{"id":91187,"title":"TRLC - Affordable robotic workers","tagline":"AI-powered robot platform that makes automation accessible to businesses.","body":"Hi 👋 this is [Jannik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannik-grothusen/) - Founder of The Robot Learning Company.\n\n**TL;DR:** We make automation accessible to businesses with an affordable, general-purpose robot platform designed to automate repetitive, stationary tasks.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=91187\u0026key=user_uploads/2427273/0797ea73-9264-46d4-b089-731c1ec76f89)\n\n# The Problem\n\n**Traditional automation is broken** for tasks outside of factories. It’s expensive, rigid, and slow to deploy. Each new use-case demands a custom $100,000+ integration, months of setup, and only works in tightly controlled environments.\n\n**General-purpose robots promise to change that**. The dream: drop-in systems that replace expensive human labor with cheap, flexible robotic labor. But in reality, most general robotic systems don’t justify their cost. The math doesn’t work:\n\n**_Value = Human labor saved – Robot cost_**\n\nToday, robots lose this equation in two key areas:\n\n* Low productivity: they don’t save enough labor\n* Hardware, setup, and training costs are too high\n\nThe future doesn’t need more traditional robotic arms - it needs smarter, cheaper ones that can adapt quickly.\n\n# Our Solution\n\nWe’re building affordable and easy-to-deploy general-purpose robotic workers.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_uDCFCBDaE\n\nWe combine:\n\n* **Low-cost hardware**: a pair of stationary robotic arms for under $10,000\n* **Self-learning control software**: we use imitation learning and offline reinforcement learning to adapt the robot to new tasks and environments from just a handful of demonstrations\n\nThis makes robotic automation accessible to a far broader set of businesses - even ones that previously couldn’t justify the investment.\n\n# About Us\n\nI’m [Jannik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannik-grothusen/), a former robot learning researcher at UC Berkeley and TU Munich, with a degree in Mechatronics. I’ve contributed to frontier open-source projects in robotic manipulation, and my work in the space has been [featured by TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/04/built-in-four-days-this-120-robot-arm-cleans-a-spill-with-help-from-gpt-4o/).\n\n# Our Ask\n\nWe’re looking for pilot partners who want to automate repetitive manual tasks in their operations - and help us build the future of low-cost robotic labor.\n\nIf you’re interested, email me: [jannik@robot-learning.co](https://mailto:jannik@robot-learning.co)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=91187\u0026key=user_uploads/2427273/06432ad1-2691-4aac-b7ec-61325aa2c246)\n\n","slug":"Nil-trlc-affordable-robotic-workers","created_at":"2025-06-10T19:52:00.513Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:56:44.485Z","total_vote_count":21,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Nil-trlc-affordable-robotic-workers","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=91187\u0026key=user_uploads/2427273/06432ad1-2691-4aac-b7ec-61325aa2c246","company":{"id":30433,"name":"The Robot Learning Company","slug":"the-robot-learning-company","url":"https://www.robot-learning.co/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/fe9d24b61e68d5f71ffc72977fe38d21eece7328.png","batch":"Spring 2025","industry":"Industrials","tags":["Machine Learning","Robotics"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30433"}}