From Zero to 150 Robots in Just 20 Months | Mike LeBlanc, Foundation Future Industries

Eye On A.I. - Craig S. Smith

In this episode of 'Show: Eye On A.I.', host Craig S. Smith explores the ambitious claims of Mike LeBlanc, co-founder of Foundation Future Industries, who asserts that his company has gone from zero robots to deploying humanoid machines in

Key takeaways

• Foundation Future Industries claims rapid progress from concept to deployed humanoid robots in under two years, though this includes acquisition of an existing robot company.
• The company's focus on military applications drives design choices prioritizing strength and durability over dexterity for domestic or commercial use.

Main topics

• Rapid development of military humanoids
• Challenges in actuator design and power efficiency

Notable quotes

"20 months ago, we didn't have a robot. We had smiles on our faces and the idea of humanoid, right? And today, we have robots already deployed out in the world, working full shifts."

"The only form factor that we know fits all of these jobs is the human form factor because humans are doing it today."

Conclusion

While Mike LeBlanc's vision for rapid deployment of military humanoids is bold and well-publicized, the episode underscores a persistent gap between

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) 20 months ago, we didn't have a robot. We had smiles on our faces and the idea of humanoid, right? And today, we have robots already deployed out in the world, working full shifts. I think all of this is a lot closer than anyone will think. Speaker 1 (0:12) I wrote something last year about humanoids and how the promise is way out ahead of the reality. And there are all these problems with power supply and the strength of actuators. generalization of the models that control them. Speaker 2 (0:29) We're also trying to get the robots out. That's why I say on the battlefield in Ukraine to really hope to actually start putting them out there and seeing how do the soldiers want to use them? How do they actually work in a fight? How do they go up against drones? How do they go up against explosions? I Speaker 1 (0:45) first interviewed Mike LeBlanc, co-founder of Foundation Robotics Lab back in January. when the company was making a public relations push, claiming they were building humanoid robot soldiers. Speaker 2 (0:59) Mike Speaker 1 (1:00) was claiming they would produce 10,000 robots this year, when even Tesla fell far short of the 5,000 it had hoped to make in 2025. Speaker 2 (1:10) Mike is good company, smart, Speaker 1 (1:13) engaging, and by his own description, an optimist to the core. I, on the other hand, am a skeptic to the core. At the end of our podcast recording, I asked if I could tag along to Ukraine when he delivered robots there for testing. The trip happened in February. We got to Kiev, but the robots were stopped at the Polish border and never arrived. Nonetheless, Mike's public relations team managed to get a big spread in Time, the venerable media brand now owned by Mark Benioff, Salesforce's CEO. The article talks a lot about robotic warfare, but fudges the question of whether any Foundation robots ever made it to Ukraine. It said simply that, in February, two Phantoms were sent to Ukraine, initially for frontline reconnaissance support. But that was enough for news aggregators to pick it up, and pretty soon I was seeing headlines like, Robots in Real War, Ukraine Battlefield Tests Phantom Mach 1, Ukraine Deploys Humanoid Robots in Battlefield Reconnaissance, and Robots Are Heading to War, Being Tested in Ukraine. When I visited Foundations Operations in San Francisco in April, my skepticism grew. Mike's claim that the company went from an idea to building a complete humanoid in under two years left out that he and his founders started by buying an existing humanoid robot company named Boardwalk. What's more, some of the military contracts he mentions were carried over from that earlier company. Foundation shop felt like a research lab, not a factory. The Speaker 2 (3:08) robots Speaker 1 (3:08) on the floor were relatively lightweight machines, nothing that could withstand the recoil of a military weapon. An engineer giving me the tour gave one a shove and it stumbled onto its knees held up by a harness. The operation was producing about one robot a day, which made 10,000 this year seem impossible. The whole time, I kept trying to square what I saw with the company's pitch. Machines that would cross rough terrain in a war zone and carry weapons. I spoke to Mike recently, and he has several updates. A new, more robust model of the robot has been completed. six feet tall, 185 pounds, with arms that Mike claims can each lift 80 kilos, more than 170 pounds each. And the company is opening a new production facility in Texas. They've scaled back this year's production target to 6,000 robots instead of 10,000. Mike said that Foundation is building its own AI model to control the robot. But see my earlier episode with Sergei Levine, a renowned AI researcher with his own startup, Physical Intelligence, where he talks about how difficult that is to do. Mike said Foundation is building its own actuators, the tiny motors that control the robot's joints and are the most critical part in any humanoid. That's ambitious. None of this means Foundation won't get there. I've been confidently skeptical about companies before and turned out to be wrong. As I told Mike, Foundation's PR is running far faster than its robots. Speaker 2 (5:03) Here's the conversation. Speaker 1 (5:05) Why don't we start with having you introduce yourself and talk about your earlier startup, and then we'll get into Foundation and what you guys are doing. Speaker 2 (5:17) Great. Yeah, so I'm Mike LeBlanc. I was born and raised in Ohio and then left home to go to Annapolis, Maryland, where I've studied the classics and solved the books behind me, learned to translate ancient Greek out there and got deep into the classics. And as I did, that started to make me really look at war in a deep way, you know, looking at the cities and the food cars and the robbers and these and joined the Marine Corps, much to my family's dismay. I was Marine Corps for 12 years total. I did three tours to the Middle East during that time. And I was at the Pentagon. And it was at the Pentagon that I started looking at startups. And I was looking at electric tanks and starting to vet what, you know, pocket drones, how these things could actually come in, how they could be used. And so as I did that, it started to make me really look at a lot of these companies. I was getting married at the same time. And so got out of the Marine Corps, went to Harvard Business School. And then as I was out of there, co-founded Cobalt Robotics, which was back to, you know, we did our seed through Bloomberg Beta, our A through Sequoia, our B through Kotu. So, you know, ran that for a number of years, grew it into nine countries, four continents, having robots all over, and then sold it in 2024 and started Foundation Future Industries, which is now the sole provider of humanoids. to the Department of Defense. Speaker 1 (6:46) Yeah, and so we were talking last time we spoke about this humanoid craze that has kind of taken over in robotics. And I was saying that it seems that there are many form factors that are more practical than the human form. And I was asking why, and maybe you can answer for listeners, why everyone is focused on humanoids now. And I know the bad answer is the world is built for humans. And the easiest way for robots to navigate is in the human form. But there are all kinds of problems with the human form factors. You know, balance and speed and... uh and battery life and all these different things that uh that frankly it'd be easier with either a wheeled robot or or even a robot dog we talked about the robot dog so uh yeah give me your view on the human form factor Speaker 2 (8:00) You know, I think that we're really we're really a species of workarounds in everything that we do. We have workarounds. We have shortcuts. We have ways that don't really fit the way that we're supposed to do things, but that's how they get done. That's part of becoming an adult is realizing that the org chart doesn't represent the full view of relationships. Right. And so as you look at all of these workarounds, you you do have all kinds of things that just need to be, you know, through a factory that need to be carried somewhere that you didn't think that they did. things, parts that need to be discarded, things that, you know, they need to adapt. And as you really start looking at that, you need dexterity and locomotion to do it. And so there are a lot of things that you can think about what form factors that could fit. But the only form factor that we know fits all of these jobs is the human form factor because humans are doing it today. And so, you know, to everyone who wonders about the human form factor, and I always did, you know, I would turn them to... the question of why do we still have so many humans in all of these factories, right? I walk into them and they're packed with robots, right? There are all kinds of ABB and FANUC and industrial robots, but there are also human beings everywhere. And so that's always my first question when I walk in, as I say, what are all these people doing here? And that's what we'll spend the next couple hours as we tour any facility talking about is why are they still humans? Speaker 1 (9:23) Yeah. And is it the form, the human form, or is it the human judgment? I mean, is it the physicality or the mental capability that humans provide? Speaker 2 (9:37) Well, the human hand is incredible. So that's a big portion of it. You know, I think about that every time I'm balancing a mug of coffee as I carry in groceries and have a kid in my arm, right? And I'm still able to open the door. The human form factor is pretty amazing for things like that. But it also is. It's being bipedal and being able to move around all these spaces, being able to sidestep, move forward and backwards without taking up a lot of room that wheels might or that a base might. And then also the human judgment. When you put all of those things together, you start to really get an appreciation of the human design. You start to learn a lot about the eyes when you're going into perception. You start looking a lot at the mouth when you want to have... have the robot have speakers, you know, all of these things are actually designed very well. Speaker 1 (10:26) Yeah. And, um, I mean, you mentioned the hand, I wasn't gonna go into the weeds right away, but I, I, I did a piece for. Somebody. On the Wuji hand, this hand out of China that uses, it has the actuator, the motor, you know, instead of the, most of the hands, human, the robot hands today, the form, human form factor hands use a tendon system. So the motors are buried in the. what is the wrist and then their tendons that run up and work the fingers. But there are a lot of reasons why that's not ideal. And there's a company in China that makes tiny actuators and they have a subsidiary named Muji Tuck and they have built a hand with the actuators actually at the joints. And it's an incredible, if you haven't seen it, look it up. It's an amazing hand. How do you, so the form factor, meaning bipedal, I mean, there are two legs for locomotion, but how are you guys working on dexterity? I mean, what hands do you use? Speaker 2 (11:56) Well, there are two questions about the hands, I think. One is how dexterous are they? So how small of an object, how thin of an object can they pick up? Can they pick up a pin? Can they do electrical wires, things like that? The other is in strength. And so how much can they lift? For how long can they lift it? Can they pull these things up? How much torque can they produce? And so when you're really looking at dexterity and strength, I think that there are ways to have actuators in the hand that have lots of dexterity. And I think if that's the hand that I'm thinking of, it's an incredible one. Watched it all over YouTube and immediately went to my hand team and I said, why aren't we using this? And they wrote back, strength. Speaker 1 (12:40) Yeah, as a matter of fact, that's right. It's only got like 40 % of the strength of a human hand, yeah. Speaker 2 (12:46) Yeah, and so that's where I think right now, as we're seeing that there's so many... humanoid companies. It's a horse race for all of this. And you have to really think about where you want to land in that market. We are fully dedicated to businesses and defense. That's what we're making our robots for. Most other people are making it for the homes and business. But when you're making those kind of design trade-offs and you're looking to fold a lot of clothes and do laundry, you're looking to empty a dishwasher. All those things, they don't require that much strength. And so when you're looking at defense use cases, when you're looking at industrial use cases, you want as much strength as possible. And so I think for us, that's why we've still kept things in the forearm. But these are all the kind of choices. We're out there with customers. We bring back all of their pieces. So if you walk into our office, you'll see parts from all of our customers. You'll see a lot of auto racks. You'll see a lot of big metal clamps. that we're working for ports. You'll see all these things because that's what we test on. That's the standard that we need to get to. Speaker 1 (13:52) Yeah. And you guys are building both the hardware and the software. Is that right? Speaker 2 (14:01) Yes. Yeah, I think most of the companies are. There are a couple of breakouts. There's physical intelligence, there's skilled that are both really just working on the brain. I think all the ones that were just working hardware seem to be getting scooped up. But we'll see. I think that really this is one of those problems where the humanoid is a lot more figured out than I thought before I got into this. And, you know, as I've gone around and seen everybody else's robots and, you know, you go to Germany and DLR, they're kind of NASA over there and looked at their humanoid. You really start to see all the parts are the same. Right. And it's you have you have a choice of what you're going to buy for for each part. But it's it's kind of it's, you know, it's really dwindled down. The only one that really is the standout is agility still has very different form factor. But for everybody else, the hardware isn't, you know, you kind of know how to place it together and everybody needs to solve hands. Everybody, you know, everybody's facing the same challenges right now. Speaker 1 (15:06) Yeah, and actually that's interesting because that's one of the things that surprised me, that you were able to jump into this extremely technical market. I mean, you had robotics experience with Cobalt, but still, that's a pretty brave leap. Speaker 2 (15:26) Wait, before I take any credit on that, my co-founder, Sanket, he has Speaker 1 (15:31) all the... Speaker 2 (15:31) Oh, that's right, he's a robotist. Yeah. Between him and Patrick Bendersmacht, our chief AI scientist, they've got so many papers all published all over and cited all over the place. And these guys are the big brains behind this. Speaker 1 (15:46) Yeah, yeah. No, I understand that. But is it like the auto industry that, you know, the different factories stamp different shapes of sheet metal? But, or whatever they're using now, fiberglass or plastic. But the actual parts, most of the parts are coming from suppliers who supply to all of the major car makers. And, you know, you have some customization. Speaker 1 (16:28) you know, a car seat is a car seat and, and a steering wheel is a steering wheel and, you know, the bearings and all that stuff. Is it like that? I mean, is there a, A world of suppliers to humanoid robotic makers or are these companies like yours building bespoke parts in-house? Speaker 2 (16:55) We're building a lot of bespoke parts in-house. So we have CNC machines. A lot of this, you know, especially for me doing the second time around with lots of manufacturing in the past, you start to see, you think that your suppliers are... these big vendors that make all this great stuff and you can never, never touch their business. And then you go visit them and you find three guys in a storage unit somewhere. And you're like, you know, hooked up to a generator and you're going, is this is what I've been paying? No wonder I, no wonder I can't scale. Right. And so, so you kind of end up taking those things in the house. And we've, we've done a lot of that this time round of, of really saying what, what is a part that we, that we can make? How can we get as close to just taking things from nature and turning it into this, into this robot? But, you know, with that, you are still going to have a steering wheel. You're still going to have tires. You're still going to have all the basic parts, right? But some people are going to be building Ferraris and some people are going to be building Honda Civics. Speaker 1 (17:51) Yeah. Although when you get to actuators,