Rock of Over The Horizon talks with robotics designers Maharad Farmani and Scott Walter, and hand surgeon Gustav Anderson, about Sunday Robotics’ Mimo and its prospects for home and commercial work.
Rock sees Mimo as a practical first step: it can clear tables, load and unload a dishwasher, and fold laundry. The group discusses the choice to build around a wheeled base and telescoping torso, which avoids the added complexity of legs but limits where the robot can go, especially on stairs and through tight spaces.
The guests praise Mimo’s recognizable design and the decision to place its camera beneath a brim rather than in its eyes. They question the square arm profile, which could snag or create safety issues during rotation. Its three-finger hand can handle dishes and socks, but thin items, small buttons, and a true tripod grip may be difficult.
A guest taped off three fingers to experience tasks with a more limited grip, and found that precise picking and bathroom cleaning remained challenging. The group also raises concerns about spills over door thresholds, vibration while carrying drinks, hygiene between chores, and the robot’s ability to confirm that a dishwasher has started. An open-plan home may suit it better than one with stairs or narrow rooms.
The panel discusses imitation learning and Sunday’s glove-based way to collect demonstrations, while noting that the robot still needs substantial training data and may struggle to generalize across hardware. They question reports of a €20,000 to €30,000 price, with one guest estimating similar hardware could cost about €3,000 to build. Suggested value depends on reliable chores, time saved, and possible added uses such as monitoring or social interaction.
Potential early settings include cafés, school canteens, Airbnbs, and homes where a narrow set of repeatable tasks is valuable. The guests argue that customers and revenue could fund further development, while a simple design may be easy for competitors to copy. They see wheeled robots and bipedal humanoids as complementary approaches, with many useful designs between the two.
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Scott Walter, a robotics engineer and advisor, joins Over The Horizon hosts and guests to discuss Sharpa’s Dairy Queen deployment, Mimic’s dexterous hand, and Sunday Robotics’ home laundry results.
Claire Zau of ZAUEY visits Sunday Robotics with CEO Tony Zhao and head of product Camila to discuss Memo, a household robot that learns chores from human demonstrations.
Tony Xiao, founder of Sunday Robotics, explains to the Sources Podcast hosts how the company is developing Memo, a home robot trained with data from wearable gloves.
Sunday Robotics cofounder Chungchi discusses collecting household robot training data with Scott and Mara on Marwa ElDiwiny’s show.
Sunday Robotics co-founders Tony Zhao and Cheng Chi join No Priors to discuss building Memo, a general-purpose home robot, and the data, hardware, and learning systems behind it.
RoboStrategy head of research Scott Walter, an aerospace engineer and robotics-company co-founder, joins host Herbert to discuss Tesla Optimus V3’s design, production readiness, and remaining engineering challenges.
