Rob Cochran on Shipping a Developer-First Humanoid at Fauna Robotics

“We wanted to ship before we talked.”

That’s how Rob Cochran, co-founder of Fauna Robotics, explains the company’s decision to stay in stealth until its humanoid robot was already in customers’ hands. In this episode of Automated, Brian Heater speaks with Cochran about launching a humanoid startup in one of the most competitive and uncertain moments in robotics.

Instead of targeting factories or chasing headline-grabbing demonstrations, Fauna built Sprout, a lightweight, three-and-a-half-foot-tall humanoid designed for developers and real-world experimentation. The robot is soft to the touch, expressive, and modular by design, supporting teleoperation, mapping and navigation, voice interaction, and AI model development out of the box. The goal is not to claim that humanoids are solved, but to create a platform where researchers, startups, and enterprises can begin solving them.

They discuss why shipping matters more than announcements, the realities of pricing and scaling hardware, how developer ecosystems accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies, and why modular AI stacks may be more practical than a single end-to-end model. The conversation also covers data ownership, teleoperation versus autonomy, early commercial deployments, and the long-term vision for consumer and home robotics. It is a pragmatic look at what it takes to move humanoids from concept videos to working systems in the world.

Sponsored by SANYO DENKI America: SANMOTION delivers precise, reliable multi-axis control for advanced robotics systems.

Learn more at https://www.sanyodenki.com/america/.

We’d love to hear from you! Have thoughts or guest suggestions? Reach us at [e-mail].

You can find the transcript and more episodes of Automated at automated.fm.

Unlock full access to Automated and explore everything automation. Subscribe today and leave a review on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Subscribe to the Automated Newsletter:

https://www.automate.org/automation/newsletter-automation-roundup

You can also find us on:

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/automated-podcast-by-a3/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/automatedpod/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.