The Future of Household Chores? This Startup Is Bringing Home Robots to the Masses

Home robots are moving beyond science fiction with one startup aiming to make robotic help a reality for everyday households at a price point that's more accessible to consumers. Joining us now to discuss the future of home robotics and more is Antoine Marcel, founder and CEO of Flourish Robotics. Thank you so much for being here, Antoine. Thank you so much for inviting me today. Yes, of course. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to really found Flourish here. Why Why do you believe that right now is the right time to bring robots into the home? Yeah, you know, for decades, we don't see any evolution in the home, actually. We buy more and more and more appliances, but we spend so much time cleaning, doing cooking every day, you know. And at some point of my life, I was like, I need to solve that problem. I don't want to cook anymore. I don't want to clean anymore. I just want to be focused on my friends, my family, spend times, you know, doing side projects and stuff like that. And so I've been focusing on robotics, how can robotics could be applied in like real life in homes for like everybody actually. Because, you know, we spend an average of two hours every day of cleaning and tidying up the home. So if we just win over that, if we just gain that time again, what the humanity will be able to do, you know, a lot of things. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, it's so true. All of us hate all of those chores that we have to do every single day. And then you're right. I mean, it takes us away so much time that we could be spending on something else that we actually care about. So tell us a little bit more about Flourish One, your first product. Tell us a little bit more about what it can actually do, how it actually works. If someone has one of these in their house. Yeah, of course. So instead of, you know, building a robot that will be either be able to be sold to B2B and to B2C, we've just been focused on how we make a domestic robot. And for that, we just lower the price at a point that everyone will be able to afford it. And we made a lot of choice about like, um, the, uh, the usage of that robot. So, because, you know, actually, um, the robotic AI is not, um, the physical AI, sorry, is not able to, to, to do a lot of things, but it can actually like, um, be really useful for the people so the robot you can like teach any kind of new task in under 30 minutes so instead of having a general AI model that can do everything you can just teach it new tasks in under 30 minutes so basically you want to teach it how to water the plant you will just show to the robot how you're actually watering the plant and it will learn we're going to fine tune a specific model for your use case and for your home and teach the robot how to do that specific task. So you can water the plants, clean the countertop, take all the clothes and put them in the dishwasher, take the trash off, all of that kind of useful tasks. Yeah, all of those tasks that none of us want to do. Just incredible to think that in just 30 minutes, it can learn exactly how you do it and then basically copy you and do that task for you. Tell us when it comes to some of these kind of household chores, picking up clothes and shoes, watering plants, as you mentioned. Talk to us about how the Flourish One can actually do those tasks and what the kind of concerns are, the challenges are, imagining how you have to pick up something with care or water something precisely. How do you make sure that the robot is able to do all of those precise tasks that someone needs to be? So much like they really want it to be in their own house, everyone has their own way of doing things how do you really get the robot to be able to do all of those different tasks so we found a way to do that really easily by creating um kind of a workflow you know like ni10 or make or stuff like that because actually you can't just tell to your robot like a prompt just go and water my plant and he don't know how to get the water he don't know where is the plant he don't know anything but with the mobile app we create you can just create kind of a workflow so the first step is uh uh go get the water the second step is find the plant and the second step is like water the plant and when you're gonna create the workflow you're gonna um show him all of um all of the step oh oh he's gonna do that um so instead of having a big like big policy that's gonna do everything gonna just teach robot every steps and you're gonna show him how to do that you know um and so we just need to separate all of kind of the different layers of the robot so for the navigation we don't need real ai we just like our SLAM system or also like autonomous navigation you know uh for like a detecting object there is some specific layers that exist like uh for for for a few years like a YOLO or like detect anything of that kind of task, but for the action, we need like typical AI, like VLA and stuff like that. So we separate all of those layers and create kind of a workflow to take that. But also if people really want to go really deeper into the robot, they can like create their own things because there is an SDK, so if people just want to code something, create, I don't know, a math tutor or whatever, they can like basically code on the robot if they want. Yeah, it's just incredible to think about how you're using all of these different technologies, right? LiDAR, AI, all of these different technologies together to make this really be a viable product. Tell us a little bit about how you keep this product safe, right? Because if it's in someone's home, they're obviously going to be worried. What about my dog, my kids, my cat, right? So talk to us a little about the safety concerns and how you really make sure that the robot is going to be a safe part of someone's home. That's one of the biggest things we need to work on, you know? Like, I think that that should be one of the biggest focus on all of the robotics companies. Actually, we solved that by an easy manner. Is that we want the robot to work while you're at work. So right now we are talking at podcast, but my robot at home is cleaning my home, you know. We don't really want the robot to interact directly with all of the humans and stuff like that. So what we chose for the security is that the robot will just stop whenever it detects a human or animal, you know. So whenever there is a human within the range of the arm motion, it will just stop, wait until the human will go away, and get back to the task. I think it's a key matter to sort of security for now. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so important. So basically, if there's any moving around live person or animal, then it will stop and basically wait until that person or animal has kind of cleared the space. Yeah, that makes sense. at least when you're kind of first working on this to make sure that you keep everyone safe thinking about um you know what kind of other companies are doing in this space right now you have Figure and 1X pursuing more general purpose humanoid robots so why has Flourish chosen to focus on a more specific set of household tasks and also how does that help you keep the cost down as well um so you know there is a bunch of companies that are trying to get money right by selling to companies and then say, okay, later we're going to go to customers, you know, like domestics, but it's not really the same product because, for example, Flourish one is only able to lift like 1.5 kilograms. We don't need to be able to lift like 10 or 20 kilograms in the home, you know? So all that choice, like we like being able to focus on like for whom the product is built and it's only built for like domestic and consumers so we don't have legs because legs uh had a lot of security concerned uh a lot of costs like like an average legs can cost like 20k you know so we just have a mobile base with wheels we can only lift 1.5 kilograms and all of that choice means like how can we solve like 80 percent of the tasks that uh like real people have on the daily basis you know and that's a real difference between like us and like all of the other companies that are building like a robot that costs 20k like nobody can like afford the robot that costs 20k dollars you know yeah exactly keeping that price down is so important i believe yours is priced at 3555 dollars right so tell us a little bit more about that pricing model and what's going to happen over time because obviously that's a lot cheaper than something like a twenty thousand dollar robot but it's still a lot for the average household so for this really this robot to really get into people's everyday households, what do you think is going to have to happen with price and how are you going to be able to get that price down? Yeah, I think the main concern right now for the customers that we've told is not like the price of the robot, but it's the capabilities. Because actually, you can water the plants, you can get all the things, the toys and put them away and things like that. But people really want to have an improvement in the capabilities. They don't want to have any cleaning people that come at their home. They don't want to have any teleoperators or stuff like that. So my main concern actually is how can we improve the capabilities every day, every month, to have the robot that's able to clean for two hours straight at 99% of success rate. So that's my main focus and the main focus of the company actually. But yeah, you're right, on the long run, we will need to lower the costs again. But that will all depend on the usage of the robot. I think if the robot can save you two hours a day, it's fine if it stays at that price point, you know. But at some point, it will be good to lower that cost. And to lower that cost, you just need to be able to manage all of the stacks by yourself. So, for example, actually, we are designing our own motors. We designed our own battery. We are assembling the robot by ourselves. And so we need to really manage the full stack by ourselves to be able to lower the cost. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So basically right now, keeping it at the price that it is and just improving the functionality more and more. And then you'll worry about the price as you get farther down the line. Last question, just talking about when people are actually going to be getting these products into their homes. So right now you're targeting initial deliveries for December of this year, right? So tell us a little bit about when people will actually be getting the robots in their homes and also what this early customer interest has looked like and what you see for the rest of the year going forward. Yeah, so we are shipping the first robot in December. Like the 50 robots will be shipped in December. So that's pretty exciting. And I really want to be really close with the people that are going to buy the robot to understand their pain point, their use case, what they want to improve on the robot. And, you know, some people are just sending me messages like I want it to be able to clean my cat litter box. And I'm just focusing with my team, like, okay, how can we improve that specific use case? Because we want the customer to be happy with that use case, you know? And so, yeah, so after that, we will just understand better what the ecosystem wants, what is the use case, what we should improve on the robot. So that's really a way for us to be able to co-create this product with early adopters, actually. Yeah, it's so exciting to think about where this is all headed. And congratulations on shipping the first robots at the end of this year. Yeah, we can't wait to see what happens with all of us. Thank you so much for joining us. Antoine Marcel, founder and CEO of Flourish Robots. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Justine.