u/David-Davey

I work at Autonomous, where we make Lamp, a physical AI assistant that sees, talks and moves. We've been experimenting with almost every part of her, from how she moves to how she sounds, and lately that's meant testing Eleven v4 as her voice.

What stood out wasn't the tone so much as the timing. She hesitates, trails off halfway through a word, and picks back up. In a body that can also look down while she does it, that lands very differently than it does in a pair of headphones.

The voice also has to fit how a conversation with her works. She turns to face you before she says anything, and you can cut her off mid-sentence and she'll stop and listen. So the voice has to start and stop cleanly, not just sound good.

The open question for us is speed versus expression in a live conversation. If you've used v4 for a live character rather than narration, how are you handling that?

My inspiration tbh :)

Our marketer just made this F1 car.

It's 17 pieces: body shell with the suspension arms built in, floor, front and rear wings, halo, and four wheels that actually spin.

Everything is open source, so you can print and build your own from the files, or we can ship you one. This is one of many. People across the team have been building toys, and more are on the way. Most of them are things you wouldn't find on a shelf.

What should we make next?

No accent lighting, no plants, no art. Just white desk, black gear, and enough contrast that nothing else needs to be there.

Desk 2 is the foundation that makes it work without asking for attention. Wide enough to run dual monitors with room to breathe, clean enough that it disappears into the setup instead of competing with it.

What would you add or would you leave it exactly like this?

*Setup from Woodley Lozamma

We put a lot of engineering effort into Lamp and most of it went into the gap between you finishing a sentence and her starting one.

Ask Siri something and there is a beat before anything comes back. Lamp does not really have one. You finish talking and it just answers, which is the part that makes it feel like a person and not a device.

Do you talk to yours like a person or do you keep it to commands?

Didn't expect a robot to feel this warm.

Lamp moves, changes colors and lights up when you are around. No sharp edges, no intimidating screen, just something small and alive sitting on your desk making the whole room feel different.

What would you put this next to in your setup?

I've used my ErgoChair Pro basically every working day for the past four years, around 8 hours a day, and it has held up great. As a software developer I spend most of my day at a desk, so durability and comfort over long sessions were my top priorities, and this chair has delivered on both. It still performs as well as it did early on, with no issues that made me consider replacing it.

After this long, I can say with confidence that it was money well spent. I'd buy it again without hesitation and happily recommend it to anyone who sits for long hours.

We're thinking about making a blue Autonomous Lamp. 4 colors are already in the lineup. Blue could be next? But only if you actually want it.

Would you put a blue Lamp on your desk? Drop your pick below!

Finally got the desk mostly how I want it.

Still feels a little empty though. Maybe something on the wall, maybe more lighting. Not sure yet.

Would you change anything?

Autonomous Lamp and Reachy Mini are having real time conversations on the same OS.

Microduck just joined the lineup too. Autonomous OS looks like it might be ready for a third robot.

What does this start to look like when it scales beyond two robots?

Every voice thing wants you to say its name first. Hey Google, Alexa, whatever. You say it, it mishears you, you say it again louder, and by then you've forgotten what you wanted.

Our Autonomous Lamp doesn't have one. It has a camera and it notices when you come back to your desk, so it's already awake by the time you say anything. The recognition math runs on the device.

Where do you land, is a thing that notices you better or worse than a thing you have to summon?

CO₂ crept up without me noticing. By 2pm it was high enough to tank my focus. I only found out because I asked my desk about it.

Autonomous Desk Pro AI has 6 sensors built in. It tracks your air all day and stores everything. When you want to know something you just ask in plain language and it answers.

No separate gadget. No dashboard to decode. The desk does it.

What would you ask your desk first?

Lamp, Intern, and one more we'll get to soon.

Same system across all three. Lamp moves and lights, Intern runs in the background and reports back, and the third one does its own thing. Different bodies, different jobs, one OS underneath.

Lamp and the new one warmed up to Intern way too fast. Are these little creatures planning something?

autonomous.ai/lamp

Here’s the current color lineup for our Autonomous Lamp, tuned to match pretty much any desk vibe.

Sand is a solid classic, but we’ve been having fun experimenting with expanding into new shade directions:

• Matcha
• Cloud
• Sand
• Charcoal

Charcoal is in. What finish should we drop next for our little robot?

Moody setups can easily feel a bit darker than usual, but adding a rich wood surface brings back the perfect balance. Here, a soft, diffused glow hits the surface of the Autonomous Desk 2 just right, giving the floating ultrawide display a grounded, intentional space without any visual clutter.

Everything, from the floating display to the felt desk mat, is kept completely simple so the focus stays strictly on the work.

What’s your go to element for keeping a dark setup from feeling too dim: wood grain, soft lighting, or a clean desk mat?

Coding agents mostly run out of sight. You kick something off, switch windows and forget it's running until you go back to check.

Command Code now runs on Autonomous Harness, which keeps it on a dedicated screen you can glance at without breaking your flow. It shows what's running, what came back, and what you've spent today

We built this to fit the different ways people work. How do you usually run your agents: set-and-forget or in a tight interactive loop?

Each device comes with an agent already running. Unbox it, plug it in, it works, no config, no keys, no setup. Intern runs Hermes out of the box

That agent isn't locked in. Bring your own and swap it in whenever you want. The whole Autonomous OS is on GitHub: https://github.com/autonomous-ai/autonomous-os/

If you've already built an agent you trust, you don't have to rebuild it for our devices. Point the device at what you're already running and it picks up where you left off. Your prompts, your tools, your memory, just with hardware in front of it now

Is there a case where you'd rather just run what shipped? I can think of a few and I'm not sure I'm right about any of them

No browser tab. No rectangle stuck in a corner of your screen.

Autonomous Lamp lives on your desk, sees you walk in, follows your face, reads your mood and guards your space when you leave.

Talk to it or chat through the app. Either way it gets to work. More skills in the store. Install any of them in one tap.

Want something that does not exist yet? Describe and Lamp learns it.

What is the first skill you would install on Lamp?