San Francisco · California · Google · TechCrunch AI
Hello Robot released the fourth iteration of its home assistance robot, Stretch, last month
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 source. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◌ Single Source
While Stretch boasts a vaguely human torso and sensor-studded head, its telescoping arm has a pair of pinchers, and it rides around on a heavy, omnidirectional wheeled base.
Key facts
- Hello Robot, founded in 2017 by CEO Aaron Edsinger, a former director of robotics at Google, and CTO Charlie Kemp, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is not building a foundation
- Stretch 4 costs an affordable-for-a-robot $30,000, which is a bit more than robots from Chinese manufacturers, although Edsinger notes that those often don’t come with sensors or software included
- Martinez, California, is about as far as you can get from Silicon Valley and still be in the San Francisco Bay Area
- When Stretch’s batteries run down, lights around its “eyes” glow, “it looks angry,” Blaine Matulevich, an engineer at the company, jokes
Summary
Martinez, California, is about as far as you can get from Silicon Valley and still be in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hello Robot released the fourth iteration of its home assistance robot, Stretch, last month. When Stretch’s batteries run down, lights around its “eyes” glow, “it looks angry,” Blaine Matulevich, an engineer at the company, jokes. Hello Robot, founded in 2017 by CEO Aaron Edsinger, a former director of robotics at Google, and CTO Charlie Kemp, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is not building a foundation model or promising to take over every job a human can do. While the latest advances in artificial intelligence promise more capabilities for robots, there is a dearth of useful training data.