Teddy Warner, just nineteen years old, has set his sights on bringing emotional intelligence to robotics through his startup, Intempus. He grew up surrounded by the robotics industry, spending his high school years working hands-on in his family’s machinist workshop.
Intempus is focused on equipping existing robots with the ability to display emotional responses and humanlike movement. The goal is to refine how people communicate with machines and to gather richer data for artificial intelligence training.
Unlike most current robots, which simply move from observing to acting, Warner emphasizes the importance of an intermediate physiological step common in living creatures. He says people and animals signal much through the motion of arms and torso rather than just facial expressions or words.
While at the AI research group Midjourney, Warner realized a gap in robot design. He noted that many world-modeling AIs lacked true understanding of spatial and physiological cues, in part because their robot data sources never experienced or mimicked emotional states such as joy or stress.
Building Emotion into Machines
Seeking solutions, Warner experimented with various physiological data sources. Initial attempts with brain activity monitoring like fMRI did not yield the results he wanted.
A friend’s suggestion led him to try using sweat measurements from polygraph technology. Quickly, Warner found success training models to generate an emotional profile for robots based solely on physiological readings.
He has since incorporated additional factors such as heart rate, body temperature, and blood volume shifts, expanding the ways robots can simulate humanlike robot emotions.
Intempus began operations in September 2024, spending the first several months entirely focused on foundational research. Recently, Warner has moved forward with product development while fostering relationships with enterprise robotics clients.
The company has secured agreements with seven business partners in the robotics space and is participating in the Thiel Fellowship, which provides financial support for young entrepreneurs. Warner has so far worked alone but is preparing to hire and advance public testing of the technology.
For now, the startup’s priority is adapting current robots with emotional functionality, but Warner does not discount the idea of someday producing completely new emotionally aware robot models. He believes that if observers can recognize distinct feelings or intentions in his robots, he will have succeeded in making machines more intuitive and relatable. For more context on this emerging field, see how emotional robotics technology is being implemented globally.
