Walden Robotics emerged from stealth on 15 July with US $300 million in funding at a valuation of $1.1 billion, as a spinout of Toyota Research Institute (TRI). The company spent the last 10 or so years working on hard problems in robotics, aiming to transition from research to real-world applications. Walden has chosen to skip legs on its humanoid robot, focusing instead on a wheeled base. Co-founder and CEO Russ Tedrake, who taught legs at MIT for 20 years, cited questions about the addressable market and what percentage is covered by a wheeled base. Rather than developing a robot first and searching for a use case second, Walden identified applications where robots can provide value now. Tedrake is light on details about specific applications, citing confidentiality with current commercial partners, but manufacturing and logistics environments with simple, repetitive tasks are a good bet. He noted that robots must find a useful niche against more flexible and cheaper human workers, requiring applications with high utilization—where the robot is used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "Manufacturing is a global imperative right now, and it makes the economics work," Tedrake said. Economic viability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Walden and its partnership with Toyota, as people are a big part of the plan.