going to look like the arms in this video? Because I'm assuming that was a rendering, right? And you guys are building and designing. And I know a lot of times to create the actual thing in a factory is a lot harder than designing the pixels on a screen.
Starting point is 00:29:40 So what does the process look like to actually make it look as elegant as the lamps that you showed in the rendering? And do you feel confident about your ability to get there? Yeah, yeah. So those renderings are designed by our engineers. And so they're not, I don't know if I mentioned this earlier. Some people thought that they were like AI generated videos, but I always say I wish it was AI generated so I didn't have to pay so much money for it. Money was that. That's beautiful. But, yes, thank you.
Starting point is 00:30:06 It will get pretty close to it. I have like a segment of the arm here. And this is spec to sort of the actual width of the shaft. So that's how it will be. These are like sort of the lampers and these are actuated robotic sort of groupers in here. Yeah. So it will be. roughly that. It might be a little bit shorter.
Starting point is 00:30:31 And the claws, I think, I don't want to call them claws because it might scare people, but the artists, it was my fault because I didn't catch it. The claws looked a bit metallic in the video, but they're not meant to be metallic. They're supposed to be rubberish. So some people I pointed that out saying they look almost like surgical tools. I'm like in phase three, they'll start looking a little bit more like surgical tools, but not right now. I admire the fact that you are making the home look different for the first time in 50 years. I think a lot of the stagnation has happened in this where we talk about this lot in the world of Adams, where just if I go into my grandmother's house, it hasn't changed in 50 years, but it doesn't
Starting point is 00:31:10 look like it doesn't belong in this century aside from like maybe the plastic on the couch and like some outdated ornamentaries. Exactly. But in terms of technology, I mean, there's a TV on the wall, there's a microwave in the kitchen. It's all relatively the same. And I think a huge part that moves us forward into this future looking like the future is robots. And a big part of that is robots in our home. It's making us feel more comfortable
Starting point is 00:31:29 with them around. It's making them beautiful but functional. And they're there to serve a purpose and to just kind of enhance everyone's life. So I really admire you for trying to tackle this problem, for doing it in a way that looks so great for hopefully shipping these out the door very soon. Is there anything other parting words you want to share, how people can get access to them, get on the pre-order line, what they can expect? Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, just a little bit of on that point. I think somebody mentioned to me very recently. He's like the only new device
Starting point is 00:32:01 between my house and my grandma's house is an air friar. That was like the latest breakthrough in the home, which I thought was kind of funny because like you said, TVs existed, refrigerators existed and all these other things. So yeah, so we're hopefully we're hopefully, you know, entering into
Starting point is 00:32:19 a new era where home robotics will make the next big paradigm shift in the home. and we want to be a part of that. And we want to do that in a way that makes people feel comfortable. We want to do that in a way where it makes your home still looking like a home
Starting point is 00:32:33 and beautiful and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, happy to be on the pod today. If anybody listening is interested, you can check us out at Sincere AI on X, on Twitter. That's where we typically post our updates. All right. Well, this has been super exciting.
Starting point is 00:32:56 I feel like we're at like an iPhone moment. I know you haven't released the product yet, but we're getting there. This is the first robot, as Josh said, kind of like that appeal to me and that I would willingly have in my home and I think my girlfriend would be chill about having in my home as well versus some six-foot-five humanoid robot. It sounds like these robots aren't just going to be used for practicality, so chores around the house, but also potentially leisure in the form of massage. and also vital healthcare
Starting point is 00:33:26 in the form of like doctor-like work that they can remotely access. So all round, this has been a super cool conversation and Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. For the listeners, if you enjoyed this,
Starting point is 00:33:36 please like, subscribe and share it with all your friends and we'll see you on the next one. Awesome. See you guys. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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