Walden isn’t sure why people like their robot’s slightly asymmetric head, but they do.
For a while there, it seemed as though robotics as a whole was stuck in amad rushtowards buildinghumanoid robotsmostly because it was very possible (and very lucrative) to do so, even without near-term goals that were necessarily realistic. Some of the magic of those first couple of years of the humanoid explosion has stuck around, but there’s also been an industry-wide sobering leading topointed questions about practicality and value. In other w…
On 15 July,Walden Robotics emerged from stealthwith US $300 million in funding at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Walden is a spinout ofToyota Research Institute(TRI), and it’s spent the last 10 or so years working on hard problems in robotics with the goal of transitioning from research to real-world applications. That seems like the amount of time and experience that it might reasonably take to develop apractical and value-driven approachto deploy…
“It’s ironic,” says Walden cofounder and CEORuss Tedrake. “I thought about legs for 20 years; that’s the class I teach at MIT. There are many reasons to build a robot with legs. But the question is, what’s the addressable market? And what percentage of it is covered by a wheeled base?” It’s this focused, practical thinking that sets Walden somewhat apart from many (if not most) of the other companies in this space. Rather thandeveloping a robot f…
Tedrake is light on the details about what specific applications Walden is targeting at this point (citing confidentiality with current commercial partners). Manufacturing and logistics environments where there are a lot ofrelatively simpleandrepetitive tasksthat aren’t friendly to conveyor belts and preprogrammed robot arms are a good bet. Even in these environments, however, robots still have to find a useful niche because they’re going up agai…
“You need to find applications with high utilization—where the robot is used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Tedrake. “Manufacturing is a global imperative right now, and it makes the economics work.” Economic viability is a necessary condition, but it’s not a sufficient one for Walden, or for their partnership with Toyota. People are a big part of Walden’s plan, too.
One of Walden’s major strengths is the company’s partnership with Toyota, which is not all that surprising given that Walden is a spinout from TRI, which isToyota’s Silicon Valley–based R&D arm. “Toyota was very proud of the work we had done at TRI, and was ready to go big in this space,” says Tedrake. “Part of the excitement of having Toyota as a partner is that their culture is deeply people-first. When talking to Toyota’s leadership, I was nev…
The robot’s chonky design allows it to meet the high-payload requirements of useful manufacturing work.Walden Robotics
In this context, at least in the short term, Walden’s approach to improving the quality of life for people is to take over those aforementioned repetitive manufacturing tasks with robots. Tedrake hopes that this will lead to workplaces where skilled craftspeople are able to do even more with their hard-earned expertise, increasing their efficiency, productivity, and happiness all at the same time—a noble goal, although there’s only so much Walden…
Many otherhumanoidroboticscompaniesare also targeting these logistics and manufacturing spaces with general-purpose robots, and they’re doing so by making robots that are as humanlike as possible. The theory is that a humanoid form factor is necessary when operating in human environments. And there are certainly arguments in favor of a humanoid with legs—stairs exist, for one, and legged robots have a smaller footprint compared with ones that hav…
But a large wheeled base offers some significant advantages, as Tedrake points out. You’re incentivized to cram the base full of batteries, since more weight near the floor keeps the robot stable, which also solves the problem of running out of power during the middle of the workday. More importantly, a statically stable robot that moves around on a wheeled base can bypass thesafety challengesthat are currently keeping legged humanoids physically…
Simple, rugged grippers make the robot suitable for commercial deployment.Walden Robotics
Walden’s perspective on manipulation is similar. Many humanoid companies are using five-fingered hands that are highly dexterous but also highly complex, which Tedrake believes is not a pragmatic approach in the context of commercial deployments. “There’s a question of what you need to do the tasks, but the real question is just durability,” Tedrake says. “We have been deployed in a Toyota factory, and at the end of the week, the hands take a bea…
Walden’s long-term plan is to build “general-purpose robots.” It’s not always clear what a general-purpose robot is, because (I would argue) nobody is quite sure what “general purpose” means. It’s certainly not referring to robots that can doeverything; I think the closest we can get are robots that can be taught to do a useful number of different skills, which is why I prefer the term “multipurpose.” It’s a little pedantic, I know, but I think t…
Part of where Walden’s optimism towards general purposeness comes from is TRI’s earlier research ondiffusion policy, which helps robots learn new skills more quickly by leveraging previously learned skills as a foundation. “Fundamentally, multitasking is a way to get to a general-purpose robot,” Tedrake says. “I believe there is a single platform that can do a lot of tasks that are of high value for real customers. That will give us the experienc…
Evan Ackermanis a senior editor atIEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.