Democratizing Efficiency

Mission: To significantly expand the scope of what individuals and teams can physically accomplish.

Yoonseo Kang

Founder & CEO

Interdisciplinary Technical Leader and Innovator. Thiel Fellow and Open Source Hardware Pioneer. Employee #1 and Former CTO at Payfare ($300M IPO). Semifinalist in ANA Avatar XPRIZE. Robotics, Advanced Manufacturing, Industrial Automation Experience.

Tim Barfoot

Robotic Autonomy Advisor

Full-Term Canada Research Chair in Autonomous Space Robotics. IEEE Fellow. University of Toronto Robotics Ph.D. Author of "State Estimation For Robotics". Former Engineer at MDA (Canadarm).

James Koppel

Science Advisor

Renowned Advanced Software Design Expert (Mirdin). MIT Software Ph.D. Thiel Fellow. NSF Fellow. 6 Software Patents. Former Apptimize Engineer (over 1 billion installations).

From the Founder: My Journey to Guidebolt

I've loved robotics since I was a curious kid in 2006. My parents would regularly drop me off at a Chapters bookstore near Toronto and I orbited the shelf with the books on making remote-controlled robots, many from the Battlebots era. I voraciously read Jim Smentowski's online stories of his robot experiences, and I also marveled at rocket scientist Carlo Bertocchini's legendary robot design (4-time Heavyweight Champion, 2003 Combat Robot Hall of Fame). I eagerly connected with a kind stranger who gifted me titanium for my robot build after I posted about it on the community forums.

After sketching the design and ordering the parts, assembling was blocked by small details that I thought were "good enough". For example, the wheels wouldn't fit on the gearmotors because their connection points were the same basic size yet incompatibly loose based on tolerance dimensions not provided on these hobby-grade parts. I realized the mutual importance of both attention to detail and availability of information. Things that work together that we take for granted are the result of standardization that breaks down over complexity; the greater the complexity, the more "seems good enough" is actually not. Knowing what really matters and getting all of it right is paramount.

During testing, the faster the robot moved, the more difficult I felt it was to control. I realized that the more capable the robot, the more important it is for the robot design to encompass the user experience. I questioned the conventional 1-stick/2-stick user interface design and wondered "what is the best way to think about how to make things better?". Overall, these formative childhood experiences shaped my conviction that robots should not only be rock-solid reliable, but also intuitively easy-to-use and clearly documented. I learned how critical it can be to think about exact pieces of information as they satisfy immediate needs (ex. integration/assembly), inevitable needs (ex. modifications/repairs), and even innovative improvements.

My personal passion matured to professional purpose. I evolved from combat robots to utility robots, leading my school's robotics team in SkillsCanada competitions. After graduation, what started as volunteer research in industrial robotics for a non-profit turned into my first professional role to lead their industrial automation initiatives in the United States. There I pioneered open source hardware to improve people's lives by making productive technologies more accessible worldwide, alongside Arduino (easy platform for electronics prototyping) and KiCad (free software for electronic design).

I also witnessed the real risks of physical work; my co-workers accidentally injured themselves, sometimes permanently, from simple mistakes like not wearing safety glasses. I realized that some information can be more dangerous than no information, if it builds unsafe confidence that meets inadequate safety protocols and equipment design. My childhood lessons echoed at the human level: the more we try to do, perhaps with newfound capabilities, the more important it is for our awareness to encompass all the possibilities and edge cases. I was compelled to think about the design of things beyond the integration and usability of a single product, to system-level and inter-system considerations that could save lives.

My desire to not just see, but feel the bigger picture grew fierce, to better understand how to design holistic technologies and systems without blind spots. So I took on technical challenges across diverse startups, sectors, and projects. I helped develop easily field-deployable bee habitats for globally interconnected citizen science (crisis response to "colony collapse disorder"), and I led scalable high-reliability software in partnership with Uber to a $300M IPO. I also soloed complete CAD-CAM-setup-multi-op workflow of 5-axis CNC multi-task machining, during which I felt the "functional yet hard-to-use" problem of manufacturing software first-hand. Noticing others who shared my frustrations with the $5000 commercial solution, I developed an improved "3+2 macro" program for the machinist community. Nearly a decade of successful interdisciplinary growth.

In parallel, I developed insights about the design of universal information that transcends specific products or platforms, and new approaches to standardization that can handle higher levels of complexity while remaining user-friendly. I found myself exploring the conceptual underpinnings of robotic AI for over a decade before AI gained mainstream attention. Then, sparked by a global robotics competition (ANA Avatar XPRIZE), I returned to robotics directly. Soon thereafter, I felt that I had "closed the circle" of my professional exploration and was ready to focus the rest of my life near my roots, in advanced robotics and intelligent automation.

Guidebolt was born from this convergence of passion, purpose, experience, and vision; a company built to create robots and systems that embody everything I've learned about reliability, usability, safety, and versatility. Guidebolt is my deep-seated commitment to materialize the best intelligent robots in the world, made in North America and deployed around the world.

The Trillion Hour Problem: Why Intelligent Robotic Automation Matters

Saving time is a benefit that everyone can relate to. The humble washing machine has saved humanity from trillions of hours of drudgery. If modern robots are more accurate and flexible than humans, and cost similar to a typical vehicle purchase, why do over 95% of homes still have no robots despite plenty of chores to automate? If modern robots cost less than a year of employee salary, why do over 90% of manufacturers still have no robots despite plenty of labor to automate?

The simple answer is that today's robots are physically capable yet lack physical intelligence.

While traditional robots excel at repetitive mass production, they lack the physical intelligence needed for the varying, smaller-scale tasks that define most real-world work. For small-to-medium volume production, traditional robots require constant reprogramming and reinstallation, burning too much time and money. If a robot costs more to use than it saves, using that robot doesn't make sense. Most manufacturers have therefore been underserved by the automation industry because the traditional automation paradigm involves expensive, specialized equipment and robots that are hard to use and require massive volume to justify the investment. This is why millions of manufacturers have long been waiting for robots that can adapt intelligently to their changing needs.

When an intelligent robot can pay for itself in months, offer future-proof versatility, and continuously improve through updates; buying one will just make too much sense. Robotic intelligence is the irresistible catalyst that will finally skyrocket the robotic adoption rate. This new technology will save humanity a trillion hours every year; improving lives, strengthening economies, and accelerating innovation worldwide.

The Fully Automated Future: Dawn of the Physical Internet

Intelligent robots are set to enable radically accessible and complete physical automation workflows across all industries, with irresistibly faster return-on-investment than traditional solutions. This is a significant technological leap in one-to-many versatility, echoing the smartphone moment:

One Smartphone, Many Apps. One Robot, Many Tasks.

Comparatively, while smartphone apps are used manually at the user's convenience, robot tasks will be performed automatically whenever work is available, unleashing relentless productivity through intelligent independence.

The broad vision is that intelligent robots will become the foundation of a "physical internet", deeply unifying the digital and material worlds. Human intentions, expressed through intuitive personal devices, will collectively command global fleets of intelligent robots, sometimes augmented by massive cloud computers, completing the essential trinity for cyber-physical convergence. This will be an era of unprecedented productivity and collaborative prosperity — where thought simply manifests reality.