Division 02 — Skilled trades
Project Raven
tools for the physical world.
The trades face the mirror image of the white-collar problem: not too much automation, but too little — too much work, too few hands, and an entire generation of craft knowledge retiring without being captured. Raven is our long bet on the people who build and fix the world.
Why the trades, why now
Every economy is short of electricians, fitters, welders, mechanics, and installers — and the shortage compounds annually as experienced hands retire faster than new ones arrive. The standard answer is "train more people," but training capacity is bottlenecked by the same scarcity: masters who can teach are exactly the people retiring.
Meanwhile the tools themselves have barely changed in decades. The knowledge work world got a hundred copilots; the person keeping your power on got a sturdier battery. We think the highest-leverage technology of this decade — vision models, AR, cheap sensors — was practically designed for the trades, and almost nobody is building it for them.
The research program
Four bets, one direction.
R-01 · VISION
Eyes that carry experience
Machine vision trained on the judgment calls of the trades: what a failing weld, a tired bearing, or a wrong torque pattern looks like. The goal is not to replace the inspection — it's to let a second-year technician see with thirty years of pattern memory.
R-02 · AUGMENTED REALITY
Guidance at the point of work
Instructions belong on the workpiece, not in a binder in the van. Raven prototypes hands-free AR that overlays the next step, the torque spec, and the hazard zone exactly where the hands are working — built for gloves, dust, and bad light, not for demo rooms.
R-03 · INSTRUMENTED TOOLS
Tools that capture technique
The knowledge walking out with every retiring master lives in wrists and habits, not manuals. Instrumented tools record the technique — force curves, sequences, corrections — and turn it into teachable, checkable patterns the next generation can learn against.
R-04 · CRAFT MEMORY
A knowledge base for the trades
The connective layer: every inspection, fix, and technique feeds a shared craft memory — the same one-memory architecture that powers Hyves, pointed at the physical world. What one crew learns, the whole trade keeps.
Where it stands
Field research
We're on job sites with working tradespeople, mapping where minutes and knowledge actually leak. No product assumptions survive contact with a Tuesday afternoon install — that's the point.
First instruments on the bench
Early vision and tool prototypes are in build. They graduate when a crew chooses to keep one, not when a roadmap says so.
Field pilots
Small, instrumented pilots with partner crews in the Benelux — measured on time saved, rework avoided, and what apprentices learn faster.
Raven is unannounced by design — we ship when it survives a job site, not a keynote. But if you run crews and want to shape what gets built, we want to hear from you.
Become a field partner