The Robotics Stack
00:31:33 · Xara, Oskar, Leo
We believe we should build a future where humans and robots should live together in a symbiotic way to have real companionship and connections versus enslaving robots and make them do all kind of different task. We really believe in the missions of human and machine living together. Luckily for us, there's good enough engineers that also believe in missions and they decided to join us and build this incredible machine. And there's third thing I want to note. You said you said you said about job description. Let me show you something very interesting because we we have a job description. We have a job post for testing engineers. The basic engineer who really test the machine and interacts with the machine. We put it out for two days, and we receive 50,000 resumes. [00:32:12] S0: A lot [00:32:13] S2: of people wanna test our machine. Right? Well, and see how it works. [00:32:19] S1: It's not that difficult to hire in the end. It really depends on the job you're advertising, I guess. [00:32:23] S2: You're right. So people... The testing personnel is definitely oversubscribed. Yes. People are super interested in testing the machine. Yes. It's depending on jobs. And other engineers, obviously, is more difficult. Like, the hardest role right now to hire, I would say, is mechanical engineer. And it's really hard to find good mechanical and electrical engineer in order to work in this space.
00:32:23 · Xara, Oskar
[00:32:23] S2: You're right. So people... The testing personnel is definitely oversubscribed. Yes. People are super interested in testing the machine. Yes. It's depending on jobs. And other engineers, obviously, is more difficult. Like, the hardest role right now to hire, I would say, is mechanical engineer. And it's really hard to find good mechanical and electrical engineer in order to work in this space. [00:32:43] S0: As you said, there are some people who are very pro this type of development and have this outlook on the future that we're going to coexist. Now, obviously, there's also another camp. Did you already see some backlash online or people saying like, you you can't do this? I mean, you're not the only one doing this. I think you're very unique in the sense, like, how you do it. But I wanna hear your take, like, to have people who are very pro and maybe people who really don't like it.
00:33:07 · Xara
[00:33:07] S2: I I think you're right, Oskar. I think people come into a stream. There are people who really are absolutely... They're appalled by us. They're like, what the hell is this? And there are people who really adore us. So let me explain. People who really doesn't like us or in some extent hate us because they think that if the machine art becomes so good... Let's say the machine is so beautiful, so handsome. If people spend so much time with a machine, they don't really spend time with real humans anymore. They believe that we're making it worse. Because if all the humans spend all the time interacting with robots, they lose sense of the reality and they don't really interact with other humans anymore. Second issue that a lot of people bring to us is that they believe that if robots are so good and people have so much in relation to robots, it's gonna affect the birth rate. The birth rate right now, especially East Asia, let's say China, Japan, Korea, it's getting so low. Young people are so stressful. They don't really want kids. And I think in a lot of developed countries like in Europe, France, or Germany, the birth rate is also not very ideal. So if you have a new type of species of robots that become our companion, doesn't that also make the birth rate even go lower? So that's main... Two of the main issues that we face is that people don't think we solve the loneliness problem, or people think that we're making whole entire periphery issue worse. And there's people who really like us because they really believe that humans really need a robotic or AI companion. So AI companion by itself, a virtual AI companion is nothing new. A lot of people spend hours talking to the chattypety. A lot of people spend hours talking to character AI and so and so forth. But the difference between us is that we give AI a body, a physical form. So one of the, primal reason... One of the reasons that why a lot of people like us is that... Let let's look at this. Is that when you look at it, there are people who really needs companionship. Maybe someone who recently lose their partner, maybe someone who's very old and needs a companionship, maybe someone who is disabled, maybe someone who's just working really hard in a city like in Shenzhen, New York, Silicon Valley. They just probably don't have enough time for real life connections.
00:34:59 · Xara, Leo
There are people who are very lonely and they don't get enough love intentions. Right? They can be old, disabled. [00:35:05] S1: They can
00:35:05 · Xara
[00:35:05] S2: be young and sad and lonely. But our company believe we are a a universal company that really wants to accommodate peoples with all kind of needs. Not a lot of people are that lucky to get a a lovely part in life, but we think we can have a solution for it. We we really do believe a lot of people are lonely, and we wanna be solution to to it. In fact, when you think about it, humans does need a lot of physical touch. Right? When we have real interactions with a physical being, it increases our oxytocin, decrease our cortisol, stress hormone, and so so forth. So we really want to become a solution to loneliness epidemic rather it's something that makes it worse. So, goes back to your question. You're right that there's this dichotomy. Right? There's people who really like us, and there's people who really dislike us. But we, as a company, we just go go ahead and go forward with our missions to build the most human like robots where humans and robots can really coexist together. And that's something that we already see in a lot of movies, no matter it's in, you know, Blade Runner, you know, in games like Cyberpunk 2077. We wanna imagine a fruitful and bright future instead of something that... That's very dystopian and dark. Right? That's something that we need also address very carefully in the future because what we see right now, gentlemen, Oskar and Leo, is that this play is one of the biggest social experiment happening right now in the modern age, is that we're slowly seeing a a robot that become looking more and more like humans, and we really don't know what happens when humans spend so much time with robots. I don't know how that's gonna impact society economy. I don't know if that's how they're gonna impact people's mental or physical health, but it's a very interesting social experiment that's gonna happen. And I will say that if Somnia lab does not build a intensity of companion robots, someone else would do it anyway. Right? Yeah. We are not unique in the sense of first person's doing it. We are probably more unique in technological stack, but someone has to be the the company that really brings this to a mass market. Even though it's a company like RealDoll and Realbotix that exists before, but they're not really for mass market adoptions.
00:36:54 · Xara, Oskar
But we really wanna be a company that publicizes and be able to deliver these products to a whole entire world. [00:36:59] S0: What is gonna be the customer experience? Let's say, I'm buying such a robot from you. Do I have to set it up myself, or how do you imagine this process?