Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators
Flywheel AI, a Y Combinator S25 startup, has launched a system for remote teleoperation and autonomy in excavators. Their retrofit solution mechanically actuates existing excavator controls, addressing the lack of electronic interfaces in most hydraulic machines. This enables increased site safety and productivity, while also generating crucial egocentric observation and action data for training autonomous systems. Flywheel is open-sourcing 100 hours of this collected excavator dataset to facilitate research in robot learning. AI
IMPACT Provides valuable real-world robotics data, potentially accelerating the development of autonomous construction equipment.