Robots with Character: Solving the interface problem for home robotics

Shahvir Sarkary

Founder and CEO of Human Computer Lab

Location: Stanford Robotics Center, Packard Electrical Engineering Bldg, Basement

Time: Friday August 21st, 3:00-4:00PM*

*SRC summer intern Bear Tolson will give a presentation ("Gecko Lasso: Capturing Tumbling Space Debris Using Gecko Inspired Adhesives") from 3:00-3:15, followed immediately by Shahvir Sarkary’s talk from 3:15-4:00

Abstract:

Home robotics is an interface problem. As we start building robots for homes, the industry will soon realize a shift from capability to relationship: whether a machine that lives with people is something they can read, trust, and want to keep. A singular focus on this axis has historically killed every robot that entered the home for three specific reasons: pre-LLM characters were reactive loops whose novelty decayed within weeks; cloud and subscription dependencies meant the character could be switched off by a business decision, destroying user trust; and creature-form designs capped out as pets or toys, competing with the real thing. We argue that all three conditions have recently changed — and that the window is now open to define the interface layer for home robotics the way early human-interface guidelines defined personal computing in the 1980s.

In this talk, we want to share how we are building character-first robots as that interface layer. Rather than adding personality to a functional device, every layer of the system is built for a character to exhibit itself: a premise-driven character architecture that generates motion, sound, and light rather than triggering state machine-like responses; how we select materials in cohesion with the character's morphology; and an animation-to-hardware pipeline developed with feature-animation talent and character artists. We illustrate these with our first robot, LeLamp, an expressive robot lamp developed across three hardware generations over the last year by the lab (80+ units, living in 20+ homes), where constraint is treated as a feature: a few degrees of freedom, no face, no screen — character carried entirely through motion, light, and sound.

Bio: 

• Founder and CEO of Human Computer Lab, building robot characters for the home

• Previously worked on hardware and software interfaces across Cybertruck, autonomous boats, and consumer products

• Raised $1.4M pre-seed, co-led by South Park Commons and FR8