Equipped with two articulated arms that appear to have watchmaker's hands
Imagine opening a box the size of a dog carrier and out comes a small factory capable of assembling complex electronics with great precision. This is the proposal from MicroFactory, a San Francisco startup that is attracting attention with its general-purpose tabletop robotic system.
The idea is simple and powerful, automating repetitive manual jobs that today consume time and require extreme human attention, such as assembling circuit boards, soldering components, routing cables and even inserting screws or manipulating adhesive tapes.
In tests, the system even demonstrated the ability to thread a needle perfectly, something that requires millimeter coordination. The difference is in the form of training, instead of complex programming, it is enough for a human to physically guide the external robotic arms, displaying the desired task.
The artificial intelligence system then replicates the movements in the inner arms of the box and learns to perform the task itself, repeating it with greater than human speed and precision. The user interface also allows tasks to be divided into small steps, making it easy to adapt for different applications.
More than just a futuristic gadget, this little box promises to be the start of a revolution.
According to Igor Kulakov, co-founders and CIO of MicroFactory, the choice was clear, “general-purpose robots are good, but they do not need to be humanoid, we decided to design robots from scratch that are still general-purpose, but without human form, so everything is simplified both in hardware and in terms of AI.”
The solution has already conquered hundreds of pre-orders and varied sectors, from electronics factories to a rather curious use, the processing of snails, and all this in less than a year of existence of the company founded in 2024. The first prototype took just 5 months to build and today MicroFactory promises to deliver machines capable of executing multiple tasks at an affordable cost, offering a practical alternative to industrial humanoids.
Compact, decentralized and low-cost factories that any company can use to scale automation without the need for gigantic industrial lines, a true pocket industry. And what do you think? Could it be that in the future each company will have its own portable micro factory to assemble anything on demand?
