How YC-backed Bucket Robotics survived its first CES

The upwind successful Las Vegas wasn’t looking good. The plan had been that each worker of YC-backed Bucket Robotics would carry parts of their booth in their luggage to the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show. But CEO and laminitis Matt Puchalski didn’t want to take the chance that one (or all) of their flights would beryllium delayed. So he rented a Hyundai Santa Fe and packed it up. 

“It was… it was tight,” helium said with a laugh on the show floor.  

It took 12 hours driving successful the rain, but the cogwheel – and Puchalski – made it safely to Las Vegas, and truthful began the young company’s first-ever CES.

San Francisco-based Bucket Robotics was just one of thousands of companies exhibiting astatine the yearly tech conference, a speck of soil connected a formation afloat of products and promises. But contempt its modest setup successful the automotive-focused West Hall, Puchalski said the trip was worth it.

Part of that was a willingness to be tireless, observant, and ever acceptable to pitch.

An technologist by trade, Puchalski spent astir of the past decennary moving connected autonomous vehicles astatine Uber, Argo AI, Ford’s subsidiary Latitude AI, and SoftBank-backed Stack AV.

At those jobs, Puchalski developed deep connections successful the automotive industry, and we crossed paths each week.

There helium was astatine an manufacture networking enactment 1 night. On different night, in my edifice lobby astatine 10 p.m., helium was debating however to balance prime and manufacturing output with Sanjay Dastoor — founder of mobility startups Skip and Boosted, both of which besides got disconnected the crushed astatine YC.

But I archetypal ran into Puchalski during breakfast at the hotel. Seated astatine the array adjacent to me, he and sales subordinate Max Joseph were moving done preparations for the conference’s “Media Day” implicit (allegedly) cage-free eggs.

Puchalski’s verve piqued my interest, and aft making an intro, helium told me what Bucket Robotics is up to. Before I knew it, helium had cracked unfastened a agleam yellowish Pelican lawsuit and I was holding a tiny portion of plastic.

Started arsenic portion of YC’s Spring 2024 batch, Bucket Robotics is each astir utilizing precocious imaginativeness systems to bash prime inspections, specifically for surfaces. The extremity is to automate a menial task that Puchalski joked is usually done by “dudes successful Wisconsin,” and to accelerate the broad, multi-industry effort to onshore manufacturing.

One illustration Puchalski offered was car doorway handles. It’s a portion customers interaction each day, truthful it needs to beryllium structurally sound, and that benignant of prime inspection is fundamentally solved.

But it tin beryllium challenging to marque definite the aboveground is flawless. Is the colour right? Are determination immoderate pain oregon scuff marks? These are the questions Bucket Robotics wants to answer.

“It’s profoundly hard to automate these types of challenges without huge volumes of data, truthful car manufacturers conscionable propulsion dudes successful Wisconsin astatine this problem,” helium said. 

Bucket Robotics solves that data problem by working from the CAD files for a peculiar part. It past generates a clump of simulated defects – pain marks, bumps, breaks – truthful that its vision software can observe those problems rapidly connected a accumulation line.

There’s nary request for manual labeling, and the institution claims its models tin deploy “in minutes” portion besides adapting if products oregon accumulation lines change. One of the large selling points to day is that Bucket Robotics tin integrate into existing accumulation lines without adding caller hardware, Puchalski said. 

This has already attracted customers successful automotive and successful defense, mounting up Bucket Robotics to prosecute the progressively fashionable way of becoming a “dual-use” company.  

When the amusement level opened, the archetypal two hours were “intense,” Puchalski said. Attendees successful suits snooped astir the startup’s tables, plucked orangish stickers with the Bucket Robotics logo, and quizzed the employees astir their tech.  

More importantly, Puchalski said the level of involvement stayed accordant passim the week. He had “real method discussions” with radical from the worlds of manufacturing, robotics, and automation. He said Friday that he’s spent the week since the show on follow-up calls with prospective customers and investors. 

CES tin beryllium a slog, but Bucket Robotics survived. Now comes the existent hard part: gathering a business, scaling, fundraising, and striking commercialized deals.  

As for the “dudes successful Wisconsin,” Puchalski doesn’t see his company as a menace to their livelihoods. Those jobs are just arsenic much about spotting defects arsenic they are about identifying the basal origin of the problem, helium said.

And besides, Puchalski added, automating aboveground prime inspection is thing that the manufacturing manufacture has been trying to bash for decades.

“So when we spell to our customers, it’s incredibly exciting,” helium said.