Jay Li advises against incurring legal issues with Tesla while attempting to launch a startup. Nonetheless, he feels that his company, Proception, could benefit from having faced such challenges.

“I see it as a resilience test, or a test under pressure,” he expressed to TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “People say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”

Li, who served as a technical lead on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot initiative, was alleged by his previous employer last year to have stolen trade secrets to establish Proception. However, after a protracted legal battle, he has now settled with Tesla, which dropped the suit earlier this month. (Tesla did not provide any comments.)

Li is now poised to address what he believes is an even tougher challenge: enabling robotic hands to function like human hands.

To assist with this goal, Proception announced on Monday that it has secured $11 million in seed funding led by First Round Capital, with additional investments from Y Combinator and early-stage firm BoxGroup.

Proception also disclosed on Monday that it is dispatching the initial shipment of its “high-dexterity robotic hand” to “researchers and robotics companies,” while also welcoming broader orders. Li stated that the ambition is to become the foremost supplier of hands for firms that prefer not to invest time or resources into what the industry calls “dexterous manipulation.”

Despite an influx of funding and interest flooding into the robotics sector, Li asserts that insufficient attention has been directed toward creating robotic hands that genuinely replicate the functionality of human hands.

One prominent advocate addressing this issue is his former boss, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who claims that robotic hands represent one of the most significant engineering obstacles yet to be overcome.

While Musk has suggested that Optimus robots might begin operating in factories within a few years, the prevailing opinion is that achieving robotic hands comparable to humans is still several years off. Kevin Lynch, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Robotics and Biosystems, indicated to the Wall Street Journal last year that his team believes it will take a decade for them to be “functional and useful and able to perform some of the actions humans can.”

Li is confident that Proception can accomplish this much sooner, largely due to their innovative data collection methods.

Currently, the majority of organizations training humanoid robots employ teleoperators for system training. A human donned with a virtual-reality headset can perceive what the robot observes and manipulate items in front of the robot, allowing it to learn from the human’s directives.

According to Li, a major drawback of this method is that the teleoperator lacks feedback from the objects the robot interacts with. He also mentioned that this technique is constrained by the number of robots a company can utilize at any moment.

Proception’s answer is a glove outfitted with sensors. With human testers equipped with these gloves (and a headset), Proception and its clients can gather “human hand interaction data without necessitating a robot in the loop,” as stated in Proception’s press release.

This same glove is used on the robotic hand Proception is designing, serving as its sensor-laden “skin.” The hand boasts 22 degrees of freedom and multiple joints per finger, allowing it a “broad range of dexterous movements,” as per Proception.

Li noted that this method would enable Proception and its clients to collect more precise, task-specific data to enhance the resemblance of robotic hands to human ones. He further believes it is more conducive to scaling up.

“You require both hardware and data, and these must work in tandem to achieve [dextrous manipulation]. Many companies concentrate solely on hardware or on hardware along with non-scalable data [collection],” he explained. “We focus on this highly dexterous hardware in conjunction with highly scalable data. We believe this is a crucial combination to solve this challenge.”

First Round partner Bill Trenchard, who spearheaded the investment in Proception, emphasized that this was a significant factor in his decision to support Li.

“We believe they will offer the best hand on the market, possibly the most advanced hand available today, supported by the underlying data and models,” he conveyed to TechCrunch. “Dexterous manipulation is an extremely important aspect of the overall humanoid narrative moving forward, and as many individuals have noted, it represents the last crucial step in making these robots genuinely effective.”

Trenchard also commended Li’s ability to maintain composure amidst the lawsuit from his former employer.

“He was very transparent with us regarding this situation, and I believe the team did an outstanding job of maintaining focus,” Trenchard remarked. “Jay is a remarkable leader.”

Li is also assured. After navigating Tesla’s “intense legal department,” he shared with TechCrunch that he wouldn’t be astonished if the company seeks assistance as Proception progresses.

“I believe it will come to pass,” he stated.