this is the world's first ever humanoid robot that will summit Mt. Everest
it's named Pemba, and two days ago it reached the top of Chimborazo, a 20,000-foot peak in Ecuador, completely on its own (no remote or operator).
and the robot itself is nothing special. Pemba is a Unitree G1, the same ~$14k robot anyone can buy online right now.
the guy behind it, Pablo Berlanga, is doing this to send robots into the places that kill people.
think about how you'd check on a melting glacier or a deadly crevasse out in the middle of nowhere today.
you either send a person who might not come back, or you skip it and learn nothing.
so Berlanga wants a robot that walks in on its own, carries a few pounds of gear, and brings back footage from places no human can safely reach.
i think eventually they'll even be used for robot rescue missions to reach people stranded in disasters and dangerous situations
from here, the plan for Pemba is Mauna Kea in Hawaii, then Everest.
Everest is the tricky one.
the team wanted to send Pemba up this spring to start hauling trash off the mountain and tracking its glaciers (something Nepal genuinely needs help with)
but the Nepalese government told them to wait.
there's no law in Nepal for a climber that isn't human, so the rules have to get written before a robot can set foot on the mountain.
kind of incredible that the machine is ready for Everest a full year before anyone's decided whether it's allowed to be up there
The mission is much greater than just hitting the tallest summits.
Can’t wait for @pabloberlangab to share more on his vision, his expertise and what he has built over the years.
locked in, founder mode.
So bullish.
@0xpepegachad@virtuals_io@eastworlds_io@base You don’t even know how ai works
How will OpenAI scratch environment data from YouTube? This is the most retarded thing I’ve heard in months
We're trying to disrupt the extreme-environment robotics industry.
Pemba represents the starting point, powered by @eastworlds_io on @base. Every summit becomes proprietary training data no lab can replicate.
Join Pemba's journey below.
I’ve been watching what @pabs is doing with https://t.co/s7lbtCTxGo ane $PEAK. At first, I was interested simply as someone who enjoys mountain climbing myself, but this is starting to feel like something much bigger than that.
If $PEAK doesn’t end up becoming a major runner in the @virtuals_io ecosystem and reach 10–20M+ and beyond, then I honestly don’t know what will.
What @pabs is doing deserves far more attention, capital, and admiration than it’s currently getting, and I think it’s only a matter of time before it receives all three.
Also, one of my main criticisms of Virtuals projects has always been LP depth.
I’ve noticed $PEAK’s liquidity has been getting thicker over time, with more liquidity being added. I assume that’s being done by the team to insure long term growth, which is great to see.
excited to follow @pabloberlangab and his teams journey to the world’s greatest summits!
This is what the support meta is about - my boy @pabloberlangab here is using ALL the fees to help disadvantaged communities
Don’t want to spoil the surprise here, but I think A LOT of charitable foundations are on the cards to support @pabloberlangab and the good work he is doing.
Truly a ray of hope and glimmer amongst the doom and gloom recently.
Thank you @pabloberlangab for brightening our day.
the team took a crazy idea and turned it into reality. this is exactly the kind of moonshot ambition we want to enable at Virtuals for founders who dare to dream.
robotics today is expensive and gated. frontier labs and well-funded teams have the technical and capital advantage. but at Virtuals, we are working to close that gap: engineering support, funding, and hardware, together in one place.
P.S. yes, this is a plug. we are currently running a robotics accelerator at Network School. fully funded 1-2 month residency where you work with real robots and our top tier team. at the end of the residency, we support teams getting to deployment. probably no summiting tho.
tag your cracked robotics friends. open source humanoid devs or solo researchers training their own VLA-JEPA models. if they join us, you get up to $850 referral.
24 hours since the summit, and the momentum is far bigger than we imagined.
8,000+ of you tuned in live, organically. We truly didn't see that coming. The support, energy, and belief from this community in less than 24 hours has been overwhelming. Thank you.
Many of you have launched separate tokens on Bankr and Pump, and we appreciate the love from those communities.
But today we claim and declare it officially: the one ticker for this movement is $PEAK on @virtuals_io.
Fees from $PEAK go directly to indigenous mountaineering communities in Ecuador, Hawaii, and Nepal. We believe robots can serve these communities through transport, food amenities, access and much more. That's the mission.
Next, we showcase Pemba to the Ecuadorian people. Then Hawaii for Mauna Kea. Then final stop, Everest.
One ticker. One mission. One movement.
We're not stopping until our robot goes to space.
$PEAK CA: 0x296eB9c4D8fCbd00fBc6D5027e4202BF955fA76f
We are officially proud to welcome Pemba to Virtuals Protocol, the first humanoid to reach Mt. Chimborazo’s summit, the closest point on Earth to the Sun.
Pemba will work with Eastworlds as a technical partner to push humanoid robotics into extreme real-world environments, starting with a successful Chimborazo summit and continuing toward Hawaii as the next milestone.
From one summit to the next.