(uplifting music)
- What's up, guys?
We are here in front of Clockwork,
in the Marina District of San Francisco.
I'm about to try the first nail painting robot
ever opened to the public.
You know, that Jetsons future, full of robots?
We're going to go see that right now.
Let's go.
(uplifting music continues)
- Garry, welcome.
- Thank you so much.
So this is it, huh?
- We can shake hands now.
- I know.
Oh my God.
Well, I'm really excited to try this.
- Awesome.
- All right.
Let's check it out.
- Ready to get your nails painted by a robot?
- I am.
- [Renuka] Grab a seat.
- Okay, so this is the machine
and then it sounds like all I have to do
is follow the instructions on here.
- Absolutely.
And it should just open the door for you.
We have what's called a cartridge,
which contains nail polish,
that you're going to put in there.
- Okay.
- And I heard you wanted black,
so we have a black cartridge ready for you.
- All right.
Black nails for a black soul.
All right, let's go.
I think I got this.
We'll see.
Okay.
All right, I insert the cartridge.
Oh, that was very satisfying.
(Renuka laughs)
Okay.
- [Renuka] And then you can close the door.
- Now I close the door.
And the robot's reading the cartridge now.
- And at any time, if you want more instructions,
you can just press "Show Me How,"
and it's going to tell you what you need.
- That's awesome.
All right, it says, "The cartridge is ready."
So this was the outcome of, you know,
more than a year of R&D, is that right?
- I think it's almost been two and a half years
at this point. - Two and a half years?
- Yeah.
We were pretty quick in getting our first prototype out.
I want to say it was eight months from ideation
that we actually put a machine in front of users
who had never seen it before.
And the reason was we really wanted that early feedback.
Like, "Are we missing something?
Is this something people really want?"
So I'm super proud of the team for that,
being able to deliver so quickly.
I don't think it's easy for a robotics company
to get something out that quickly.
- I mean, off the bat right now,
it's ready for, for me,
a guy who literally like came in off of the street
to be able to, you know, get my first nail done.
It looks like there's a little divot here
and then I need to make sure that's down
and then I just insert all the way.
- [Renuka] Yeah.
Go all the way in.
There you go. - Oh, all right.
Oh, I have to say or press "ready."
Let's try it.
Ready.
(machine revving)
So walk me through what's happening right now.
- Right.
So those flashes that you saw
were our two 3D cameras,
taking a bunch of really quick pictures of your finger
and they build a point cloud, or a 3D map.
It's a very, very high resolution map of your fingernail.
And that gets shipped to our AI.
The AI figures out where the edges are,
and then the algorithms
instruct the robot exactly where to go
to paint your nail.
How does it feel?
- That looks perfect, actually.
All right, now I can remove.
So that was pretty sweet.
That was my first nail painted totally by a robot.
- [Renuka] It was.
- Awesome. Okay.
And then one of the things that's really cool about this
is you can go from beginning to end, like all 10 fingers,
it sounds like, in as fast as seven minutes?
- I think I can do it in six
because I'm now used to the process.
But we have had a customer trying it for the very first time
who was done in seven minutes.
- Wow, that is really fast.
So now it's ready for my next one.
And then I should pull this back.
And then...
So this stuff is powered by computer vision.
Was that one of the reasons
why you started working on the problem in the first place?
Like there's this new idea that computers can see.
- One of the big motivations for us
was how robotics was changing.
Because of computer vision and the advances there,
robots can really come out of factories
and prescriptive environments
and into real life.
And so we can pull these kinds of things off.
- Ready.
The robot can hear as well.
- It can.
- What were some of the things that were the hardest
to sort of figure out?
I mean, it looks like it's working,
and it's not just a 2D problem, it's actually a 3D problem.
- So a lot of what we've used
are things made possible by self-driving cars.
But self-driving cars don't need submillimeter accuracy,
because for us, we do need that.
If we get a little bit of polish on people's cuticles,
or on their skin, they won't be satisfied.
So being able to do this in 3D
and with submillimeter accuracy
was pretty hard to figure out.
And then ergonomically,
I think what's been surprising for me
is the finger rest, or the hand rest as we call it,
because people's fingers are so different.
The last thing I was expecting was that
for a machine that can paint your nails fully autonomously,
that the hard thing would be where you place your hand.
So that was an unexpected challenge.
Yeah, I guess one of the things that's interesting
is how much you're never quite prepared for
the robot to actually touch your nail.
- I think that's a very surprising moment
for a lot of people.
- Yeah.
But it's so accurate.
Thankfully.
(both laughing)
- We actually have a bunch of layers of security woven in.
And one of the ultimate ones
was anyone who's uncomfortable can just pull out their hand
and it's just going to stop midway and back off.
- I like the touch screen.
That's quite nice.
- The touch screen also gives us a number of opportunities
to, you know,
we have a captive audience, quite literally,
so we can use the touch screen for a number of things
to make people's experience even better.
- Perfect.
Hey!
What do you think?
It's pretty good, actually.
- Do you like it?
- Yeah.
I mean, my first robot nail painting. It's awesome.
- Awesome.
- So a lot of people who are watching this
are going to be like, "Okay, how do I try this out for myself?"
- So what we're trying to do right now
is find partners all around the country.
We want this to be just a 10 minute walk from you.
In fact, we really want it to be in corporate buildings
or in retail stores, where people already are,
which just really adds to the convenience factor.
- And so you're still a startup, growing really fast.
You know, it sounds like you're hiring too.
- We're only six people right now, getting to this stage,
but we've seen so much demand.
And there's so much potential here
that it's time to grow the team.
- I'm just really excited about this sort of Jetsons future,
where all of the things in our lives
could basically be automated by robots like this.
- I mean, that is our goal.
To sort of not have people spend time on things
that are just tasks for them.
And instead, divert their energy to things that they love.
- That's awesome.
So if people want to follow up with you,
like, you know, what's your website?
Like do they sign up for your email list?
- It's LikeClockwork.com.
- Oh, I love that domain.
- [Renuka] Thank you.
- Well, Renuka, thank you so much for having me today.
- Absolutely.
Thank you for coming.
- All right.
This is coming to you soon.
(uplifting music)