Teddy Warner, a 19-year-old entrepreneur, is on a mission to humanize robotics. With a background rooted in the industry—growing up in a machinist shop—Warner is now leading his own startup, Intempus, which aims to give robots emotional expression to improve how humans interact with machines.
Building Emotionally Aware Robots
Founded in September 2024, Intempus retrofits robots with human-like reactions by mimicking physical emotional cues. According to Warner, movement—especially of the torso and arms—communicates subconscious signals more effectively than facial expressions or words. His technology allows robots to express emotions through kinetic motion, making their behavior easier to understand and predict.
Warner got the idea while working at AI research lab Midjourney. He observed that world AI models struggle with spatial reasoning, largely because the robots feeding them data lack physiological responses like stress or joy—an important step humans naturally go through before taking action.
“Robots currently go from observation to action, skipping the physiological state that humans and animals experience. That’s what makes our behavior more predictable and relatable,” Warner explained.
Turning Sweat and Signals into Emotion
To replicate this human trait in machines, Warner experimented with various physiological data sources. His breakthrough came when he used sweat data—commonly captured in lie detector tests—to model emotional responses. Encouraged by these results, he expanded to include heart rate, body temperature, and photoplethysmography, a method that tracks blood flow changes in the skin.
“I was amazed at how quickly I could train models using sweat data from myself and my friends. The robots were able to show emotional composition based on that input,” said Warner.
After spending four months on pure research, Warner has already signed seven enterprise robotics partners and is part of the Thiel Fellowship program. The fellowship offers $200,000 to young entrepreneurs to skip college and focus on their startups full-time.
Now, Warner is ready to grow his team and put his tech into human-facing trials. Though the focus is currently on upgrading existing robots, he’s open to building entirely new emotionally intelligent machines in the future.
“I want someone to meet one of my robots and instantly feel that it’s joyful or calm—if I can express emotion and intent naturally through movement, then I’ve done my job,” he said.
