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Show HN: TakoVM โ Isolated model and tool execution used by enterprises
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๐บ๐ธ ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ยท IT/๊ธฐ์ ยท "ENTERPRISES" ยท ์ด 4๊ฑด
ํํฐ ๋ณด๊ธฐํ์ฌ ์ง์
48.9
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50 = ์ค๋ฆฝ
100 = ๊ธ์ ์ฐ์ธ
์ต๊ทผ 7์ผ ๊ธฐ์ค 11,519๊ฑด์ ๋ถ์ํ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ, ๋ด์ค ์ฌ๋ฆฌ์ง์๋ 48.9(๊ท ํ)์ ๋๋ค. ๊ธ์ 1,126๊ฑด(9.8%)ยท์ค๋ฆฝ 8,320๊ฑด(72.2%)ยท๋ถ์ 2,073๊ฑด(18.0%)์ด๋ฉฐ, ์ค๋ฆฝ ๋น์ค์ด ๋๋ ทํ๊ฒ ๋์ต๋๋ค. ์ฑํฅ ์ง์๋ ์ข ํฉ 20.4(๋ณด์ ๊ฒฝํฅ)์ ๋๋ค.
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Enterprise AI is entering a different phase now, one where enterprises are no longer evaluating whether AI is exciting. They are evaluating whether it is safe to deploy broadly.
More than 30 years ago, in the mountain village of Mbem in northwest Cameroon, the moon and stars in the night sky were the only light young Jude Numfor knew after the sunset. Electricity had not yet reached his rural community. โThere was one person in the village with a petrol generator and a small television,โ Numfor says. โWhen he turned it on, all the children would run to his house and peep through the window.โ That memory became the spark for Numforโs mission: to bring electricity to rural communities like his hometown. To accomplish his goal, in 2006 he cofounded Wireless Light and Power, since renamed Renewable Energy Innovators Cameroon, and he serves as its CEO. REI Cameroon designs, installs, and maintains solar minigrids for rural electrification. The minigrids use photovoltaic technology and battery-energy storage systems to generate electricity at 50 hertz. The electricity is distributed through smart meters. In 2017 the company received a grant from IEEE Smart Village to fund the expansion of REIโs minigrid operations and refine its business model. Smart Village supports projects and organizations bringing electricity and educational and employment opportunities to remote communities worldwide. The program is supported by IEEE societies and donations to the IEEE Foundation. The partnership has led to a collaboration developing open source metering, a free, community-driven way of tracking energy usage. Unlike proprietary utility meters, the system allows users, researchers, and utilities to view, customize, and verify how data is collected, ensuring transparency in billing, consumption tracking, and grid management. Smart Villageโs support has been pivotal, Numfor says: โItโs not just about money. We share ideas, we get advice, and we have made friends. Entrepreneurship is lonely, but with the [Smart Village] community, it is different.โ From teenage tinkerer to entrepreneur Numforโs first experience of life with electricity was in 2001, after moving in with a missionary family in the small village of Allat. They used solar panels to power their whole homeโan unimaginable luxury in Mbem. โI could watch TV, eat ice cream, and turn on lights,โ he says. โIt made me wish my brothers in Mbem had the same opportunity.โ Numforโs curiosity about electricity was ignited when a motion-sensor solar light in the familyโs home stopped working. He tinkered with the device to find out why. โMy missionary family told me to play with it like a toy,โ he says, laughingly. โI replaced the dead battery with a motorcycle battery and was able to bring the power back for the night.โ Jude Numfor [right] testing a rechargeable solar lantern, which aimed to replace hazardous kerosene lampsโknown locally as โbush lamps.โREI Cameroon His missionary parents encouraged Numfor to study technology and engineering on his own, as none of the countryโs universities offered solar energy educational programs at the time. They built him a library and stocked it with books on engineering, management, and entrepreneurship. In 2006, armed with his new knowledge, Numfor launched Wireless Light and Power with a friend, Ludwig Teichgraber. The nonprofit aimed to replace hazardous kerosene lampsโknown locally as โbush lampsโโwith rechargeable solar lanterns. These solar lanternsโcalled โlight packsโโwere built locally by Numfor and a team of 11 young Cameroonians using PVC pipes, nickel-metal hydride batteries, and LED bulbs. Families rented the lamps for a small fee, swapping discharged lamps for fully charged ones at solar-powered charging kiosks when they ran out of power. The kiosks then recharged the depleted lamps, making them available for the next swap. โThe solar lantern was safer and cleaner, plus it gave children a chance to read at night,โ Numfor explains. โPeople loved them.โ Between 2006 and 2010, his team replicated the model across several villages. But when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, donor support dwindled, forcing the organization to evolve. โWe pivoted from being an NGO to a commercial venture,โ he says. โThatโs how REI was born.โ Building solar minigrids to serve community needs The new companyโs goal was to move away from the lanterns and toward full electrification of communities. Villagersโ aspirations changed, Numfor says, as they now wanted to power their TVs, music systems, and mobile phones. In response, in 2010, REI developed one of the first solar minigrids in West Africa. Using locally procured components, the prototype supplied steady power to six households. The minigrid system used 12 123-watt solar photovoltaic panels manufactured by Sharp, 16 12-volt 100 ampere-hour automatic gain control lead acid batteries, and a Xantrex charge controller and inverter. Locally sourced wooden light poles were erected to distribute electricity throughout the village. REI charged each household a fee for the electricity. โIt was a product-market-fit moment,โ Numfor says. โPeople immediately asked, โWhen can we get this, too?โโ The word-of-mouth, grassroots growth caught the attention of global partners. Numfor connected with Smart Village and in 2017, REI Cameroon received its first seed grant from the program. With that funding, Numfor was able to grow organically and attract additional grants, including one from the U.S. Trade Development Agency (USTDA), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energyโs National Renewable Energy Laboratory. REI has since expanded to six villages, providing power to more than 1,000 households and businesses. With a dedicated team of 16 people, the company operates in multiple regions of the country, each with unique terrain, languages, and cultural dynamics. โIt wasnโt easy,โ he acknowledges. โIโm not an academic personโI had to learn everything by doing. [Smart Village] helped me structure the project and grow as an entrepreneur.โ Today, Numfor pays it forward by sharing his Smart Village experience and mentoring new entrepreneurs. Launching a coalition for smart metering Minigrids canโt operate efficiently without clarifying operating rules to ensure quality service requirements and consumer protection, while also enabling reliable and effective monitoring of the system, Numfor says. โWe need to know how power is being used, detect problems early, and manage the minigrid from a distance,โ he explains. Existing commercial smart-meter providers offer limited and proprietary solutions. One major provider left the market, making their technology infrastructure obsolete. โItโs risky for an entire sector to depend on a few companies for such a critical technology,โ Numfor says. In 2025, with the help of the Smart Village technical community, Numfor convened a consortium of open-source power advocates, including the Africa Mini-Grid Developers Association, EnAccess, Energy IOT, and NESL. The goal was to develop an open smart metering system that is accessible, transparent, and sustainable for all energy providers. โThese organizations are collaborating as Open Advanced Metering Infrastructure [OpenAMI], which is about giving control back to the people who deliver the energy,โ he says. Scaling for impact Numforโs passion has grown from bringing light to local rural communities to bringing light to his entire country. Just 54 percent of Cameroonโs citizens have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. For Numfor, the challenge is not just technologicalโitโs social and economic as well. โElectricity is the most important enabler of education and economic growth today,โ he says. โWhen you have power, you unlock everything else.โ โElectricity changed my life. Now I want to make sure every child can grow up with that same light.โ โJude Numfor Across the villages where REI has installed sustainable electricity solutions, small businesses are flourishing. Barbershops hum with community chatter, food vendors can preserve perishables, and entrepreneurs run companies such as phone-charging stations and small mills. โSome villages even have laundromats now,โ Numfor says proudly. โElectricity creates jobs and changes mindsets.โ Still, it has been a bumpy journey. It wasnโt until 2025 that REI obtained its official authorization (license) from Cameroonโs government to produce and distribute electricity in off-grid areas using solar minigrids. This was a major milestone because REI is one of the first private enterprises in the country to receive such authorization. โWe were stuck between pilot projects and growth,โ he explains. โOur projects were successful, and there was community demand for more, but to grow, we needed investors who require legal guarantees before committing funds. Now we can scale up and attract investors.โ REI plans to expand its reach dramatically, beginning with 134 new villages identified through a feasibility study supported by the USTDA. Their long-term goal is to electrify 760 villages across Cameroon by 2031. While authorization opens doors, financing remains one of REIโs biggest challenges. โThe minigrid space doesnโt attract venture capitalists easily,โ Numfor notes. โOur return on investment is under 15 percent, so itโs not a typical tech startup model. The real return here is the impactโ on the community. He hopes to attract investors who understand that access to electricity drives education, health care, and entrepreneurship. โThere are people out there who want to make meaningful change,โ he says. โWe just need to connect with them. When you electrify a village, you never know who the next innovator will be. Maybe itโs another kid like me, looking through a window, dreaming.โ Finding skilled staff is another challenge, Numfor says. To address this, REI developed an intensive recruitment and training process. โIt used to take years to find the right people,โ he says. โNow, we can identify who fits our company culture within six months.โ Numforโs wife, Angela Taliklong, who joined the venture in 2010, now oversees administration and human resources. A brighter Cameroon and beyond Numfor offers simple words of advice to other impact-driven entrepreneurs: Keep moving. โOne of my mistakes early on was trying to be perfect,โ he says. โI was spending time improving prototypes instead of increasing the number of our project installations and scaling how many communities we could electrify. You must keep momentum. Donโt wait until everything is perfect before you move forward.โ That mindset, rooted in resilience and experimentation, has defined his journey. Rajan Kapur, president of Smart Village, says Numfor is a โshining exampleโ of the programโs vision: โscalable and enduring impact through local entrepreneurs, local procurement, and community engagement based on the use of IEEE technology in underserved communities.โ With the ongoing Smart Village partnership, Numfor is determined to bring light and opportunity to every corner of Cameroon, and beyond. He already has launched REI Nigeria. โElectricity changed my life,โ he says. โNow I want to make sure every child can grow up with that same light.โ
This article is brought to you by DAIMON Robotics. This April, Hong Kong-based DAIMON Robotics has released Daimon-Infinity, which it describes as the largest omni-modal robotic dataset for physical AI, featuring high resolution tactile sensing and spanning a wide range of tasks from folding laundry at home to manufacturing on factory assembly lines. The project is supported by collaborative efforts of partners across China and the globe, including Google DeepMind, Northwestern University, and the National University of Singapore. The move signals a key strategic initiative for DAIMON, a two-and-a-half-year-old company known for its advanced tactile sensor hardware, most notably a monochromatic, vision-based tactile sensor that packs over 110,000 effective sensing units into a fingertip-sized module. Drawing on its high-resolution tactile sensing technology and a distributed out-of-lab collection network capable of generating millions of hours of data annually, DAIMON is building large-scale robot manipulation datasets that include vast amounts of tactile sensing data. To accelerate the real-world deployment of embodied AI, the company has also open-sourced 10,000 hours of its data. Prof. Michael Yu Wang, co-founder and chief scientist at DAIMON Robotics, has pioneered Vision-Tactile-Language-Action (VTLA) architecture, elevating the tactile to a modality on par with vision.DAIMON Robotics Behind the strategy is Prof. Michael Yu Wang, DAIMONโs co-founder and chief scientist. Prof. Wang earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon โ studying manipulation under Matt Mason โ and went on to found the Robotics Institute at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. An IEEE Fellow and former Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, he has spent roughly four decades in the field. His objective is to address the missing โinsensitivityโ of robot manipulation, which practically relies on the dominant Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model. He and his team have pioneered Vision-Tactile-Language-Action (VTLA) architecture, elevating the tactile to a modality on par with vision. We spoke with Prof. Wang about how tactile feedback aims to change dexterous manipulation, how the dataset initiative is foreseen to improve our understanding of robotic hands in natural environments, and where โ from hotels to convenience stores in China โ he sees touch-enabled robots making their first real-world inroads. Daimon-Infinity is the worldโs largest omni-modal dataset for Physical AI, featuring million-hour scale multimodal data, ultra-high-res tactile feedback, data from 80+ real scenarios and 2,000+ human skills, and more.DAIMON Robotics The Dataset Initiative This month, DAIMON Robotics released the largest and most comprehensive robotic manipulation dataset with multiple leading academic institutions and enterprises. Why releasing the dataset now, rather than continuing to focus on product development? What impact will this have on the embodied intelligence industry? DAIMON Robotics has been around for almost two and a half years. We have been committed to developing high-resolution, multimodal tactile sensing devices to perceive the interaction between a robotโs hand (particularly its fingertips) and objects. Our devices have become quite robust. They are now accepted and used by a large segment of users, including academic and research institutes as well as leading humanoid robotics companies. As embodied AI continues to advance, the critical role of data has been clearer. Data scarcity remains a primary bottleneck in robot learning, particularly the lack of physical interaction data, which is essential for robots to operate effectively in the real world. Consequently, data quality, reliability, and cost have become major concerns in both research and commercial development. This is exactly where DAIMON excels. Our vision-based tactile technology captures high-quality, multimodal tactile data. Beyond basic contact forces, it records deformation, slip and friction, material properties and surface textures โ enabling a comprehensive reconstruction of physical interactions. Building on our expertise in multimodal fusion, we have developed a robust data processing pipeline that seamlessly integrates tactile feedback with vision, motion trajectories, and natural language, transforming raw inputs into training-ready dataset for machine learning models. Recognizing the industry-wide data gap, we view large-scale data collection not only as our unique competitive advantage, but as a responsibility to the broader community. By building and open-sourcing the dataset, we aim to provide the high-quality โfuelโ needed to power embodied AI, ultimately accelerating the real-world deployment of general-purpose robotic foundation models. The robotics industry is highly competitive, and many teams have chosen to focus on data. DAIMON is releasing a large and highly comprehensive cross-embodiment, vision-based tactile multimodal robotic manipulation dataset. How were you able to achieve this? We have a dedicated in-house team focused on expanding our capabilities, including building hardware devices and developing our own large-scale model. Although we are a relatively small company, our core tactile sensing technology and innovative data collection paradigm enable us to build large-scale dataset. Our approach is to broaden our offering. We have built the worldโs largest distributed out-of-lab data collection network. Rather than relying on centralized data factories, this lightweight and scalable system allows data to be gathered across diverse real-world environments, enabling us to generate millions of hours of data per year. โTo drive the advancement of the entire embodied AI field, we have open-sourced 10,000 hours of the dataset for the broader community.โ โProf. Michael Yu Wang, DAIMON Robotics This dataset is being jointly developed with several institutions worldwide. What roles did they play in its development, and how will the dataset benefit their research and products? Besides China based teams, our partners include leading research groups from universities, such as Northwestern University and the National University of Singapore, as well as top global enterprises like Google DeepMind and China Mobile. Their decision to partner with DAIMON is a strong testament to the value of our tactile-rich dataset. Among the companies involved there are some that have already built their own models but are now incorporating tactile information. By deploying our data collection devices across research, manufacturing and other real-world scenarios, they help us to gather highly practical, application-driven data. In turn, our partners leverage the data to train models tailored to their specific use cases. Furthermore, to drive the advancement of the entire embodied AI field, we have open-sourced 10,000 hours of the dataset for the broader community. Equipped with Daimonโs visuotactile sensor, the gripper delicately senses contact and precisely controls force to pick up a fragile eggshell.Daimon Robotics From VLA to VTLA: Why Tactile Sensing Changes the Equation The mainstream paradigm in robotics is currently the Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model, but your team has proposed a Vision-Tactile-Language-Action (VTLA) model. Why is it necessary to incorporate tactile sensing? What does it enable robots to achieve, and which tasks are likely to fail without tactile feedback? Over these years of working to make generalist robots capable of performing manipulation tasks, especially dexterous manipulation โ not just power grasping or holding an object, but manipulating objects and using tools to impart forces and motion onto parts โ we see these robots being used in household as well as industrial assembly settings. It is well established that tactile information is essential for providing feedback about contact states so that robots can guide their hands and fingers to perform reliable manipulation. Without tactile sensing, robots are severely limited. They struggle to locate objects in dark environments, and without slip detection, they can easily drop fragile items like glass. Furthermore, the inability to precisely control force often leads to failed manipulation tasks or, in severe cases, physical damage. Naturally, the VLA approach needs to be enhanced to incorporate tactile information. We expanded the VLA framework to incorporate tactile data, creating the VTLA model. An additional benefit of our tactile sensor is that it is vision-based: We capture visual images of the deformation on the fingertip surface. We capture multiple images in a time sequence that encodes contact information, from which we can infer forces and other contact states. This aligns well with the visual framework that VLA is based upon. Having tactile information in a visual image format makes it naturally suitable for integration into the VLA framework, transforming it into a VTLA system. That is the key advantage: Vision-based tactile sensors provide very high resolution at the pixel level, and this data can be incorporated into the framework, whether it is an end-to-end model or another type of architecture. DAIMON has been known for its vision-based tactile sensors that can pack over 110,000 effective sensing units.DAIMON Robotics The Technology: Monochromatic Vision-based Tactile Sensing You and your team have spent many years deeply engaged in vision-based tactile sensing and have developed the worldโs first monochromatic vision-based tactile sensing technology. Why did you choose this technical path? Once we started investigating tactile sensors, we understood our needs. We wanted sensors that closely mimic what we have under our fingertip skin. Physiological studies have well documented the capabilities humans have at their fingertips โ knowing what we touch, what kind of material it is, how forces are distributed, and whether it is moving into the right position as our brain controls our hands. We knew that replicating these capabilities on a robot handโs fingertips would help considerably. When we surveyed existing technologies, we found many types, including vision-based tactile sensors with tri-color optics and other simpler designs. We decided to integrate the best of these into an engineering-robust solution that works well without being overly complicated, keeping cost, reliability, and sensitivity within a satisfactory range, thus ultimately developing a monochromatic vision-based tactile sensing technique. This is fundamentally an engineering approach rather than a purely scientific one, since a great deal of foundational research already existed. With the growing realization of the necessity of tactile data, all of this will advance hand in hand. DAIMON vision-based tactile sensor captures high-quality, multimodal tactile data.DAIMON Robotics Last year, DAIMON launched a multi-dimensional, high-resolution, high-frequency vision-based tactile sensor. Compared with traditional tactile sensors, where does its core advantage lie? Which industries could it potentially transform? The key features of our sensors are the density of distributed force measurement and the deformation we can capture over the area of a fingertip. I believe we have the highest density in terms of sensing units. That is one very important metric. The other is dynamics: the frequency and bandwidth โ how quickly we can detect force changes, transmit signals, and process them in real time. Other important aspects are largely engineering-related, such as reliability, drift, durability of the soft surface, and resistance to interference from magnetic, optical, or environmental factors. A growing number of researchers and companies are recognizing the importance of tactile sensing and adopting our technology. I believe the advances in tactile sensing will elevate the entire community and industry to a higher level. One of our potential customers is deploying humanoid robots in a small convenience store, with densely packed shelves where shelf space is at a premium. The robot needs to reach into very tight spaces โ tighter than books on a shelf โ to pick out an object. Current two-jaw parallel grippers cannot fit into most of these spaces. Observing how humans pick up objects, you clearly need at least three slim fingers to touch and roll the object toward you and secure it. Thus, we are starting to see very specific needs where tactile sensing capabilities are essential. From Academia to Startup After 40 years in academia โ founding the HKUST Robotics Institute, earning prestigious honors including IEEE Fellow, and serving as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TASE โ what motivated you to found DAIMON Robotics? I have come a long way. I started learning robotics during my PhD at Carnegie Mellon, where there were truly remarkable groups working on locomotion under Marc Raibert, who founded Boston Dynamics, and on manipulation under my advisor, Matt Mason, a leader in the field. We have been working on dexterous manipulation, not only at Carnegie Mellon, but globally for many years. However, progress has been limited for a long time, especially in building dexterous hands and making them work. Only recently have locomotion robots truly taken off, and only in the last few years have we begun to see major advancements in robot hands. There is clearly room for advancing manipulation capabilities, which would enable robots to do work like humans. While at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, I saw increasingly greater people entering this area in the form of students and postdoctoral researchers. We wanted to jumpstart our effort by leveraging the available capital and talent resources. Fortunately, one of my postdocs, Dr. Duan Jianghua, has a strong sense for commercial opportunities. Recognizing the rapid growth of robotics market and the unique value that our vision-based tactile sensing technology could bring, together we started DAIMON Robotics, and it has progressed well. The community has grown tremendously in China, Japan, Korea, the U.S., and Europe. Robots equipped with DAIMON technology have been deployed in factory settings. The company aims to enable robots to achieve โembodied intelligenceโ and close the gap between what they can see and what they can feel.DAIMON Robotics Business Model and Commercial Strategy What is DAIMONโs current business model and strategic focus? What role does the dataset release play in your commercial strategy? We started as a device company focused on making highly capable tactile sensors, especially for robot hands. But as technology and business developed, everyone realized it is not just about one component, rather the entire technology chain: devices, data of adequate quality and quantity, and finally the right framework to build, train, and deploy models on robots in real application environments. Our business strategy is best described as โ3Dโ: Devices, Data, and Deployment. We build devices for data collection, our own ecosystem, and for deploying them in our partnersโ potential application domains. This enables the collection of real-world tactile-rich data and complete closed-loop validation. This will become an integral part of the 3D business model. Most startups in this space are following a similar path until eventually some may become more specialized or more tightly integrated with other companies. For now, it is mostly vertical integration. Embodied Skills and the Convergence Moment Youโve introduced the concept of โembodied skillsโ as essential for humanoid robots to move beyond having just an advanced AI โbrain.โ What prompted this insight? What new capabilities could embodied skills enable? After the rapid evolution of models and hardware over the past two years, has your definition or roadmap for embodied skills evolved? We have come a long way now see a convergence point where electrical, electronic, and mechatronic hardware technologies have advanced tremendously in last two decades. Robots are now fully electric, do not require hydraulics, because hardware has evolved rapidly. Modern electronics provide tremendous bandwidth with high torques. If we can build intelligence into these systems, we can create truly humanoid robots with the ability to operate in unstructured environments, make decisions, and take actions autonomously. โOur vision is for robots to achieve robust manipulation capabilities and evolve into reliable partners for humans.โ โProf. Michael Yu Wang, DAIMON Robotics AI has arrived at exactly the right time. Enormous resources have been invested in AI development, especially large language models, which are now being generalized into world models that enable physical AI capabilities. We would like to see these manifested in real-world systems. While both AI and core hardware technologies continue to evolve, the focus is much clearer now. For example, human-sized robots are preferred in a home environment. This is an exciting domain with a promise of great societal benefit if we can eventually achieve safe, reliable, and cost-effective robots. The Road to Real-World Deployment Today, many robots can deliver impressive demos, yet there remains a gap before they truly enter real-world applications. What could be a potential trigger for real-world deployment? Which scenarios are most likely to achieve large-scale deployment first? I think the road toward large-scale deployment of generalist robots is still long, but we are starting to see signs of feasibility within specific domains. It is very similar to autonomous vehicles, where we are yet to see full deployment of robo-taxis, while we have already started to find mobile robots and smaller vehicles widely deployed in the hospitality industry. Virtually every major hotel in China now has a delivery robot โ no arms, just a vehicle that picks up items from the hotel lobby (e.g., food deliveries). The delivery person just loads the food and selects the room number. It is up to the robot thereafter to navigate and reach the guestโs room, which includes using the elevator, to deliver the food. This is already nearly 100 percent deployed in major Chinese hotels. Hotel and restaurant robots are viewed as a model for deploying humanoid robots in specific domains like overnight drugstores and convenience stores. I expect complete deployment in such settings within a short timeframe, followed by other applications. Overall, we can expect autonomous robots, including humanoids, to progressively penetrate specific sectors, delivering value in each and expanding into others. Ultimately, our vision is for robots to achieve robust manipulation capabilities and evolve into reliable partners for humans. By seamlessly integrating into our homes and daily lives, they will genuinely benefit and serve humanity. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.