People, planets, robots

Just back from watching David Attenborough: A life on our planet.

If you haven’t, watch it. It’s on Netflix.

The movie makes a case on Biodiversity and highlights how biodiversity is connected in straightforward ways with our own health and prosperity. Remember that all of #Covid19 is itself only a part in an ongoing severe biodiversity crisis.

Planet earth as seen from orbit. This is one is stunning. Picture credits: By NASA/Bill Anders –, Public Domain,

The view of earth shown in the picture above was not generally known to people before the late 1960s, except to a few imaginative visionaries. It is not about saving the planet though. It is about saving our own asses. Right here, right now. Anything else is procrastination, neglect, or worse. Anyway, lets not get stalled.

You ask, what does this have to do with Jetpack Cognition Lab? The answer is, just about everything. Read on to find out.

In whichever way exactly the sustainability turn is realized, there is going to be autonomous mobile robots in it.

Frame capture from “A life on our planet” at 1:13:13, Netflix, Fair use
Frame capture from “A life on our planet” at 1:13:40, Netflix, Fair use

These are likely scenarios but far from complete. Drones need support on the ground and up in the tree. They also need to go beneath the foliage because this is where it happens. That is all quite complicated stuff. The autonomous mobility of the robots we currently have is still a far cry from anything practically usable, and this includes affordable.

Mainstream promises have not realized anywhere despite trillions of sunk budgets, private and public. Remote death operations is as good as it gets.

The developments we are observing are not fast enough by some orders of magnitude. As more people need to be able to work on all that, the approach clearly needs to be massively diversified.

How is this done? You are right, with self-learning robots of course, with education and inspiration. This is a massive challenge and we need to take steps that might appear weird from the outside.

Where are you in this? We are very curious to learn and let us know anytime. Out here with the mobile Jetpack Cognition Lab and we need you support in every possible way.

Next, flatcat crowdfunding campaign.

flatcat is the next step towards creating robots that are built for learning all the way up. Does that scare you? good, this is how you and everyone else works, on the inside that is. Time to get to grips with yourself.

Your next robot is a pet

flatcat is a new robot for your home

Jetpack Cognition Lab, a Berlin-based AI and robotics startup, today announced flatcat, a new consumer robot, to be launched in March 2021. flatcat is a firm and fluffy AI pet for the living room, that responds to touch and gravity, and has a playful life of its own.

flatcat invites to experience a new dimension of touch and motion. Cuddle with it, have a gentle romp, or just watch it do weird things on its own, to caress your soul. The robot feels everything exactly with cognitive sensorimotor loops based on ten years of developmental robotics research. flatcat has no face, no app, no cloud, full privacy. It is built around a 3D printed skeleton and is powered by Jetpack Cognition Lab‘s own electrical motor design.

The new product will be available on Kickstarter and selected outlets beginning March 3, 2021. Visit for more information.


About Jetpack Cognition Lab
Established in 2019, Jetpack Cognition Lab is a Berlin-based AI and Robotics startup and innovation hub. Founded by Oswald Berthold and Matthias Kubisch, it specializes in science transfer and product research. The company’s bioinspired hardware and software design is built on the neuroscience and psychology of developmental learning.

Taking the A out of AI

Taking the A out of AI means to think more about natural intelligence and what might be natural to a robot. Yes, Embodiment, comes screaming from the backrows. So what is embodiment and why is it important?

As is well known the symbolic approach to AI is interesting but incomplete with regard to real world intelligence. Traversing a doorstep or a flipped carpet edge, picking up a slippery piece of food or crumbs from the floor. Unsolved, all of it. So don’t tell me about autonomous cars and healthcare robots.

At Jetpack we are working to realize the transfer from research insights of our discipline, developmental robotics, into society with consumer products. Our robots. What needs to be addressed first for sustainable robotics in the 21st century is the sensorimotor gap that is present in all AI-branded products out there. It may look small and insignificant but do not let yourself be fooled. This is the layer that connects the silicon brain with outside world and contrary to the common belief, this layer is not trivial to navigate, sensation and perception is extremely noise, incomplete and contradictory. But it can be done. This is called embodied intelligence and the adaptive sensorimotor layer provides a natural grounding for any embodied intelligence.

Jetpack – pet-like robots that react to touch. Because people are at the center of our approach, our mindset, and our world view. Cheers.