Matt Puchalski Is Aiming Self-Driving Cars' Eyes At Assembly Line Imperfections

🎙️ Matt Puchalski, founder and CEO of Bucket Robotics, joins TOOL OR DIE to explain how building defect-detection cameras for self-driving cars led him to modernize factory inspection systems. Bucket is attacking the quality-critical task of surface inspection with synthetic data, low-cost cameras, and vision software designed for factory floors, not research labs. From his time at Argo AI to leading reliability teams, Matt shares how empathy, donut diplomacy, and deeply nerdy tooling are giving American manufacturers better ways to detect defects and stay competitive.TIMESTAMPS:02:14 Matt Puchalski: from Argo AI to launching Bucket Robotics04:45 What’s broken in factory vision systems—and why most inspection tech is obsolete10:00 Making defect detection scalable with cheap cameras and smart software14:00 Why factory floors don’t need better hardware—they need better lighting and code21:00 The pricing model: how Bucket sells defect detectors per-part, not per-factory26:00 Hidden complexity: why manufacturing tires is a masterclass in material science33:00 What trade shows reveal about the people actually fixing U.S. manufacturing36:00 The missing middle: how reindustrialization needs capital, not contentKey Topics:* Why low-cost cameras + synthetic data beat expensive vision hardware* What manufacturers actually want from defect detection systems* The cultural and technical gap between software startups and factory operators* Surface inspection as the gateway to smarter QA and modular manufacturing* The true challenge of selling to manufacturing: empathy and 6:00 a.m. Teams calls* How to bootstrap job shops—and why we need more of them🔧 Learn more: bucket.botTOOL OR DIE is hosted by Joel Johnson, former journalist, corporate strategist, and builder of brands like Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and Wirecutter. Each week, he and co-host Alex Roy speak with the people actually rebuilding American manufacturing—one machine, one company, one idea at a time. Get full access to TOOL or DIE at www.toolordie.com/subscribe