Palm Garden AI develops Coherence Guard relational decision layer for human-facing robots

Coherence Guard is designed to enable service robots to behave appropriately around people, says Palm Garden AI. Source: aivora studio AI, via Adobe Stock

As so-called general-purpose robots and humanoids continue to evolve, so is the software stack to enable them to conduct useful tasks around people. Palm Garden AI is developing Coherence Guard, which it described as a “platform-agnostic relational decision layer for human-facing robots.”

“The aim is not to replace perception, motion planning, reinforcement learning, or existing robot control stacks,” said Joachim Scheuerer, CEO of Palm Garden AI. “Rather, it functions as an additional pre-action evaluation layer: Before a robot executes an action, the layer can evaluate whether the action is relationally coherent in a real human environment.”

“This includes signals such as timing, proximity, boundary requests, emotional tone, trust preservation, respectful withdrawal, and the difference between technically possible action and socially appropriate action,” he added. “ As humanoids move toward hospitality, care, retail, education, guidance, and domestic environments, we believe this may become a necessary infrastructure category.”

Palm Garden AI, which has offices in Germany and Thailand, has built its ANATTA 9 behavior infrastructure on the Transwarp Cloud Operating System ( TCOS ). The company said Coherence Guard is designed to sit above or beside existing robot control, SDK/API, ROS 2, planning, or world-model systems.

While physical world models help AI systems understand objects, space, and movement, Palm Garden said its Relational Infrastructure Framework (RIF) adds an understanding of roles, intentions, vulnerabilities, and possible future consequences.

The technology can evaluate human expressions and guide coherent actions, such as withdrawing if a person indicates discomfort. The RIF Relational Infrastructure Framework is now available upon request from Palm Garden.

Scheuerer replied to the following questions from The Robot Report :

How did you identify the need or gap in current service robot capabilities?

Scheuerer: We saw the gap from two directions. First, many current service robots are already becoming capable in navigation, speech, perception, task execution and expressive interaction.

Joachim Scheurer, CEO of Palm Garden AI. Source: LinkedIn

But in real human environments, the difficult moment is often not the task itself — it is the relational decision around the task: when to approach, when to pause, when to withdraw, how much to explain, how to handle hesitation, discomfort, confusion or changing boundaries.