Sunny Ray talks with Bradley, who leads Luxonis, a company building AI powered cameras and perception systems that give robots the ability to see and navigate the physical world. Bradley traces his winding path from a mechanical engineering degree and early robotics classes through field engineering at Kiewit, nine years at safety equipment maker Guardian Fall Protection through its acquisition, an executive MBA earned while working full time, and a stint in B2B pricing at Amazon before joining Luxonis, co-founded by his college roommate Brandon. He explains the company's origin story, rooted partly in friends and Bradley himself being injured in bicycle accidents, which pushed Brandon to build an AI stereo camera that could sense collisions before they happen. Bradley unpacks why vision, which consumes roughly half the human brain's processing power, is the hardest and most important problem to solve for physical AI, and breaks down in simple terms how Luxonis cameras let a robot see, map, and manipulate objects in a home. He closes by describing the company's explosive organic growth, fueled by Kickstarter campaigns and a devoted developer community, with zero traditional marketing.
A Luxonis leader explains how giving robots humanlike vision, born from a bicycle accident tragedy, could unlock the future of physical AI.
What does Luxonis do?
We build eyes and brains for robots. Essentially, we bring the real time perception that humans have to machines, so robots can see and perceive the world, navigate it, and successfully perform various tasks in it.
Was there anything early on that hinted you'd end up building vision systems for robots?
Not really at first. In my mechanical engineering undergrad my favorite classes were robotics classes twenty years ago, building robots for games like capture the flag and dodgeball. I was captivated by autonomy, robots that could compete on their own once you pushed the power button, instead of being teleoperated like battlebots.
What was your path from Kiewit to Guardian to Amazon to Luxonis?
I hated my first job at Kiewit and quit after a year and a half. I then spent nine years at Guardian, an equipment manufacturer, which was acquired in 2017. I went to Amazon to build software experience I was missing, and that finally gave me the confidence to join a technology startup like Luxonis.
Why did you go back for an executive MBA while working full time at Guardian?
I felt I was lacking skills in accounting, finance, and economics. I considered leaving Guardian for a full time program but got convinced to stay, so I did an executive MBA, working fifty or sixty hour weeks and studying evenings and weekends. It was intense but a really great two years.
What's the origin story behind Luxonis and the bicycle accidents you mentioned?
Brandon originally wanted to build a laser tag headset, but while pitching that idea he talked to friends who had been injured or killed in bicycle accidents. I had been injured in one too, so it was personal. He set out to build an AI stereo camera that could tell if a truck was about to hit you, and when he found it too hard to build with existing components, Luxonis was born to make that easier for other developers.
Why is solving vision the key unlock for physical AI?
Robots have long succeeded in controlled, unchanging environments like factories, but the real world is always changing, and humans handle that using vision more than any other sense. Our brains dedicate about half their processing power to it. We believe visual perception is the hardest problem in robotics, and solving it unlocks robots' potential across the sixty trillion dollar global economy of physical work.
What's driving your growth of 4.5 million SDK downloads with zero outbound marketing?
A lot of it was dumb luck. We launched through two Kickstarters, raising 2.5 million dollars from 15,000 backers, hardcore hobbyists who turned out to work at the world's biggest companies. They realized the tech they used for fun could solve real problems at work, and word of mouth from that developer community has been our entire growth engine ever since.
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