The Robotics Stack
00:00:00 · Oskar, Leo
[00:00:00] S0: Hello. Welcome to the Robotics Stack podcast. Today, we're joined by Xara, founder of Somnia, to explore the engineering behind intimacy robots and what happens when AI companions move beyond the screen and into our lives. This is episode 24. My name is Oskar. [00:00:18] S1: And my name is Leo. Thank you very much for being with us today, Xara. We are so excited to address this topic. We already did an episode about it, but just the two of us actually, and I believe this is one of most successful episodes so far so we are super happy to have someone actually working on this topic right now. Obviously we are going to dive a little bit in your background and the journey that led you to create Somnia, your current company. But first I would like to ask you what made you run for it and decide, okay, this is the right time to go into the robot company industry?
00:00:53 · Xara
[00:00:53] S2: So, I started this company at the end of last year, December, and so far we have this incredible journey. We have developed three generation machines, and the machine has its body, and it has a robotic face, and it has full companion, features. So we decided to go into space, for a few reasons. Number one is that we observed a very interesting phenomenon happening right now in the world. There's a loneliness epidemic. One in six person in the world right now experience some kind of loneliness. So there's 8,000,000,000 people in the world. Roughly 1,500,000,000 people are experiencing loneliness right now. I'm 32. I was born in, 1994. Right now, I'm still single and lonely. But there's over a billion people just like myself. Right? So we we think, loneliness is a issue that needs to be addressed, and that's one of the reasons why we go for companion robots. Second thing is that we observed a few key trends in robotics that allows us to build a very good companion robots, which I will show demos in a little bit. First of all, there's some breakthrough in, robotics algorithm. Using robotics algorithm, the latest, motion control algorithm, we're able to make the robots perform any kind of actions very stably, especially when it comes to intimacy actions. Second thing is that there's breakthrough in new materials. Our robots has three parts. There's internal skeleton, just like a human. There are three d printed muscle parts, which is using a TPU, three d printed, soft kinda, elasticity polymer. And on top of there's skin. So we're building robots in a way so it almost represents a real human. It has skeleton, muscle, and skin. So we are so excited about technology because for the first time in human history, we are able to build a robot that looks, I would say, 80 to even 90% like a human. And in the future, maybe it has no difference between a robot and human when it comes to appearance. So third thing is that we have to think the era of AI. So the robots right now is fully AI controlled. So using the latest language model, you're able to converse and talk to robots in real time. Using the latest memory technology and agentic memory, we're able to remember whatever user says to robots and be able to have the robots respond to user in a very low latency fashion and in a very empathetic way.
00:02:45 · Xara, Leo
We wanna build robots so that it has very high emotional intelligence versus just purely high IQ. We believe the high EQ robots is much more important than the high IQ robots. So we build robots in a way so that no matter its intimacy, no matter its companionship, it's optimized for connecting with humans emotionally. And in order to do that, we believe, number one, has to talk to humans very well. Number two, it has to look like a human. Right? Human skin, human body, very similar. Number three is that you have to behave like a human. You have to social like a human. You have to perform any kind of actions or any kind of behavior here just like humans. So we are very lucky that, there's breakthrough in material, breakthrough in AI and robotics, and breakthrough in consumer electronics, also in supply chain that allows us to build this kind of robots very fast. [00:03:28] S1: I see. That's a pretty strong vision you have here for sure. Pretty thorough. Already everything in mind. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Were you in robotics before? I understand you are a repeat founder. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:03:28 · Leo, Xara, Oskar
[00:03:28] S1: I see. That's a pretty strong vision you have here for sure. Pretty thorough. Already everything in mind. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Were you in robotics before? I understand you are a repeat founder. So can you tell us a little bit about that? [00:03:41] S2: Yeah. So I was actually trained in physics and computer science. I was a computer software engineer. Robotics for me personally is a new venture. I started this company last year. But initially, when I go into robotics space, I was doing a lot of research. I was planning to go into a robotic data collection space where we collect a lot of robotic data and eventually sell it to some kind of embodied AI, you know, robotic brain company, like physical AI, SQL and so and so forth. But during the process of investigating that kind of business, I realized it's really hard to do a data collection business. Right? We wanna build, let's say, the scale AI version of robotics data, which is very hard. So... But we observe a very interesting industry. It's called dolls. Are you guys familiar with doll industry at all? [00:04:18] S0: I think here in Berlin, there is some sort of venue where you can go and you see some dolls. I mean, from personal experience, we cannot really speak, I think, but we've definitely heard about it a little bit. But tell us more if you want.
00:04:18 · Oskar, Xara, Leo
[00:04:18] S0: I think here in Berlin, there is some sort of venue where you can go and you see some dolls. I mean, from personal experience, we cannot really speak, I think, but we've definitely heard about it a little bit. But tell us more if you want. [00:04:30] S2: Yeah. So it's a it's a $10,000,000,000 industry. So doll is a industry that's growing incredibly fast. And, the revenue generated in dolls was doubling, every single year during COVID, right, from 2019 to 2022 roughly. Because people are lonely. Right? People stay at home, and they wanna interact with dolls. And I think you said earlier, Oskar, there there is in Germany something called cyber brothel where people pay some amount of money. They actually go into one of those, doll brothel and able to interact with the dolls. So it's a $10,000,000,000 industry, and every single year is growing by 2030%. But the... None of the dolls right now on the market moves. None of the dolls right now are built in a robotic fashions that can interact with humans in real time. In fact, I actually have some demos to show you guys. So, initially, this is gonna be very crazy. I I don't know if we can show any of this. [00:05:13] S1: Okay. Show us, and we can always edit.
00:05:13 · Leo, Xara
[00:05:13] S1: Okay. Show us, and we can always edit. [00:05:15] S2: Okay. Let me show you something crazy. So, again, our company was founded last year, and we have built three generation machines. But initially, when we first started our company, we didn't really have our own hardware because being a robotic hardware is very hard, as we said. So we control Unitree to have sex with real humans. This is what we did last year. So we actually attached Doodle to the the Unitree robots, which is what you guys are familiar with. It's one of the most popular, robots available on market right now. And this video actually went really viral on the Internet because it was the first time in history a male robot is interacting with female. And this is what we did last year during Christmas. Santa is a human, and Unitree is a robot. Using the laser specter with AI, we're able to make Unitree recognize the bed and is able to climb onto the bed. You guys might wonder, Unitree does not have a, you know, a a private part. So we actually create a sim card mode just for the Unitree, and we call it the Robo Pussy, just for the Unitree. We start interacting with Robo Pussy, and we move, move, move. It lays down. Oh, this video actually went viral on X for two days before we were taken down because it was so crazy. Right? It was the first time in human history that a human have sex with a robot. [00:06:17] S1: That you know of. I mean, I don't know.