Automated with Brian Heater

Companion robots are entering a new stage of development, and Andromeda is one of the companies pushing that shift forward. The earliest version of Abi began as a simple prototype, yet it revealed something important. High quality interaction in age tech depends as much on reliability, latency, and engagement as it does on mechanical design. The market needed systems that could sustain meaningful connection at scale. Andromeda’s work has focused on that challenge. Abi’s evolution has moved from a lightweight 3D printed shell to a platform designed for consistent interaction, emotional responsiveness, and deployment inside real assisted living environments. The next iteration, Genesis Abi, builds on that foundation with improved sensing, better motion capability, and a broader interaction model shaped by direct feedback from residents and care providers. The company’s recent 15 million dollar Series A signals the growing demand for robotics that support aging populations with reliability and empathy. Age tech is becoming more sophisticated, and the bar for companion systems is rising quickly. Andromeda’s progress shows what is possible when interaction quality becomes the central design goal. Read here and subscribe to Automated: https://lnkd.in/ehJ342Ue Grace Brown Bryan Balin Hussein Salem Dominic Taranto Mary Mortos

Construction isn’t slow to adopt robotics because people don’t care about innovation. It’s slow because the margins are thin, the risks are high, and one bad decision can wipe out an entire year’s profit. As Tessa Lau put it in our recent Automated episode, the industry is hidebound for a reason: when your average margin is three percent, “doing things differently” isn’t bold — it’s dangerous. That’s why automation in construction only works when it’s not just better… but 10x better. More accurate. More consistent. More reliable than any manual workflow could ever be. When technology removes risk instead of adding to it, the adoption curve changes fast. Full episode at https://hubs.la/Q03X0tWH0 #AutomatedPodcast #ConstructionTech #Robotics #Automation Dusty Robotics

Subscribed for our newsletter yet? You would have already seen this story. Adrian Macneil has a unique vantage point on the current wave of humanoid and physical AI development. Before cofounding Foxglove, he led infrastructure engineering at Cruise. He left in 2021, three years before GM restructured the autonomous taxi division and folded it into other efforts. At Foxglove, that same focus on infrastructure became the foundation of the company’s approach. Physical AI depends on enormous volumes of data, and robotics teams need tools that make that data searchable, organized, and usable. In 2022, the company introduced MCAP, a file container format for recording and cataloging robotics data. It has since been adopted by ROS 2 and NVIDIA Isaac and has become a common building block for robotics teams working across sensing, navigation, and perception. MacNeil points to four forces driving this moment in physical AI. Hardware has improved significantly. AI models have advanced. Broader economic and geopolitical trends have accelerated investment and reshoring. And talent has expanded across the ecosystem. The result is a growing need for reliable data infrastructure. Factory floors, farms, and warehouses all generate high volumes of real-world robotics data, and teams rely on the ability to store, search, and visualize it to understand system behavior and improve performance. Read the story and subscribe: https://hubs.la/Q03WTLqr0

Robotics in Australia is growing fast, and Andromeda Co-Founder and CEO Grace Brown is one of the founders shaping that momentum. In this new episode of the podcast, she explains how Australia built a strong robotics R&D environment and why the country is becoming a global destination for robotics hardware development. Grace also shares her journey from studying mechatronics to leading a robotics company. She talks about the value of being a generalist, how early engineering work prepared her for the leadership demands of a founder and why broad technical skills are so important in the early stages of building a robotics product. Watch the full episode here: https://hubs.la/Q03WsnxW0 #Automation #Robotics #RoboticsRAndD #Mechatronics #RoboticsEngineering #A3Automated

People quit jobs. Not bosses. Dianne Huiwen Eldridge, now at Google AI has seen this time and time again over her career and knows how important it is to provide support to employees on their way up. Hear Dianne talk about mentorship and much more: automated.fm

🤖NEW EPISODE ALERT 🤖 Back when everything ran on paper checks and mail, @Dusty Robotics founder and CEO Tessa Lau looked at her monthly bill routine and thought: “Let’s build a robot that can write and mail checks.” Today, she calls that idea exactly what it was: the wrong kind of automation. It would have sped up the chore without addressing the real problem, which was moving money from one account to another. The true breakthrough turned out to be online bill pay, not a robot holding a pen. Tessa walks through why so many teams still automate around the surface task instead of the underlying workflow, and how that mindset shift ultimately shaped her company's approach to robotics in construction. Full episode: https://lnkd.in/eP7M6E2u

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The latest Automated newsletter features a story that every robotics founder will recognize. Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau shared a moment from the early days that shows how unpredictable, stressful, and strangely funny real-world testing can be. A 100-pound robot, a makeshift ladder, some rope, and a startup team hoping the next five minutes wouldn’t decide their entire future. The demo survived the descent, but the chaos didn’t end there. On the jobsite, the prototype drifted off its perfect straight line and marked up the floor in the wrong place. The superintendent banned the team on the spot. It was the kind of moment that becomes a turning point only after you make it out the other side. What stands out in Tessa’s reflections is the value of building in public. Robotics doesn’t reward secrecy. You only get a few real chances to test your ideas, and those tests have to happen in the field, with people watching, reacting, and giving you the feedback that shapes the next version. Dusty learned this early, and it shaped the path toward the FieldPrinter that is now trusted across the industry. It is a reminder that progress in robotics rarely looks clean. The mistakes, the messy tests, and the uncomfortable feedback are part of the process. When a superintendent checks your work with a measuring tape and finds it dead-accurate, that moment carries far more weight because of everything it took to get there. Click to read here and subscribe to our newsletter! https://lnkd.in/ee-G-eC9 #Automation #Robotics #StartupStories #A3Automated Newsletter

Some companies in robotics still have that classic Silicon Valley feel, and Innate is one of them. They started out in a Palo Alto garage earlier this year and only recently moved into a real office. Even with more space, CEO Axel Peytavin took the interview call from under a desk in their machining room so he wouldn’t interrupt a team meeting. It’s the kind of detail that tells you exactly where they are in the startup journey. Axel drew a comparison that stuck with me. In the early days of personal computing, people were building incredible hardware, but there was no clear way for everyday developers to actually use it. Robotics feels a lot like that right now. Lots of progress, lots of excitement, but not enough accessible tools for the people trying to build on top of it. Innate is trying to change that. Their goal is to make robotics development feel more like working with a polished, reliable platform instead of something only large companies can fully tap into. Read the story: https://hubs.la/Q03V7KHt0