The robot-training gold rush is coming for gig work.
Instawork, best known for matching hourly staff with shifts at hotels, warehouses, and stadiums, is launching a wearable camera system that helps gig workers collect real-world data for training machines.
Business Insider got the first look at the new system, called Instacore. It includes five cameras mounted on the head, chest, and wrists, connected to a compute backpack built to last an eight-hour shift.
The goal is to have Instawork workers, known as Pros, record themselves doing tasks on the job, from chopping vegetables in a commercial kitchen to stocking shelves in a grocery store. That footage can then be used by robotics companies and AI labs trying to teach robots how to operate in commercial environments.
Instawork, which has raised more than $150 million from investors including Benchmark, Greylock, and Spark Capital, declined to name customers but said it is working with leading research labs.
This is part of a growing scramble for real-world data as AI moves from chatbots to machines that can act in the physical world. Sam Altman has declared robotics OpenAI’s next frontier, while Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla are all ramping up their own robotics efforts.
Instawork has about 10 million Pros on its platform, giving it access to a wide range of tasks and settings. That variety makes the data more valuable to AI labs and robotics companies trying to train robots for the messiness of the real world.
“We will be rolling out Instacore across the world and collecting what we think will be the largest and most diverse commercial data set for robotics,” said Aaron Bromberg, head of robotics at Instawork and a former Amazon technologist who worked on the company’s Astro home robot.
‘Instacore inception”
At Instawork’s Mountain View warehouse, workers were already wearing Instacore systems to record themselves assembling more of the devices.
“It’s like Instacore inception — they’re recording data of themselves as they build the units,” Bromberg said as he gave me a tour.
Rya Jetha
Two months ago, the space was empty. Instawork has moved into hardware at remarkable speed after nearly a decade as a labor marketplace. After noticing last year that robotics companies were posting shifts on Instawork’s platform, CEO Sumir Meghani began taking walks with founders near Y Combinator’s headquarters in Dogpatch to learn more about robotics.
“People start to use your product in ways you didn’t intend, and then you follow that signal,” Meghani said. “It struck me that robotics is the intersection of physical labor — which we are really good at — and AI.”
No RoboCop
The biggest challenge was designing a system that Pros could wear across a wide range of jobs. Bromberg said the company did not want to build something that made workers look like RoboCop.
Early versions were too heavy, did not have enough battery life, and got too hot, making some workers feel like they had portable space heaters strapped to their backs. Instawork kept iterating based on feedback from Pros.
The final system balances worker comfort with the detailed data robotics companies want. Two head cameras help calculate depth, a chest camera captures the broader environment, and wrist cameras track hand movement. The system also syncs video and sensor data, and weighs less than three pounds.
“You definitely have to get used to it,” said Aaron Kerchner, an Instawork Pro who is now an on-site supervisor at the Mountain View facility. “There are cables that can get caught on things, and so you learn to be aware of it.”
Instawork is currently assembling hundreds of Instacore systems in Mountain View, but plans to move production overseas to scale up. Parts are sourced from China and the US, while some are 3-D printed in-house.
Rya Jetha
Other companies are also using gig workers to collect real-world data. A few weeks ago, a startup called shift went viral in New York for offering free apartment cleanings if cleaners could wear head-mounted cameras as they did dishes, mopped floors, and folded laundry.
Instawork plans to send thousands of Pros to gigs wearing Instacore. Data collection will be opt-in and anonymized, the company said.
Meghani’s long-term bet is that physical AI, a term popularized by Jensen Huang to describe AI systems that can act in the real world, will create new jobs, including robot “wranglers,” trainers, and technicians.
“Because of the acceleration of physical AI, there are all these new jobs being created, and our focus is on making our Pros relevant in a world with robots,” Meghani said.
