Standard Bots is training robots to ‘think’ for themselves – and maybe even do the dishes

Standard Bots is building and training robots to think for themselves with artificial intelligence — and it could bring more manufacturing to the U.S. in the process.

The Long Island-based company is early to apply AI to robotics and one of the first to do so for commercial purposes rather than to conduct academic research.

“We’re creating tools so that anyone can use this robot for their business by telling the robot what they want to do through hand-held training devices,” founder and CEO Evan Beard told The Post.

Instead of writing long lines of code, AI lets robots learn a task — like pouring a soda into a cup — from humans by capturing the movement through cameras and mirroring it. Unlike traditional autonomous robots that perform a movement by rote, AI robots “understand” their environment and adapt.

For example, a Standard Bots AI robot can see if the gas can has been moved and retrieve it from the new location.

“ChatGPT gave AI a language, and robotics is giving AI a body,” said Randy Howie, who helped start the New York Robotics Network, a nonprofit advancing robotics in NYC. “Robotics didn’t advance as fast as software over the past 30 years… but now, with the intersection of AI and robotics, a new frontier has opened up where robots are smart and can learn. [They are] able to understand their environments and reason through them. Standard Bots is leading the commercialization of AI and robotics at that frontier.”

In practical terms, Beard believes this means robots could be smart enough to fill manufacturing jobs or wash dishes in restaurants within the next five years.

That focus on real-world applications is part of the reason companies including Amazon and Samsung injected $63 million into Standard Bots this summer.

Contrary to dystopian fears of robots taking jobs for humans, Beard said the initial application is to help companies that already automate production to make it more efficient and affordable. And that should make it more attractive for companies to bring their supply chains back to the US.

“If we can automate a lot of the manufacturing, we can actually bring jobs back to this country and we can compete on price,” Beard explained. “We see from both presidential candidates now the importance of manufacturing here… It can improve national security. It’s better for the environment [and] it lowers our transportation costs and the cost of food.”

Having major corporate backing is a dramatic step from 2017, when Beard, 37, and his co-founder started tinkering with robots in his apartment. But they struggled to raise money, and Beard poured the last of his personal savings into Standard Bots before the first infusion of outside money arrived just days before the 2020 coronavirus lockdown.

One of the reasons that robotics has been slower to develop than other software technologies is because it is “multidisciplinary.”

But Beard’s story—he studied computer science at Duke and was accepted into the exclusive incubator Y Combinator to start a software company—bridges the gap to bring software and hardware together.

“You have to have people who are good at electronics, good at hardware, good at manufacturing and great at software… There are so many different areas you have to bring together,” Beard said. “It just makes it really hard.”

After the seed grew, Beard was able to move with his children and wife to Glen Cove, Long Island, to open an 8,500-square-foot factory (a second 13,000-square-foot factory is opening on Long Island early next year) later in 2020

In the coming months, Standard Bots will be ready to sell its new robotic AI “arm” — a product that Beard believes is far more efficient than building fully humanoid robots — and will also debut in the movie.

Beard and his bots are featured in A24’s Babygirl, in cinemas on Christmas Day and starring Nicole Kidman as the CEO of a robotics company. While Beard only appears in one scene, his robotics plays a major role. It was the New York Robotics Network that connected Beard with A24, which is based in NYC.

And Beard believes NYC helped him get lucky.

In the early days of Standard Bots, he would invite venture capitalists and technologists to drop by his city apartment to demonstrate the robotics—and eventually won some investors that way.

“We have the talent, we have the engineers and the investors… New York City has the whole ecosystem,” Beard said. “It’s important to be near such a center … it creates a lot of peace.”

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