"We are building a robot that cares. Can you help?"

I cared.

Then came months of animation pipeline design, team building, assets creation, and other development work. And working with extremely talented engineers seeped in the current trends in hardware prototyping, industrial design, machine learning, AI, vision systems, and imaging.

I worked on this project creating motions for various prototypes of the robot as a consulting animation director, and designing a unique art and animation pipeline at the onset of the technology development curve.

I remember the thrill, when years ago, lead programmer Matt Brown of the first game I ever worked on had quietly called me into his office at Dreamworks Interactive for me to see my animations plugged into the dinosaur player character for the first time. It was mesmerizing to feel the dinosaur come to life under the power of the motions I had created.

That moment of magic was experienced once again decades later at Embodied, when engineer Peter Teel plugged in prototype motions I had made. The machine woke up, and started looking around the room, blinking, with a life-like curiosity.

I live for these moments of creative manifestations.

Embodied, based in Pasadena, California is well on its way to release Moxie the robot this year.

The press has been stunning.

Sunil Thankamushy