Hebi Robotics CEO: Humanoids are ‘more cool than practical’

The furnace has cooled, but only by the standards of a furnace.

Inside, the furnace is a cylinder several times taller than it is wide, its walls crusted with the residue of the past few melts. Someone has to go in. The furnace operator pulls on protective gear, clips onto the mount and climbs, scraping the walls with a wire brush as they go. Claustrophobics wouldn’t do well here. There’s no room to turn around, and the air is thick with everything the brush shakes loose.

At one metal producer, that job is now done by a robot. It looks nothing like a human, and it’s purpose-built for the job. It locks onto the same mount, rides up the furnace the way the worker did, works its way around the walls and cleans the interior. The operator watches the video feed from the outside and spot-checks the result.

The robot was built by Hebi Robotics, a Pittsburgh company that spun out of Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics Lab in 2014 to commercialize snake robots — chains of actuators that could slither through pipes and rubble. The actuators now show up in the tensegrity rover NASA built for planetary landings, in the inchworm robots NASA is using to prototype construction in orbit and in hardware bound for the seafloor.

Bob Raida was finishing an MBA at Carnegie Mellon when the lab asked him for a hand. “It was just an idea,” he says. “They could use some business help, so I stepped in and did some market research and laid the groundwork.” He had cofounded TrueCommerce, an e-commerce software company, in the 1990s. He joined Hebi as its first full-time employee in 2016 and has been CEO since 2023.

Raida talks to TechInformed about the evolving industry, why not every robot should look the same and where robotics is making its mark on land, at sea and in space.

What are the coolest-looking robots you’ve seen?

NASA has been a customer [of ours] since early on. One of the coolest robots anybody has built with our tools is called Super Ball Bot.

It was a research robot, a tensegrity robot: a bunch of rods connected by cables, like a great big three-dimensional hashtag. It could expand and collapse, carry a payload and walk around, and they used our tools to actuate those cables.

They took a very challenging automation problem and made it feasible and practical.

The coolest thing we’re working on now isn’t even one robot. It’s an approach to mobility. Hebi was initially launched to commercialize snake robots, which are basically a bunch of actuators strung together. One of the robot styles we work with now, which is really exciting, is what we call an inchworm.

It’s a simple form factor, basically a big arm, but without a fixed base. It can walk around on either end. We’ve used suction to walk around, and we’ve used knife edges and even grippers. You can insert it into a small, confined space, and it can attach itself, walk around and manipulate tools.

That lets you get into highly variable, unpredictable, confined spaces, or even open spaces with obstacles, and still have the robot navigate reliably and access areas. It can even overcome obstacles that wheeled robots or conventional legged robots simply can’t.

Robots like that are being used by NASA, in a project called ARMADAS (Automated Reconfigurable Mission Adaptive Digital Assembly Systems).

We have another customer that produces nondestructive testing probes used in very dangerous workspaces, and they’re automating their inspection with these tools.

A customer in Europe is creating a version using our tools that can walk around on pipes. We think it’s a really exciting form factor that solves a lot of hard problems in getting into confined spaces, navigating obstacles and doing work or inspections in important infrastructure, such as maritime applications like ship hulls.

Which industries are making the most progress with robots?

The industries making the most progress are those with high-value automation challenges. A lot of companies are focusing on eliminating confined space entry, and we think that’s an excellent use for robotics.

Putting a person into a confined space is very dangerous, and doing work in there is very unpleasant. Even if a robot doesn’t do the entire job automatically, enabling the operator to do it remotely, safely and effectively is very valuable.

You’re potentially saving lives, not just minimizing labor costs. Those are the types of things we think are big wins for robotics.

[For example,] we created a robot for a customer that produces metals. They melt their metal in a big cylindrical furnace that’s very tall but not very wide. After every few melts, someone has to go in with a wire brush and clean it, in protective gear, in a very unpleasant space.

We created a system that does what the human would do, but automatically. It attaches to a mount within the furnace and rides up it, just as the person would, then goes around and cleans the furnace.

We have the drawings of the furnace and know what it looks like, so we can automate it to cover all the areas. The operator can see video and images of the cleaning and do spot checks, but it’s largely automated.

What are your thoughts around humanoids?

There’s a lot of hype around robotics and physical AI. You allude to humanoids. They’re cool to look at, and we’ve seen them in science fiction movies forever, so people think, “That’s the future.” Maybe, but I think they’re more cool than practical.

The things that are valuable to automate are perhaps less sexy than the robot maid or the robot bartender. They’re the things that get real work done in confined spaces and enable humans to work remotely and safely. That’s where robots win, and a human form factor or a quadruped form factor just doesn’t make sense a lot of the time.

What excites you about the future of robots and the way the technology is evolving?

A lot of different things. There are so many opportunities for automation. A lot of people look at a robot maid or a robot that walks your dog and think, “How cool.” I look at that and think, “I walk my own dog. That’s something we should do. It’s good for us and we enjoy it.”

But think about space exploration. To make things happen in space, you need to move product around and build things, and we’re literally starting from a vacuum. There is very little automation, yet many countries and companies have very ambitious aspirations for getting to the moon, Mars and beyond. To me, that’s super exciting, because there’s so much that needs to happen there.

One of the things we’re working on right now is space-rated actuation. We have a handful of projects with NASA and a lot of support from industry, because there’s such a need, and no one robot will do it. You need a lot of different things. I’m excited about seeing all that happen.

Automation in dangerous environments where people can’t survive — space being one and the deep sea another — is where I see a lot of potential.

We have a project with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to create a version of our hardware that can operate at depths of up to 1,000 meters. There’s a lot that could happen beneath the sea, such as moving things around and manipulating things. Some companies create tools, but it’s a very underserved market with unlimited potential.

Those challenging workspaces on land, at sea and in space are where I think robots have a really high ceiling.

Do you have any robots yourself?

Well, I’ve got a Roomba. That’s an example of a very effective consumer robot that we now pretty much take for granted, but it’s a useful and practical tool. I also have a dishwasher and a washing machine. Those are automation tools. The question is, what is a robot?

That’s part of what Hebi wants to do: get people thinking differently about robots. A robot doesn’t need to look like C-3PO or R2-D2, although they’re cool examples. A robot is a tool that helps you get something done faster, better, safer. I would argue your dishwasher is a robot, and your washing machine, and of course the Roomba. I’ve got those, and I also have some Hebi robots scattered about to play with.

How do you have your coffee?

Just black. Let it be coffee. That said, I’m a pumpkin spice fan, so I get the pumpkin spice at Dunkin’. It suits me well.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.