Why Intempus Thinks Robots Need a Human

Introduction Of Intempus

Teddy Warner, 19, has had robotics in his DNA for as long as he can remember. Raised in a family entrenched in the industry, he spent his high school years working in a machinist shop, getting hands-on with machines while his peers were still figuring out how to change a tire. Now, he’s taking that early experience and turning it into something ambitious: building robots that act — and react — more like people.

Warner is the founder of Intempus, a startup with a bold mission: to retrofit existing robots with expressive, emotionally intelligent behaviors. The idea is that by making robots move and react more like humans, they’ll become easier for people to understand, interact with, and trust. These human-like responses won’t just make robots friendlier — they’ll also generate more meaningful data that can improve the way artificial intelligence learns and functions.

But here’s the twist: the robots won’t be smiling or frowning with animated faces. Instead, Intempus is focusing on kinetic expressions — the subtle ways humans use their body to communicate emotion.

“Humans subconsciously pick up emotional cues not just from facial expressions or tone,” Warner explained in an interview with TechCrunch. “We understand a lot just from how someone moves — their arms, their posture. Animals do this too. It’s a universal language of motion.”

The concept started taking shape while Warner was working at AI research lab Midjourney, where the team was exploring “world models” — AI systems that aim to understand the physical and spatial dynamics of the real world, not just simple input-output logic. But Warner saw a fundamental flaw.

“These models were learning from robots that didn’t understand space the way humans do,” he said. “Humans operate on a three-step loop: we observe (A), process those observations internally (B), and then act (C). Robots typically skip the middle — the physiological state — entirely.”

According to Warner, that missing middle is where feelings like stress, excitement, or fatigue live — all factors that affect how people move, react, and make decisions. Without that, robots are predictable only in code, not in presence. And that can make them feel alien — even uncanny.

So Warner started digging. His first attempt involved analyzing fMRI data, but it wasn’t practical. Then a friend suggested something simpler — a polygraph test, which tracks changes in sweat levels. That was the breakthrough.

“I was blown away by how quickly I could go from just collecting sweat data from me and a couple of friends to training a model that gave robots an emotional profile,” Warner said.

Since then, Intempus has expanded to gather data from other physiological signals — body temperature, heart rate, and photoplethysmography (a method of measuring blood volume changes through the skin). The goal is to simulate a nervous system that mirrors the one we rely on every day — turning robotic motion into something that feels organic and alive.

Launched in September 2024, Intempus spent its first four months deep in research. Now, Warner is shifting gears into development and early customer engagement. He’s already signed seven enterprise robotics partners, all curious about giving their machines a more human edge.

The company is also part of the Thiel Fellowship, a program created by billionaire investor Peter Thiel that gives $200,000 to young entrepreneurs who opt out of college to build groundbreaking companies. Warner is currently a solo founder, but plans to build a team soon and begin real-world testing of the tech.

For now, Intempus is focused on enhancing existing robots, but Warner isn’t ruling out designing new ones from scratch down the road.

“I want someone to look at a robot and just get it — to feel that it’s joyful, or serious, or focused, without needing words or screens,” Warner said. “If I can convey that emotion — that intent — clearly and instinctively, I’ll know we’ve nailed it. And I think we’ll be able to prove that in the next few months.”

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