Steven King, Founder of Blue Sky Robotics: How a Metaverse Project Pivoted to Hospital Robotics

Steven King, CEO and co-founder of Blue Sky Robotics, joins me to talk about building a computer vision company that has pivoted twice in three years, from metaverse avatars to warehouse robotics to hospital automation. Steven, a longtime UNC professor, explains how a side project meant to capture realistic 3D avatars for the metaverse turned into a vision system for robotic arms, and how a client's ambitious accuracy target forced his engineering team to rebuild the company's core technology from scratch. That rebuild became the foundation for Blue Sky's current focus: helping hospitals like UNC Health and Mayo Clinic catch operational errors, from mislabeled dining trays to missing surgical instruments, before they become patient safety issues.

Along the way, we cover why the company built its early customer base on paying clients instead of venture capital, how real-world data has become Blue Sky's biggest competitive advantage over synthetic simulation, and why the team turned down deals that wouldn't scale even when it hurt short-term revenue. Steven also shares candid lessons on choosing a co-founder and staying flexible enough to let a company's direction change completely without losing its footing.

It's a grounded, detail-rich conversation about building a hard-tech company in North Carolina, with real numbers on accuracy, team growth, and what's coming next.

Timestamps

00:02 Cold open and sponsor thanks

01:34 Scot's preview: meet Steven King and Blue Sky Robotics

03:34 Welcome Steven King to the show

04:29 Life before Blue Sky Robotics

05:41 15 years at UNC: from photojournalism to computer vision

06:34 The Washington Post years and the trip to Liverpool

08:15 The spark: from innovation lab to startup

08:48 First idea: volumetric capture for the metaverse