All posts by Oliver Mitchell

As the last days of summer set, one is wistful of the time spent with loved ones sitting on the beach, traveling on the road, or just sharing a refreshing ice cream cone. However, for many Americans such emotional connections are rare, leading to high suicide rates and physical illness. In a recent study by the Surgeon General, more than half of the adults in the USA experience loneliness, with only 39% reporting feeling “very connected to others.” As Dr. Vivek H. Murthy states: “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” In dollar terms, this epidemic accounts for close to $7 billion of Medicare spending annually, on top of $154 billion of yearly worker absenteeism.

As a Venture Capitalist, I have seen a growing number of pitch decks for conversational artificial intelligence in place of organic companions (some of these have wellness applications, while others are more lewd). One of the best illustrations of how AI-enabled chatbots are entering human relationships is in a recent article by the New York Times reporter Erin Griffin, who spent five days testing the AI buddy Pi. Near the end of the missive, she exclaims, “It wasn’t until Monday morning, after hours of intermittent chatting throughout the weekend, that I had my ‘aha’ moment with Pi. I was feeling overwhelmed with work and unsure of how to structure my day, a recurring hangup that often prevents me from getting started. ‘Good morning,’ I typed into the app. ‘I don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do today!’ With a level of enthusiasm only a robot could muster before coffee, Pi pushed me to break down my to-do list to create a realistic plan. Like much of the bot’s advice, it was obvious and simple, the kind of thing you would read in a self-help article by a productivity guru. But it was tailored specifically to me — and it worked.” As the reporter reflected on her weekend with the bot, she commented further, “I could have dumped my stress on a family member or texted a friend. But they are busy with their own lives and, well, they have heard this before. Pi, on the other hand, has infinite time and patience, plus a bottomless well of encouraging affirmations and detailed advice.”

In a population health study cited by General Murthy, the demographic that is most isolated in America is people over the age of 65. This is also the group that is most affected by physical and cognitive decline due to loneliness. Doctors Qi and Wu presented to Neurology Live a survey of the benefits of AI in their June paper, “ChatGPT: A Promising Tool to Combat Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment.” According to the authors, “ChatGPT can provide emotional support by offering a nonjudgmental space for individuals to express their thoughts and feelings. This can help alleviate loneliness and provide a sense of connection, which is crucial for well-being.” The researchers further cited ancillary uses, “ChatGPT can also assist with daily tasks and routines. By offering reminders for appointments, medications, and other daily tasks, this AI model can help older adults with MCI (mild cognitive impairment) maintain a sense of independence and control over their lives.” The problem with ChatGPT for geriatric plus populations is the form factors, as most seniors are not the most tech-savvy. This is an opportunity for roboticists.

Last Tuesday, Intuition Robotics announced it scored an additional financing of $25 million for expanding its “AI care companions” to all senior households. While its core product, ElliQ, does not move, its engagement offers the first glimpse of the benefits of social robots at mass. In speaking about the future, I interviewed its founder/CEO, Dor Skuler, last week. He shared with me his vision, “At this time, we don’t have plans to add legs or wheels to ElliQ, but we are always looking to add new activities or conversational features that can benefit the users. Our goal is to continue getting ElliQ into as many homes as possible to spread its benefits to even more older adults. We plan to create more partnerships with governments and aging agencies and are developing more partnerships within the healthcare industry. With this new funding, we will capitalize on our strong pipeline and fund the growth of our go-to-market activities.”

Unlike the stuffed animal executions of Paro and Tombot, ElliQ looks like an attractive home furnishing (and winner of the 2003 International Design Award). According to Skuler, this was very intentional, “We placed very high importance on the design of ElliQ to make it as easy as possible to use. We also knew we older adults needed technology that celebrated them and the aging process rather than focusing on disabilities and what they may no longer be able to do by themselves.” At the same time, the product underwent a rigorous testing and development stage that put its customer at the center of the process. “We designed ElliQ with the goal of helping seniors who are aging in place at home combat loneliness and social isolation. This group of seniors who participated in the development and beta testing helped us to shape and improve ElliQ, ensuring it had the right personality, character, mannerisms, and other modalities of interaction (like movement, conversation design, LEDs, and on-screen visuals) to form meaningful bonds with real people.” He further observed in the testing with hundreds of seniors, “we’ve witnessed older adults forming an actual relationship with ElliQ, closer to how one would see a roommate rather than a smart appliance.”

The results since deploying in homes throughout New York have been astounding in keeping older populations more socially and mentally engaged. As ElliQ’s creator elaborated, “In May 2022, we announced a partnership with the New York State Office for the Aging to bring 800+ ElliQ units to seniors across New York State at no cost to the end users. Just a few weeks ago this year, we announced a renewal of that partnership and the amazing results we’ve seen so far including a 95% reduction in loneliness and great improvement in well-being among older adults using the platform. ElliQ users throughout New York have demonstrated exceptionally high levels of engagement consistently over time, interacting with their ElliQ over 30 times per day, 6 days a week. More than 75% of these interactions are related to improving older adults’ social, physical, and mental well-being.”

To pedestrian cynics, ElliQ might look like an Alexa knockoff leading them to question why couldn’t the FAANG companies cannibalize the startup. Skuler’s response, “Alexa and other digital assistant technology were designed with the masses in mind or for younger end users. They also focus mainly on reactive AI, meaning they do not provide suggestions or talk with users unless prompted. ElliQ is designed to engage users over time, using a proactive approach to engagement. Its proactive suggestions and conversational capabilities foster a deep relationship with the user. Moreover, ElliQ’s integration of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) enables rich and continuous conversational experiences, allowing for more contextual, personalized, and goal-driven interactions. These capabilities and unique features such as drinking coffee with ElliQ in cafes around the world or visiting a virtual art museum, bring ElliQ and the user close together, creating trust that allows ElliQ to motivate the older adult to lead a more healthy and engaged lifestyle.”

While ElliQ and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have shown promise in treating mental illness, some health professionals are still not convinced. At MIT, professor and psychologist, Sherry Turkle, worries that the interactions of machines “push us along a road where we’re encouraged to forget what makes people special.” Dr. Turkle demures, “The performance of empathy is not empathy. The area of companion, lover therapist, best friend is really one of the few areas where people need people.”

Last month, the entire world was abuzz when five über wealthy explorers perished at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near the grave of the once “unsinkable ship.” Disturbingly, during the same week, hundreds of war-torn refugees drowned in the Mediterranean with little news of their plight. The irony of machine versus nature illustrates how tiny humans are in the universe, and that every soul rich or poor is precious. It is with this attitude that many roboticists have been tackling some of the hardest problems in the galaxy from space exploration to desert mining to oceanography to search & rescue.

Following the news of the implosion of the Titan submersible, I reached out to Professor F. Javier Diez of Rutgers University for his comment on the rescue mission and the role of robots. The aerospace academic is also an entrepreneur of a novel drone technology company that can fly and swim autonomously within the same mission. As he explains, his approach could’ve saved time and money in ascertaining the same unfortunate answer, “I think we could go down to 12,000. No problem. So now imagine sending a 20-pound [robot] down to 12,000 feet. You can do this in a couple of hours. You just throw it overboard, or you fly, you know you don’t need to bring in a crane, a gigantic ship, and all this very expensive equipment just to do that first look.” Dr. Diez’s sentiment was validated during the first press conference of US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger when he cautioned the media of the huge logistical undertaking in moving such large equipment to a remote, hostile, area of the globe. Diez continued, “We could have been there in a couple of hours. So of course, you know there’s more to it. But I was just saying that long term I can see how very small robots like ours for search and rescue could be huge. We are doing some work. We actually put some proposals with the submarine community. I think this has a huge application because again, these 20-pound [drones] are something you can deploy from anywhere, anytime.”

In breaking down his invention, the drone CEO elaborated on the epiphany that happened in his lab years earlier by overcoming the conventional wisdom that an uncrewed system that operated in two modalities (marine and air) required two separate propulsion systems. He further noted that two propulsion systems were very inefficient regarding burning energy and functionality. “And this was I would say a mental barrier for a lot of people, and it still is when they see what we put into it.” He explained how he first had to overcome so many industry naysayers, “I brought this to some folks at NASA, and everyone was saying, it’s not going to work. And then when you look at what’s behind the propeller design and the motor design, you realize that we cannot be living on an edge. We designed propellers for a very specific condition, which is air.” However, the innovator challenged the status quo of the aerospace community by asking, “Can you design propellers and motors for water? And it turns out that you can.” He deconstructed his lab’s research, “So if you look at the curve for air, and you look at the currents for water, they intersect, and if you do it the right way, you can be efficient in both places. So that was the breakthrough for me to be able to show. And we actually show that you can design propellers that can be efficient in both air and underwater.”

After sharing insights into the design, he then conveyed to me that the programming of the flight controls was the next hurdle to overcome. “The next challenge is the transition. So we worked very hard from the very beginning on that transition from water. We actually have a patent on this and it’s really the heart of our technology. I call it dual-plane propulsion. You have 2 propellers on the top and two propellers on the bottom. So when you’re on the surface, the bottom ones are in the water and the top ones are in the air. So the bottom ones are like when you have a baby and you are pull-swimming. Babies are not very good at swimming, but if you put your hand on their bellies all of a sudden they become great swimmers. So think of it as the bottom propellers. When the vehicle is on the surface, the bottom propellers are keeping it very very stable. So now that you have that stability, the top [propellers] can work together to get [the drone] out of the water. So that’s how we accomplish the continuous transition. You can go in and out 100 times,” bragged the Professor.

Diez’s company SubUAS is not a theoretical concept, but an actual product that is currently deployed by the US military, and looking to expand into commercial markets. “So we’d been a hundred percent with the Department of Defense. They really supported the development of technology.” He now is itching to expand from a Navy Research-funded project to new deployments in the municipal and energy sectors. “We have done a lot of different types of inspections related to ship pylons. Now, we have [Florida’s] Department of Transportation interested in this technology,” said the startup founder. “What I realized over the last year or so is that defense has its own speed. You cannot really push it. There is a specific group now in defense that is encouraging us, but it takes a couple of years,” he quipped. Optimistically, he envisions being profitable very soon by opening up the platform for commercial applications. “Now we’re starting to see the fruits of that [effort]. I can tell you that we got approved in Europe to do offshore wind turbine inspection later this summer. However, he is most excited by bridge inspections, “We have over half a million bridges in the USA. And like at least 50,000 to 200,000 have something seriously wrong with them. I mean, we’re not doing enough inspections. So having a vehicle like the Naviator that can look at the underwater part of the bridge is huge.”

He has also been approached by several companies in the energy industry. “And then there are a lot of interesting assets within the oil and gas, but we are discovering this. It’s kind of almost like a discovery phase because nobody has ever had the capability of doing air and marine.” He described that there are many robots like ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) inspecting rigs on the marine’s surface and aerial drones looking from the air, but no one is focused on the splash zone [where the two meet] as they never had dual modality before. He further illustrated the value proposition of this specific use case, “Nobody gets close to the surface. So they’re saying that that’s a huge application for us.” Long-term, Diez imagines replacing tethered ROVs altogether as his system is easier (and cheaper) to deploy.

Today, SubUAS’ business model is on an inspection basis, but over time it will center around data collection as they are the only waterproof aerial drone on the market that can swim. “We go to the bridge inspectors, and we work with them to simplify their lives, and at the end of the day reduce the risk for the diver. So they know what we are doing is making their lives easier.” However, that is only the tip of the iceberg, because “it’s not so much about the hardware or the sensors, but the data that you collect. We think cloud services are huge as it allows you to sort and analyze it anywhere.” He concluded by sharing that his next model will be utilizing a lot of artificial intelligence in interpreting the condition and autonomously planning the missions accordingly. Maybe soon, virtual explorers could look at shipwrecks as well from the comfort (and safety) of their couches.

“Thirty million developers” are the answer to driving billion-dollar robot startups, exclaimed Eliot Horowitz of Viam last week at Automate. The hushed crowd of about 200 hardware entrepreneurs listened intensely to MongoDB‘s founder and former CTO (a $20Bn success story). Now, Horowitz aims to take the same approach that he took to democratizing cloud data applications to mechatronics. As I nudged him with questions about how his new platform will speed complex robot deployments to market, he shared his vision of the Viam developer army (currently 1,000+ strong) creating applications that can be seamlessly downloaded on the fly to any system and workflow. Unlike RoS which is primarily targeted to the current community of roboticists, Viam is luring the engineers that birthed ChatGPT to revolutionize uncrewed systems with new mechanical tasks addressing everyday needs. Imagine generative AI prompts for SLAM, gripping, computer vision, and other highly manipulative tasks with drag-and-drop ease.

Interviewing Horowitz recalled my discussion a few months back with Dr. Hal Thorsrud of Anges Scott College in Georgia. Professor Thorsrud teaches a novel philosophy course at this Liberal Arts institution on the “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.” Similar to Horowitz, Thorsrud envisions an automated world whereby his graduates would be critical in thinking through the ethical applications of robots and AI. “Ethics has to become an engineering problem which is fascinating because, I mean, the idea is that we need to figure out how we can actually encode our ethical values into these systems. So they will abide by our values in order to pursue what we deemed to be good,” remarked Thorsrud.

According to Thorsrud’s syllabus, the class begins: “with a brief survey of positions in the philosophy of mind in order to better understand the concept of intelligence and to formulate the default position of most AI research, namely Computationalism. We then examine questions such as ‘What is a computer?’, ‘What makes a function or number computable?’, ‘What are algorithms and how do they differ from heuristics?’ We will consider fundamental issues in AI such as what makes a system intelligent, and whether computers can have minds. Finally, we will explore some of the ethical challenges that face AI such as whether intelligent artificial systems should be relied upon to make important decisions that affect our lives, and whether we should create such systems in the first place.”

In explaining the origins of his course, Dr. Thorsrud recalled, “A lot of my students are already interested in philosophy. They just don’t know it. And so, in fact, just recently my department has joined forces with neuroscience. We’re no longer a Philosophy Department. We’re now the Philosophy of Neuroscience, and now the Department of Law, Neuroscience, and Philosophy. Because these students are interested in mind, they are interested in intelligence, but they don’t realize that philosophy has been dealing with an attempt to understand the nature of mind from the very beginning, and the nature of intelligence from the very beginning. So we have a lot to offer these students this question of how to reach them. So that’s what kind of started me off on this different path, and, in the meantime think the same is true of artificial intelligence.”

Thorsrud elaborated that this introductory course is only the first step in a wider AI curriculum at Anges Scott as the confluence between endeavors like Viam and ChatGPT collide in the coming years to move the automation industry at hyperspeed. Already, the AI Philosopher sees how GPT is challenging humans to stand out, “The massive growth in the training data and the parameters, the weights that were that the machine learning was operating on really paid off.” He continued to illustrate how dystopian fears are unfounded, “I mean, we have a tendency to anthropomorphize things like ChatGPT and it’s understandable. But as far as I can tell, it’s, it’s a long way from the intelligence of my dog, a long, long way.” He is realistic about the speed of adoption, “Well, as a philosopher, they’re never going to be able to get to the point where they can give me a credible adjudication, because human judgment you know it is. And, this is another example of the ever-present receding horizon problem. First, you know that computers will never be able to beat a human at chess. Okay, fine computers will never be able to beat a human at GO. Fine computers will never be able to write. And so we keep setting these limits down, and then surpassing them.”

At Automate, I had the chance to catch up with ff Venture Capital portfolio company, PlusOne Robotics, and its amazing founder, Erik Nieves. While the talk in the theater was about the future, Nieves illustrated on the floor what is happening today. Impressively the startup is close to one million picks of depalletizing packages and sorting goods for the likes of FedEx and other leading providers of shipping & logistics. PlusOne’s proprietary computer vision co-bot platform is not waiting for the next generation of developers to join the ranks, but building its own intelligent protocols to increase efficiencies on the front lines of e-commerce fulfillment.

As Brian Marflak, of FedEx, remarked, “The technology in these depalletizing arms helps us move certain shipments that would otherwise take up valuable resources to manually offload. Having these systems installed allows team members to perform more skilled tasks such as loading and unloading airplanes and trucks. This has been a great opportunity for robotics to complement our existing team members and help them complete tasks more efficiently.”

Markflak’s sentiment was shared by the 25,000+ attendees of Automate that filled the entire Detroit Convention Center. A big backdrop of the show was how macro labor trends and shortages are exasperating the push towards automation (and thus moving the horizon even further). According to the most recent reports, close to 20% of all US retail sales are driven online, with over 20 billion packages being shipped every year growing at an annual rate of 25%. This means even if the e-commerce industry is able to hire a million more workers, there are not enough (organic) hands to keep up. As Nieves puts it, “The growth of e-commerce has placed tremendous pressure on shipping responsiveness and scalability that has significantly exacerbated labor and capacity issues. Automation is key, but keeping a human-in-the-loop is essential to running a business 24/7 with greater speed and fewer errors. With the ongoing labor shortages, I believe we’ll see an increase in the adoption of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) to lower capital expenditures and deploy automation on a subscription basis.” Get ready for Automate 2024, as the convention moves for the first time to an annual gathering!

Earlier this month, Candy Crush celebrated its decade birthday by hosting a free party in lower Manhattan. The climax culminated with a drone light display of 500 Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) illustrating the whimsical characters of the popular mobile game over the Hudson. Rather than applauding the decision, New York lawmakers ostracized the avionic wonders to Jersey. In the words of Democratic State Senator, Brad Hoylman, “Nobody owns New York City’s skyline – it is a public good and to allow a private company to reap profits off it is in itself offensive.” The complimentary event followed the model of Macy’s New York fireworks that have illuminated the Hudson skies since 1958. Unlike the department store’s pyrotechnics that release dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, drones are a quiet climate-friendly choice. Still, Luddite politicians plan to introduce legislation to ban the technology as a public nuisance, citing its impact on migratory birds, which are often more spooked by skyscrapers in Hoylman’s district.

Beyond aerial tricks, drones are now being deployed in novel ways to fill the labor gap of menial jobs that have not returned since the pandemic. Founded in 2018, Andrew Ashur’s Lucid Drones has been power-washing buildings throughout the United States for close to five years. As the founder told me: “I saw window washers hanging off the side of the building on a swing stage and it was a mildly windy day. You saw this platform get caught in the wind and all of a sudden the platform starts slamming against the side of the building. The workers were up there, hanging on for dear life, and I remember having two profound thoughts in this moment. The first one, thank goodness that’s not me up there. And then the second one was how can we leverage technology to make this a safer, more efficient job?” At the time, Ashur was a junior at Davidson College playing baseball. The self-starter knew he was on to a big market opportunity.

Each year, more than 160,000 emergency room injuries, and 300 deaths, are caused by falling off of ladders in the United States. Entrepreneurs like Ashur understood that drones were uniquely qualified to free humans from such dangerous work. This first required building a sturdy tethered quadcopter, capable of a 300 psi flow rate, connected to a tank for power and cleaning fluid for less than the cost of the annual salary of one window cleaner. After overcoming the technical hurdle, the even harder task was gaining sales traction. Unlike many hardware companies that set out to disrupt the market and sell directly to end customers; Lucid partnered with existing building maintenance operators. “Our primary focus is on existing cleaning companies. And the way to think about it is we’re now the shiniest tool in their toolkit that helps them do more jobs with less time and less liability to make more revenue,” explains Ashur. This relationship was further enhanced this past month with the announcement of a partnership with Sunbelt Rentals, servicing its 1,000 locations throughout California, Florida, and Texas. Lucid’s drones are now within driving distance of the majority of the 86,000 facade cleaning companies in America.

According to Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, there are 5.9 million commercial office buildings in the United States, with an average height of 16 floors. This means there is room for many robot cleaning providers. Competing directly with Lucid are several other drone operators, including Apellix, Aquiline Drones, Alpha Drones, and a handful of local upstarts. In addition, there are several winch-powered companies, such as Skyline Robotics, HyCleaner, Serbot, Erlyon, Kite Robotics, and SkyPro. Facade cleaning is ripe for automation as it is a dangerous, costly, repetitive task that can be safely accomplished by an uncrewed system. As Ashur boasts, “You improve that overall profitability because it’s fewer labor hours. You’ve got lower insurance on ground cleaner versus an above ground cleaner as well as the other equipment.” His system being tethered, ground-based, and without any ladders is the safest way to power wash a multistory office building. He elaborated further on the cost savings, “It lowers insurance cost, especially when you look at how workers comp is calculated… we had a customer, one of their workers missed the bottom rung of the ladder, the bottom rung, he shattered his ankle. OSHA classifies it as a hazardous workplace injury. Third workers comp rates are projected to increase by an annual $25,000 over the next five years. So it’s a six-figure expense for just that one business from missing one single bottom rung of the ladder and unfortunately, you hear stories of people falling off a roof or other terrible accidents that are life changing or in some cases life lost. So that’s the number one thing you get to eliminate with the drone by having people on the ground.”

The Seinfeld idiom, “worlds are colliding,” is probably the best description of work in the age of Corona. Pre-pandemic, it was easy to departmentalize one’s professional life from one’s home existence. Clearly, my dishpan hands have hindered my writing schedule. Thank goodness for the robots in my life, scrubbing and vacuuming my floors; if only they could power themselves with the crumbs they suck up.

The World Bank estimates that 3.5 million tons of solid waste is produced by humans everyday, with America accounting for more than 250 million tons a year or over 4 pounds of trash per citizen. This figure does not include the 34 billion gallons of human organic materials that is processed in water treatment centers across the country each year. To the fictional Dr. Emmett Brown, this garbage is akin to “black gold” – ecologically powering cities, cars, and machines. In reality, the movie, “Back to The Future II” was inspired by the biomass gasification movement of 20th century in powering cars with wood during World War II when petroleum was scarce. The technology has advanced so much that a few years ago the GENeco water treatment plant in the United Kingdom built a biomethane gas bus that relied solely on sewage. In reflecting on the importance of the technology, Collin Field of Bath Bus Company declared, “We will never, ever, ever, while we are on this planet, run out of human waste.”

Less than twenty miles away from the GENco plant, Professor Loannis Leropoulos of the University of Bristol’s Robotics Laboratory is working on the next generation of bio-engineered fuel cells. Last week, Dr. Leropoulos demonstrated his revolutionary Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) for me. As witnessed, he is not just inspired by nature, but harnessing its beauty to power the next generation of robots. The MFCs mimic an animal’s stomach with microbes breaking down food to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The Bristol lab began building MFCs to power its suite of EcoBots. “I started this journey about twenty years ago with the main purpose of building sustainable autonomous robots for remote area access,” reflects Leropoulos. He was inspired by Dr. Stuart Wilkinson’s Gastrobot in the early 2000s that first promoted the idea of “an intelligent machine that digests real food for energy.” At the time the media hyped Wilkinson’s invention as a flesh-eating robot, when in reality it digested sugar cubes, turning the carbohydrates into electrical energy. Unfortunately, the Gastrobot’s clumsy oversized form factor suffered from long charging times with an 18-hour “carbo-loading” process for every 15 minutes of power.

Springboarding off of Wilkinson’s concept, Leropoulos’ team started with the idea of using MFC to power machines by putting the microbes directly inside the unit to more efficiently produce energy from any sugar-based substance, even waste (e.g., urine, feces, and trash). The Professor described the elegance of his technology that creates a “uniform colonization” of microbes multiplying every 8 minutes with parent lifecycles succeeded by daughter cells in a continuous pattern of ‘feed-growth-energy’. He compares it to the human microflora process of breaking down fresh food in the digestive system that results in healthy bathroom visits, “the same is with Microbial Fuel Cells as long as we continue feeding them, the MFCs will continue to generate electricity.” The Bristol professor boasts that batteries are better performing than anything on the market as biological lifeforms have no denigration since “the progeny keep refreshing the community or electrodes so we have stable levels of power.” By contrast, the most popular non-fossil fuel available, lithium, degrades over time and leads to destructive mining practices in scarring the Earth in search of declining ore resources with the explosion of mobile phones, portable devices, and electric vehicles.

While MFCs are still in their infancy, Leropoulos shared with me his plan for commercializing the invention. His lab recently announced the success of its MFCs prototypes in powering mobile phones, smart watches, and other devices (including the EcoBots). In addition, Leropoulos has pushed his team to miniaturize the size of his batteries from its 6″ prototype to smaller than a AA, while at the same time rivaling the performance of alkaline. Backed by the Gates foundation, he has also reduced the production costs from $18 to $1 a unit, this is before achieving the economies of scale with mass production. Today, his business plan has expanded beyond just autonomous robots to power smart homes, by connecting multiple MFCs to a house’s sanitation and waste systems. “Our research is all about optimizing miniaturization and stacking them with minimum losses so we can end up with a car battery-like shape and size that gives us the amount of power we require,” explains the professor. When I questioned Leropoulos about using MFCs in the future of autonomous fleets, and even to offset the high energy demands of something like bitcoin mining, he remarked, “It would be naive of me to say a straight yes, but this is of course the work we are doing. I strongly believe with the development of new materials that will help with the energy density. We are at a stage where we have done some groundbreaking research using 3D printed electric materials as a low cost scalable technology. There is a lot to say about the functionalization of the electrodes that enables colonization from the microbes in making sure all the progeny cells colonize and the ceramic separators that allows for target ion transfer that makes the whole operation smarter and more efficient.” In thinking more about his work, he declared, “We have yet to see the full potential of Microbial Fuel Cells. I do think one day we will have a ‘Back to the Future’ scenario, feeding your food scraps to your car,”

Pressing Leropoulos on how he envisions robot-charging stations working in a factory or home in the near future, he illustrated it best, “with a Roomba example its actually picking of food scraps in the kitchen that would be a very nutritious source of fuel for the Microbial Fuel Cell, but that’s a few steps down the line.” He continued, “a straightforward application for something like a Roomba is to leave the charging station where it is and connect it to the toilet or kitchen sink. The fuel cycle would be continuous as the robot would not be drawing energy from the house, but the wastewater.” Processing the impact of his vision, it took me back to the early days of the global pandemic shutdown with animals returning to ancient grazing areas and pollution clouds clearing over heavily populated areas with many seeing for the first time distant mountains and blue skies. Innovations like MFCs are part of a new wave of mechatronic environmentally-focused solutions. Before parting, I asked Leropoulos how hopeful is he about the environment, “I do feel optimistic, I have more faith in the the younger generation that they will do things better. The shock we sustained as a society [this past year] is a lesson in seeing the true color of our natural world, if we learn from this then I think the future is a good one.”

CBS MarketWatch declared 2020: The Year of the SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation). A record 219 companies went public through this fundraising vehicle that uses a reverse merger with an existing private business to create a publicly-listed entity. This accounted for more than $73 billion dollars of investment, providing private equity startups a new outlet to raise capital and provide shareholder liquidity. According to Goldman Sachs, the current trends represents a “year-over-year jump of 462% and outpacing traditional IPOs by $6 billion.” In response to the interest in SPACs, the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed last week to allow private companies to raise capital through direct listings, providing even more access to the public markets outside of Wall Street’s traditional institutional gatekeepers.

For the past few months the SPAC craze has spilled over to the robot and remote sensing industries. Just last week, SoftBank announced it is raising $525 million in a blind pool SPAC for investments in artificial intelligence. In the filing with the SEC, Softbank states, “For the past 40 years, SoftBank has invested ahead of major technology shifts. Now, we believe the AI revolution has arrived.” In 2017, SoftBank’s Chief Executive, Masayoshi Son (nicknamed Masa) predicted that by 2047, robots will outnumber humans on the planet with 10 billion small humanoids (like its own Pepper robot) rolling the streets. An outspoken believer in Singularity, Masa has not been shy about investing in the robotics sector with ownership stakes in Whiz, Pepper, Bear and Brain Corp. The company sold its interests in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai for a billion dollars earlier this month. When launching his own venture capital fund in 2018, Masa declared, “I am devoting 97% of my time and brain on AI.” This past month, Masa’s $100 billion Vision Fund had a huge portfolio win with the IPO of DoorDash, erasing earlier losses of failed investments in WeWork and OneWeb. In that spirit, it is not surprising that the SPAC filing exclaims: “COVID-19 has pulled this future forward by dramatically accelerating the adoption of digital services. During this time, we intersected with many compelling companies that wanted our support at IPO and beyond, but we lacked the vehicle to partner with them. This trend has only increased over the past year as more companies have decided to list publicly.”

SoftBank’s optimism is further validated by the success of SPACs in acquiring hardware sensor companies. Earlier this month, Ouster became the fifth LiDAR startup to go public through a SPAC this year. Already trading on the markets is Velodyne, Luminar, Innoviz, and Aeva. Each of these companies raised hundreds of millions of dollars at valuations exceeding a billion dollars. Some have fared well in the public markets, such as Luminar doubling its valuation in a few weeks. Others, like Velodyne, have had more difficulty. Velodyne’s shares fell by half since its listing in September (it is currently trading modestly above its initial price). As hardware is tough, staying private comes at the cost of founder dilution and overvaluation. SPACs offer startups and their investors quicker access to capital and greater liquidity, enabling investors to reinvest their returns in the autonomous sector and ultimately driving innovation in advance of greater adoption.

Recently, I caught up with Andrew Flett, General Partner of Mobility Impact Partners which raised $115 million for a new SPAC – Motion Acquisition Corp. (ticker symbol MOTNU). Flett’s investment vehicle is still on the hunt for an acquisition of “target businesses in connected vehicle industries globally, which include companies providing transportation software and cloud solutions for fleet management, freight and logistics, and mobile asset management applications.” When speaking with Flett, he described his inaugural experience in the space as follows, “This is the first SPAC I have been directly involved with but the mechanism has evolved and matured over the last couple of decades. They are popular now as a function of the same yield scarcity and immense liquidity that has been driving public equity speculation. There will be both highly speculative companies and companies with solid fundamentals in any wave of interest. This wave is no different.” He astutely points to previous SPAC upticks (since the 1980s) led by dubious underwriters that used the mechanism as a way to make a quick buck through “pump-and-dump” schemes. These market manipulators, many still serving jail time, quickly promoted stocks on the exchanges to only rapidly sell their own interests in the companies before other investors were legally able to trade the shares, ultimately devastating the startup’s and its shareholders’ values. This is compounded by the increased expenses and transparency of publicly traded listings, leaving startup founders ill prepared for their new role on the NASDAQ or NYSE.

Unlike the past, many of the newly formed SPACs have been managed by brand name investors such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Bill Ackman (Pershing Square) and Peter Thiel (Bridgetown). The performance of the newly listed SPAC 2020 crop has been very impressive, outpacing the S&P, with Draft Kings and Nikola leading the charge with triple digit returns. In nudging Flett for his opinion of these managers, he cautions, “Smart guys. Is it just a branding exercise or will they be involved in the asset evaluation and ultimate de-SPACed company? In the end, the asset needs to stand on its own and regardless of how it gets there (IPO, Direct Listing, SPAC), once public it is a pure apples to apples performance comparison dependent on strategy, management, and execution. If the public company does not benefit from their wisdom, it does not matter what brand is attached at the front end.”

Flett advises founders not to be too easily seduced by public capital, rather “focus on your company. If your company cannot absorb the responsibilities and overhead of being a public company, it is not the right option for you.” Gauging his view of Softbank’s latest announcement, “Like most Private Equity or institutional investors, it is simply a cash grab and an alternative vehicle to demonstrate their investing acumen. I prefer seeing Softbank doing reasonably sized SPACs than raising another misguided Vision Fund,” Flett optimistically opines. However, at the end of the day, the SPAC pioneer reminds us that the market is cyclical and the window of opportunity will eventually close, “As some of the speculative bets burn investors and yield alternatives appear, the SPAC market will slow.”

Like the city that hosts the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) there is a lot of noise on the show floor. Sifting through the lights, sounds and people can be an arduous task even for the most experienced CES attendees. Hidden past the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) is a walkway to a tech oasis housed in the Westgate Hotel. This new area hosting SmartCity/IoT innovations is reminiscent of the old Eureka Park complete with folding tables and ballroom carpeting. The fact that such enterprises require their own area separate from the main halls of the LVCC and the startup pavilions of the Sands Hotel is an indication of how urbanization is being redefined by artificial intelligence.

Many executives naively group AI into its own category with SmartCity inventions as a niche use case. However as Akio Toyoda, Chief Executive of Toyota, presented at CES it is the reverse. The “Woven City,” initiative by the car manufacturer illustrates that autonomous cars, IoT devices and intelligent robots are subservient to society and, hence, require their own “living laboratory”. Toyoda boldly described a novel construction project for a city of the future 60 miles from Tokyo, “With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test AI technology, in both the virtual and the physical world, maximizing its potential. We want to turn artificial intelligence into intelligence amplified.” Woven City will include 2,000 residents (mostly existing and former employees) on a 175 mile acre site (formerly a Toyota factory) at the foothills of Mount Fuji, providing academics, scientists and inventors a real-life test environment.

Toyota has hired the Dutch architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) to design its urban biosphere. According to Bjarke Ingels, “Homes in the Woven City will serve as test sites for new technology, such as in-home robotics to assist with daily life. These smart homes will take advantage of full connectivity using sensor-based AI to do things automatically, like restocking your fridge, or taking out your trash — or even taking care of how healthy you are.” While construction is set to begin in 2021, the architect is already boasting: “In an age when technology, social media and online retail is replacing and eliminating our natural meeting places, the Woven City will explore ways to stimulate human interaction in the urban space. After all, human connectivity is the kind of connectivity that triggers wellbeing and happiness, productivity and innovation.”

Walking back into the LVCC from the Westgate, I heard Toyoda’s keynote in my head – “mobility for all” – forming a prism in which to view the rest of the show. Looking past Hyundai/Uber’s massive Air Taxi and Omron’s ping-pong playing robot; thousands of suited executives led me under LG’s television waterfall to the Central Hall. Hidden behind an out of place Delta Airlines lounge, I discovered a robotics startup already fulfilling aspects of the Woven City. Vancouver-based A&K Robotics displayed a proprietary autonomous mobility solution serving the ballooning geriatric population.  The U.S. Census Bureau projects that citizens over the ages of 65 will double from “52 million in 2018 to 95 million by 2060” (or close to a quarter of the country’s population). This statistic parallels other global demographic trends for most first world countries. In Japan, the current population of elderly already exceeds 28% of its citizenry, with more than 70,000 over the age of 100. When A&K first launched its company it marketed conversion kits for turning manual industrial machines into autonomous vehicles. Today, the Canadian team is applying its passion for unmanned systems to improve the lives of the most vulnerable – people with disabilities. As Jessica Yip, A&K COO, explains, “When we founded the company we set out to develop and prove our technology first in industrial environments moving large cleaning machines that have to be accurate because of their sheer size. Now we’re applying this proven system to working with people who face mobility challenges.” The company plans to initially sell its elegant self-driving wheelchair (shown below) to airports, a $2 billion opportunity serving 63 million passengers worldwide.

In the United States the federal government mandates that airlines provide ‘free, prompt wheelchair assistance between curbside and cabin seat’ as part of the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act. Since passing the bill, airport wheelchair assistance has mushroomed to an almost unserviceable rate as carriers struggle to fulfill the mandated free service. In reviewing the airlines performance Eric Lipp, of the disability advocacy group Open Doors, complains, “Ninety percent of the wheelchair problems exist because there’s no money in it. I’m not 100% convinced that airline executives are really willing to pay for this service.” In balancing profits with accessibility, airlines have employed unskilled, underpaid workers to push disabled fliers to their seats. A&K’s solution has the potential of both liberating passengers and improving the airlines’ bottomline performance. Yip contends, “We’re embarking on moving people, starting in airports to help make traveling long distances more enjoyable and empowering.”

A&K joins a growing fleet of technology companies in tackling the airport mobility issue. Starting in 2017, Panasonic partnered with All Nippon Airways (ANA) to pilot self-driving wheelchairs in Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. As Juichi Hirasawa, Senior Vice President of ANA, states: “ANA’s partnership with Panasonic will make Narita Airport more welcoming and accessible, both of which are crucial to maintaining the airport’s status as a hub for international travel in the years to come. The robotic wheelchairs are just the latest element in ANA’s multi-faceted approach to improving hospitality in the air and on the ground.” Last December, the Abu Dhabi International Airport publicly demonstrated for a week autonomous wheelchairs manufactured by US-based WHILL. Ahmed Al Shamisi, Acting Chief Operations Officer of Abu Dhabi Airports, asserted: “Convenience is one of the most important factors in the traveller experience today. We want to make it even easier for passengers to enjoy our airports with ease. Through these trials, we have shown that restricted mobility passengers and their families can enjoy greater freedom of movement while still ensuring that the technology can be used safely and securely in our facilities.” Takeshi Ueda of WHILL enthusiastically added, “Seeing individuals experience the benefits of the seamless travel experience from security to boarding is so rewarding, and we are eager to translate this experience to airports across the globe.”

At the end of Toyoda’s remarks, he joked, “So by now, you may be thinking has this guy lost his mind? Is he a Japanese version of Willie Wonka?” As laughter permeated the theater, he excitedly confessed, “Perhaps, but I truly believe that THIS is the project that can benefit everyone, not just Toyota.” As I flew home, I left Vegas more encouraged about the future, entrepreneurs today are focused on something bigger than robots. In the words of Yip, “As a company we’re looking to serve all people, and are strategically focused on airports as a step towards smart cities where everyone has the opportunity to participate fully in society in whatever way they are interested. Regardless of age, physical challenges, or other, we want people to be able to get out of their homes and into their communities. To be able to see each other, interact, go to work or travel whenever they want to.”

Sign up today for next RobotLab event forum on Automating Farming: From The Holy Land To The Golden State, February 6th in New York City. 

The elephant in the room loomed large two weeks ago at the inaugural Internet of Things Consortium (IoTC) Summit in New York City. Almost every presentation began apologetically with the refrain, “In a 5G world” practically challenging the industry’s rollout goals. At one point Brigitte Daniel-Corbin, IoT Strategist with Wilco Electronic Systems, sensed the need to reassure the audience by exclaiming, ‘its not a matter of if, but when 5G will happen!’ Frontier Tech pundits too often prematurely predict hyperbolic adoption cycles, falling into the trap of most soothsaying visions. The IoTC Summit’s ability to pull back the curtain left its audience empowered with a sober roadmap forward that will ultimately drive greater innovation and profit.

The industry frustration is understandable as China announced earlier this month that 5G is now commercially available in 50 cities, including: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. In fact, the communist state beat its own 2020 objectives by rolling out the technology months ahead of plan. Already more than 10 million cellular customers have signed up for the service. China has made upgrading its cellular communications a national priority with more than 86,000 5G base stations installed to date and another 130,000 5G base stations to go live by the end of the year. In the words of Wang Xiaochu, president of China Unicom, “The commercialization of 5G technology is a great measure of [President] Xi Jinping’s strategic aim of turning China into a cyber power, as well as an important milestone in China’s information communication industry development.” By contrast the United States is still testing the technology in a number of urban zones. If a recent PC Magazine review of Verizon’s Chicago pilot is any indication of the state of the technology, the United States is very far from catching up. As one reporter complains, “I walked around for three hours and found that coverage is very spotty.”

Last year, President Trump donning a hardhat declared “My administration is focused on freeing up as much wireless spectrum as needed [to make 5G possible].” The importance of Trump’s promotional event in April could not be more understated, as so much of the future of autonomous driving, additive manufacturing, collaborative robotics, shipping & logistics, smart city infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual & augmented reality relies on greater bandwidth. Most experts predict that 5G will offer a 10 to 100 times improvement over fourth generation wireless. Els Baert of NetComm explains, “The main advantage that 5G offers over 4G LTE is faster speeds — primarily because there will be more spectrum available for 5G, and it uses more advanced radio technology. It will also deliver much lower latency than 4G, which will enable new applications in the [Internet of Things] space.” Unfortunately, since Trump’s photo op, the relationship with China has worsened so much that US carriers are now blocked from doing business with the largest supplier of 5G equipment, Huawei. This leaves the United States with only a handful of suppliers, including market leaders Nokia and Ericsson. The limited supply chain is exasperated by how little America is spending on upgrading its telecommunications, according to Deloitte “we conclude that the United States underspent China in wireless infrastructure by $8 billion to $10 billion per year since 2015.”

The current state of the technology (roadblocks and all) demands fostering an innovation ecosystem today that parallels the explosion of new services for the 5G economy. As McKinsey reports there are more than 25 billion connected IoT devices currently, which is estimated to grow to more than 75 billion by 2025 with the advent of fifth generation wireless. The study further cites, “General Electric projects that IoT will add $10 to $15 trillion to a worldwide Global Domestic Product (GDP) growth by 2030. To put that into perspective, that number is equivalent to China’s entire current economy.” Regrettably, most of the available 5G accelerators in the USA are built to showcase virtual and augmented reality instead of fostering applications for the larger opportunity of business-to-business services. According to Business Insider “IoT solutions will reach $6 trillion by 2021,” across a wide spectrum of industries, including: healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, energy, smart homes, transportation and urban development. In fact, hardware will only account for about one-third of the new revenues (and VR/AR headsets comprise considerably less).

It is challenging for publicly traded companies (like T-Mobile, Verizon & AT&T), whose stock performance is so linked to the future of next generation wireless. Clearly, market makers are overly excited by the unicorns of Oculus (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014) and Magic Leap (valued at $4.5 billion in 2016) more than IoT sensors for robotic recycling, agricultural drones, and fuel efficient rectors. However, based upon the available data, the killer app for 5G will be found in industry not digital theatrics. This focus on theatrics is illustrated in one of the few statements online by Verizon’s Christian Guirnalda, Director of its 5G Labs, boasting “We’re literally making holograms here using a dozen of different cameras in a volumetric capture studio to create near real-time images of what people and products look like in 3D.” A few miles north of Verizon 5G Labs, New York City’s hospitals are overcrowded with patients and data leading to physical and virtual latency issues. Verizon could enable New York’s hospitals with faster network speeds to treat more patients in economically challenged neighborhoods remotely. Already, 5G threatens to exasperate the digital divide in the United States by targeting affluent communities for its initial rollout. By investing in more high-speed telemedicine applications, the telecommunications giant could potentially enable less privileged patients access to better care, which validates the need for increased government spending. Guirnalda’s Lab would be better served by applying the promise of 5G to solve these real-life urban challenges from mass transit to food scarcity to access to healthcare.

The drawback with most corporate 5G incubators is their windows are opaque – forcing inventors to experiment inside, while the real laboratory is bustling outside. The United Nations estimates by 2050 seventy percent of the world’s population will be urban. While most of this growth will take place in developing countries (i.e., Africa and Asia) already 80% of global GDP is generated in cities. The greatest challenge for the 21st century will be managing the sustainable development of these populations. At last month’s UN “World Cities Day,” the diplomatic body stated that 5G “big data technologies and cloud-computing offer the potential to enhance urban operations, functions, services, designs, strategies and policies.” The UN’s statement did not fall on deaf ears, even President Trump strained to comfort his constituents last month with the confession, “I asked Tim Cook to see if he could get Apple involved in building 5G in the U.S. They have it all – Money, Technology, Vision & Cook!”

Going to CES? Join me for my panel on Retail Robotics January 8th at 10am, Las Vegas Convention Center. 

One of the biggest urban legends growing up in New York City were rumors about alligators living in the sewers. This myth even inspired a popular children’s book called “The Great Escape: Or, The Sewer Story,” with illustrations of reptiles crawling out of apartment toilets. To this day, city dwellers anxiously look at manholes wondering what lurks below. This curiosity was shared last month by the US Defense Department with its appeal for access to commercial underground complexes.

The US military’s research arm, DARPA, launched the Subterranean (or SubT) Challenge in 2017 with the expressed goal of developing systems that enhance “situational awareness capabilities” for underground missions. While the prospect of armies utilizing machines to patrol sunken complexes conjures up images of the Matrix, in reality one of the last frontiers to be explored on Earth is below the surface. As SubT moves closer to its culminating event planned for 2021, the agency is beginning the first phase of three planned real-world tests. According to the contest description the initial focus area will be “human-made tunnel systems,” followed by “underground urban environments such as mass transit and municipal infrastructure,” and then concluding with “naturally occurring cave networks.” This summer DARPA issued a Request For Information for subsurface infrastructure in the interest of “global security and disaster-related search and rescue missions.”

Competing technologists will have the chance to win $2 million for hardware inventions and $750,000 for software innovations that “disruptively and positively impact how the underground domain is leveraged.” The types of solutions being considered include platforms “to rapidly map, navigate, and search unknown complex subterranean environments to locate objects of interest.” In further explaining the objectives, Timothy Chung, DARPA program manager, said: “One of the main limitations facing warfighters and emergency responders in subterranean environments is a lack of situational awareness; we often don’t know what lies beneath.” Chung’s boss, Fred Kennedy, Director of the Tactical Technology Office, confirmed, “We’ve reached a crucial point where advances in robotics, autonomy, and even biological systems could permit us to explore and exploit underground environments that are too dangerous for humans. Instead of avoiding caves and tunnels, we can use surrogates to map and assess their suitability for use.” Kennedy even coined a catch phrase for the challenge – “making the inaccessible accessible.” 

In an abandoned Pennsylvania coal mine, on a sweltering August afternoon, eleven teams from across the globe came with 64 terrestrial robots, 20 unmanned aerial vehicles and one autonomous blimp to compete in the first wave of the SubT Challenge. The course included four events each lasting an hour deep inside the mine, which was originally built by the Pittsburgh Coal Company in 1910. Each team’s fleet of machines had to autonomously locate, identify and record 20 items or artifacts. The only team to score in double digits in all four independent runs was Explorer of Carnegie Mellon University. CMU is a DARPA Challenge favorite with a winning record that includes the 2007 Urban Challenge and 2015 Robotics Challenge. This year it had the distinct advantage of being local, scouting out the location beforehand to better plan its tactics for live competition. As Courtney Linder of Popular Mechanics writes, “Explorer regularly practiced at the Tour-Ed Mine in Tarentum, which is normally only frequented by tourists who want to check out a coal mine formerly owned by Allegheny Steel. They periodically flew drones and watched their ground robots exploring the cavernous, maze-like depths.”

The biggest hurdles for teams competing below ground are the lack of Global Position System (GPS) signals and WIFI communications. To safely navigate the cavernous course of these GPS-denied environments, SubT machines had to rely solely on a fusion of on-board sensors, including: LIDAR, cameras and radar. In explaining how his team won to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CMU lead, Sebastian Scherer said they employed up to eight robots that created its own WIFI network to “talk” to each other while simultaneously mapping the environment with its sensors. Deploying a swarm approach, the robots acted as a collective unit working together to fill in data gaps, which meant that even if one went offline it was still able to pilot using its onboard systems and previously downloaded maps. Leading up to the competition the CMU team utilized computer simulations to strategize its approach, but understood the limitations of exclusively planning in the virtual world. As Scherer’s collaborator, Matt Travers, explains, “Our system may work perfectly in simulation and the first time we deploy, we may take the exact same software from the simulation and put it in the robot and it drives right into a wall and you go figure out why.” CMU’s geographic proximity to the test site seemingly played a critical role in their team achieving high scores.

While Explorer walked off with some nominal prize money, all eleven teams are committed to the same goal of full autonomy regardless of the environment and manual input. As Travers exclaims, “We’d like to build a system that’s going to be agnostic to the types of mobility challenges that we’ll face. And this is certainly a difficult thing to do.” Reflecting on the August gathering, the creativity of invention unified a global community towards a single purpose of saving lives. In the words of the program’s organizer, Chung, “We are inspired by the need to conduct search and rescue missions in a variety of underground environments, whether in response to an incident in a highly populated area, a natural disaster, or for mine rescue.” The next round will take place in February quite possibly in the sewers of New York City (alligators and all). As Chung cautions the contestants, “Prepare for a few new surprises. The SubT Challenge could be compared to a triathlon. DARPA is not looking just for the strongest swimmer, runner, or cyclist, but rather integrated solutions that can do all three.”

Traveling to six countries in eighteen days, I journeyed with the goal of delving deeper into the roots of my family before World War II. As a child of refugees, my parents’ narrative is missing huge gaps of information. Still, more than seventy-eight years since the disappearance of my Grandmother and Uncles, we can only presume with a degree of certainty their demise in the mass graves of the forest outside of Riga, Latvia. In our data rich world, archivists are finally piecing together new clues of history using unmanned systems to reopen cold cases.

The Nazis were masters in using technology to mechanize killing and erasing all evidence of their crime. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Treblinka, Poland. The death camp exterminated close to 900,000 Jews over a 15-month period before a revolt led to its dismantlement in 1943. Only a Holocaust memorial stands today on the site of the former gas chamber as a testimony to the memory of the victims. Recently, scientists have begun to unearth new forensic evidence of the Third Reich’s war crimes using LIDAR to expose the full extent of their death factory.

In her work, “Holocaust Archeologies: Approaches and Future Directions,” Dr. Caroline Sturdy Colls undertook an eight-year project to piece together archeological facts from survivor accounts using remote sensors that are more commonly associated with autonomous vehicles and robots than Holocaust studies. As she explains, “I saw working at Treblinka as a cold case where excavation is not permitted, desirable or wanted, [non-invasive] tools offer the possibility to record and examine topographies of atrocity in such a way that the disturbance of the ground is avoided.” Stitching together point cloud outputs from aerial LIDAR sensors, Professor Sturdy Colls stripped away the post-Holocaust vegetation to expose the camp’s original foundations, “revealing the bare earth of the former camp area.” As she writes, “One of the key advantages that LIDAR offers over other remote sensing technologies is its ability to propagate the signal emitted through vegetation such as trees. This means that it is possible to record features that are otherwise invisible or inaccessible using ground-based survey methods.”

Through her research, Sturdy Colls was able to locate several previously unmarked mass graves, transport infrastructure and camp-era buildings, including structures associated with the 1943 prisoner revolt. She credits the technology for her findings, “This is mainly due to developments in remote sensing technologies, geophysics, geographical information systems (GIS) and digital archeology, alongside a greater appreciation of systematic search strategies and landscape profiling,” The researcher stressed the importance of finding closure after seventy-five years, “I work with families in forensics work, and I can’t imagine what it’s like not to know what happened to your family members.” Sturdy Colls’ techniques are now being deployed across Europe at other concentration camp sites and places of mass murder.

Flying north from Poland, I landed in the Netherlands city of Amsterdam to take part in their year-long celebration of Rembrandt (350 years since his passing). At the Rijksmuseum’s Hall of Honors a robot is featured in front of the old master’s monumental work, “Night Watch.” The autonomous macro X-ray fluorescence scanner (Macro-XRF scanner) is busy analyzing the chemical makeup of the paint layers to map and database the age of the pigments. This project, aptly named “Operation Night Watch,” can be experienced live or online showcasing a suite of technologies to determine the best methodologies to return the 1642 painting back to its original glory. Night Watch has a long history of abuse including: two world wars, multiple knifings, one acid attack, botched conservation attempts, and even the trimming of the canvas in 1715 to fit a smaller space. In fact, its modern name is really a moniker of the dirt build up over the years, not the Master’s composition initially entitled: “Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.”

In explaining the multi-million dollar undertaking the museum’s director, Taco Dibbits, boasted in a recent interview that Operation Night Watch will be the Rijksmuseum’s “biggest conservation and research project ever.” Currently, the Macro-XRF robot takes 24 hours to perform one scan of the entire picture, with a demanding schedule ahead of 56 more scans and 12,500 high-resolution images. The entire project is slated to be completed within a couple of years. Dibbits explains that the restoration will provide insights previously unknown about the painter and his magnum opus: “You will be able to see much more detail, and there will be areas of the painting that will be much easier to read. There are many mysteries of the painting that we might solve. We actually don’t know much about how Rembrandt painted it. With the last conservation, the techniques were limited to basically X-ray photos and now we have so many more tools. We will be able to look into the creative mind of one of the most brilliant artists in the world.”

Whether it is celebrating the narrative of great works of art or preserving the memory of the Holocaust, modern conservatism relies heavily on the accessibility of affordable mechatronic devices. Anna Lopuska, a conservator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland, describes the Museum’s herculean task, “We are doing something against the initial idea of the Nazis who built this camp. They didn’t want it to last. We’re making it last.” New advances in optics and hardware, enables Lopuska’s team to catalog and maintain the massive camp site with “minimum intervention.” The magnitude of its preservation efforts is listed on its website, which includes: “155 buildings (including original camp blocks, barracks, and outbuildings), some 300 ruins and other vestiges of the camp—including the ruins of the four gas chambers and crematoria at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau site that are of particular historical significance—as well as more than 13 km of fencing, 3,600 concrete fence posts, and many other installations.” This is on top of a collection of artifacts of human tragedy, as each item represents a person, such as “110 thousand shoes, about 3,800 suitcases, 12 thousand pots and pans, 40 kg of eyeglasses, 470 prostheses, 570 items of camp clothing, as well as 4,500 works of art.” Every year more and more survivors pass away making Lopuska’s task, and the unmanned systems she employs, more critical. As the conservationist reminds us, “Within 20 years, there will be only these objects speaking for this place.”

Editor’s Announcements: 1) Vote for our panel, “Love In The Robotic Age,” at SXSW; 2) Signup to attend RobotLab’s next event “Is Today’s Industry 4.0 A Hackers Paradise?” with  Chuck Brooks of General Dynamics on September 25th at 6pm, RSVP Today! 

Pipeline inspection robot

I was on the phone recently with a large multinational corporate investor discussing the applications for robotics in the energy market. He expressed his frustration about the lack of products to inspect and repair active oil and gas pipelines, citing too many catastrophic accidents. His point was further endorsed by a Huffington Post article that reported in a twenty-year period such tragedies have led to 534 deaths, more than 2,400 injuries, and more than $7.5 billion in damages. The study concluded that an incident occurs every 30 hours across America’s vast transcontinental pipelines.

The global market for pipeline inspection robots is estimated to exceed $2 billion in the next six years, more than tripling today’s $600 million in sales. The Zion Market Research report states: “Robots are being used increasingly in various verticals in order to reduce human intervention from work environments that are dangerous … Pipeline networks are laid down for the transportation of oil and gas, drinking waters, etc. These pipelines face the problem of corrosion, aging, cracks, and various other types of damages…. As the demand for oil and gas is increasing across the globe, it is expected that the pipeline network will increase in length in the near future thereby increasing the popularity of the in-pipe inspection robots market.”

Industry consolidation plays key role

Another big indicator of this burgeoning industry is growth of consolidation. Starting in December 2017, Pure Technologies was purchased by New York-based Xylem for more than $500 million. Xylem was already a leader in smart technology solutions for water and waste management pump facilities. Its acquisition of Pure enabled the industrial company to expand its footprint into the oil and gas market. Utilizing Pure’s digital inspection expertise with mechatronics, the combined companies are able to take a leading position in pipeline diagnostics.

Patrick Decker, Xylem president and chief executive, explained, “Pure’s solutions strongly complement the broader Xylem portfolio, particularly our recently acquired Visenti and Sensus solutions, creating a unique and disruptive platform of diagnostic, analytics and optimization solutions for clean and wastewater networks. Pure will also bring greater scale to our growing data analytics and software-as-a-service capabilities.”

According to estimates at the time of the merger, almost 25% of Pure’s business was in the oil and gas industry. Today, Pure offers a suite of products for above ground and inline inspections, as well as data management software. In addition to selling its machines, sensors and analytics to the energy sector, it has successfully deployed units in thousands of waterways globally.

This past February, Eddyfi (a leading provider of testing equipment) acquired Inuktun, a robot manufacturer of semi-autonomous crawling systems. This was the sixth acquisition by fast growing Eddyfi in less than three years. As Martin Thériault, Eddyfi’s CEO, elaborates: “We are making a significant bet that the combination of Inuktun robots with our sensors and instruments will meet the increasing needs from asset owners. Customers can now select from a range of standard Inuktun crawlers, cameras and controllers to create their own off-the-shelf, yet customized, solutions.”

Colin Dobell, president of Inuktun, echoed Thériault sentiments, “This transaction links us with one of the best! Our systems and technology are suitable to many of Eddyfi Technologies’ current customers and the combination of the two companies will strengthen our position as an industry leader and allow us to offer truly unique solutions by combining some of the industry’s best NDT [Non Destructive Testing] products with our mobile robotic solutions. The future opportunities are seemingly endless. It’s very exciting.” In addition to Xylem and Eddyfi, other entrees into this space, include: CUES, Envirosight, GE Inspection Robotics, IBAK Helmut Hunger, Medit (Fiberscope), RedZone Robotics, MISTRAS Group, RIEZLER Inspektions Systeme, and Honeybee Robotics.

Repairing lines with micro-robots

While most of the current technologies focus on inspection, the bigger opportunity could be in actively repairing pipelines with micro-bots. Last year, the government of the United Kingdom began a $35 million study with six universities to develop mechanical insect-like robots to automatically fix its large underground network. According to the government’s press release, the goal is to develop robots of one centimeter in size that will crawl, swim and quite possibly fly through water, gas and sewage pipes. The government estimates that underground infrastructure accounts for $6 billion annually in labor and business disruption costs.

One of the institutions charged with this endeavor is the University of Sheffield’s Department of Mechanical Engineering led by Professor Kirill Horoshenkov. Dr. Horoshenkov boasts that his mission is more than commercial as “Maintaining a safe and secure water and energy supply is fundamental for society but faces many challenges such as increased customer demand and climate change.”

Horoshenkov, a leader in acoustical technology, expands further on the research objectives of his team, “Our new research programme will help utility companies monitor hidden pipe infrastructure and solve problems quickly and efficiently when they arise. This will mean less disruption for traffic and general public. This innovation will be the first of its kind to deploy swarms of miniaturised robots in buried pipes together with other emerging in-pipe sensor, navigation and communication solutions with long-term autonomy.”

England is becoming a hotbed for robotic insects; last summer Rolls-Royce shared with reporters its efforts in developing mechanical bugs to repair airplane engines. The engineers at the British aerospace giant were inspired by the research of Harvard professor Robert Wood with its ambulatory microrobot for search and rescue missions. James Kell of Rolls-Royce proclaims this could be a game changer, “They could go off scuttling around reaching all different parts of the combustion chamber. If we did it conventionally it would take us five hours; with these little robots, who knows, it might take five minutes.”

Currently the Harvard robot is too large to buzz through jet engines, but Rolls-Royce is not waiting for Boston’s scientist as it has established with the University of Nottingham a Centre for Manufacturing and On-Wing Technologies “to design and build a range of bespoke prototype robots capable of performing jet engine repairs remotely.” The project lead Dragos Axinte is optimistic about the spillover effect of this work into the energy market, “The emergence of robots capable of replicating human interventions on industrial equipment can be coupled with remote control strategies to reduce the response time from several days to a few hours. As well as with any Rolls-Royce engine, our robots could one day be used in other industries such as oil, gas and nuclear.”

At the turn of the twentieth century, the swelling populations of newly arrived immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side reached a boiling point, forcing the City to pass the 1901 Tenement House Act. Recalling this legislation, New York City’s Mayor’s Office recently responded to its own modern housing crisis by enabling developers for the first time to build affordable micro-studio apartments of 400 square feet. One of the primary drivers of allocating tens of thousands of new micro-units is the adoption of innovative design and construction technologies that enable modular and flexible housing options. As Mayor de Blasio affirmed, “Housing New York 2.0 commits us to creating 25,000 affordable homes a year and 300,000 homes by 2026. Making New York a fairer city for today and for future generations depends on it.”

Urban space density is not just a New York City problem, but a world health concern. According to the United Nations, more than half of the Earth’s population currently resides in cities and this is projected to climb to close to three-quarters by 2050. In response to this alarming trend the UN drafted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Stressing the importance of such an effort, UN Deputy Secretary Amina J. Mohammed declared, “It is clear that it is in cities where the battle for sustainability will be won or lost. Cities are the organizing mechanisms of the twenty-first century. They are where young people in all parts of the world flock to develop new skills, attain new jobs, and find opportunities in which to innovate and create their futuresThe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the most ambitious agenda ever set forth for humanity.”

Absent from the UN study is utilizing mechatronics to address the challenges of urbanization. For example, robots have been deployed on construction sites in China to rapidly print building materials. There are also a handful of companies utilizing machines to cost effectively produce modular homes with the goal of replacing mud-huts and sheet metal shanties. However, the progress of automating low-to-middle income housing has been slow going until this week. Ikea, the world’s largest furniture retailer which specializes in low cost decorating solutions, announced on Tuesday the launch of Rognan – a morphing robotic furniture system for the micro-home. Collaborating with the Swedish design powerhouse is hardware startup, Ori Living. The MIT spin-out first introduced its chameleon-changing furniture platform two years ago with an expandable wardrobe that quickly shifted from bookcase/home office to walk-in closet at the touch of a button. Today such systems can be bought through the company’s website for a price upwards of $5,000. It is expected that the partnership with IKEA will bring enormous economies of scale with the mass production of its products.

The first markets targeted by IKEA next year for Rognan are the cramped neighborhoods of Hong Kong and Japan, where the average citizen lives in 160 square feet. Seana Strawn, IKEA’s product developer for new innovations, explains “Instead of making the furniture smaller, we transform the furniture to the function that you need at that time When you sleep, you do not need your sofa. When you use your wardrobe, you do not need your bed etc.”

Ori founder, Hasier Larrea, elaborates on his use of machine learning to size the space to the occupants requirements. “Every floor is different, so you need a product that’s smart enough to know this, and make a map of the floor,” describes Larrea. By using sensors to create an image of the space, the robot seamlessly transforms from closet-to-bed-to-desk-to-media center. To better understand the marketability of such a system, I polled a close friend who analyzes such innovations for a large Wall Street bank. This potential customer remarked that he will wait to purchase his own Rognan until it can anticipate his living habits, automatically sense when it is time for work, play or bed.

Ori’s philosophy is enabling people to “live large in a small footprint.” Larrea professes that the only way to combat urbanization is thinking differently. As the founder exclaims, “We cannot keep designing spaces the same way we’ve been designing spaces 20 years ago, or keep using all the same furniture we were using in homes that were twice the size, or three times the size. We need to start thinking about furniture that adapts to us, and not the other way around.” Larrea’s credo can be heard in the words of former Tesla technologist Sankarshan Murthy who aims to revolutionize interior design with robotic ceiling dropping storage furniture. Murthy’s startup, Bubblebee Spaces, made news last April with the announcement of a $4.3 million funding round led by Loup Ventures. Similar to a Broadway set change, Bubblebee lowers and hoists up wooden cases on an as needed basis, complete with an iPhone or iPad controller. “Instead of square feet you start looking at real estate in volume. You are already paying for all this air and ceiling space you are not using. We unlock that for you,” brags Murthy. Ori is also working on a modern Murphy Bed that lowers from ceiling, as the company’s press release stated last November its newest product, “a bed that seamlessly lowers from the ceiling, or lifts to the ceiling to reveal a stylish sofa”  all at the beckon of one’s Alexa device.

In 1912, William Murphy received his patent for the “Disappearing Bed. Today’s robotic furniture, now validated by the likes of Ikea, could be the continuation of his vision. Several years ago, MIT student Daniel Leithinger first unveiled a shape shifting table. As Leithinger reminisces, “We were inspired by those pinscreen toys where you press your hand on one end, and it shows on the other side.” While it was never intended to be commercialized, the inventor was blown away by the emails he received. “One person said we should apply it to musical interfaces and another person said it would be great to use to help blind children understand art and other things. These are things we didn’t even think about,” shares Leithinger. As Ori and Bubblebee are working diligently to replace old couch springs for new gears and actuators, the benefits of such technology are sure to go beyond just better storage as we enter the new age of the AI Home.

Returning from vacation, my inbox overflowed with emails announcing robot “firsts.” At the same time, my relaxed post-vacation disposition was quickly rocked by the news of the day and recent discussions regarding the extent of AI bias within New York’s financial system. These unrelated incidents are very much connected in representing the paradox of the acceleration of today’s inventions.

Last Friday, The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) became the first hospital system to safely transport, via drone, a live organ to a waiting transplant patient with kidney failure. The demonstration illustrates the huge opportunity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to significantly reduce the time, costs, and outcome of organ transplants by removing human-piloted helicopters from the equation. As Dr. Joseph Scalea, UMMC project lead, explains “There remains a woeful disparity between the number of recipients on the organ transplant waiting list and the total number of transplantable organs. This new technology has the potential to help widen the donor organ pool and access to transplantation.” Last year, America’s managing body of the organ transplant system stated it had a waiting list of approximately 114,000 people with 1.5% of deceased donor organs expiring before reaching their intended recipients. This is largely due to unanticipated transportation delays of up to two hours in close to 4% of recorded shipments. Based upon this data, unmanned systems could potentially save more than one thousand lives. In the words of Dr. Scalea, “Delivering an organ from a donor to a patient is a sacred duty with many moving parts. It is critical that we find ways of doing this better.” Unmentioned in the UMMC announcement are the types of ethical considerations required to support autonomous delivery to ensure that rush to extract organs in the field are not overriding the goal of first saving the donor’s life.

As May brings clear skies and the songs of birds, the premise of non life saving drones crowding the air space above is often a haunting image. Last month, the proposition of last mile delivery by UAVs came one step closer with Google’s subsidiary, Wing Aviation,  becoming the first drone operator approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation. According to the company, consumer deliveries will commence within the next couple of months in rural Virginia. “It’s an exciting moment for us to have earned the FAA’s approval to actually run a business with our technology,” declared James Ryan Burgess, Wing Chief Executive Officer. The regulations still ban drones in urban areas and limit Wings autonomous missions to farmlands but enable the company to start charging customers for UAV deliveries.

While the rural community administrators are excited “to be the birthplace of drone delivery in the United States,” what is unknown is how its citizens will react to the technology, prone to menacing noise and privacy complaints. Mark Blanks, director of the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, optimistically stated, “Across the board everybody we’ve spoken to has been pretty excited.” Cautiously, he admits, “We’ll be working with the community a lot more as we prepare to roll this out.” Google’s terrestrial autonmous driving tests have received less than stellar reviews from locals in Chandler, Arizona, which reached a crescendo earlier this year with one resident pulling a gun on a car (one-third of all Virginians own firearms). Understanding the rights of citizenry in policing the skies above their properties is an important policy and ethical issue as unmanned operators move from testing systems to live deployments.

The rollout of advanced computing technologies is not limited to aviation; artificial intelligence (AI) is being rapidly deployed across every enterprise and organization in the United States. On Friday, McKinsey & Company released a report on the widening penetration of deep learning systems within corporate America. While it is still early in the development of such technologies, almost half of the respondents in the study stated that their departments have embedded such software within at least one business practice this past year. As stated: “Forty-seven percent of respondents say their companies have embedded at least one AI capability in their business processes—compared with 20 percent of respondents in a 2017 study.” This dramatic increase in adoption is driving tech spending with 71% of respondents expecting large portions of digital budgets going toward the implementation of AI. The study also tracked the perceived value of the use of AI with “41 percent reporting significant value and 37 percent reporting moderate value,” compared to 1% “claiming a negative impact.

Before embarking on a journey south of the border, I participated in a discussion at one of New York’s largest financial institutions about AI bias. The output of this think tank became a suggested framework for administrating AI throughout an organization to protect its employees from bias. We listed three principals: 1) the definition of bias (as it varies from institution to institution); 2) the policies when developing and installing technologies (from hiring to testing to reporting metrics); and 3) employing a Chief Ethics Officer that would report to the board not the Chief Executive Officer (as the CEO is concerned about profit, and could potentially override ethics for the bottomline). These conclusions were supported by a 2018 Deloitte survey that found that 32% of executives familiar with AI ranked ethical issues as one of the top three risks of deployments. At the same time, Forbes reported that the idea of engaging an ethics officer is a hard sell for most Blue Chip companies. In response, Professor Timothy Casey of California Western School of Law recommends repercussions similar to other licensing fields for malicious software, “In medicine and law, you have an organization that can revoke your license if you violate the rules, so the impetus to behave ethically is very high. AI developers have nothing like that.” He suggests that building a value system through these endeavors will create an atmosphere whereby “being first in ethics rarely matters as much as being first in revenues.”

While the momentum of AI adoption accelerates faster than a train going down a hill, some forward-thinking organizations are starting to take ethics very seriously. As an example, Salesforce this past January became one of the first companies to hire a “chief ethical and humane use officer,” empowering Paula Goldman: “To develop a strategic framework for the ethical and humane use of technology.” Writing this article, I am reminded of the words of Winston Churchill in the 1930s cautioning his generation about balancing morality with the speed of scientific discoveries, as the pace of innovation even then far exceeded humankind’s own development: “Certain it is that while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing and measureless speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. The brain of modern man does not differ in essentials from that of the human beings who fought and loved here millions of years ago. The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.”

Join RobotLab on May 16th when we dig deeper into ethics and technology with Alexis Block, inventor of HuggieBot, and Andrew Flett, partner at Mobility Impact Partners, discussing “Society 2.0: Understanding The Human-Robot Connection In Improving The World” at SOSA’s Global Cyber Center in NYC – RSVP Today! 

It’s been two years since the last time I judged the Automate Startup Competition. More than any other trade show contest, this event has been an oracle of future success. In following up with the last vintage of participants, all of the previous entrees are still operating and many are completing multi-million dollar financing rounds. As an indication of the importance of the venue, and quite possibly the growth of the industry, The Robot Report announced last week that 2017 finalist, Kinema Systems was acquired by SoftBank’s Boston Dynamics. 

Traditionally, autonomous machines at the ProMat Show have been relegated to a subsection of the exhibit floor under the Automate brand. A couple of years ago there were a handful of self-driving rovers with twice as many robotic arms, today almost one third of the entire McCormick Center was promoting unmanned solutions. As e-commerce sales continue to explode, pressuring fulfilment centers nationwide, the logistics industry now demands two separate conventions with Automate 2021 being held in the Motor City for the first time. This palpable buzz formed the backdrop to the packed startup theater that represented the burgeoning mechatronic ecosystem. In the words of Jeff Burnstein, president of A3 (Automate’s organizers), “Automation is among the most dynamic emerging markets, with venture funding increasing robustly each year. The finalists in the Automate Launch Pad Startup Competition represent the many types of innovation that will transform the manufacturing and services sectors over the next decade.”

Freeing The Supplychain From Bottlenecks

The first company that presented, IM Systems (IMS) traveled from the Netherlands to Chicago to unveil its invention that strikes at the core of the robo-universe – actuation. Today, most of the co-bots deployed are utilizing rotary actuators from Japanese-owned Harmonic Drive (HD). HD’s speed reducers are the industry’s standard for gearing technology, offering the greatest level of movement control, force and precision of any  commercially available mechanical system. This has translated to more than $500 million in annual revenue for HD and is projected to grow to more than $3 billion by 2024. HD’s grip on the industry is citied by many as the main reason why collaborative robot companies have failed to achieve unicorn-level growth. Currently unchallenged by competitors, HD has been free to artificially inflate prices by stiffly controlling the number of units it ships a year, maintaining a careful balance of low supply and high demand. As Thibaud Verschoor, founder of IM Systems, walked on stage I eagerly awaited to hear how his company was planning to disrupt HD’s virtual monopoly. Verschoor introduced a toothless gearbox called the Archimedes Drive that relies on friction instead of gear teeth to transmit torque, promising greater precision and lower cost thus hitting directly at Harmonic Drive. Originating from the Delft University of Technology, IMS is already boasting of its growing list of pre-orders with roboticists lining up for a long-awaited alternative. The startup founder quipped that today it is ‘now quicker to gestate a baby than get an actuator from Harmonic Drive, but not anymore’ as its business child will be shipping next year.

Extending Uptime Performance 

In addition to actuation, energy efficiency has been a hurdle for robots in completing unplugged missions. WiBotic, an innovation spun out of the University of Washington, promises continuous charging availability with its patented wireless inductive power transfer system. Dr. Ben Waters took to the stage to demonstrate how WiBotic is able to charge unmanned vehicles and drones within a ten centimeter proximity of his transfer coils. In addition, WiBotic’s platform is also able to monitor a facility’s entire fleet of autonomous systems to provide managers with better power consumption and machine utilization data, enabling greater productivity and cost efficiency. When I asked Dr. Waters what is next for his company, he exclaimed that they have conquered the air with drones, land with robots, now they are aiming at the sea.

Maximizing Human Labor 

Labor more than any other theme was the big discussion on the floor of ProMat and Automate. While many pundits decry automation for taking jobs, Daniel Theobald of Vecna Robotics shared with me, at our fireside chat, that no one has been fired because of a robot. In fact, today there are not enough humans to fulfill the growing demand of a global economy. One of the most grueling tasks still performed by humans is riveting, often performed in stiff contortions for hours at a time. Wilder Systems is a new collaborative robot system for the aerospace industry to relieve humans from the repetitive dangerous occupation of vertical drilling and fastening performed during fuselage manufacturing. Wilder offers a modular mobile system that is affordable for factories in providing their customers with greater speed, consistency, and accuracy. Until recently robotic systems like Wilder were only available to large corporations but  now with the startups “robot-as-a-service” business model, smaller aircraft plants are able to automate.

Providing A Gentle Touch 

When moderating a session the day before about the definition of success in deploying robots, a large grocery store operator asked the panel what is available for his needs. While hard goods is challenging, picking up the wide variety of fragile organic materials of food is almost impossible for traditional metal grippers. While there are a small number of soft robot solutions available on the market, most require air to be pumped into their elastomeric end effectors, adding cost and complexity to the installation. Ubiros claims to be the “first fully electrically operated soft gripper” without any expensive peripheral equipment, such as pressurized air. To illustrate the tenderness of their solution the startup showcased FlowerBot, a robot arm with their gripper that is capable of picking up roses to create attractive (pre-programmed) bouquets. Dr. Cagdas D. Onal, the company’s founder, proudly introduced the judges to their new customer that just purchased 250 units to begin automating his floral fulfillment center. To Dr Onal’s credit, the Automate pavilion literally smelled like roses as throngs of people sat in the theater with vases on their laps.

Visualizing Installations Before Production

An old proverb teaches that “seeing is believing,” unfortunately machines are often plagued more by Murphy’s Law during the on-boarding process. Firefly Dimension, an augmented reality startup for industrial applications, is focusing on speeding up manufacturing and product development with its unique perspective. Firefly’s headset is the only one in development promoting a 100% field of view equal to one’s eyes. This translates to lower down time, costs and potentially better outcomes. The company shared with the judges its early successes with manufacturers in China that are already testing their prototypes in their production facilities. As many industry analysts project the market for augmented reality solutions to exceed $60 billion by 2024, the Silicon Valley team of entrepreneurs is well positioned to take advantage of the next stage of automation technologies.

Making Robots Accessible For The Masses

According to Dr. Rahul Chipalkatty, CEO of Southie Autonomy, most of the tasks in the warehouse and factory are not automated because they change too quickly for professional integrators and on-staff engineers to respond. Dr. Chipalkatty asserts that this market is actually the lowest hanging fruit for automation, but has remained untapped as technologists have failed to target non-technical workers. To counter this trend, Southie literally developed a magic wand that utilizes artificial intelligence, gesture control and augmented reality projections to train robots on the fly to respond to spontaneous jobs. The Boston-based startup is marketing its technology for “ANY industrial robot to be re-purposed and re-deployed by ANY person, without robotics expertise or even computer skills.” Companies like Southie that focus on ease-of-use interfaces will only further the overall adoption of robotics in the coming years for millions of employees globally. 

Building A Collision-Free World 

On the day of the startup competition, Realtime Robotics announced the launch of its proprietary computer board and software that enables “collision-free” motion planning within milliseconds for collaborative robots and autonomous vehicles to work together. Marketed as RapidPlan and RapidSense the startup contends that its solution is the only one available to enable machines to safely operate within workcells with humans and other robots simultaneously. According to the press release (which was later explained on stage) RapidPlan enables users to load up to “20 million motions” into the system that analyzes “800,000 motions at 30 frames-per-second” which is automatically integrated with the machines onboard sensors via RapidSense. Realtime Robotics’ CEO, Peter Howard, bragged, “Our collision-free motion planning solutions allow robots to perform safely in dynamic, unstructured, and collaborative workspaces, while instantaneously reacting to changes as they occur.” Realtime, backed by Toyota AI, is definitely on my startup watch list for 2019/2020.

And The Winner Is

Deliberating in the judges room, we were challenged to pick a winner from so many qualified diverse startups. Balancing the presentations against the immediate needs of automation industry, one company universally stood out for its important contribution. IM Systems’ Archimedes Drive has the potential to generate a billion-dollar valuation with its promise of bringing down the cost of adoption and quickening the speed of deployment. Following the show, I caught up with IMS founder Jack Schorsch and asked him how he plans to compete against a multinational conglomerate like Harmonic Drive. Schorsch responded, “I do think that HD & Nabtesco have to some degree deliberately throttled their supply, in order to keep unit profits high on sales to everyone but Fanuc/ABB/Yaskawa. On the flip side, I know in my bones that if you can come to market with a technically comparable or better drive you can sell every unit that you can make.”

Join RobotLab on May 16th when we host a discussion with Alexis Block, inventor of HuggieBot, and Andrew Flett, partner at Mobility Impact Partners, on “Society 2.0: Understanding The Human-Robot Connection In Improving The World,” RSVP Today! 

Last week’s breaking news story on The Robot Report was unfortunately the demise of Helen Greiner’s company, CyPhy Works (d/b/a Aria Insights). The high-flying startup raised close to $40 million since its creation in 2008, making it the second business founded by an iRobot alum that has shuttered within five months. While it is not immediately clear why the tethered-drone company went bust, it does raise important questions about the long-term market opportunities for leashed robots.

The tether concept is not exclusive to Greiner’s company, there are a handful of drone companies that vie for marketshare, including: FotoKite, Elistair, and HoverFly. The primary driver towards chaining an Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (UAV) is bypassing the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) ban on beyond line of sight operations. Therefore the only legal way to truly fly autonomously, without a FAA waiver, is attaching a cord to the machine. There are a host of other advantages such as continuous power and data links. In the words of Elistair customer Alexandre Auger of Adéole, “We flew 2 hours 45 minutes before the concert and 1 hour after with Elistair’s system. This innovation allowed us to significantly increase our flight time! During our previous missions, we did not have this system and the pressure related to battery life was huge.”

Most of the millions of robots installed around the world are stationary and, thus, tethered. The question of binding an unmanned system to a power supply and data uplink is really only relevant for units that require mobility. In a paper written in 2014 Dr. Jamshed Iqbal stated, “Over the last few years, mobile robot systems have demonstrated the ability to operate in constrained and hazardous environment and perform many difficult tasks. Many of these tasks demand tethered robot systems. Tether provides the locomotion and navigation so that robot can move on steep slopes.” Most robotic companies employed leashes five years ago, even mobility leader Boston Dynamics. However, today Marc Raibert’s company has literally cut the cord on its fleet, proving once and for all that greater locomotion and agility await on the other side of the tether.

This past Thursday, Boston Dynamics unveiled its latest breakthrough for commercializing unhitched robots – freewheeling warehouse-bots. In a video on YouTube! that has already garnered close to a million views, a bipedal wheeled robot named Handle is shown seamlessly palletizing boxes and unloading cartons onto a working conveyor belt. Since SoftBank’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics in 2017, the mechatronic innovator has pivoted from contractor of defense concepts to a purveyor of real world robo-business solutions. Earlier this year, Raibert exclaimed that his latest creations are “motivated by thinking about what could go in an office — in a space more accessible for business applications — and then, the home eventually.” The online clip of Handle as the latest “mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics” is part of a wider marketing campaign leading up to ProMat 2019*, the largest trade show for supplychain automation held in Chicago later this month.

According to the company’s updated website, Handle, the six foot two hundred pound mechanical beast, is “A robot that combines the rough-terrain capability of legs with the efficiency of wheels. It uses many of the same principles for dynamics, balance, and mobile manipulation​ found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are fast and efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs, Handle has the best of both worlds.” The video is already creating lots of buzz on social media with Evan Ackerman of IEEE Spectrum tweeting, “Nice to see progress, although I’ve still got questions about cost effectiveness, reliability, and safety.”

To many in the retail market palletizing is the holy grail for automating logistics. In a study released earlier this month by Future Market Insights (FMI) the market for such technologies could climb to over $1.5 billion by 2022 worldwide. FMI estimated that the driving force behind this huge spike is that “Most of the production units are opting for palletizing robots in order to achieve higher production rates. The factors that are driving the palletizing robots market include improved functionality of such robots along with a simplified user interface.” It further provided a vision of the types of innovations that would be most successful in this arena, “Due to the changing requirements of the packaging industry, hybrid palletizing robots have been developed that possess the flexibility and advantages of a robotic palletizer and can handle complex work tasks with the simplicity of a conventional high speed palletizer. Such kind of palletizing robots can even handle delicate products and perform heavy duty functions as well, apart from being simple to use and cost effective in operations.” Almost prophetic in its description, FMI described Handle’s free-wheeling demonstration weeks before the public release by Boston Dynamics.

The mantra for successful robot applications is “dull, dirty and dangerous.” While advances like Handle continue to push the limits of mobility for the “dull” tedious tasks of inventory management, “dirty and dangerous” use cases require more continuous power than ninety minutes. By example, tethered machines have been deployed in the cleanup efforts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant since the tsunami in March 2011. The latest invention released this month is a Toshiba robot packed with cameras and sensors that include “fingers” for directly interacting the deposits of the environment enabling deeper study of radioactive residue. In explaining the latest invention, Jun Suzuki of Toshiba said, “Until now we have only seen those deposits, and we need to know whether they will break off and can be picked up and taken out. Touching the deposits is important so we can make plans to sample the deposits, which is a next key step.”

The work of Suzuki and his team in creating leashed robots in disaster recovery has already spilled over to new strides for underwater and space exploration. Last week, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency announced a partnership with GITAI to build devices for the International Space Station. In the words of GITAI’s CEO, Sho Nakanose, “GITAI aims to replace astronauts with robots that can work for a long time while being remotely controlled from Earth while in low Earth orbit space stations to reduce the burden on astronauts, shorten the time it takes to perform work in space, and reduce costs.”

* Editors Note: I will be moderating a panel at ProMat 2019 on “Achieving Return On Investment: Demystifying The Hype And Achieving Implementation Success,” on April 9th and the next day hosting a fireside chat with Daniel Theobald of Vecna Robotics on “Investing in Automation,” as part of the Automate program.