Latest / Founder Mode / From Hollywood to High-Rises: Making Robots with Asa Hammond

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From Hollywood to High-Rises: Making Robots with Asa Hammond · Founder Mode

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  Yeah, as, as you can imagine, they're, they're very, very
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  careful people, those who run nuclear reactors.
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  So that was a very high spec project.
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  It took us a long time to do it primarily because of all the
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  they're, they're very careful kind of ramp up to get to the
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  point where you can, you can go in and fly during an active
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  emission. Welcome back to Founder Mode.
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  Where we talked to founders doing the wildest stuff and
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  getting their hands. Dirty Yeah, today's topics
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  robotics that go from the big screen to the biggest hyper
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  scaler builds. You might think film and
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  construction have nothing in common, but when it comes to
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  precision tools, robotics is actually that unexpected bridge.
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  Jason, you've worked in like tech and media like, what do you
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  think of of all the AI video models like Google's update the
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  view? So I watched that that keynote
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  from IO and I've been seeing all these videos come out.
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  I've started to play with the tool.
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  This stuff is nuts. Like when we're going to talk to
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  Ace in a minute about film sets and robots that are doing the
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  most complicated moves with the camera and amazing stuff.
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  But like when you don't even need the $1,000,000 film set to
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  create something that looks like a blockbuster movie.
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  Like when this stuff all converges and you have these
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  films that are part AI created, part, you know, incredible
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  talented humans doing it. Like I think it's a 1 + 1 = 3
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  moment. I think it's going to completely
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  change the game and the creativity and the artistry that
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  can come from it. It's not about people's jobs
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  being destroyed in the entertainment industry.
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  It's about the job changing, which is what we talk about all
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  the time on the show. So like as that example, which
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  I'm talking about, like bringing this creativity that is being
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  ushered in by AI into these new markets like film and
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  entertainment. And we're talking about, you
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  know, using robotics and construction with ASA.
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  How do you think AI, robotics and all this comes together
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  across industries, Kevin? Yeah, it's super interesting as
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  founders. Like part of the goal is to find
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  that new tech. And I mean, honestly, what we've
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  been doing for decades is like thinking about what's the new
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  and exciting things and how do you bring that back to either
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  new businesses or old businesses?
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  And I mean, for this conversation, it actually goes
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  back to the late 90s when ASA and I met, you know, as students
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  at UCLA in engineering. And so I think it's pretty
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  interesting. And I think there's going to be
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  a bunch to unpack. Here.
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  Yeah, exactly. And that's what makes ASA
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  Hammond, our guest today, so fascinating.
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  His career connects 2 things that you would not expect
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  Hollywood and hard hats. Yeah, Asa's worked on films like
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  Gravity Built Drones to inspect nuclear reactors.
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  I'd like the sickest climbing wall in his last factory, and
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  maybe if we're lucky, he'll call in from the new factory where
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  they're now working on robotics for construction.
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  Amazing. I can't wait to meet him.
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  This episode is a deep dive into how you turn tools for
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  storytelling into systems for saving lives, inspecting nuclear
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  reactors, and building the future.
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  Let's get into it with ASA. Hey, so welcome to Founder mode.
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  How are you? Yeah, from robotics to sort of
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  this Oscar winning film stuff. I think we've had some just
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  incredible walks and conversations over the years.
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  And now, you know, you know, taking this to construction
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  sites. I think it's it's going to be
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  pretty cool to talk through this with you.
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  And yeah, just excited that you're here.
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  This is a fun one because you know, rewinding, you said this
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  before we started, but like you're always looking forward,
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  right? But let's look back for a
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  second. How did you get into robotics in
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  the 1st place? It's.
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  Kind of like, like anything sort of following my interest.
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  My, my main tenet in life is to not be bored generally just
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  always looking for for interest. So following my interest, I
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  started out in in Hollywood working on visual effects,
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  computer graphics in films. So kind of came up in the design
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  world working on main titles. I worked on a bunch of, you
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  know, small things in commercials 1st and then kind of
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  moved over into a big titles house called Imaginary forces,
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  worked on Spider man. It was kind of a big, big first
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  hard mode thing I did. And yeah, I just kept working up
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  in the in the film world, had my own company and then burned out
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  of that, got sick of being doing the creative thing and, and
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  really just wanted to work on things that had requirements and
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  specs and robotics is that, and, you know, all the computer
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  graphic, spatial understanding, camera matching, all this kind
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  of really high spec work that we have to do for visual effects
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  where every single pixel, we literally just over and over
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  again loop every single shot, even if it's 13, you know,
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  frames long and everybody in the whole room is looking at every
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  pixel in the whole screen. They're all perfect.
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  And then it's like, you know, finals and you're like, cool,
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  let's go. So you kind of bring in that
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  mode of, of attention into the real world.
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  And so now you've got to make sure that you don't hit things
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  and you, you're moving perfectly.
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  And, you know, all this, all this kind of thing that seems
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  very unrelated, but, but actually is quite related.
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  And had the opportunity to work with a, with a small group
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  called auto Fuss. And they, they were starting to
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  bring these industrial robot arms into into doing motion
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  control and doing commercials. I started, I, I ended up being
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  the visual effects supervisor on their first big mush control
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  shoot. And then later on when we
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  started ramping up for gravity, I, I ended up being the, the
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  person who took over and yeah, built, built the whole thing
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  for, for that show. So it was quite the learning
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  curve kind of went home with the the stack of manuals for the
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  Kooka robots and red dot cover to cover and came back on Monday
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  and started start building stuff.
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  So that was my first real entrance into robotics was
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  really just we need to get this done here.
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  The AP is to that robot. So they figured out and then
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  ended up in a, in a kind of a more full longer term dev cycle
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  to, to produce the tools required to service a big movie
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  like like Gravity, you know, really the strongest visual
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  effects company, the strongest director and DP and actors out
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  there. Definitely it's a high bar.
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  And and so you're really working at at a set of tooling that is
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  going to try and be as capable and flexible as possible and as
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  safe as possible to match that effort.
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  Yeah, so from those early days, like what sticks with you about
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  like building for film makers? Like to me it just seems like
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  this mystical thing, like I was an extra when I was in LA after
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  UCLA. So Ace and I went to UCLA
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  together. That's where actually we met,
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  you know, 1228 years ago, I would say 27 years ago at this
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  point, and worked on electric car club.
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  So building, you know, an early kind of electric battery powered
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  little racer thing that was just so dope.
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  Yeah, So it's a it's a very film sets are are are kind of the
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  alternate between the most being the most boring place and the
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  most exciting place on Earth. And at the time, this is quite a
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  while ago, 2007 and something like that.
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  It was very, very challenging. You could not do real anything
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  sort of real time in terms of real time adjustment of the
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  camera, which also would have been really unsafe.
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  And so so it was specifically built to to be kind of on rails,
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  like virtual rails. It's going to do the same thing
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  every single time no matter what.
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  You got four people on on E stops watching it.
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  We run it at 15 percent, 25 percent, 4050%.
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  You know, you get it faster and faster.
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  Your first running with stunt double for a while proving this
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  move. And so you sort of ramp up from
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  a safety perspective and it's always exactly the same move.
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  And so any deviation and the people released their their
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  hands off the of the stops, you know, or they press the buttons
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  like a dead man switch in order to kick it back.
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  You know, we're working in a software called Maya and Maya is
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  a 3D animation software and it's kind of the big heavy lifter for
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  the other industry has been still is it's got easy to use
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  animation tools. So you know, we're sitting there
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  on set or me or Tarek are sitting there adjusting if few
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  keyframes to just layer in this adjustment and you push it back
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  out. You're trying to make that loop
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  as fast as possible. You have to pull her out, right,
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  because you haven't actually run this move.
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  So to be ultra safe, you're you're pulling her out.
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  You're then going to run through the whole move half, half speed,
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  full speed, doing all the same things.
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  Yes, cool, OK, let's do it. Because she was strapped and
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  basically bolted into kind of an Iron Maiden style thing that she
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  could rotate and it would tilt her forward and it would adjust
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  her like this. And then this giant camera arm
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  is like bolted to a massive track racing at her high speed.
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  You know, it's all industrial equipment.
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  So it's all very reliable from a company that's been doing it
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  forever. Kuka, the big industrial arms
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  that we've basically are are jamming real time Linux be here
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  at this time kind of information.
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  So it's a it's a curve that we are really only adjusting the
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  time parameter on the curve. So whenever we lock in the
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  curve, that's curve is safe. We're just making parts of it go
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  slower or faster essentially. And even we even wired it up to
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  like a knob. There's like a, you know, like
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  kind of a knob and it'd be a person, you know, me be like
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  slowly slowing down a section of it and then kind of speeding it
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  up. There's that.
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  Human. There's that human piece to the
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  robotics element too. It's not just entirely running
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  automated. So ASA, there's things about
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  this that I can imagine are similar as you crossover from
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  industries like film to construction, but like just take
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  us through the difference between designing robots for
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  films like Gravity and and and others to like designing
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  construction robots, which which is what you're building now,
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  right? Yeah.
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  So it's all the same concerns, right?
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  Safety, reliability, ruggedness. You always have this user.
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  That's whatever you're going to introduce something in the end
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  of these industries and you have people who are already getting
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  work done. They're they rely on their tools
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  and those tools have to be, have to always work every time, you
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  know, you reach for a hammer hammer, it's a simple tool.
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  It's like it's always got to work.
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  You can break a hammer, but you know, it takes some, some
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  malfeasance. And so, so it's really just
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  trying to make tools. So I feel like I'm a, I'm a tool
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  tool maker. I am making the simplest,
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  simplest way for people to get the most work done.
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  It's really kind of kind of what it what it sort of always has
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  been. And the leverage is, is a whole
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  world of robotics, math, algorithmic evolving and
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  improving all the time. And then the other side is, is,
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  is whatever mechanical bases that we can rely on that are off
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  the shelf as much as possible. And that just helps you with
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  having it be other problems. Many of the, of the, of the, the
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  ruggedness. I mean, these arms are good for
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  15 years of life, You know, they're just there to Weld and
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  bolt stuff, you know, on, on a factory line forever.
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  So they've been, they've been well, well, well engineered and,
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  and other they're a reliable piece of the puzzle.
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  But then you're kind of going in and inserting yourself nowadays
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  at, at at this fully dynamic level.
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  So we've evolved past this very fixed thing that we were doing
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  in the past and now that 250 Hertz were telling these big
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  arms exactly where to be. So it's more and more on us to
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  design, you know, the, the safety and, and, you know,
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  smoothness basically to make sure that they're not not
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  jerking, not using too much energy, that they're not hitting
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  each other, hitting things. So there's a lot of planning
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  that goes into making this be as easy to use as possible.
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  Also, of course, on the UX side, in general, it's got to be safe,
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  you know #1 it's got to be reliable, you know, probably #2
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  and then, you know, ease of use is, is, is really the third
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  thing. And if you don't have those
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  things that it's, it's just very hard to get any kind of traction
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  with, with users. You know, some people make do a
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  lot of robots and those are all hidden away in a, in a factory,
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  in a manufacturing line. And that's fine.
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  You can get a bunch of nerds and, you know, we can all get
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  around and say, what's the problem?
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  Oh, OK, got to make sure that these little, little things are
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  flowing into that thing at the highest rate possible.
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  And so, you know, you get a team and build that thing and
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  eventually they can like make one thing and then they, they
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  let it go. And there's all kinds of
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  incredible versions of that that are, that are out there and
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  made. But it's just a kind of a
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  different world when you're, when you're out there directly
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  having to work with users. And I, I am blessed that my, my
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  father was a general contractor. I grew up summer jobs, you know,
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  I learned how to build things in the shop attached to my,
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  attached to my house. So construction has been with me
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  from the beginning. Pictures of my dad basically
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  built our entire house in phases.
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  And there are times when I didn't have a door.
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  It started as like a small shack and a big piece of land and a,
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  and a, like a lean to carport thing.
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  And then, you know, now it's this beautiful huge kind of
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  multi building complex. And, and so anyway, I've, I've
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  been in the, in the construction world and kind of adjacent
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  watching him, he's finally retired a few years ago.
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  But watching him trying to trying to get technology into
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  his world and just seeing that fail.
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  It's very hard to push technology into the construction
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  world. The only thing that does it is,
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  is just, you know, reliability. So you sort of like walk through
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  like this precision, reliability, you know, and then
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  this sort of Arc between like, you know, kind of growing up in
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  a construction site, going into this cinema sort of movie
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  creative industry and now into back to industrial robots back
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  in the construction site. And so like, which industry
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  would you say like pushes those limits more like the limits of
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  like that precision, repeatability, sort of
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  ruggedness. Where are you seeing like the,
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  the most challenging sort of like, you know, wow, we're
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  really hitting the limits of that.
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  And obviously the technology's probably changed over those 40
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  years, right, from what's possible.
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  But like from from where you sit today, like what's kind of like
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  the the limits that are that are that you're like working within
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  or really tricky to sort of navigate today?
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  So it's really interesting time in in the world.
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  Generally you have LMS have really made talking to the sand
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  like possible, which is which is amazing and what a great UX
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  unlock. I'm confused on how to do the
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  thing and move this move Sandra 10° forward.
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  Well, here, let me tell you how to do it or let me do that for
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  you. You can choose your own
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  adventure and and how deeply you want to let the LLM's, you know,
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  control your thing. We're very.
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  Kevin and I have chosen for complete control.
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  The LLM's actually are telling us to breathe in, breathe out
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  right now, like everything we're doing is completely.
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  We're basically I'm not there yet.
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  I'm not there. Yet but master by the AI I'll.
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  Have to get some pointers. No, don't do it.
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  It's it may not be right. Maybe wrong.
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  There's this big new thing, right we can we can talk to talk
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  to it. So there's a lot of UX
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  flexibility there so so that side of it but of course we have
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  to work we're never going to have a thing talking to the
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  Internet at runtime. So on sites in all these
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  environments, we have to we have to have a local local model and
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  and of course it has to be incredibly reliable.
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  So we think of it as as unlocking the sort of
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  flexibility and ease of use at the sort of high level when when
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  you're sitting there with an interface that so many people
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  can be complicated because it's got it, You know, you can tumble
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  around a 3D object and you're seeing all this work happening
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  or whatever it is. So being able to talk to it is,
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  is a big new thing. And then the other thing that's
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  happening in sort of modern robotics is sort of
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  demonstration learning basically.
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  And some level you can, you can show, show the sand what you
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  want to happen. And then you get the sand can
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  at, you know, 10 Hertz or whatever online while you're
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  doing an action actually, you know, from from a camera stream
• 14:40
  from a or fork sensor or whatever can directly modify the
• 14:43
  action. So that gets you, you know, the
• 14:46
  ability to fold laundry. Some people are going after
• 14:49
  laundry folding or cleaning up a cluttered environment.
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  You know, there are a variety of these tasks that are, that are
• 14:53
  kind of, or we think of it as a task primitive that are that
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  require that kind of in in the loop modification.
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  And that's now tractable. You can do that in 50 examples,
• 15:04
  100 examples. And so you can train a thing
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  that's that's highly reliable, that gets to our standard of
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  reliability and safety in many, many fewer, fewer examples.
• 15:12
  So that levered into the to the rest of all the different task
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  primitives that we've been able to do before moving things
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  around and drilling whatever. I like the language task
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  primitives and then your example of folding laundry because my
• 15:25
  next questions about how I think the company was called pre NAV,
• 15:29
  you flew drones inside of critical infrastructure.
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  Like I'm just trying to draw some contrast here.
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  Like some people right now are building robots that fold
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  laundry. ASA historically you have done
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  things like teach robots how to fly inside of nuclear reactors,
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  right? So can you tell us a little bit
• 15:47
  about that and like what those constraints were like?
• 15:50
  Yeah, as, as you can imagine, they're, they're very, very
• 15:52
  careful people, those who run nuclear reactors.
• 15:56
  Makes sense? And so that was a very high spec
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  project. It took us a long time to do it,
• 16:03
  primarily because of all the they're they're very careful
• 16:07
  kind of ramp up to get to the point where you can you can go
• 16:09
  in, fly with during an active mission.
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  So to the point where where you have to go and weigh every
• 16:14
  single part of your drone, like every single component of the
• 16:17
  drone, you have to get a full in all up weight so that it gets
• 16:20
  weighed before it goes in and it gets weighed when it comes out.
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  There had better be the exact same mass, the amount of checks.
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  So it's it's other people. We're also handing it off to
• 16:28
  operators who are fully suited up when they're going in.
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  So it has to be able to be used with gloves.
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  It has to be inside an environment where where or
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  essentially sort of hardening it to the point where you're
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  sending it into outer space almost.
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  And you, you watch, we just watch the mission through
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  monitors. And I just had a really great
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  team of people. And we're we're working with,
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  we've been doing a lot of development for a long period of
• 16:50
  time. And then we got this
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  opportunity. And so kind of a core group of
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  of people kind of just hammered on this problem for maybe a year
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  and a half like that to go through all of the different
• 17:00
  checks, proving that we could do it inside at our at our place.
• 17:03
  And then we go to their training reactor or they have a full
• 17:06
  training mock up, which is the full size thing sitting what you
• 17:10
  know. Yeah.
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  And then you know. Exact same size, just.
• 17:14
  Yeah, OK. Because it's kind of a it's on
• 17:16
  the reactor that's on its side. So we're going up and holding a
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  radiation meter at each of the little cores of the of the of
• 17:23
  the wall. Yeah.
• 17:24
  So so then you do it on the full size mock up, show what happens
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  to run the full procedure and then do that enough times.
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  The movie analogy. The film analogy is like the
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  stunt double. This is the stunt double nuclear
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  reactor. Yep, Yeah, yeah.
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  This is safe. This is safe thinking, right?
• 17:38
  You go through and you do everything many times.
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  This is, I understand this is very different from software.
• 17:44
  Yeah, not quite. Someday, maybe, but the industry
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  hasn't gotten there. Like you talk a lot about the
• 17:50
  team and I think and, you know, you said you had a team of
• 17:52
  people working together. And I know that, you know,
• 17:53
  whenever we talk on our walks, you always talk about like, you
• 17:56
  know, folks that you've worked with for a long time.
• 17:58
  And my partner JJ and I've worked together now, you know,
• 18:00
  over 2 decades and a lot of the same people.
• 18:03
  I'm curious for you, like, what is it that makes a great
• 18:06
  robotics team? And like what are the kind of
• 18:08
  key roles that you see? And has that changed over the
• 18:11
  last, you know, 10 years or 15 years or like are that, you
• 18:13
  know, today like you would hire the same sort of key people that
• 18:16
  you would have hired, you know, in that first sort of like some
• 18:18
  of those movie runs? I mean, you learn a lot,
• 18:20
  obviously over time. I don't know that I was a great,
• 18:22
  great hire of people gravity. I mean, I was the only person
• 18:26
  for the software really sovereign hardware piece.
• 18:27
  There was there was somebody was working on some of the hardware
• 18:29
  pieces. So I had to do it all and grab
• 18:31
  and and grapple with it myself. And so I didn't have to really
• 18:35
  lever other people so much on that on that project.
• 18:37
  But then later as you grow and and working on pre now, for
• 18:40
  instance, we are definitely have the requirements of all of the
• 18:43
  different disciplines in engineering.
• 18:45
  Really, that's the thing that I love about robotics is, you
• 18:47
  know, from UX all the way down to the electrical engineering,
• 18:50
  mechanical, you're basically touching all these different
• 18:52
  domains and you need experts in each of those domains or at
• 18:56
  least sort of T shaped people who who've got a strong
• 18:58
  expertise and then can can kind of do general things.
• 19:01
  And in early companies, you, you really people who are founder
• 19:04
  types off right, people maybe not willing to go all the way to
• 19:06
  the point where being founded themselves.
• 19:07
  But several of the people that we've brought into this this
• 19:10
  this new thing are are like that.
• 19:12
  They're self starters, they're going out and it's somebody that
• 19:15
  can rely on. Do they know a lot about the
• 19:16
  domain I can rely on? If I, if I hand off thing, even
• 19:19
  if it's not directly in their domain, they'll go and, and just
• 19:22
  chase it down and, and give me good, good feedback, good,
• 19:25
  clear, direct response. They're not just going to be
• 19:27
  like, Oh, yes, Sir, you need a conversation.
• 19:30
  That's yeah, you need reliable people.
• 19:33
  You need people who are fluid thinking and, and then they have
• 19:37
  to be, of course, you know, just really, really smart and good at
• 19:40
  their domain and be willing to work hard.
• 19:41
  I do like the the Ace and I were both mechanical engineering
• 19:44
  majors, and he's actually doing mechanical engineering where I'm
• 19:47
  like, you know. You took you took the road most
• 19:50
  traveled and he took the road left well, he.
• 19:53
  He finished his degree and I and I dropped out and said I would
• 19:56
  rather have to be doing these other things.
• 19:58
  Where can folks follow your work?
• 19:59
  And more importantly, when stealth mode ends, like where
• 20:01
  can people look it up and where's the banner going to flip
• 20:03
  from kind of quiet mode to loud mode?
• 20:05
  LinkedIn X Twitter What's your where's your spot that folks can
• 20:09
  can find you I. Don't do any socials.
• 20:10
  I have I have. I have a LinkedIn page but who
• 20:13
  cares about that? I love it.
• 20:14
  Perfect. Well ASA, this conversation was
• 20:17
  next level. Thanks for helping us bolt
• 20:19
  together creative tech and hardcore robotics.
• 20:22
  OK. It's good, guys.
• 20:24
  That was wild. I don't think we've ever had a
• 20:26
  guest blend creativity and engineering like that.
• 20:29
  Yeah, the way ASA talks about designing robots with both like
• 20:32
  perfectly designed automations and also the human touch of like
• 20:35
  the dials and knobs, it reframes the whole conversation.
• 20:38
  Yeah, there's this notion of like he talks about UX and like
• 20:41
  user experience, the way you're looking at like some beautiful
• 20:44
  art project or some sort of like incredibly like, you know,
• 20:47
  choreographed art of, you know, an app on your phone and, you
• 20:50
  know, so a bunch of key takeaways, right?
• 20:51
  So I think this notion of like Hollywood to hardware, right?
• 20:54
  How do you go from like, you know, visual effects for Spider
• 20:58
  Man robots for gravity and then, you know, never really looked
• 21:00
  back, right? And now it's that creativity
• 21:03
  meets industrial where he's taking, you know, the precision
• 21:06
  of running sort of a special effect over and over.
• 21:08
  Now to like robotics where it's really about how do we do it
• 21:11
  safe and how do we do it repeatable?
• 21:13
  And then very, very simple, right?
• 21:14
  Because that's, you know, non negotiable in construction,
• 21:16
  right? You need to be able to have a
• 21:17
  tool that you can use in 15 years.
• 21:20
  Yeah, just being this tool maker at heart, right?
• 21:22
  You know, robotics has never seen the better tools.
• 21:25
  But again, how do you make them robot rugged, reliable and
• 21:28
  intuitive? And I remember back when we were
• 21:30
  building projects as engineering students at UCLA, stuff would
• 21:33
  break all the time. It felt like we were in the shop
• 21:35
  repairing it. And so I think a lot of what
• 21:36
  they're, what they've worked on is really how do you, you know,
• 21:39
  complete, complete that repeatability for a place where
• 21:42
  people aren't probably taking care of some of those tools,
• 21:44
  drones in the danger zones. I mean, the story of flying in
• 21:47
  the nuclear reactor and, you know, having to weigh every part
• 21:49
  and really understand that whatever went into the reactor
• 21:51
  also came out, which is a pretty critical thing.
• 21:54
  In a full size stunt double nuclear reactor.
• 21:57
  Right, wild, like the fact that they were practicing.
• 22:00
  But again, you know, kind of practice makes perfect and
• 22:02
  perfect practice is what really brings it home.
• 22:04
  And so, yeah, but seeing the future is kind of this software,
• 22:07
  right? I'm betting on AI.
• 22:09
  But then also, you know, using that real time learning and
• 22:12
  these software designed defined robots to actually sort of know
• 22:15
  what you're expecting, you know, step by step, but also sort of
• 22:19
  realizing that, you know, the humanoid walking around in our
• 22:21
  house or with our kids or pets is probably not coming anywhere
• 22:25
  soon. That's probably.
• 22:26
  For the best. All right, so if you're building
• 22:28
  in robotics or you just love where this like concept of tech
• 22:31
  meets creativity, send this episode to your friend, your
• 22:34
  founder, somebody that's building something.
• 22:36
  Just like that and subscribe if you haven't.
• 22:38
  You know, lots more stories like ASA coming your way, super
• 22:41
  interesting builders and founders coming in the next
• 22:43
  couple weeks, and obviously your reviews help us get the story
• 22:46
  out to more people. Yeah, all the links from today's
• 22:48
  episode will be in the show notes.
• 22:50
  And next week we're going to talk about the intersection of
• 22:52
  AI in the enterprise. So how do big companies adopt or
• 22:55
  not adopt AI and how can you apply that founder mode mindset
• 22:59
  even if you're inside of a big slow moving organization?
• 23:02
  That's a wrap, because great engineering, like great
• 23:04
  filmmaking, is all about precision under pressure.