PhAIL
Real-robot benchmark for AI models
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I built this because I couldn't find honest numbers on how well VLA models [1] actually work on commercial tasks. I come from search ranking at Google where you measure everything, and in robotics nobody seemed to know.PhAIL runs four models (OpenPI/pi0.5, GR00T, ACT, SmolVLA) on bin-to-bin order picking – one of the most common warehouse operations. Same robot (Franka FR3), same objects, hundreds of blind runs. The operator doesn't know which model is running.Best model: 64 UPH. Human teleoperating the same robot: 330. Human by hand: 1,300+.Everything is public – every run with synced video and telemetry, the fine-tuning dataset, training scripts. The leaderboard is open for submissions.Happy to answer questions about methodology, the models, or what we observed.[1] Vision-Language-Action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision-language-action_model
HN · launched Mar 31, 2026 · 21 upvotes (top 25%) · 0 views
Niche: ai benchmarking platforms · 145 launches, 4 in the last 7 days ▼ -56% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Observability & eval
- Developer
- AI-native
- Commercial product
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 145 launches in ai benchmarking platforms →
Could you build this?
No PhAIL evaluates Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models on real physical robotic hardware (Franka FR3 + Robotiq gripper) across commercial manipulation tasks. Physical robot integration, real-world hardware test environments, and physical benchmark automation cannot be vibe-coded.
What it would actually take: A real implementation requires physical robotic hardware (e.g., Franka Emika FR3 arms, Robotiq grippers, calibrated camera rigs), low-level robot control software (ROS2, real-time Linux kernels), and an automated physical resetting harness. The software pipeline runs inference for complex VLA models (OpenPI, GR00T, ACT) in real-time control loops, logs trajectory data, and computes standardized manipulation metrics. It demands deep robotics engineering, physical lab space, hardware maintenance, and vision-motor calibration expertise.
Discussion
8 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: DreamZero (NVIDIA), Remote teleoperation solutions for robotics, Simulation-based benchmarks
Concerns raised: Speed of robot model performance gap narrowing, Real-world vs simulation performance discrepancy
Feature requests: Add more robot models to leaderboard, Benchmark for manipulation tasks specifically
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 252 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #90 of 253 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 143 days after the earliest competitor.
- Compute:Arena · hn · 2026-09-17 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Gemini Robotics 2.5 · ph · 2026-11-11 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Gemini Robotics 2.5 · ph · 2026-11-14 · 147 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Model Stack · ph · 2026-10-20 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- benchboard · github · 2026-09-18 · 18 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- ManiLoop · github · 2026-09-16 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Make Pictures · ph · 2026-11-04 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Run open-weight OCR, VLM and vision models behind one API · hn · 2026-09-04 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.42
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