Robots Like Us - EP 92 Andrew Kiguel and Matt McMullen From Realbotix

Matt McMullen (0:00)

All of those robots that I've seen in any of these events are remote controlled. There's no AI.

Andrew Kiguel (0:05)

If you think about loneliness, something like 25% of the world identifies as lonely. If you're a 75-year-old man who's widowed, you're not gonna go on Tinder to, you know, go on a bunch of coffee dates.

Matt McMullen (0:15)

I think that having a human-like embodiment for a robot and for an artificial intelligence creates a bridge between humans and technology that can't be done in any other way.

Andrew Kiguel (0:27)

Harvard came out with a report about nine months ago, and the number one use case for AI, not that there aren't several, but the number one was companionship. For all the people that think it's strange, I get at least five or six messages a week on LinkedIn email everywhere, which is like, I'm so lonely, can you please design and sell something to me that will solve my loneliness?

Matt McMullen (0:46)

So what I wanted was, I wanted the face to come off, like Westworld.

Andrew Kiguel (0:50)

So this is how the faces would peel off of a robot, a robot that can do karate chops and has a 30-minute battery life. What is that good for? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors on social media. I'm the only CEO of a robotics company that's got to worry about the dress for the robots and them having nice manicures and nice hairstyles.

Ashlee Vance (1:08)

If you are watching this episode, you will see right away that I have a couple of robotic companions behind me, and they look quite human-like. They come from a company called Realbotix. We're joined by its two top executives today, Andrew Kiguel and Matt McMullen. This is going to be a little bit of an adventure. Realbotix is trying to make human-like humanoids. They do have a background in making real dolls, companions sometimes for emotional support and sometimes for sexual support. But Realbotix is creating a clean break with that past, and it is meant to create a new type of human-like robot that's out in the world. Maybe being a greeter at a hotel, offering help at a hospital or even being something like a tutor. They're full of artificial intelligence technology to speak and hear and communicate with you. The robots have a lot of animatronic details. Instead of doing the all-metal factory worker-looking robot or the generic ones we see that are supposed to be doing tasks inside of homes, a lot of these robots have these circular blank faces. Realbotix is all in on making these things look realistic. They've got animatronic components. They've got artificial intelligence software built in so that you can talk to and hear from the robots there. A little weird, I guess, for a lot of people and I get it. I also think Realbotix has put more thought and artistry and philosophy in what they're making than just about anyone else. I think they've got a bit of work still to do, but I appreciate the care and effort that they're putting into this because I suspect, I suspect robots won't be generic and roboty looking universally. I think we will have things that are human like and somebody should be trying to do this and somebody should be trying to do it well. So we went to Las Vegas to their headquarters, I sat down, we had an interview. We're going to have a complete video coming with Andrew and Matt where we see how these robots are made and this will be on our YouTube channel. I go on a drive with one of the robots, Aria. We go down the Las Vegas Strip. It's going to be fantastic.

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It would make a huge difference to people finding this show. I think you'll enjoy this chat. It is a little strange. Quite a different take on robotics.

Fascinating stuff. As ever, I am Ashlee Vance. This is Core Memory. Here we go.

Gentlemen, hello. Thank you for having us here. We're in Las Vegas at Realbotix HQ. This is exciting. There's so many places to go with this story. How would you guys, just to... I want to give the viewers, and you should absolutely be watching this episode, not just listening to it. But yeah, like, I mean, how do you guys usually describe what you do?

Andrew Kiguel (4:57)

Sure.

So we are an AI software company and a robotics hardware company. We sort of marry both into an all-in-one solution, but we've come up with sort of a different way of thinking about AI and robotics that I think is very unique and different from what everybody else in the world is doing. Yeah.