FrodoBots

FrodoBots is a DePIN robotics gaming platform built on Solana that lets players remotely pilot real sidewalk robots via browser, generating embodied AI training data. Core approach: "gaming as tele-operations" — each play session produces camera footage, movement telemetry, and environmental sensor data that feeds AI model training pipelines. The flagship Earth Rovers product (ET Fugi scavenger hunt game) deploys rovers priced USD 199–250 across hundreds of robots in 12-plus cities on six continents. In February 2025, FrodoBots Lab and Protocol Labs launched BitRobot on Solana: a subnet network where Subnet 1 runs DePIN gaming contests for urban navigation data, Subnet 2 runs researcher competitions for autonomous navigation models, and Subnet 3 runs simulation contests for synthetic datasets. The FrodoBots-2K dataset — 2,000 hours of real-world urban robot navigation footage, the largest public dataset of its kind — is available on Hugging Face; the company has research collaborations with Google DeepMind and UC Berkeley. FrodoBots Lab has raised USD 8 million (USD 6 million seed, led by Protocol VC), with Solana Ventures, Fabric Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Zee Prime Capital, Tioga Capital, Sfermion, and Virtuals Protocol as investors, plus angel investors including Solana Labs co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. Co-founder Michael Cho leads the company. Upcoming products include Octo Arms (robotic arm manipulation games) and Earth Rovers School.