Multiple robotics companies are tackling one of AI's hardest problems: building foundation models capable of executing tasks they were never explicitly trained to handle. Their approaches run the gamut — from studying millions of web videos and conducting computer simulations to collecting motion data from humans performing tasks in gloves with built-in sensors.

Enigma, a research lab set to emerge from stealth on Monday, is taking a fundamentally different approach. Rather than focusing purely on model capabilities, the less-than-one-year-old startup wants to study how humans engage with robots in hopes that these interactions will lead to intuitive interfaces and possibly a different kind of robotic brain.

To finance its mission, Enigma raised a $71 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sarah Guo of Conviction Partners. To test how humans want to communicate with machines, Enigma is launching a large-scale experiment that allows anyone in the world to interact online with more than 100 of its proprietary AI robots.

Enigma’s co-founder Jonathan Jacobi believes manipulating robots should eventually be as intuitive as adjusting a car's volume knob. 'If you had to do your dishes and spent 15 minutes explaining to a robot where to put everything, everyone reaches the point of “Forget it, I’ll just do it myself,”' he said.

Enigma hopes that data gathered from its online experiment will reveal an interface that becomes the robotics equivalent of the car volume knob. The startup’s public test will evaluate different ways for people to communicate with its robots. 'We’re going to learn a lot about what is the right way to interact with robots,' Jacobi said.