Why Intempus Believes Robots Should Mimic Human Physiology

Teddy Warner, 19, has long been fascinated by robotics. Growing up in a family involved in the field, he spent his high school years working in a machinist shop. Today, he’s launching his own robotics startup, Intempus, with the goal of making robots more human-like.

Intempus is developing technology to retrofit existing robots with emotionally expressive features, aiming to enhance human-robot interaction and improve how people interpret robot behavior. By giving robots human-like reactions, the company also hopes to generate valuable data to improve AI training.

These expressions will be conveyed through body movements, Warner explained to TechCrunch.

“Much of the subconscious communication we rely on doesn’t come from facial expressions or words,” Warner said. “It’s actually in the motion of the arms and torso—something we even recognize in animals like dogs and cats.”

How World Models Sparked a Vision for Emotionally Aware Robots

Warner said the inspiration for Intempus came while he was working at the AI research lab Midjourney. There, like in many other AI labs, the focus was on developing “world models“—AI systems designed to understand and make decisions based on real-world dynamics and spatial relationships, rather than just simple cause-and-effect logic.

However, Warner realized that achieving this level of spatial reasoning would be challenging because the training data for these models often came from robots that lacked that very ability.

“Right now, robots operate from observation to action—going straight from point A to point C,” Warner explained. “But humans, like all living beings, have an important intermediate step: a physiological state. Robots don’t experience stress, joy, or fatigue. If we want them to perceive and interact with the world like humans do, and to communicate with us in a more natural, intuitive, and less unsettling way, we need to give them that missing middle step.”

How Sweat Data Sparked a Breakthrough in Robotic Empathy

Warner ran with the idea and began researching how to give robots a form of emotional state. He initially explored fMRI technology, which tracks brain activity through changes in blood flow and oxygen levels, but it didn’t yield useful results. A breakthrough came when a friend suggested using a polygraph, which records sweat levels. That approach started to show promise.

“I was surprised by how quickly I could collect sweat data from myself and a few friends, and then train a model that gave robots an emotional profile based entirely on that data,” Warner said.

Since then, he’s broadened his approach beyond sweat to include other physiological signals like body temperature, heart rate, and photoplethysmography—a method for measuring changes in blood volume in the skin.

Intempus Gains Traction with Industry Partnerships

Warner officially launched Intempus in September 2024, spending the first four months solely on research. More recently, he’s been balancing technical development with outreach to potential customers, and he’s already partnered with seven enterprise robotics companies.

Intempus is also part of the current cohort of the Thiel Fellowship, which provides $200,000 over two years to young entrepreneurs who leave school to build their ventures.

Next on Warner’s agenda: building a team. Until now, he’s been working solo, but he plans to bring in others to help test the technology in real-world human interactions. While the company’s current focus is on enhancing existing robots, Warner hasn’t ruled out designing custom emotionally aware robots in the future.

“I’ve got a bunch of robots running emotional states,” he said. “If someone can walk in and intuitively sense that one is joyful, then I know I’ve done my job. And I believe I can prove that within the next four to six months.”

Read the original article on: TechCrunch

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