Across industries, the cost and quality of service are constrained by one factor: physical labor.
In hospitals, warehouses, hotels, farms, and factories, human effort remains the limiting input—the variable that determines speed, safety, and consistency.
In healthcare, that constraint shows up most acutely, which is why we began there. But it's not unique to care. It's structural, a universal challenge for every environment built on physical work.
Automation has long optimized information flows. The next wave will optimize physical flows: how things move, are cleaned, delivered, assembled, or maintained. That's the future Sidekick Robotics is building toward.
Beyond One Application: A Platform for Physical Automation
Caregiving remains our starting point—a demanding, high-impact domain that ensures our systems meet the highest standards of reliability and trust. But the platform we're building is broader. It's designed for the world of work at large.
Sidekick Robotics is developing the Sidekick AI model, a general-purpose system for physical work. Each task Sidekick learns in one setting (grasping, sorting, navigating, delivering) becomes part of a shared foundation that can be rapidly adapted to new industries.
Our focus isn't on single-purpose robots, but on transferable skills: perception, manipulation, and motion planning that scale across environments. The same intelligence that autonomously handles laundry can handle inventory, materials, or tools with the same reliability and safety.
Transferable Skills Across Industries
Perception
Understanding environments and objects
Manipulation
Grasping, sorting, and handling
Motion Planning
Navigating and path optimization
That's why we built Sidekick as a technology company, implementing agents in the physical world.
We're commercializing foundational AI for physical automation: models that continuously learn from real-world deployments and can generalize across sectors.
Where We're Going
The Sidekick AI model is designed for industries where mobility, dexterity, and adaptability matter—where tasks are too dynamic for fixed automation and too repetitive for human efficiency.
Below are five application verticals where Sidekick applies seamlessly:
Healthcare
Starting Point
Sidekick AI
Platform
5 Industries
Broad Impact
Healthcare Operations
Logistics inside hospitals and senior living: laundry, delivery, waste, and materials handling. These controlled environments offer clear workflows, measurable ROI, and strong trust signals for broader adoption.
Facilities & Hospitality Services
Room turnover, restocking, and cleaning in hotels, student housing, and offices. High labor turnover and predictable, semi-structured spaces make this ideal for scalable, safe deployment.
Warehousing & Micro-Logistics
Point-to-point transport, picking, and light kitting in retail or manufacturing support. A massive and growing market for mobile manipulation, directly aligned with Sidekick's strengths in perception and motion autonomy.
Agriculture & Controlled-Environment Farming
Crop handling, greenhouse maintenance, and material movement in high-value produce environments. Tasks that blend dexterity, sensing, and mobility—ideal for general-purpose manipulation.
Clean Energy & Maintenance Support
Inspection, delivery, and light mechanical support for renewable energy infrastructure. A fast-growing sector where repetitive, safety-critical tasks demand adaptable, field-capable automation.
Together, these sectors represent trillions in global labor value and a single underlying problem: how to augment human physical capacity safely and efficiently.
The Broader Vision
Automation is entering the physical world with the same intelligence leap that reshaped digital work. Sidekick Robotics represents that shift, taking robotic capability beyond code, beyond scripts, and into systems that can see, decide, and act in complex, human environments.
Our goal is simple: to redefine what humans can do safely, flexibly, and at scale. Not by building robots for one job, but by building robots that can learn to do many.
If you're exploring physical automation in your organization, join our pilot program:
sidekickrobotics.ai/pilotFounders' Reflection
At Stanford, we saw how AI foundation models were transforming robotics. Sidekick Robotics exists to bring that same transformation to the physical world, to create intelligent systems that extend what humans can achieve.
Our mission begins with caregiving because that's where the challenge is most urgent. But the platform we're building, and the foundation model behind it, are built for the broader economy of motion—where work still depends on the limits of human reach.
Building the future of physical automation,
Andrew Raffi Ansell and Mark Garo Ansell
Co-Founders, Sidekick Robotics
PART 1
Our Origin Story: Why Robotics for Caregiving
Learn why we founded Sidekick Robotics and how we're addressing the healthcare labor crisis through AI-powered physical automation.
PART 2
The Next Chapter: Building for the Economy of Motion
How we're thinking about the broader platform opportunity and expanding beyond healthcare to transform physical automation across industries.
About Sidekick Robotics
Sidekick Robotics is creating the AI Sidekick for Physical Work, robots that learn and perform the complex tasks that keep hospitals and care communities running. We're tackling the healthcare labor shortage by reducing burnout, turnover, and rising costs, so caregivers can focus on what matters most: patients.
Media Contact: founders@sidekickrobotics.ai