Teddy Warner, 19, has always found robots to be fascinating. He claims that while in high school, he “grew up” working in a machinist shop since his family was in the business.
Warner is now developing his own robotics business, Intempus, with the goal of giving robots a more human-like appearance.
Emotion Through Robot Motion
Intempus is developing technology to give current robots human-like emotional emotions so that people may communicate with them more effectively and anticipate their moves more accurately.
Giving these robots human-like responses will also provide data that will help improve AI model training.
Warner told TechCrunch that these robots would use kinetic movements to convey their emotions.
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Warner explained that much of our subconscious communication relies on how we move our arms and torso, rather than our facial expressions or the words we use. This form of body language is also seen in animals like dogs and cats.
Bridging Robots and Humans
According to him, Midjourney was developing world AI models, or AI models that comprehend and make judgments based on spatial features and real-world dynamics rather than merely cause and effect, like many other AI research laboratories.
Warner understood, however, that it would be very difficult for these models to acquire this spatial reasoning since a large portion of the data used to train the models came from robots that lacked spatial thinking as well.
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According to Warner, “humans and all living things have this intermediate B step that we call physiological state, whereas robots currently go from A to C, that is observation to action.” A robot does not have any physiological state or condition.
They don’t experience tension or pleasure. We must offer robots this B step if we want them to comprehend the world as humans do and be able to connect with us in a manner that is natural to us—that is, less strange and more predictable.
Sweat Data Powers Emotion
Warner adopted that notion and began to investigate. He began using fMRI data, which detects changes in oxygen and blood flow to evaluate brain activity, but it was unsuccessful.
After that, his buddy advised him to attempt a polygraph, or lie detector exam, which records perspiration data, and he began to see some results.
Warner said he was astonished by how quickly he progressed from gathering sweat data from himself and a few friends to developing a model that enables robots to have an emotional makeup based entirely on that data.
Since then, he has extended his use of sweat data to include body temperature, heart rate, and photoplethysmography, which gauges variations in blood volume at the skin’s microvascular level, among other things.
From Solo to Teamwork
Warner concentrated entirely on Intempus research for the first four months after its September 2024 release. He has been focusing on both engaging prospective clients and developing these emotional capacities for robots for the last several years.
Peter Thiel’s Thiel Fellowship program, which awards young entrepreneurs $200,000 over two years to drop out of school and launch their businesses, includes Intempus in its current cohort.
Warner, who has so far worked as a team of one, says that Intempus’ next move is to employ and get some of the developed technology in front of people so that testing can begin.
Warner said that he would never rule out Intempus creating its own emotionally intelligent robots in the future, even though the company is now focused on retrofitting existing robots and intends to concentrate on that.
Conveying Robots’ True Emotions
“I want people to immediately feel that this robot is joyful,” Warner said. “If I can naturally express emotions or intentions through the robot, then I’ve succeeded.”
“I’ve built several robots, each designed to express different emotions,” he continued. “In the next four to six months, I’m confident I can prove that I’ve achieved this goal.”