Phantom MK-1
Foundation's general-purpose humanoid robot. 180 cm tall, 80 kg, 29 DOF, proprietary cycloidal actuators, 40 kg payload, 1.7 m/s walking speed.
Applications
- Factory Automation
- Production Line Operation
- Industrial Logistics
- Inspection
Foundation Cortex is the in-house robotics software stack developed by Foundation Future Industries โ a San Francisco startup building the Phantom MK-1 humanoid for industrial applications. Cortex is designed as a full robot OS โ combining a perception layer (multi-camera + depth fusion), VLM-driven task planning via VLA models in the LLM class, and deterministic low-level controllers running on a Whole Body Controller (WBC) at 1 kHz.
The Cortex architecture is two-tier, analogous to Helix/Pi-0/GR00T: the upper layer is a multimodal foundation model (System 2) generating semantic embeddings from cameras and natural language, the lower layer is a fast visuomotor policy (System 1) translating embeddings into torque commands for actuators. Everything runs onboard on two Jetson AGX Thor units with a dedicated load-balancing layer.
The stack is closed-source and available only to internal Foundation teams and early pilot customers. There is no public SDK and no ROS 2 bridge in the current version. The company declares OTA support for VLA model and RL policy updates across customer-deployed robot fleets.
A Runtime is the environment or execution layer used to run code, load libraries, manage dependencies, and operate applications or services โ either in real time or during normal system operation. In robotics this includes real-time operating system (RTOS) runtimes, ROS 2 executor runtimes, containerised execution environments (Docker, podman), and embedded C++ runtimes on microcontrollers.
A Control Stack is the set of software components responsible for control logic, motion planning, command execution, and coordination of a robot's actuators. It receives high-level goals or waypoints (from planning or AI layers) and translates them into low-level actuator commands, closed-loop feedback control, and safety checks. Common implementations include MoveIt (arm manipulation), Nav2 (mobile navigation), and custom whole-body control stacks for humanoids.
A Perception Stack encompasses the software layers that process data from cameras, LiDARs, IMUs, microphones, and other sensors in order to recognise the surrounding environment, perform localisation, detect and track objects, and interpret the scene. It is typically the first processing stage in an autonomous robot's data pipeline, feeding its outputs to planning and control stacks.
Phantom MK-1 โ early pilots with logistics and manufacturing customers in the US. Number of robots in testing <50 (2025).
No open-source community. Communication via foundation.com and sales/PR channels. No GitHub repo.
Locked to the Phantom MK-1 platform. Requires an enterprise subscription and NDA.
License family: Proprietary โ Commercial
First commercial pilots, OTA fleet management.
VLA System 2 integration, Jetson Thor compatibility.
First Cortex version unveiled publicly with Phantom MK-1.