Several robotics companies are tackling one of the toughest problems in AI: building basic models capable of executing tasks they were never explicitly trained to perform. Their approaches run the gamut: from studying millions of web videos and running computer simulations to collecting motion data from humans performing tasks while wearing gloves with embedded sensors.
EnigmaA research lab that will emerge from stealth on Monday is taking a fundamentally different approach. Instead of focusing solely on the model’s capabilities, the less than a year old startup wants to study how humans interact with robots in the hope that these interactions will lead to intuitive interfaces and possibly a different type of robotic brain.
To fund its mission, Enigma raised a $70 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners.
To test how humans want to communicate with machines, Enigma is launching a large-scale experiment that allows anyone in the world to interact online with more than 100 of its patented AI robots. These robots, housed in hangars located in Israel and California, can perform tasks such as drawing pictures with a paintbrush, fighting each other with swords, and performing simple chemical experiments by picking up and mixing flasks with liquids. Enigma claims to have developed both the robotic arms and their underlying models completely from scratch.
Jonathan Jacobi (pictured right), Microsoft’s youngest employee, recruited by Wiz founder Asaf Rappaport during his time there, co-founded Enigma with his old friend Gal Niv (pictured left). The two met while competing in hacking competitions as teenagers, then became close friends while serving together in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where they conducted cybersecurity research.
When Jacobi and Niv set out to launch a startup together last year, they decided to apply their technical prowess to AI for robotics, a field in which they lacked direct experience but which they believed held the most interesting unsolved technological problems.
They assembled a team of what Jacobi describes as some of their “smartest friends” from Israel’s ecosystem and tech community, including alumni from top AI labs, math Olympiad winners, and several people who were even convinced to drop out of PhD programs.
“There are many robotics industry experts participating in the next wave of embodied intelligence, but Jonathan and Gal are outsiders, they are not roboticists. This gives them more room for originality,” said Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures. “An insider may start with teleoperation or dexterity capabilities, but Enigma starts from a very different place: ‘What is the ultimate experience?'”
Jacobi told TechCrunch that Enigma aims to make interactions between humans and robots completely simple.
“If you had to do the dishes and you spent 15 minutes explaining to a robot where to put everything, everyone gets to the point of ‘Forget it, I’ll do it myself.’,‘” Jacobi said. “Right now, everyone is at that point, even the most capable models.”
Jacobi believes that manipulating robots should become as intuitive as adjusting the volume control in a car. Users would be frustrated, he argues, if instead of turning a dial, they had to adjust the volume by set percentages without knowing whether the result would end up being too loud or too quiet.
Enigma hopes that the data collected from its online experiment will reveal an interface that becomes the robotic equivalent of the car’s volume knob. The startup’s public test will evaluate different ways people communicate with their robots.
“We’re going to learn a lot about what’s the right way to interact with robots,” Jacobi said. “Do we want to just talk to them via text or audio? Do we want to show them an example in video form? Or maybe we want to touch, drag and drop?”
Jacobi admits that the Enigma experiment is very open-ended. The hope is that by collecting real-world data on human-robot interaction, the startup will discover not only superior interfaces, but also better ways to train its fundamental AI model.
The company could eventually discover how humans prefer to communicate with robots. But for now, its enterprise use case remains an enigma in itself. While Jacobi declined to share specific use cases for Enigma’s AI, he said the startup is already partnering with healthcare, logistics and entertainment companies.
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