{"id":95475,"title":"Yondu AI ➡️ Enabling the robot workforce of the future","tagline":"Yondu is the platform for robot labor starting with drop-in order fulfillment automation","body":"### **We are a platform-to-application company that puts robots in warehouses and makes them useful on day one. Our state-of-the-art remote teleoperation gives immediate efficiency gains, with our robot behavior models gradually taking over to reach full automation and drive costs down further. We’re starting with mobile order fulfillment, where a huge chunk of warehouse labor spend sits.**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/e8add669-ff4f-4eaa-9579-da70973fc77b)\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzglTuRloCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzglTuRloCo\u0026t=1s)\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# **The timing**\n\nGeneral purpose robot **hardware has gotten 10x cheaper** in the past decade. And advancements in robot learning are helping automate **long-form, complex tasks**. **BUT** it’s still hard to achieve the **perfect human level success rates necessary** for deployment! The **opportunity lies in automating the shorter-form, easier-to-master tasks** that still have a level of complexity that made them impossible to automate in the past. The logistics field is full of these types of problems…\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/8a3ea638-c361-46bd-8276-97be15ccf669)\n\n_A simple, fully autonomous pick at 1× speed_\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# **The problem in mind**\n\nOrder picking labor can account for up to **50%** of warehouse manual operating costs. Pickers often walk **miles** per shift! Warehouses still rely on people for repetitive, physically demanding tasks with high turnover. Existing order fulfillment automation falls into two buckets:\n\n\\- **ASRS (Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems)**: Basically turns a warehouse into a giant 3D robot grid system. It gets high throughput but costs tens of millions and requires an overhaul of warehouse space. 😢 **_HIGH COST_**_, 😊 **HIGH AUTOMATION**_\n\n\\- **AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robots)**: These robots carry shelves and goods around which reduces walking time. But they still require human picking. 😊 **_LOW COST_**_, 😢 **LOW AUTOMATION**_\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# **OUR SOLUTION**\n\n**We’ve created a 3 part embodied-AI platform that automates bin picking using off the shelf robots in brownfield deployments. 😊 _LOW COST, 😊 HIGH AUTOMATION_**\n\nhttps://youtu.be/UVmMSui2_FQ\n\nWith **ULTRON** (user-friendly low-latency **remote teleoperation** system) we **deploy first**, putting robots to use immediately in our customers’ operations and spinning up our data flywheel.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/6ddec526-7b14-48db-a5b1-387ea371943e)\n\nOur **WMS** (warehouse management software) **integration and** **orchestration** software routes orders from a warehouse’s WMS to our platform, instructing robots where to go and operators what to pick.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/583a510d-09f3-46e7-8b54-c44e0edc3e9b)\n\nOur autonomy stack **YGM** (Yondu General Manipulation) pushes the system to fully autonomous as we **gain more in-the-wild** experience. Over time the manipulation policy takes over more work and the operator is required less. YGM is responsible for:\n\n* Steering our robot policy to pick and place from the correct bins\n* Identifying how good a job it is doing and whether it is struggling so an operator can take over\n* Learning from new experiences and adapting to succeed in situations that it previously struggled in\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/663a0f0b-53ce-40b5-ad46-95980e70197b)\n\n_Operations in our partner warehouse_\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# Our Vision\n\nOur platform is **not limited to only helping us conquer bin picking**. Logistics warehouses still have many more repetitive-yet-slightly-complex tasks such as decanting, replenishing, and packing. And as **robot learning capabilities continue to grow**, our pipeline of _deploy→collect→refine→automate_ only increases in value. There will be **more brownfield robotics automation providers** for specific industries and increasingly complex tasks. They will need to integrate with their customers and spin up their own data flywheels. And the Yondu platform will be available for them so they can automate **any task** with **any robot**.\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# **Team**\n\nWe’ve gathered quite the team. Here are just a few of our talented members\n\n\\- **Michael Chen (CEO)** Ex-MIT Controls and Robotics\n\n\\- **Tahmid Jamal (CTO)** MIT AI \u0026 Aerospace\n\n\\- **Lianhao Yin (Head of Research)** MIT CSAIL Postdoc in Robotic Systems\n\n\\- **Jairo Maldonado (Teleop Lead)** Georgia Tech PhD in Robotic Prosthesis\n\n\\- **Mehul Kumar (Founding Researcher)** Industry veteran in VR, humanoids, simulations, and teleop\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/b5914757-4088-48a7-b88b-0252656f6300)\n\n### ——————————————————————————————\n\n# Ask\n\n\\- **3PLs**: If you are in charge of warehouse operations and think you’re spending more resources on a job than you _should_ be, **complain to us**!\n\n\\- **Robotics partner**: If you’re also in the robotics automation space and would like to use our platform, **let’s partner up**\n\n**Reach out to [founders@yonduai.com](mailto:hello@yonduai.com)**\n\n### ——————————————————————————————","slug":"Opv-yondu-ai-enabling-the-robot-workforce-of-the-future","created_at":"2025-11-14T18:30:57.452Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T02:37:10.168Z","total_vote_count":58,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Opv-yondu-ai-enabling-the-robot-workforce-of-the-future","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=95475\u0026key=user_uploads/1547615/e8add669-ff4f-4eaa-9579-da70973fc77b","company":{"id":29402,"name":"Yondu","slug":"yondu","url":"https://yondu.ai/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/0b7969c1cf6999d5b5333e8a0fd7ca63e13f079f.png","batch":"Winter 2024","industry":"Industrials","tags":["Hard Tech","Robotics","Logistics","AI"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29402"}}