The Boston Dynamics spinout building robots you’ll actually want to hug

Danielle’s a poodle, with big eyes, fuzzy ears, and cartoon lavender fur. She’s also a robot, and as I talk on Zoom to Marc Theermann, she’s sitting behind him.

“Danielle is a robot we built on top of Boston Dynamics’ Spot platform,” said Theermann, referencing Boston Dynamics’ famous robot dog. “People are excited about robots, but all these robots today look like they’re out of a sci-fi movie. In order to really be welcomed by humans, they need to be cute and cuddly. So, this is Danielle.”

And even over Zoom, Danielle is obviously snuggly. Her eyes, hooded under purple eyelids move, as do her mouth and legs. She’s one of two prototype companion robots that Theermann—previously chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics—has been working on. The other is Hugo, a Tyrolean mountain troll whom I’ve only seen pictures of, but looks like the cutest imaginable yeti. Hugo and Danielle are both internal experiments at Dynamic Creatures, the startup Theermann just cofounded with noted AI researcher Farbod Farshidian. The startup declined to disclose the amount of funding it’s raised, but venture backers include Eniac Ventures, Kindred Ventures, BlueGrass Ventures, Heliad, and Sunshine Lake. The company’s a spinout of the most famous name in American robotics, Boston Dynamics, with one mission: Making the cutest and most loveable robots. 

“It seems counterintuitive to say that this is the next frontier of robotics when everyone’s running in the industrial direction,” said Theermann. “But at Boston Dynamics, we had so much inbound of people saying: ‘Hey, can you come to my event? Can you come to FIFA? Can you come to our football game, and dance at the halftime show?”

So, while at Boston Dynamics, Theermann monitored........

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