All posts by Andra Keay

If you look at the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it’s clear that robots have a huge role to play in advancing the SDGs. However the field of Sustainable Robotics is more than just the application area. For every application that robotics can improve in sustainability, you have to also address the question – what are the additional costs or benefits all the way along the supply chain. What are the ‘externalities’, or additional costs/benefits, of using robots to solve the problem. Does the use of robotics bring a decrease or an increase to:

• power costs
• production costs
• labor costs
• supply chain costs
• supply chain mileage
• raw materials consumption
• and raw material choice

Solving our economic and environmental global challenges should not involve adding to the existing problems or creating new ones. So it’s important that we look beyond the first order ways in which robotics can solve global sustainable development goals and address every level at which robotics can have an impact.

Here I propose 5 levels of sustainability to frame the discussion, much as the 5 levels of autonomy have helped define the stages of autonomous mobility.

Level 1: Robots for existing recycling

Level 1 of Sustainable Robotics is simply making existing processes in sustainability more efficient, affordable and deployable. Making recycling better. Companies that are great examples are: AMP Robotics, Recycleye, MachineEx, Pellenc ST, Greyparrot, Everlast Labs and Fanuc. Here’s an explainer video from Fanuc.

“Because of AI, because of the robotic arms, we have seen plants recover 10, 20, 30% more than what they have been doing previously,” said JD Ambati, CEO of EverestLabs. “They have been losing millions of dollars to the landfill, and because of AI, they were able to identify the value of the losses and deploy robotic arms to capture that.”

Some other examples of Level 1 use robots to better monitor aquaculture, or robots to clean or install solar farms and wind turbines. If the robotics technology improves existing recycling practices then it is at Level 1 of Sustainable Robotics.

Level 2: Robots enabling new recycling

Level 2 of Sustainable Robotics is where robotics allows new materials to be recycled and in new industry application areas. A great example of this is Urban Machines, which salvages timber from construction sites and transforms it back into useable materials, something that was too difficult to do at any scale previously.

Construction using onsite materials and robotics 3D printing is another example, as seen in the NASA Habitat Challenge, sponsored by Caterpillar, Bechtel and Brick & Mortar Ventures.

Some other examples are the ocean or lake going garbage collecting robots like Waste Shark from Ran Marine, River Cleaning, or Searial Cleaners, a Quebec company whose robots were deployed in the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, helping to remove 74,000 plastic pieces from four lakes since 2020.

Searial Cleaners is angling for its BeBot and PixieDrone to be used as janitorial tools for beaches, marinas and golf courses, and the BeBot offers ample room for company branding. The equipment emerged from the mission of the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup (GLPC) to harness new technologies against litter. The program also uses other devices including the Seabin, which sits in water and sucks in trash, and the Enviropod LittaTrap filter for stormwater drains.

If it’s a brand new way to practice recycling with robotic technology, then it’s at Level 2 of Sustainable Robotics.

Level 3: Robots electrifying everything

One of the biggest sustainability shifts enabled by robotics is the transition from fossil fuel powered transport, logistics and agricultural machinery into BEV, or Battery Electric Vehicle technology. On top of radically reducing emissions, the increasing use of smaller autonomous electric vehicles across first, last and middle mile can change the total number of trips taken, as well as reducing the need for large vehicles that are partially loaded taking longer trips.

Monarch Tractor’s MK-V is the world’s first electric tractor, and is ‘driver optional’, meaning it can be driven or operate autonomously, providing greater flexibility for farmers. Of course the increased use of computer vision and AI across all agrobots increase sustainability, by enabling precision or regenerative agriculture with less need for chemical solutions. Technically, these improvements to agricultural practice are Level 2 of Sustainable Robotics.

However, the use of smaller sized fully autonomous agricultural robots, such as Meropy, Burro.ai, SwarmFarm, Muddy Machines and Small Robot Company also reduces the size and soil compaction associated with agricultural machinery, and make it possible to tend smaller strip farms by machine. This is Level 3 of Sustainable Robotics.

Level 4: Robots

The higher the sustainability level, the deeper it is into the actual design and construction of the robot system. Switching to electric from fossil fuels is a small step. Switching to locally sourced or produced materials is another. Switching to recyclable materials is another step towards fully sustainable robotics.

OhmniLabs utilize 3D printing in their robot construction, allowing them to export robots to 47 countries, while also manufacturing locally in Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, Cornell researchers Wendy Ju and Ilan Mandel have introduced the phrase ‘Garbatrage’ to describe the opportunity to prototype or build robots using components recycled from other consumer electronics, like these hoverboards.

“The time is ripe for a practice like garbatrage, both for sustainability reasons and considering the global supply shortages and international trade issues of the last few years,” the researchers said.

This is a great example of Level 4 of Sustainable Robotics.

Level 5: Self-powering/repairing Robots

Self powering or self repairing or self recycling robots are the Level 5 of Sustainable Robotics. In research, there are solutions like MilliMobile: A battery-free autonomous robot capable of operating on harvested solar and RF power. MilliMobile, developed at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, is the size of a penny and can steer itself, sense its environment, and communicate wirelessly using energy harvested from light and radio waves.

It’s not just research though. In the last two years, a number of solar powered agricultural robots have entered the market. Solinftec has a solar powered spray robot, as has EcoRobotix and AIGEN, which is also powered by wind.

Modular robotics will reduce our material wastage and energy needs by making robotics multipurpose, rather than requiring multiple specialist robots. Meanwhile self powering and self repairing technologies will allow robots to enter many previously unreachable areas, including off planet, while removing our reliance on the grid. As robots incorporate self repairing materials, the product lifecycle is increased. This is Level 5 of Sustainable Robotics.

And in the future?

While we’re waiting for the future, here are a couple of resources for turning your entire company into a sustainable robotics company. Sustainable Manufacturing 101 from ITA, the International Trade Administration and the Sustainable Manufacturing Toolkit from the OECD.

References

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/08/everestlabs-using-robotic-arms-and-ai-to-make-recycling-more-efficient.html
2. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/great-lakes-are-awash-plastic-can-robots-and-drones-help
3. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/02/06/using-artificial-intelligence-agricultural-robots-are-on-the-rise
4. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/farming-robots-small-robot-company-tractors
5. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/09/garbatrage-spins-e-waste-prototyping-gold

In celebration of the launch of International Women in Robotics Day, the Women in Robotics organization is proud to release another “50 women in robotics you need to know about” collection of stories. With a growing robotics industry there are many opportunities for everyone to get involved. This is why we showcase the wide range of roles that women play in robotics today.

Since 2012, the Women in Robotics organization has released a list of women building the future in robotics. The list has covered all ages, career stages, types of occupation and experience. We’ve featured more than 350 women already and we’ve shown that women have always been working in the robotics industry, in the earliest robotics research labs and companies, although those stories have often been forgotten.

This year’s collection includes Nancy Cornelius, co-founder of Boston Dynamics and the first engineer hired. Cornelius remained an integral part of Boston Dynamics until the company was sold to Google in 2013. Vandi Verma is the head of NASA’s rover (robot) program. Joanna Buttler is the head of the Global Autonomous Technology Group for Daimler Truck. And Whitney Rockley founded a venture capital company investing exclusively in ‘industrial internet’ companies like Clearpath Robotics.

For the first time, we feature an Indigenous (Ojibwe) American roboticist, Danielle Boyer. Boyer started a non-profit The STEAM Connection to combat the difficulties that many kids have getting access to robotics. She created an affordable robot kit that’s been distributed to thousands of students, and is proudest of the SKOBOT project. Personalized robots that keep culture and language traditions alive. Boyer epitomizes the motto “Building the Future”.

We also try to feature women from all regions of the world and this year’s collection represents Nigeria, India, China, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Croatia, Korea, Denmark, Singapore, Italy, Romania, United States, Sweden, Spain, Canada, the UK, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. There is an active Latinx community in Women in Robotics engaged in translating more robotics information into Spanish, hoping to create more connections between the global robotics community and the roboticists, and potential roboticists, of Latin America.

There have always been women doing great things in robotics! And we’re pleased to present another collection of strong female role models for young and upcoming roboticists (of any gender).

You can also join in the Women in Robotics celebrations today and throughout October, with events listed on the women in robotics site, like Diversity Cocktails at the IROS conference in Detroit, or the launch of the Los Angeles women in robotics chapter. Women in Robotics is a global community organization for women and non-binary people working in robotics and those who’d like to work in robotics. Learn more at https://womeninrobotics.org

Join our events, host your own events, share our celebration on social media!

Is Rosie the Robot Maid from the Jetsons here yet? Several different types of humanoid are currently deployed commercially or in trials. We’ve come along way since the DARPA Robotics Challenge of 2015/2016, where the most popular footage was the blooper reels of robots falling over and failing to open doors or climb stairs.

The Avatar XPrize of 2019-2022 showcased some extremely sophisticated humanoids that certainly advanced the state of the art but the holy grail of humanoid robots is combining incredible sophistication into a sub $50,000 package. Why $50,000? Wouldn’t some companies pay a lot more? Then again, can’t we buy a car, also a very sophisticated device capable of partial autonomy that is 5 times the size of a humanoid, for less than $50,000? Why is this the benchmark for humanoids?

$50,000 is the annual wage for a single shift of labor at slightly more than $18/hour or minimum wage in every low wage industry. There is a terrible labor shortage and it is the dirty dull and dangerous jobs that are hardest for employers to fill. Companies that can afford to run two or more shifts a day also have more alternatives when it comes to filling their labor gaps. It’s the small to medium size enterprise that is suffering the most in our current economic and demographic conditions.

We don’t need a Six Million Dollar Man.

We need a $50,000 humanoid.

The roll out of sophisticated new robots and how we integrate them into society is at the heart of my early research and my current roles as the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics (explain), VP of Global Robotics for AMT (explain) and the VP of Industrial Activities for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (explain).

As more and more companies announce their work towards the affordable humanoid robot, I wanted to create a reference chart for myself, and realized that it might be of interest to others as well. The ranking system is just my own opinion and it will be fascinating to see who succeeds and progresses over the next few years. Enjoy this overview and make up your own minds as to which humanoid robot is really the best.

Who’s in the running? (in alphabetical order by company not robot)

• 1x – Eve
• Aeolus Robotics – Eva
• Agility Robotics – Digit
• Apptronik – Astra
• Boston Dynamics – Atlas
• Comma.ai – body
• Devanthro – Robody
• Engineered Arts – Ameca
• Figure – Figure01
• Giant.ai – Universal Worker
• IIT – ErgoCub
• PAL – Reem-C
• Prosper Robotics – Alfie
• Sanctuary – Phoenix
• Tesla – Optimus
• Toyota – T-HR3

Who isn’t in the running?

Hollywood Humanoids
Hollywood Humanoids are one off robots for the purpose of entertainment, like Sophia from Hanson Robotics, Xoxe from AI Life, or Beonmi from Beyond Imagination. ….

Chinese robots
It’s too hard for me to validate that they exist, work as advertized, and what the specifications are.

Research robots
Love them but they have a different purpose. Only robots with commercial deployment plans, and ideally, a price tag and a date in 2023 or 2024 when they’ll be available for purchase, if they aren’t already being sold.

Not humanoid
I also love robots that work like a humanoid but don’t look human-like. We saw some examples in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, most notably RoboSimian. Once we go down that route, all quadrupeds, and multi-armed robots or wheeled humanlike robots, would qualify. Who knew there were so many robots!

Who have I missed?

I’m hoping to crowdsource some more great robots :)

Read the original article on Substack.

I have been studying the whole range of issues/opportunities in the commercial roll out of robotics for many years now, and I’ve spoken at a number of conferences about the best way for us to look at regulating robotics. In the process I’ve found that my guidelines most closely match the EPSRC Principles of Robotics, although I provide additional focus on potential solutions. And I’m calling it the 5 Laws of Robotics because it’s so hard to avoid Asimov’s Laws of Robotics in the public perception of what needs to be done.

The first most obvious point about these “5 Laws of Robotics” should be that I’m not suggesting actual laws, and neither actually was Asimov with his famous 3 Laws (technically 4 of them). Asimov proposed something that was hardwired or hardcoded into the existence of robots, and of course that didn’t work perfectly, which gave him the material for his books. Interestingly Asimov believed, as did many others at the time (symbolic AI anyone?) that it was going to be possible to define effective yet global behavioral rules for robots. Whereas, I don’t.

My 5 Laws of Robotics are:

1. Robots should not kill.
2. Robots should obey the law.
3. Robots should be good products.
4. Robots should be truthful.
5. Robots should be identifiable.

What exactly does those laws mean?

Firstly, people should not legally able to weaponize robots, although there may be lawful exclusions for use by defense forces or first responders. Some people are completely opposed to Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) in any form, whereas others draw the line at robot weapons being ultimately under human command, with accountability to law. Currently in California there is a proposed legislation to introduce fines for individuals building or modifying weaponized robots, drones or autonomous systems, with the exception of ‘lawful’ use.

Secondly, robots should be built so that they comply with existing laws, including privacy laws. This implies some form of accountability for companies on compliance in various jurisdictions, and while that is technically very complex, successful companies will be proactive because companies otherwise there will be a lot of court cases and insurance claims keeping lawyers happy but badly impacting the reputation of all robotics companies.

Thirdly, although we are continually developing and adapting standards as our technologies evolve, the core principle is that robots are products, designed to do tasks for people. As such, robots should be safe, reliable and do what they claim to do, in the manner that they claim to operate. Misrepresentation of the capabilities of any product is universally frowned upon.

Fourthly, and this is a fairly unique capability of robots, robots should not lie. Robots have the illusion of emotions and agency, and humans are very susceptible to being ‘digitally nudged’ or manipulated by artificial agents. Examples include robots or avatars claiming to be your friend, but could be as subtle as robots using a human voice just as if there was a real person listening and speaking. Or not explaining that a conversation that you’re having with a robot might have many listeners at other times and locations. Robots are potentially amazingly effective advertizing vehicles, in ways we are not yet expecting.

Finally, and this extends the principles of accountability, transparency and truthfulness, it should be possible to know who is the owner and/or operator of any robot that we interact with, even if we’re just sharing a sidewalk with them. Almost every other vehicle has to comply with some registration law or process, allowing ownership to be identified.

What can we do to act on these laws?

1. Robot Registry (license plates, access to database of owners/operators)
2. Algorithmic Transparency (via Model Cards and Testing Benchmarks)
3. Independent Ethical Review Boards (as in biotech industry)
4. Robot Ombudspeople (to liaise between the public, policy makers and the robotics industry)
5. Rewarding Good Robots (design awards and case studies)

There are many organizations releasing guides, principles, and suggested laws. I’ve surveyed most of them and looked at the research. Most of them are just ethical hand wringing and accomplish nothing because they don’t factor in real world conditions around what the goals are, who would be responsible and how to make progress towards the goals. I wrote about this issue ahead of giving a talk at the ARM Developer Summit in 2020 (video included below).

Silicon Valley Robotics announced the first winners of our inaugural Robotics Industry Awards in 2020. The SVR Industry Awards consider the responsible design as well as technological innovation and commercial success. There are also some ethical checkmark or certification initiatives under preparation, but like the development of new standards, these can take a long time to do properly, whereas awards, endorsements and case studies can be available immediately to foster the discussion of what constitutes good robots, and, what are the social challenges that robotics needs to solve.

The Federal Trade Commission recently published “The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust” describing the

For those not familiar with Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics, they are:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov later added a Fourth (called the Zeroth Law, as in 0, 1, 2, 3)

Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm

Robin R. Murphy and David D. Woods have updated Asimov’s laws to be more similar to the laws I proposed above and provide a good analysis for what Asimov’s Laws meant and why they’ve changed them to deal with modern robotics. Beyond Asimov The Three Laws of Responsible Robotics (2009)

Some other selections from the hundreds of principles, guidelines and surveys of the ethical landscape that I recommend come from one of the original EPSRC authors, Joanna Bryson.

The Meaning of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics (2016)

And the 2016/2017 update from the original EPSRC team:

Margaret Boden, Joanna Bryson, Darwin Caldwell, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Lilian Edwards, Sarah Kember, Paul Newman, Vivienne Parry, Geoff Pegman, Tom Rodden, Tom Sorrell, Mick Wallis, Blay Whitby & Alan Winfield (2017) Principles of robotics: regulating robots in the real world, Connection Science, 29:2, 124-129, DOI: 10.1080/09540091.2016.1271400

Another survey worth reading is on the Stanford Plato site: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/

We’ve all seen or heard of the Hype Cycle. It’s a visual depiction of the lifecycle stages a technology goes through from the initial development to commercial maturity. It’s a useful way to track what technologies are compatible with your organization’s needs. There are five stages of the Hype Cycle, which take us through the initial excitement trigger, that leads to the peak of inflated expectations followed by disillusionment. It’s only as a product moves into more tangible market use, sometimes called ‘The Slope of Enlightenment’, that we start to reach full commercial viability.

Working with so many robotics startups, I see this stage as the transition into revenue generation in more than pilot use cases. This is the point where a startup no longer needs to nurture each customer deployment but can produce reference use cases and start to reliably scale. I think this is a useful model but that Gartner’s classifications don’t do robotics justice.

For example, this recent Gartner chart puts Smart Robots at the top of the hype cycle. Robotics is a very fast moving field at the moment. The majority of new robotics companies are less than 5-10 years old. From the perspective of the end user, it can be very difficult to know when a company is moving out of the hype cycle and into commercial maturity because there aren’t many deployments or much marketing at first, particularly compared to the media coverage of companies at the peak of the hype cycle.

So, here’s where I think robotics technologies really fit on the Gartner Hype Cycle:

Innovation trigger

• Voice interfaces for practical applications of robots
• Foundational models applied to robotics

Peak of inflated expectations

• Large Language models – although likely to progress very quickly
• Humanoids

Trough of disillusionment

• Quadrupeds
• Cobots
• Full self-driving cars and trucks
• Powered clothing/Exoskeletons

Slope of enlightenment

• Teleoperation
• Cloud fleet management
• Drones for critical delivery to remote locations
• Drones for civilian surveillance
• Waste recycling
• Warehouse robotics (pick and place)
• Hospital logistics
• Education robots
• Food preparation
• Rehabilitation
• AMRs in other industries

Plateau of productivity

• Robot vacuum cleaners (domestic and commercial)
• Surgical Robots
• Warehouse robotics (AMRs in particular)
• Factory automation (robot arms)
• 3d printing
• ROS
• Simulation

AI, in the form of Large Language Models ie. ChatGPT, GPT3 and Bard is at peak hype, as are humanoid robots, and perhaps the peak of that hype is the idea of RoboGPT, or using LLMs to interpret human commands to robots. Just in the last year, four or five new humanoid robot companies have come out of stealth from Figure, Teslabot, Aeolus, Giant AI, Agility, Halodi, and so far only Halodi has a commercial deployment doing internal security augmentation for ADT.

Cobots are still in the Trough of Disillusionment, in spite of Universal Robot selling 50,000+ arms. People buy robot arms from companies like Universal primarily for affordability, ease of setup, not requiring safety guarding hardware and capable of industrial precision. The full promise of collaborative robots has had trouble landing with end users. We don’t really deploy collaborative robots engaged in frequent hand-offs to humans. Perhaps we need more dual armed cobots with better human-robot interaction before we really explore the possibilities.

Interestingly the Trough of Disillusionment generates a lot of media coverage but it’s usually negative. Self-driving cars and trucks are definitely at the bottom of the trough. Whereas powered clothing or exoskeletons, or quadrupeds are a little harder to place.

AMRs, or Autonomous Mobile Robots, are a form of self-driving cargo that is much more successful than self-driving cars or trucks traveling on public roads. AMRs are primarily deployed in warehouses, hospitals, factories, farms, retail facilities, airports and even on the sidewalk. Behind every successful robot deployment there is probably a cloud fleet management provider or a teleoperation provider, or monitoring service.

Finally, the Plateau of Productivity is where the world’s most popular robots are. Peak popularity is the Roomba and other home robot vacuum cleaners. Before their acquisition by Amazon, iRobot had sold more than 40 million Roombas and captured 20% of the domestic vacuum cleaner market. Now commercial cleaning fleets are switching to autonomy as well.

And of course Productivity (not Hype) is also where the workhorse industrial robot arms live with ever increasing deployments worldwide. The International Federation of Robotics, IFR, reports that more than half a million new industrial robot arms were deployed in 2021, up 31% from 2020. This figure has been rising pretty steadily since I first started tracking robotics back in 2010.

What does your robotics hype cycle look like? What technology would you like me to add to this chart? Contact andra@svrobo.org

Unmanned and master/slave are two terms that are offensive to many in the community. Such terms may once have been accepted by society, but not any longer, and we are pleased to see many organizations starting to use alternative terms.

We call on you in 2022 to remove words with negative connotations, like the ones listed below, from all materials, course descriptions, department names, products, forms, reports or articles. The benefit to you is in broadening your appeal to all the community members who find those terms, if not outrightly offensive, then at the least old-fashioned and representative of a mindset that has not engaged meaningfully with creating inclusive or modern robotics.

Women in Robotics has taken the lead in curating a list of best practices in inclusive terminology, in consultation with other groups, and now we would like to share the first draft of “Terminology for 21st Century Technologists” for comment. So far we’ve considered gender, ethnicity and some disability issues. Our goal is to create a comprehensive directory of terminology, which can go through an update process periodically, just as standards do. There is obviously a little more work to be done and we want to include sections on ‘how to retire terms’, ‘how to implement changes constructively’ and more information about the process. This is where you can help us.

Please send comments in response to the first draft by June 28 2022 to reports@womeninrobotics.org

The difference between robotics and automation is almost nonexistent and yet has a huge difference in everything from trade shows, marketing, publications to academic conferences and journals. This week, the difference was expressed as an opportunity in the Dear Colleague Letter below from Professor Ken Goldberg, CITRIS CPAR and UC Berkeley, who suggested that students whose papers were rejected from ICRA, revise them for CASE, the Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. This opportunity was expressed beautifully in the title quote from Professor Raja Chatila, ex President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and current President of IEEE Global Society on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. “One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots on Mars is automation.”

Dear Colleagues,

Over 2000 papers were declined by ICRA today, including many that can be
effectively revised for another conference such as IEEE CASE (deadline 15
March).

IEEE CASE, the annual Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, is
a major IEEE conference that is one of three fully-supported IEEE
conferences in our field (with ICRA and IROS).

In 2021 CASE will be held 23-27 August.  It will be hybrid, with a live
component in Lyon France and an online component:
https://case2021.sciencesconf.org/

IEEE CASE was founded in 2006 so is smaller but growing quickly.  The
acceptance rate for the last CASE was about 56%, higher than ICRA 2021
(48%), IROS, or RSS.  I consider this a feature not a bug: it is an
excellent venue for exploratory and novel projects.

IEEE CASE continues the classic conference model of featuring a 10-15 min
oral presentation of each paper in contrast to poster sessions.  This is
particularly exciting for students, who get the valuable experience of
lecturing and fielding questions in front of an audience of peers.

IEEE CASE also has a tradition of spotlighting papers nominated for awards
such as Best Paper, Best Student Paper, etc.  Each nominated paper is
presented in special single session track on Day 1, where everyone at the
conference attends and there is a lively Q&A led by judges.

IEEE CASE emphasizes Automation.  Automation is very closely related to
Robotics. There is substantial overlap, but Automation emphasizes
efficiency, robustness, durability, safety, cost effectiveness. Automation
also includes topics such as optimization and applications such as
transportation and mfg. I like how RAS President Raj Chatila summed up the
relationship 10 years ago: “One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots on
Mars is automation.”

In China there are over 100 university departments
focused on Automation.  The impact factor for the IEEE Transactions on
Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) this year is on par with T-RO
and higher than IJRR. Automation is important to put robotics into
practice.

Ken Goldberg

Professor, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley

Director, CITRIS People and Robots Lab

OAKLAND, California, Dec. 14, 2020 /Press Release/ — Silicon Valley Robotics, the world’s largest cluster of innovation in robotics, announces the inaugural ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards, celebrating the robotics, automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) that will help us solve global challenges. These 52 companies and individuals have all contributed to innovation that will improve the quality of our lives, whether it’s weed-free pesticide-free farming, like FarmWise or Iron Ox; supporting health workers and the elderly manage health care treatment regimes, like Catalia Health or Multiply Labs; or reimagining the logistics industry so that the transfer of physical goods becomes as efficient as the transfer of information, like Cruise, Embark, Matternet and Zipline. 

The categories Innovation, Vision and Commercialization represent the stages robotics companies go through, firstly with an innovative technology or product, then with a vision to change the world (and occasionally the investment to match), and finally with real evidence of customer traction. The criteria for our Commercialization Award is achieving $1 million in revenue, which is a huge milestone for a startup building a new invention. 

Tessa Lau, Founder and CEO of Dusty Robotics, an Innovation Awardee said “We’re almost there. $1 million in revenue is our next goal.” Dusty Robotics’ FieldPrinter automates the painstaking, time-consuming process of marking building plans in the field, replacing a traditional process using measuring tape and chalk lines that hasn’t changed in 5000 years. The company’s vision of creating robot-powered tools for the modern construction workforce resonates strongly with commercial construction companies. Dusty’s robot fleet is now in production, producing highly accurate layouts in record time on every floor of two multi-family residential towers going up in San Francisco.

The SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards also highlight diverse robotics companies. In our Visionary Category, Zoox is the first billion dollar company led by an African-American woman, Aicha Evans, and Robust AI shows diversity at every level of the organization. Diversity of thought will be critical as Robust AI tackles the challenge of building a cognitive engine for robotics that incorporates common sense reasoning. 

“Robotics and AI will shape the next century in the same way the Industrial revolution shaped the 20th century. To create a future that amplifies human potential, the full spectrum of human perspective needs to contribute to the design process. This is fundamental to how we are building Robust.AI” explains COO Anthony Jules. 

We also wanted to highlight the community in robotics with our Champion Award, because as Silicon Valley Robotics Managing Director Andra Keay says, “In robotics, we’re always standing on the shoulders of giants. And many of these contributions go unrecognized outside of the robotics community. We depend on a strong community to help startups cross the chasm to commercialization, and so we want to recognize our Champions, starting with Willow Garage, which was the Fairchild of the 21st century.” 

Willow Garage had a massive impact on robotics in seven short years, from 2006 to 2013. Not only did they produce ROS, now maintained by Open Robotics, but alumni of Willow Garage can be found in the core teams of almost every groundbreaking new robotics company. Some, like Fetch Robotics, winner of our Overall Excellence Award and pioneer in autonomous mobile robots for logistics, achieved the full cycle from startup to ground breaking industry leader in only five short years. By 2018, Fetch Robotics was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and is winner of our Award for Overall Excellence along with Ambidextrous.

Ambidextrous looks likely to follow the same successful trajectory as Fetch, but focused on manipulation instead of autonomous mobility. Ambidextrous is spinning out research from the University of California Berkeley, that uses AI and simulation to solve the ‘pick problem’ for handling real world items. At only two years old, Ambidextrous is already piloting solutions for significant customers. Two other UC Berkeley startups made our inaugural award list, Squishy Robotics and Covariant.ai, highlighting the large amount of robotics research happening in the Bay Area, in more than fifty robotics research labs. 

Hopefully, this will lead to more good robots solving global challenges. As one of our Champions, Dr Ayanna Howard says, “I believe that every engineer has a responsibility to make the world a better place. We are gifted with an amazing power to take people’s wishes and make them a reality.”

The full details of the 52 Awardees in the 2020 Silicon Valley Robotics ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards can be seen at https://svrobo.org/awards . 

Overall Excellence Award:

Fetch Robotics 

Ambidextrous 

Innovation Award:

Eve – Halodi
FHA-C with Integrated Servo Drive – Harmonic Drive LLC
FieldPrinter – Dusty Robotics
Inception Drive – SRI International
nanoScan3 – SICK
QRB5 – Qualcomm
Stretch – Hello Robot
Tensegrity Robots – Squishy Robotics
Titan – FarmWise
Velabit – Velodyne Lidar Inc.

Visionary Award:

Agility Robotics
Built Robotics
Covariant.ai
Cruise
Dishcraft Robotics
Embark
Formant
Iron Ox
Robust.ai
Zipline
Zoox

Commercialization Award:

Canvas
Catalia Health
Haddington Dynamics
Kindred.ai
Matternet
Multiply Labs
OhmniLabs
Simbe Robotics
Ubiquity Robotics

Entrepreneurship Award:

Yateou

Community Champion Award:

Companies:

NASA Intelligent Robotics Group
Open Robotics
PickNik Robotics
Robohub
SICK
Willow Garage (best to see the Red Hat series How to Start a Robot Revolution)

Individuals:

Alex Padilla
Ayanna Howard
Evan Ackerman
Frank Tobe
Henrik Christensen
Joy Buolamwini
Katherine Scott
Khari Johnson
Louise Poubel
Mark Martin
Rodney Brooks
Rumman Chowdhury
Timnit Gebru

About Silicon Valley Robotics

Silicon Valley Robotics (SVR) supports the innovation and commercialization of robotics technologies, as a non-profit industry association. Our first strategic plan focused on connecting startups with investment, and since our founding in 2010, our membership has grown tenfold, reflecting our success in increasing investment into robotics. We believe that with robotics, we can improve productivity, meet labor shortages, get rid of jobs that treat humans like robots and finally create precision, personalized food, mobility, housing and health technologies. For more information, please visit https://svrobo.org

SOURCE: Silicon Valley Robotics (SVR)

PRESS CONTACT: Andra Keay andra@svrobo.org

We’d like to share the video from our 2020 Ada Lovelace Day celebration of Women in Robotics. The speakers were all on this year’s list, last year’s list, or nominated for next year’s list! and they present a range of cutting edge robotics research and commercial products. They are also all representatives of the new organization Black in Robotics which makes this video doubly powerful. Please enjoy the impactful work of:

Dr Ayanna Howard – Chair of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech

Dr Carlotta Berry – Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Angelique Taylor – PhD student in Health Robotics at UCSD and Research Intern at Facebook

Dr Ariel Anders – roboticist and first technical hire at Robust.AI

Moderated by Jasmine Lawrence – Product Manager at X the Moonshot Factory

Follow them on twitter at @robotsmarts @DRCABerry @Lique_Taylor @Ariel_Anders @EDENsJasmine

Some of the takeaways from the talk were collected by Jasmine Lawrence at the end of the discussion and include the encouragement that you’re never too old to start working in robotics. While some of the panelists knew from an early age that robotics was their passion, for others it was a discovery later in life. Particularly as robotics has a fairly small academic footprint, compared to the impact in the world.

We also learned that Dr Ayanna Howard has a book available “Sex, Race and Robots: How to be human in the age of AI”

Another insight from the panel was that as the only woman in the room, and often the only person of color too, the pressure was on to be mindful of the impact on communities of new technologies, and to represent a diversity of viewpoints. This knowledge has contributed to these amazing women focusing on robotics projects with significant social impact.

And finally, that contrary to popular opinion, girls and women could be just as competitive as male counterparts and really enjoy the experience of robotics competitions, as long as they were treated with respect. That means letting them build and program, not just manage social media.

You can sign up for Women in Robotics online community here, or the newsletter here. And please enjoy the stories of 2020’s “30 women in robotics you need to know about” as well as reading the previous years’ lists!

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Repeated activity wears on soft robotic actuators, but these machines’ moving parts need to be reliable and easily fixed. Now a team of researchers has a biosynthetic polymer, patterned after squid ring teeth, that is self-healing and biodegradable, creating a material not only good for actuators, but also for hazmat suits and other applications where tiny holes could cause a danger.

“Current self-healing materials have shortcomings that limit their practical application, such as low healing strength and long healing times (hours),” the researchers report in today’s (July 27) issue of Nature Materials.

The researchers produced high-strength synthetic proteins that mimic those found in nature. Like the creatures they are patterned on, the proteins can self-heal both minute and visible damage.

“Our goal is to create self-healing programmable materials with unprecedented control over their physical properties using synthetic biology,” said Melik Demirel, professor of engineering science and mechanics and holder of the Lloyd and Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Biomimetic Materials at Penn State.

Robotic machines with industrial robotic arms and prosthetic legs have joints that move and require a soft material that will accommodate this movement. So do ventilators and personal protective equipment of various kinds. But, all materials under continual repetitive motion develop tiny tears and cracks and eventually break. Using a self-healing material, the initial tiny defects are repairable before catastrophic failure ensues.

Demirel’s team creates the self-healing polymer by using a series of DNA tandem repeats made up of amino acids produced by gene duplication. Tandem repeats are usually short series of molecules arranged to repeat themselves any number of times. The researchers manufacture the polymer in standard bacterial bioreactors.

“We were able to reduce a typical 24-hour healing period to one second so our protein-based soft robots can now repair themselves immediately,” said Abdon Pena-Francesch, lead author of the paper and a former doctoral student in Demirel’s lab. “In nature, self-healing takes a long time. In this sense, our technology outsmarts nature.”

The self-healing polymer heals with the application of water and heat, although Demirel said that it could also heal using light.

“If you cut this polymer in half, when it heals it gains back 100% of its strength,” said Demirel.

Metin Sitti, director of the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany, and his team were working with the polymer, creating holes and healing them.  They then created soft actuators that, through use, cracked and then healed in real time — about one second.

“Self-repairing, physically intelligent soft materials are essential for building robust and fault-tolerant soft robots and actuators in the near future,” said Sitti.

By adjusting the number of tandem repeats, Demirel’s team created a soft polymer that healed rapidly and retained its original strength, but they also created a polymer that is 100% biodegradable and 100% recyclable into the same, original polymer.

“We want to minimize the use of petroleum-based polymers for many reasons,” said Demirel. “Sooner or later we will run out of petroleum and it is also polluting and causing global warming. We can’t compete with the really inexpensive plastics. The only way to compete is to supply something the petroleum-based polymers can’t deliver and self-healing provides the performance needed.”

Demirel explained that while many petroleum-based polymers can be recycled, they are recycled into something different. For example, polyester t-shirts can be recycled into bottles, but not into polyester fibers again.

Just as the squid that the polymer mimics biodegrades in the ocean, the biomimetic polymer will biodegrade. With the addition of an acid-like vinegar, the polymer will also recycle into a powder that is again manufacturable into the same, soft, self-healing polymer.

“This research illuminates the landscape of material properties that become accessible by going beyond proteins that exist in nature using synthetic biology approaches,” said Stephanie McElhinny, biochemistry program manager in the Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory. “The rapid and high-strength self-healing of these synthetic proteins demonstrates the potential of this approach to deliver novel materials for future Army applications, such as personal protective equipment or flexible robots that could maneuver in confined spaces.”

Also working on this project was Huihun Jung, postdoctoral fellow in engineering science and mechanics, Penn State.

The Max Planck Society, the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation, the Federal Ministry for Education and Research of Germany, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Huck Endowment of the Pennsylvania State University supported this work.

Originally posted as “Soft robotic actuators heal themselves” at Penn State on July 27 2020

The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge aims to develop innovative technologies that would augment operations underground.

The SubT Challenge allows teams to demonstrate new approaches for robotic systems to rapidly map, navigate, and search complex underground environments, including human-made tunnel systems, urban underground, and natural cave networks.

The SubT Challenge is organized into two Competitions (Systems and Virtual), each with two tracks (DARPA-funded and self-funded).

The Cave Circuit, the final of three Circuit events, is planned for later this year. Final Event, planned for summer of 2021, will put both Systems and Virtual teams to the test with courses that incorporate diverse elements from all three environments. Teams will compete for up to $2 million in the Systems Final Event and up to $1.5 million in the Virtual Final Event, with additional prizes.

Learn more about the opportunities to participate either virtual or systems Team: https://www.subtchallenge.com/

Dr. Timothy Chung – Program Manager

Dr. Timothy Chung joined DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office as a program manager in February 2016. He serves as the Program Manager for the OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics Program and the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. His interests include autonomous/unmanned air vehicles, collaborative autonomy for unmanned swarm system capabilities, distributed perception, distributed decision-making, and counter unmanned system technologies.

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Chung served as an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and Director of the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL). His academic interests included modeling, analysis, and systems engineering of operational settings involving unmanned systems, combining collaborative autonomy development efforts with an extensive live-fly field experimentation program for swarm and counter-swarm unmanned system tactics and associated technologies.

Dr. Chung holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. He also earned Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Learn more about DARPA here: www.darpa.mil

In times of crisis, we all want to know where the robots are! And young roboticists just starting their careers, or simply thinking about robotics as a career, ask us ‘How can robotics help?’ and ‘What can I do to help?’. Cluster organizations like Silicon Valley Robotics can serve as connection points between industry and academia, between undergrads and experts, between startups and investors, which is why we rapidly organized a weekly discussion with experts about “COVID-19, robots and us” (video playlist).

During our online series, we heard from roboticists directly helping with all sorts of COVID-19 response, like Gui Cavalcanti of Open Source Medical Supplies and Alder Riley of Helpful Engineering. Both groups are great examples of the incredible power of people working together.

Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS) was formed in March 2020 to research and disseminate open source plans for medical supplies used to treat and reduce the spread of COVID-19 that could be fabricated locally. Additionally, Open Source Medical Supplies supports, mentors, and guides local communities as they self-organize hospital systems, essential services, professional fabricators, makerspaces, and local governments into resilient, self-supporting supply units.

In its first two months of operation, Open Source Medical Supplies helped organize over 73,000 people in its Facebook group, produced 6 iterations of its Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supply Guide featuring 20 design categories and 90+ curated open source designs, engaged over 200 Local Response groups in 50 countries. OSMS materials are being translated into 40 languages, and OSMS guidance and collaboration platforms have catalyzed volunteers around the world to produce and deliver over 11 million medical supply items to their local communities (as of May 30).

Speakers like Mark Martin from California Community Colleges who started the Bay Area Manufacturers Discussion Forum and Rich Stump from Studio Fathom shared how the manufacturing community was coping with pivoting to making PPE instead of other products, and some of the issues with regulations and the supply chain.

Speakers like Tom Low and Roy Kornbluh from SRI International and Eric Bennett from Frontier Bio talked about redesigning ventilators, including designing robots to teleoperate ventilators. Ventilators are critical in treating COVID-19 but there is also a lack of trained operators, and FDA regulations don’t allow devices to be adapted or changed. And Rachel McCrafty Sadd (aka The Crafty Avenger) from Ace Monster Toys talked about making hundreds thousands of cloth masks and what sort of robots would have been useful.

In general, teleoperation is the trojan horse for adopting robots in workplaces in new ways. People trust a robot being remotely operated much more readily than a fully autonomous one. We spoke to Tra Vu from OhmniLabs and David Crawley of Ubiquity Robotics both of whom produce very affordable mobile bases for telepresence and other use cases, including disinfecting. The demand for both robots is rapidly increasing and people are asking for add-on abilities, like the ability to push a button, or open a door. Not all of these tasks are going to be simple to add but clearly once a hospital, facility or household has successfully used one robot, they are very willing to add more robots.

Rescue robotics expert Robin Murphy, who is Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M, IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow and Chair of the new Robotics for Infectious Diseases Organization joined us on several evenings to share a global tally of robot use cases around the world. Not only did the facts get the discussion going but she shared tips and tricks for how to design and deploy robots successfully in pandemic conditions.

Robotics for Infectious Diseases has launched two new interview series: Series 1 provides information from Public Health, Public Safety and Emergency Management Experts that answer many questions about what and how to deploy technology in a disaster response scenario (like COVID-19). The interviews are intended to give roboticists and robotics startups insights into the problems and requirements for technology in the health sector. Series 2 follows roboticists like Antonio Bicchi and Gangtie Zheng working on COVID-19 applications and describes the lessons learned.

Murphy’s primary research is in artificial intelligence for mobile robots as applied to disaster robotics. She has literally written the book about “Disaster Robotics”. Her analyses have shown that 50% of the terminal failures in disaster robotics are due to human error, so a significant portion of her work is in human-robot interaction. Murphy works with responders and agency stakeholders to determine gaps that lead to the formulation of applied and fundamental research thrusts with her non-profit Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR). Her research group has participated in 27 disasters or incidents and over 35 exercises gathering data spanning urban search and rescue, structural inspection, hurricanes, flooding, mudslides, mine disasters, radiological events, and wilderness search and rescue.

In our COVID-19, robots and us series, we also heard from Sue Keay, the head of Australia’s robotics research cluster and organizer of the Australian Robotics Roadmap about some successful deployments for COVID response, and also disaster scenarios of other sorts, including their 4th place finish in the recent DARPA Subterranean Robotics Challenge.

In the Systems competition of the Urban Circuit, 10 teams navigated two courses winding through an unfinished nuclear power plant in Elma, Washington, Feb. 18-27, 2020. DARPA designed the courses to represent complex urban underground infrastructure. The Virtual competition with eight teams took place Jan. 23-30, with results announced Feb. 27. Teams from eleven countries participated across the Virtual and Systems competitions in the Urban Circuit.

“Teams are under tremendous pressure in the SubT Challenge, not just because of the prize money at stake, but because of the significance of winning a DARPA Grand Challenge, events that have a history of jumpstarting innovation,” said Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager for the Subterranean Challenge in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “At the core of the SubT Challenge is the mission to face an unknown environment and respond to changing situations.”

The focus turns now to the Cave Circuit, set for August 2020. DARPA will announce the location about three months prior to the start of the event. DARPA-funded and self-funded teams compete side-by-side throughout the Subterranean Challenge. Only self-funded teams are eligible for prizes in the Circuit Events, but they must finish in the top six overall for the Systems competition and top five overall for the Virtual competition. All qualified teams are eligible for prizes in the Final Event.

“We knew heading into the Urban Circuit that verticality would be one of the significant obstacles. Teams that traveled between floors, either flying, walking, or rolling, found more artifacts,” said Dr. Chung. “Teams designed their approaches to tackle uncertainty up front, and then toward the end of the Urban Circuit, we saw them put their platforms out there and take more risks, I look forward to seeing how they adapt for the Cave Circuit.”

Finally, if you have experiences to share deploying robots for COVID-19 applications, there is a Call for Papers for a Special Issue of IEEE RAM.

This special issue, edited by the IEEE RAS Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technologies (SIGHT), aims to present up-to-date results and innovative advanced solutions on how robotics and automation technologies are used to fight the outbreak, giving particular emphasis to works involving the actual deployments of robots with meaningful analysis and lessons learned for the robotics community. The editors will accept both conventional full length contributions and short contributions reporting practical solutions to the problem that have proven effective in the field. The topics of interest for paper submissions include, but are not limited to:

• autonomous or teleoperated robots for hospital disinfection and disinfection of public spaces.
• telehealth and physical human-robot interaction systems enabling healthcare workers to remotely diagnose and treat patients.
• hospital and laboratory supply chain robots for handling and transportation of samples and contaminated materials.
• robots use by public safety and public health departments for quarantine enforcement and public service announcements.
• social robots for families interacting with patients or with relatives in nursing homes.
• robots enabling or assisting humans to return to work or companies to continue to function.
• case studies of experimental use of robots in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Important Dates:

May 2020 – Call for papers
31 July 2020 – Submission deadline
15 September 2020 – First decisions on manuscripts
30 October 2020 – Resubmission
30 November 2020 – Final decisions
10 December 2020 – Final manuscripts uploaded
March 2021 – Publication

Click here for more details.

Talking about racism and it’s impact on robotics and roboticists was the first conversation in our new biweekly online discussion series “Society, Robots and Us” on alternate Tuesdays at 6pm PDT. It was a generous, honest and painful discussion that I hope has left a lasting impact on everyone who listened. There is systemic racism in America, and this does have an impact on robotics and roboticists in many many ways.

The US Senator Elizabeth Warren in conversation today with Alicia Garza from Black Futures Lab said, “America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom, but it was built on the backs of enslaved people. This is a truth we must not ignore. Racism and white supremacy have shaped every crucial aspect of our economy, and our political system for generations now.”

The speakers in ‘Society, Robots and Us’ were Chad Jenkins, Monroe Kennedy III, Jasmine Lawrence, Tom Williams, Ken Goldberg and Maynard Holliday explored the impact of racism in their experiences in robotics, along with explicit information about changes that we all can make. And we discussed learnings for allies and supporters and what a difference support could make. Please listen to the full discussion but Chad Jenkin’s notes capture some of the critical insights.

“I have been in computing for nearly 30 years and a roboticist for over 20 years.  Thus, I have been able to experience firsthand many of the systemic problems that face our field. Let me build on some of the recommendations from the blackincomputing.org open letter and call to action. “

In particular, I believe we can bring equal opportunity to STEM quickly by upholding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 for institutions receiving federal funding, and public funding more generally.  We now incentivize systemic disparate impacts in STEM.

Like law enforcement, university faculty are asked to do too much. Given our bandwidth limits, we have to make hard choices about what gets our attention and effort.

This creates a dilemma in every faculty member about whether to bolster their own personal advancement (by gaining social acceptance in the establishments of the field that control access to funding, hiring, and publishing through peer review) or further create and extend opportunity to others (taking a professional sacrifice to provide mentorship and empathy to future generations towards broadening participation in the STEM workforce).

It is clear STEM incentivizes the former given systemic exclusion of underrepresented minorities, with disastrous results thus far.

I believe we are a vastly better society with the upholding of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 yesterday by the Supreme Court to prohibit employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens.  Discrimination is wrong.  My hope is that we can apply this same standard and attention for Title VI of this statue to outcomes in STEM. This is not an issue of altruism, it reflects our true values at a nation and affects the quality of our work and its impact on the world.

There are placeholder measures that can be enacted to incentivize equal opportunity.  For example, universities could decline sabbatical and leave requests from faculty seeking to collaborate with companies that have failed to provide equal opportunity, such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

To achieve systemic fairness in robotics, however, we must go beyond token gestures to address the causal factors of inequity rooted in the core economic incentives of our universities.  It is universities that are the central ladder to opportunity through the development of future leaders, innovators, and contributors to our society.

We have the tools at hand today to create equal opportunity in STEM.  The question is whether we have the will.

Equal opportunity cannot be true for anyone unless equal opportunity is true for everyone.

Odeste Chadwicke Jenkins, Associate Professor University of Michigan Robotics Institute

Our next episode of “Society, Robots and Us” on June 30 is going to discuss the role and the roll out of killer robots, but we’ll be coming back to talk more about racism, diversity and inclusion in robotics because we’ve only just scratched the surface.

Talking about racism and it’s impact on robotics and roboticists was the first conversation in our new biweekly online discussion series “Society, Robots and Us” on alternate Tuesdays at 6pm PDT. It was a generous, honest and painful discussion that I hope has left a lasting impact on everyone who listened. There is systemic racism in America, and this does have an impact on robotics and roboticists in many many ways.

The US Senator Elizabeth Warren in conversation today with Alicia Garza from Black Futures Lab said, “America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom, but it was built on the backs of enslaved people. This is a truth we must not ignore. Racism and white supremacy have shaped every crucial aspect of our economy, and our political system for generations now.”

The speakers in ‘Society, Robots and Us’ were Chad Jenkins, Monroe Kennedy III, Jasmine Lawrence, Tom Williams, Ken Goldberg and Maynard Holliday explored the impact of racism in their experiences in robotics, along with explicit information about changes that we all can make. And we discussed learnings for allies and supporters and what a difference support could make. Please listen to the full discussion but Chad Jenkin’s notes capture some of the critical insights.

“I have been in computing for nearly 30 years and a roboticist for over 20 years.  Thus, I have been able to experience firsthand many of the systemic problems that face our field. Let me build on some of the recommendations from the blackincomputing.org open letter and call to action. “

In particular, I believe we can bring equal opportunity to STEM quickly by upholding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 for institutions receiving federal funding, and public funding more generally.  We now incentivize systemic disparate impacts in STEM.

Like law enforcement, university faculty are asked to do too much. Given our bandwidth limits, we have to make hard choices about what gets our attention and effort.

This creates a dilemma in every faculty member about whether to bolster their own personal advancement (by gaining social acceptance in the establishments of the field that control access to funding, hiring, and publishing through peer review) or further create and extend opportunity to others (taking a professional sacrifice to provide mentorship and empathy to future generations towards broadening participation in the STEM workforce).

It is clear STEM incentivizes the former given systemic exclusion of underrepresented minorities, with disastrous results thus far.

I believe we are a vastly better society with the upholding of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 yesterday by the Supreme Court to prohibit employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens.  Discrimination is wrong.  My hope is that we can apply this same standard and attention for Title VI of this statue to outcomes in STEM. This is not an issue of altruism, it reflects our true values at a nation and affects the quality of our work and its impact on the world.

There are placeholder measures that can be enacted to incentivize equal opportunity.  For example, universities could decline sabbatical and leave requests from faculty seeking to collaborate with companies that have failed to provide equal opportunity, such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

To achieve systemic fairness in robotics, however, we must go beyond token gestures to address the causal factors of inequity rooted in the core economic incentives of our universities.  It is universities that are the central ladder to opportunity through the development of future leaders, innovators, and contributors to our society.

We have the tools at hand today to create equal opportunity in STEM.  The question is whether we have the will.

Equal opportunity cannot be true for anyone unless equal opportunity is true for everyone.

Odeste Chadwicke Jenkins, Associate Professor University of Michigan Robotics Institute

Our next episode of “Society, Robots and Us” on June 30 is going to discuss the role and the roll out of killer robots, but we’ll be coming back to talk more about racism, diversity and inclusion in robotics because we’ve only just scratched the surface.

What are the main reasons that robotics companies and startups fail? Is it the technology or is it the business? Fresh Consulting analyzed significant industry case studies from Rethink Robotics to iRobot for their whitepaper “Why Robotics Companies Fail,” and launched it on June 11 at a panel discussion moderated by James Dietrich, from Fresh Consulting, with guest speakers Aaron Prather, Senior Advisor for the Technology Research and Planning Team at FedEx Express; Andra Keay, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics and startup accelerator advisor, and Eric Klein, Partner and Founder at Lemnos Labs.

In a lively discussion, the speakers weighed in on what key factors for success or failure were most likely in their experience. Andra Keay believes that lack of business fundamentals is the most critical error a young company faces. “There are a lot of resources out there to help startups pitch, value their company, draw up cap tables and divide equity. We’ve never had such a well educated set of founders from that perspective. But still simple business fundamentals bring down startups, whereas serial entrepreneurs know how to avoid a lot of those pitfalls.”

As Eric Klein continued, “We’re entering a golden era for applied robotics. It’s never been easier or cheaper from a technological standpoint to build robotics companies. But from a venture capital perspective there are still business barriers, particularly in understanding the customer’s economics.”

From a wealth of experience at FedEx working with robotics companies, Aaron Prather agrees that customer knowledge and understanding was the most significant point of failure from startups. “One of the things that we’re really big on at FedEx is seeing if you are matching technology to the right use case. How well do you know your customer’s problems and needs?”

According to the whitepaper, the five central themes that are consistent among failed robotics companies are:

• lacking in business fundamentals,
• poor market fit and timing,
• bad user experience and integration,
• misaligned investors and partners
• and focusing on the wrong problem.

Is it the investor or the startup who should take the blame for failure? The panelists all agreed that misalignment is the key issue. Keay said “it’s honestly scary that startups still need to be told to ask their investors questions! It’s not just about getting money, it’s about finding the right partners for your company’s growth. Some investors are hands-on, some are not, which is fine. Startups need to ask questions about what value they’re getting out of the deal.”

According to Klein, “if you don’t have strong business fundamentals or you’re doing all your learning real time, then that’s like driving into the fog of war and hoping to find your way out. Your selection of a venture capitalist is a two way relationship. A serial entrepreneur may say, Hey, I know a lot of what I need to do and what I need is access to silent capital. But for other folks it may be their first time, even if they’re an amazing crew of mechatronics folks coming out of the best schools on a global basis, Waterloo or Tel Aviv or Shenzhen or Sydney. Wherever you come from, your mechatronics degree means you can build the product. And the first risk any venture capitalist is trying to disassemble is engineering risk. But the second equally important risk is product market fit”

The discussion continued with the pros and cons of the Robot-As-A-Service business model, which is becoming very popular in the venture capital community but doesn’t make as much sense for some larger customers, for example like Fedex, who are happy to put robots on the capex budget, not the opex budget. If the customer is always right, then a startup needs to adapt their business model, in spite of push from the investors eager for ARR (annual returning revenue), or similar business models borrowed from the software industry.

Another discussion point was that finding the right metrics for success for each company is still a black art. Is it volume? Is it revenue? Is it number of customers? And the more innovative you are, the harder it might be to arrive at the right metrics. Keay suggested Series C funding as one metric in proxy for number of deployments, and Klein pointed out that in his opinion most robotics startups were seriously undervalued at a Series B and C stage at the moment, because investors don’t yet place sufficient value on the ability to produce multiple physical robots.

Final comments from the panel included request for startups to get in touch. Both Fedex, Lemnos Labs and Silicon Valley Robotics are there to share knowledge that can help startups succeed, and as Klein said, “Between the three of us as panelists we have this collective scar tissue from having done this for a while. And I want you to make spectacular mistakes. Don’t make the silly mistakes I made as an entrepreneur for 20 years, make a new spectacular one. So network in the robotics community.”

We hope you enjoyed this in-depth discussion on the topic of “Why Robotics Companies Succeed or Fail” as much as we did. In case you missed it, we’ve made the webinar recording available for you to watch online! Click here to view the recording.

If you haven’t already, please use this link to download our newest white paper, “Why Robotics Companies Fail,” which provides a deeper exploration into the topics and themes we discussed with our panelists.