It's hard to know where to focus when talking to Christoph Koestall. The contents of his jam-packed Palo Alto garage are drawing attention. Immediately to his right stands a tower of electrical components dotted with flashing lights. On the left side is the workbench and the top of the machine tool.
Red industrial beams run through the ceiling above. For those who have spent time in a robotics lab, this element is immediately recognizable as the gantry system used to stabilize the robot during the testing phase.
In fact, at its far end, the top of the robot's head is barely visible, peering over Mr. Korstall's shoulder as he logs into the meeting. I asked if a ceiling-mounted system was used to test his system's bipedal robots. He answered in the affirmative, then added that the team has moved to a different, less traditional system: $80 coat racks.
After taking a peek inside Kind Humanoid's chaotic workspace, one thing's for sure. That said, the spirit of Silicon Valley's dormant do-it-yourself computing scene may have mostly fallen in price, but it's not completely dead.
Videos posted by robotics startups are infused with the same charm. Kind's early Mona prototypes look Frankenstein-like together, like props from an '80s movie about two kids building robots for a science fair.
Image credit: Kind Humanoid
At first glance, it's hard to know what to make of it. Korstall has a Silicon Valley pedigree that belies the chaotic scene, having recently spent a year working on robotics as part of the now-defunct Google Brain team.
Kind Humanoid's three-man team recently won the championship in Yves Béhar. The highly sought-after designer said he first visited Korstor's garage in late 2022 or early 2023.
“I was immediately fascinated by two things,” he says. “One of the things is literally seeing a robot come out of a little lab, seeing body parts coming out of a 3D printer, and seeing the motors and actuators and these elements inside those parts. The other thing was the efficiency and the sense of speed, which I found very exciting.”
Earlier this month, Kind featured Béhar's rendering of a humanoid robot. It's an alien combination of angles and shapes, as whimsical as the homemade robot beneath it. The robot is covered in soft white with rounded edges to match. It's as if someone is trying to build a human-shaped figure from a joint industrial arm.
The robot end effector can be recognized as an analogue of the human hand. However, the feet are more hoof-like. Upon closer inspection, these appear to be a pair of working joints that stabilize the bipedal robot. A diamond-shaped head is mounted on an incredibly thin neck. Adding to the dream-like quality of the rendering is a cloudy blue sky displayed on a small visor-like screen.
It's surreal in design. Béhar borrowed aesthetic cues from the Belgian painter René Magritte.
“We start exploring ways to use these cloud background images to convey the robot's intentions and what the robot is currently doing. Are they thinking? Are they reflecting? Interesting. Will it give us an answer? That's why the face is so important. Its orientation gives a sense of purpose and connection.”
Image credit: Kind Humanoid
To avoid tripping over the uncanny valley effect, the researchers deliberately avoided creating robots that looked too human. This system is a marked contrast to the strict Stormtrooper designs employed by the likes of Tesla and Figure. In this sense, form follows function. Kind imagines Mona as the caretaker of the house.
Most humanoid manufacturers are targeting industrial environments first, with plans to eventually bring this technology to home environments. There are many reasons for this, many of which boil down to simple economics. Automakers tend to have more cash than managers. Companies can invest in these technologies to help scale up for mass production.
This is why Kind's three-person team is focusing its efforts here because other humanoid manufacturers don't tackle housing in the short term. “The industrial market is very crowded, so we're not going to compete in that market,” Kostall said. “Ironically, the argument for building humanoids is not the strongest in the industrial market, which is served very well in many ways by specialized robots. It becomes very beautiful and powerful. [there’s] Diverse movement across stairs and cluttered environments. ”
Initial customers are likely to include care facilities and residences for seniors who want to maintain their independence. The advanced robot market is largely untapped due to its aging population. Most commercial works focus on transporting humanoids to warehouse or factory sites.
All of this feels almost impossibly far away. Perhaps it's Mr. Kind's indifference to fundraising, an act of passive defiance alien to Silicon Valley: rent protection.
Image credit: Kind Humanoid
“Our team is focused on the innovation part,” says Kostor. “It's not something you can solve by just throwing money at it. It requires capital efficiency and thoughtful experimentation.”
He added that Kind is working on building the first dozen Mona robots for field testing early next year. It's a statement that seems every bit as surreal as Béhar's product designs. I gesture to the robot behind Korstor, noting that there's still a huge amount of daylight between the DIY Frankenbot and Magritte-inspired renderings on display in early videos. I did.
He points out that the muscular robot that frequently appears in Kind's videos was the first prototype. He moves the conference call outside, where parts of the robot are spray-painted on the ground. These form the outer shell of the robot, resulting in a design closer to what Béhar envisioned.
“Most parts can be injection molded,” says Kohstall. “So they can be mass-produced and built cheaply.”