The Robotics Business with Fexingo: Automation, Industrial Robots, and Hardware Startups

Episode 79 of The Robotics Business. Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly difficult problem of robotic garment folding. They break down why a task that a five-year-old can master has stumped robotics engineers for decades, focusing on the specific physics of woven fabric — non-rigid, non-linear, infinitely variable. The hosts walk through a 2025 paper from the University of Tokyo's JSK Lab that...

Episode 78 of The Robotics Business with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly difficult task of teaching a robot hand to pick up a raw egg without crushing it or dropping it. They focus on one startup, Soft Robotics Inc., which uses soft grippers with optical sensors and machine learning to achieve a 99.5% success rate on eggs. The conversation covers the physics of fragile gripping, t...

Episode 77 of The Robotics Business: Lucas and Luna examine the challenge of teaching robot arms to install drywall, a task that demands precision, strength, and adaptability. They break down the technical hurdles—from handling brittle 4x8 sheets to aligning them with studs—and profile a startup that's deploying its first units on commercial construction sites. The conversation covers sensor fusio...

In this episode of The Robotics Business, Lucas and Luna dive into how robot arms are being trained to perform automated functional testing of printed circuit boards — a task traditionally done by human technicians with multimeters. They look at a specific case: a contract electronics manufacturer in Shenzhen that deployed a six-axis arm from a Chinese robotics startup to run 400 continuity checks...

Strawberries are one of the most delicate and labor-intensive crops to harvest, with growers spending up to a third of their costs on picking labor. This episode digs into how a startup called Harvest Automation is tackling the problem with a new generation of robot arms that combine computer vision, soft grippers, and machine learning to handle ripe berries without bruising them. We walk through...

Furniture assembly is the bane of many homeowners, but for robot arms, it's a complex problem of perception, planning, and force control. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into a new wave of research that teaches robots to follow IKEA-like pictographic instructions, handle asymmetric parts, and apply just the right torque to avoid stripping screws. They discuss a specific 2025 study from MIT's...

Episode 73 of The Robotics Business: Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly complex challenge of automating rebar tying on construction sites. They break down how Advanced Construction Robotics' TyBot system uses computer vision and a custom end-effector to twist wire ties around steel rebar mats — a task that requires precise spatial reasoning and consistent force. The hosts discuss the market s...

Episode 72 of The Robotics Business with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dive into the surprisingly difficult engineering challenge of automating pizza-making. From spreading sauce without tearing the dough to handling sticky mozzarella, they unpack why Pizza Hut and Zume faced different technical barriers and how a startup called Picnic is now deploying robot pizza stations in stadiums and kitchens. The...

Lucas and Luna explore why opening a door is one of the hardest tasks for a robot arm. They break down the physics of door handles, the need for force control versus position control, and how a startup called Covariant has trained its robots to handle unlatching, pulling, and holding doors open in warehouses. Lucas explains the difference between a lever handle and a round knob from a robotics per...

Episode 70 of The Robotics Business dives into one of the hardest problems in robotic manipulation: gripping slippery, deformable objects like raw fish. Lucas and Luna explore why seafood processing has been a stubborn holdout for automation, and how a small Japanese startup, RoboFish Inc., is cracking the problem with a combination of soft robotics and real-time pressure sensing. We break down th...

Episode 69 of The Robotics Business digs into one of the hardest problems in construction robotics: welding steel I-beams on a high-rise frame. Lucas and Luna walk through the physics challenge — millimeter precision on uneven, wind-swept surfaces — and profile a startup called TrueBond Robotics that just closed a $14 million Series A to tackle it. They contrast TrueBond's adaptive-weld approach w...

In episode 68, Lucas and Luna dive into the surprising complexity behind robotic coffee-making — from the physics of pouring latte art to the sensing challenges of grinding beans. They unpack how companies like Seattle-based Artly and Japan's Yaskawa are solving the hard problems of dexterity and consistency in beverage preparation. Lucas breaks down the three key hurdles: vision for bean quality,...

Lucas and Luna explore the challenge of automating sneaker assembly, a task requiring delicate handling of flexible materials and precise glue application. They discuss how Adidas and Nike are investing in robotics for shoemaking, with a focus on the new 'LaceBot' system that can thread laces into 200 pairs per hour. The episode also covers the broader trend of footwear automation, including 3D kn...

Lucas and Luna explore the cutting edge of automated visual inspection in manufacturing. They focus on a 2026 deployment at a Siemens electronics plant in Germany where robot arms equipped with edge-AI cameras now spot micro-solder defects two hundred times faster than human inspectors. The conversation covers how neural networks trained on synthetic defect images achieve ninety-eight percent accu...

Episode 65 of The Robotics Business dives into a surprisingly hard automation problem: folding cardboard boxes. Lucas and Luna explore why box erecting — the process of taking a flat corrugated blank and forming it into a rigid container — has resisted automation for decades. They examine how a German startup called KUKA and a robotic folding cell developed at MIT's CSAIL lab are using force-torqu...

Wind turbine towers are getting taller, and manual welding at those scales is dangerous and slow. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how robotics startups and industrial automation firms are retooling welding cells to handle the massive steel rings of a turbine tower. They look at the specific technical challenge: positional welding on 80-meter-tall structures, the tolerances involved, and wh...

Episode 63 of The Robotics Business podcast dives into one of the hardest problems in manufacturing automation: screwing a plastic cap onto a shampoo bottle. Lucas and Luna unpack the physics of thread alignment, the limits of torque-based assembly, and how a startup called CapDrive tackled the challenge with a vision-guided wrist that sees thread pitch in real time. They discuss the $2 million co...

In this episode of The Robotics Business, hosts Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly difficult problem of teaching a robot arm to paint a car. They break down why automotive painting has resisted automation for decades — the physics of atomized paint, the need for perfect film thickness, and the 'orange peel' defect that haunts every paint shop. Lucas walks through how a startup called Akara Ro...

In this episode of The Robotics Business with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how robot arms are being trained to polish gemstones — a task that demands micron-level precision and years of human craftsmanship. They dive into a specific case study: a startup called Gem Robotics that has developed a force-sensitive robotic arm capable of cutting and polishing sapphire crystals for watch faces and op...

Episode 60 of The Robotics Business with Fexingo: Lucas and Luna explore why folding laundry is a surprisingly hard robotics problem. They break down the physics of fabric deformation, the computer vision challenge of identifying garment types, and why even the most advanced grippers struggle with a fitted sheet. The hosts highlight research from UC Berkeley's AUTOLab and the startup FoldiMate, di...

Episode 59 of The Robotics Business with Fexingo digs into one of the hardest unsolved problems in logistics: unloading a semi-trailer full of mixed boxes. Lucas and Luna walk through why decades-old dock operations still rely on human backs, how recent advances in 3D perception and compliant grippers are changing that, and what it means for companies like DHL and Amazon. They break down the speci...

Episode 58 of The Robotics Business explores a surprising frontier in automation: shipbuilding. Lucas and Luna examine how robot arms are being retasked to weld massive hull sections, a task long considered too complex and unstructured for robots. They discuss the specific challenges of shipyard environments—tight spaces, variable weld paths, and the need for real-time seam tracking—and how compan...

In this episode of The Robotics Business, hosts Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly difficult problem of robotic cable harness assembly. While robot arms can weld, deburr, and even fold laundry, threading flexible wires through tight connectors has remained a stubborn challenge. Lucas breaks down why cable harnesses are a multi-billion-dollar bottleneck in industries from aerospace to automoti...

In episode 56 of The Robotics Business, Lucas and Luna dive into one of the toughest challenges in food automation: deboning fish. They explore why fish filleters are so hard to replace, how computer vision and compliant grippers are tackling the problem, and what it means for the $150 billion seafood industry. The episode features the story of a startup called 'Pacific Robotics' (a pseudonym for...

In this episode of The Robotics Business, Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly complex problem of robotic cloth manipulation. They discuss why folding laundry, draping fabric, and handling deformable materials have stumped engineers for decades, the latest advances in simulation and tactile sensing, and what a breakthrough could mean for manufacturing, logistics, and home robotics. The episode...