Dan Kfoury

@Instawork Robotics Lab

[Sunny Sahota @_sunnysahota]

August 17th: I.R.L. Happy Hour by @instawork

https://t.co/cjuEHO8Z36

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

This👇 the next big milestone from @Instawork Robotics Lab (IRL). Thanks to @nabeel @adarshkulkarni for being on our panel.

[Ryan Hickman @ryanmhickman]

Everyone in Embodied AI is talking about Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models. Almost no one is talking about the physical nightmare of collecting the data to train them. You can't scrape a kitchen table or a warehouse shelf from a web browser.

To get to millions of hours of diverse, real-world manipulation data, you need hundreds of rigs. But you can't buy them. If you build them out of off-the-shelf developer kits, they weigh 15 pounds, overheat in an hour, require bulky cabling, and break the first time an operator wears them on a job site.

At the Instawork Robotics Lab (IRL), we had to build our own. Meet the Instacore: a rugged, 4lb wearable egocentric data-capture engine designed specifically to survive a full shift on a standard power pack.

We didn't build a flashy humanoid. We did hard, blue-collar systems engineering:

💾 THE COMPUTE — A custom MediaTek Genio carrier board that runs completely fanless, routing 5 camera streams directly to on-board storage.

⚡ THE I/O PIPELINE — We ditched USB for industrial GMSL. Thin, ultra-flexible coaxial lines route high-speed data down to the backpack and Power-over-Coax (PoC) back up, completely eliminating batteries on the wrist.

⏱️ UNIFIED SENSOR CLOCK — The MediaTek Genio SoC drives a shared master clock straight to the ISPs driving our 5 global shutter sensors, stamping metadata at the microsecond of capture to ensure zero-drift temporal alignment.

👁️ OPTIMIZED OPTICS — 95 DFOV lenses on flexible PCB ribbon modules keep the wrist cams flat to prevent snags. A 145-degree chest camera captures the macro workspace, while a 50mm baseline rectilinear stereo head pair preserves close-up 3D mapping.

To build hundreds of these, we took over a warehouse in Mountain View in April, called it the Instalab, and brought in talented Pros with assembly backgrounds from Tesla, Apple, and Meta.

To test the systems, we had our Pros wear active rigs while assembling more rigs. The video below shows the raw, time-synchronized Foxglove playback of that exact loop.

Now, we’re shipping these units globally to scale data collection for real Pros on the job.

[Dan Kfoury @DanKfoury]

@zuwang95 This is impressive, congrats!

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

Just returned from a fascinating couple weeks in China meeting robotics teams/manufacturers and retail/Internet operators. Found @ericjang11 and @vhmth's reflections useful and wanted to share themes/tradeoffs I've been reflecting on.

Came home with more questions than answers!

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

Today, we're opening @Instawork Robotics Lab (IRL), connecting the robotics industry with > 10 million skilled workers. IRL is offering the first certified workforce program for the physical AI economy ... with 20,000 @Instawork Pros already certified! 👷

Read more from @alistairmbarr @BusinessInsider

https://t.co/57Jwyabf2P

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

Excited to have @TCVTech & others, including @9yardscapital @LarryFitzgerald join us in our journey to create economic opportunity for local businesses & hourly workers! Our Series D funding will help us invest faster in AI to improve the quality & density of our 4M+ worker labor network.

https://t.co/1cl8OBluJl

[Tilman Fertitta @TilmanJFertitta]

Excited to support @sumirmeghani and @instawork as they help American get back to work. I know it’s hard to find hospitality staff right now, and this is a great way businesses can find staff and workers can find flexible work today.

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

@Instawork has raised $60M in Series C funding to get America back to work and to continue executing towards our vision to create economic opportunity for local businesses and professionals. Just one step in our long journey!

https://t.co/H5ydGlUqDJ

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

Completed our first shifts today outside the US, an incredible milestone for @instawork. More to share soon, it’s always Day 1!!!

[Dan Kfoury @DanKfoury]

@nflcommish 🗑 🤡

[JuJu Smith-Schuster @TeamJuJu]

First the NFL takes away our bye week because another team can’t get their Covid situation together, now they take away our Thanksgiving primetime game for the same reason. Smh.

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

RIP to Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn https://t.co/FA7MhMMW2m

[Dan Kfoury @DanKfoury]

@BMurphy_21 @OldTakesExposed

[JuJu Smith-Schuster @TeamJuJu]

He’s baaaaaaaackkkk!! 👀

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

@instawork is bringing on 20,000 new Professionals the next 2 months to support essential businesses in Delivery, Janitorial, Retail, and Warehouse Operations; if you know people seeking work (or businesses who need people), we're open and ready to help https://t.co/kLyJbGoBaU

[Fareed Mosavat @far33d]

1/ Experimentation is a critical tool to move your business and your understanding of customers forward. Unfortunately, most experiments are bad.

What’s the difference between a good experiment and a bad experiment? [credit to @bhorowitz for the style]

https://t.co/LoRYhpuOB6

[Dan Kfoury @DanKfoury]

@KBAndersen @nytimes Officials are just as idiotic as he is

[Dan Kfoury @DanKfoury]

@TeeAreOhWhy Where are you located @TeeAreOhWhy ? We're BOOMING all across the US!

[Sumir Meghani @sumirmeghani]

Courtesy of @cloresimonis and our Texas team, I woke up this morning to read several compelling, personal stories of how @instawork is creating economic opportunity for our Professionals every day. I'm so proud of our team's hard work.