While some tech companies have lofty goals like transforming drug discovery or mining metals from asteroids through AI, others aim to solve some of the most infuriating everyday problems faced by ordinary people. Tennibot falls into the latter category, and wants to pick up tennis balls for you.
Haisam Eletravi, co-founder and CEO of Tenibot, said in a recent episode of TechCrunch's podcast “Found” that he's been involved in tennis his whole life. As a child, his parents wanted his sister to become a tennis star, so they tasked Eletravi with practicing with her. A few years later, while earning his PhD in civil engineering from Auburn University, he started playing tennis again and remembered his least favorite task: retrieving the balls after a session.
“I've always hated picking up tennis balls,” Eletravi says. “Whether I was practicing my serves on the board machine or taking lessons, spending time making balls was always frustrating for me, so I took the problem into my own hands.”
Eletravi says his first model was a radio-controlled car that picked up tennis balls, but they've come a long way since then. Models on the market today use AI and computer vision to recognize and pick up tennis balls, but also avoid people and obstacles. He acknowledges that this may sound like a tennis Roomba, and noted that iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner became an investor after seeing the company's exhibit at CES.
“She played a critical role in helping us avoid the pitfalls that are common for early robotics and AI companies,” Eletravi said.
Eletravi also spoke about what TennisBot's technological development was like and how the company navigated the patent process, including purposefully patenting the device for “round objects” rather than just tennis balls so that it could be expanded to sports like pickleball.
He also talked about why Tennibot has a flat management structure, why they're not leaning into founder mode, and how tennis bonds the whole team.