armel

ceo @mirurobotics | @utaustin

[armel @armelwtalla]

I don’t fear failure. I don’t fear death. I only fear mediocrity

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

I’m convinced discipline is just the highest form of self-respect. It’s choosing what you want most over what you want now. It’s keeping your word. It’s an act of service to your future self.

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

“But the market is so small rn”
“How do you know robotics is going to work? Show me the proof”

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

Introducing Compare Devices in Miru (YC S24) ♻️

Often, performance differences among robots in your fleet can be explained by configuration differences.

But previously, it was difficult for teams to access those diffs. They'd need to go file by file, using offline tools.

Compare Devices makes it easy - you can select any two devices and start comparing.

We hope this empowers teams to spend more time taking action and less time diagnosing issues.

This is just the start. We're building more tools to analyze configs across your fleets, look out for agentically created fleet reports on the horizon 👀

[Miru (YC S24) @mirurobotics]

https://t.co/JsJT00bcJN

[Miru (YC S24) @mirurobotics]

https://t.co/zR9GiUGKig

[Miru (YC S24) @mirurobotics]

Scaling Robotics Episode 8:

The Software Playbook for a 2,000 Robot Fleet with Cem Ersoz, Director of Robotics Software @simberobotics

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Timestamps
(0:04) Introduction
(1:32) Fleet Scale and Deployment
(3:57) Lessons from Operating Alongside Humans
(6:56) Building Software for Thousands of Robots
(10:55) Testing, Deployment, and Reliability
(13:58) A/B Testing in Robotics vs. SaaS
(17:06) Supporting Legacy Hardware
(22:20) AI Coding Tools in Robotics
(25:28) Staged Rollouts and Canary Deployments
(29:30) The Hundred Megabit Cable Story
(34:10) Building Workarounds into Everything
(36:11) Hardest Moments in Scaling
(39:49) What Makes a Great Robotics Engineer
(43:21) Closing

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This Episode
In Episode 8, we speak with Cem Ersoz, Director of Robotics Software at Simbe Robotics. Simbe builds Tally, an autonomous retail robot that scans millions of shelves per week, giving retailers real-time visibility into product availability, out-of-stocks, and shelf accuracy. With thousands of Tallys deployed across major retailers in more than 10 countries, operating daily alongside untrained store employees across grocery, club, farm supply, and home improvement, Simbe runs one of the largest commercial Physical AI fleets in the world.

We discuss what actually changes when your fleet crosses key thresholds. At a certain scale, you can no longer SSH into a robot to fix it, and that forces a complete rethink of how you build. We get into the difference between 95% autonomous and truly autonomous, why improving 9s of reliability is so hard, and how Simbe ships software to thousands of robots they can never directly touch.

Plus, why A/B testing a robot fleet isn't like optimizing a SaaS funnel. There are things that no dashboards can capture, such as whether people actually feel comfortable around a robot moving faster through the store. We also get into what a truly representative canary rollout looks like at this scale, and what Cem learned when hardware he had trusted for years finally failed on robot number 2,000.

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

Cem and @simberobotics have quietly built one of the largest Physical AI fleets in the world.

Thousands of their Tally robots roam retail stores across 10+ countries every day, scanning shelves and generating the data that keeps products in stock.
In today's episode of Scaling Robotics, we learn more about what it takes to build software at fleets of this scale.

When you can't afford to physically touch every robot, how do you build, test, deploy, and monitor software to keep high uptime?

What are the qualities of teams and engineers that can get a fleet to this scale?

In this conversation with Cem, we dive into how he leads robot software at Simbe. Enjoy!

(And they're hiring engineers among other roles, check them out at simberobotics [dot] com)

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

i love it when our customers are positively stoked about quality of life improvements 😆

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

@samanfarid is one of my favorite CEOs in robotics. He and

@goformic has deployed hundreds of robots at manufacturers across the country... all doing reliable, useful work 24/7.

Check out this episode!

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

just did a count, and we currently have 120 eggs and 7 tubs of greek yogurt in the fridge 🤣

and we're stocked with delicious, high-protein Locale meals

@mirurobotics has the healthiest startup fridge in SF

[Miru (YC S24) @mirurobotics]

In Episode 6, we speak with Ritukar Vijay, Co-founder and CEO of Ottonomy. Ottonomy builds autonomous indoor-outdoor delivery robots for enterprises across healthcare, logistics, aerospace, and more.

Before founding Ottonomy, Ritukar spent 16 years in autonomy, leading BMW's L4 self-driving program at Aptiv and building everything from defense UGVs to warehousing robots, with 57+ patents to his name.

We discuss why robot ops is really customer ops and most teams get the framing wrong, how Ottonomy templatized infrastructure integrations like elevators and access doors to avoid the custom-engineering trap at every new site, and Ritukar's take that the industry overfits on the robot when the real scaling unlock is the orchestration layer that sits above it. Plus, why he thinks teleoperated robots will hit a wall at scale and full autonomy from day one is the only viable path for enterprise deployments.

Timestamps
(0:04) Introduction
(1:20) What Ottonomy Does
(2:53) Healthcare Use Cases
(5:37) What Feels Different About Robotics Today
(8:01) Educating Customers and the Buyer Process
(10:05) Deployment Blockers and Infrastructure Integration
(14:36) Shifting from Product Focus to Solution Focus
(19:07) Scaling Operations and Robot Ops
(23:14) Metrics and Tracking Performance
(25:55) Incident Lifecycle and Resolution
(27:39) Scaling the Human-to-Robot Ratio
(29:50) Indoor-Outdoor Differentiation and Building for the Future
(35:09) Advice for Founders and Closing

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

@mirurobotics product update!

- multi-file editing -> bundle multiple file edits into a single deployment

- redeploy -> rollback to a historic deployment

- improved diff navigation -> better visibility and controls

- snapshot comparison -> compare between any two deployments

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

https://t.co/cUeMykfygT

[Michael Dell 🇺🇸 @MichaelDell]

Focus on what you can control. Build something, anything. A product, yourself, a family, your community, a team, a company or organization, relationships. Or help someone else do it. Don't complain or be a victim, ever. #PlayNiceButWin

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

https://t.co/vnUm9q8EJt

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Someone asked about tricks for meeting eminent people. I said the best plan is just to do really good work. Then you'll tend to meet them organically. In the worst case you'll see one whenever you look in the mirror.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Black History Month is a time to recognize the lived, shared experience of all Black folks who have fundamentally shaped, challenged, and ultimately strengthened America. It’s about taking an unvarnished look at the past so that we can create a better future. As we mark 100 years of celebrating Black history, let’s honor the sacrifices of the leaders who came before us, and recommit ourselves to continuing their work.

[Vedant Nair @vedantnair__]

First half marathon 🦾

[J. Cole @JColeNC]

Disc 2 - Track 2

[J. Cole @JColeNC]

The Fall-Off