In true Palo Alto style, our journey led us to a Steve Jobs-esque garage, where Normal Robotics Lab is pioneering a revolution in home cooling. We interviewed Ashten Akemoto, the company’s Co-Founder and a former NASA robotics engineer, who explained how their use of intelligent machine perception and space-grade robotics is transforming homes into living, breathing organisms that cool the person, not just the room.
Ashten Akemoto is a robotics engineer with a diverse background in developing innovative technologies. He is the Co-Founder andStaff Engineer at Normal Robotics Lab, focusing on next-generation heat pumps. Previously, he interned as a Robotics Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he contributed to guidance navigation and control for the CADRE lunar mission. As a Research Fellow at NASA, he researched multi-agent visual teach-and-repeat approaches and gaussian processes for planetary exploration.At VIP RoSE at UH Mānoa, he founded a collegiate robotics team and wrote an entire autonomy stack. He also interned at Astrobotic, developing simulation environments for moon missions.
Ashten Akemoto is a robotics engineer with a diverse background in developing innovative technologies. He is the Co-Founder andStaff Engineer at Normal Robotics Lab, focusing on next-generation heat pumps. Previously, he interned as a Robotics Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he contributed to guidance navigation and control for the CADRE lunar mission. As a Research Fellow at NASA, he researched multi-agent visual teach-and-repeat approaches and gaussian processes for planetary exploration.At VIP RoSE at UH Mānoa, he founded a collegiate robotics team and wrote an entire autonomy stack. He also interned at Astrobotic, developing simulation environments for moon missions.
