Dmitry Grishin at the Skolkovo Robotics conference in Russia.

In 2012, Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru Group, the largest Internet and social networking company in the Russian-speaking world, seeded a fund with $25 million of his own money to focus on robotic startups.

This month Grishin Robotics launched another fund with $100 million provided by institutional and individual investors from Europe and the U.S. to focus on companies involved in the “Hardware Revolution.”

“Until recently, people mainly thought about robots as multi-functional products in humanoid form-factor. Today single-purpose devices, combining sensors with software and data analytics components, have the potential to radically automate the physical world around us — eliminating “dirty, dull & dangerous” tasks from our lives and, thus, realizing the ultimate purpose of robotics. The investment focus of the new fund reflects this vision, as Grishin Robotics looks to fund both hardware & software companies, driven by the six pillars of the Hardware Revolution — (1) cheaper components, (2) ubiquitous connectivity, (3) smartphone penetration, (4) 3D printing, (5) disruption of supply chain and (6) crowdfunding. By 2020, total value of the markets driven by these changes, is estimated to reach $1 trillion.”

The new fund will be primarily focused on Series A & B deals, with a certain amount of capital reserved for seed and later-stage opportunities — such as Ring, a web-based video doorbell consumer product, whose Series C round was the first investment from the new fund. Grishin Robotics is looking to expand its B2B focus as well as B2C, and will allocate up to $10 million over the lifecycle of portfolio startup companies.

Komissarova describes why the timing for starting Grishin Robotics was just right, and shares some of the initial feedback from different parts of the robotics community.

She also talks about differences between the companies that get funded and the ones that that don’t, what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur in robotics, and the areas within consumer robotics where we are likely to see strong development in the next few years.

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See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

[AK] With investments in two accelerators now (Bolt in US and Navigator Campus in Russia), as in well as a range of robotics companies, Grishin Robotics has a bird’s eye view of robot startups. What do you think about the recent high profile announcements about robotics investments … how will this impact the start-up scene? 

[VK] It’s definitely great news. Amazon, for example, announced in a very significant way their interest in robotics a few years ago when they bought Kiva for $775 million. So this isn’t the first time that big corporations not traditionally involved in robotics are starting to pay attention to the field. It really  begun at least in 2012, when Grishin started to invest into robotics startups as well.

However, this time it’s even more about perception. These high profile media announcements are getting picked up by the general public, investors, and entrepreneurs – they attract attention to the industry. No doubts, it is important from an entrepreneurial perspective – there should be more success stories for them, more ‘benchmarks’.

These days many talented mechanical and electrical engineering students and professionals (particularly in the Bay Area) are attracted by the large salaries being offered by big internet companies like Facebook and therefore decide to switch into software and postpone their startup, hardware and robotics dreams indefinitely.

But when they hear these big announcements about new products or M&As, they realize the market is actually happening and they begin to believe that they can start their own company … they don’t have to go work for a big corporation. They can continue to work in a profession that they like and have expertise in. So from that perspective, these announcements are very important.

From the investors’ perspective, it’s largely the same. They need inspiration, they need proof, they need exits, and they need public companies. Of course there are already public companies like iRobot , but still we don’t hear about robotics acquisitions or IPOs every day – not yet. The announcements of the Amazon drones and the Google acquisitions of Nest and other companies really attracted the attention of the venture and finance communities and reminded them that something big is happening. It forced them to pay attention … it forced them to think that maybe another one or two years is too long to wait to make their bet on this space. And that’s really great news.

Google have invested in quite an assortment of robot startups, particularly if you include their investments and resources in AI and NLP. What do you think their plans are?

Interesting question to speculate on. Google itself said that their primary interest at this point lies in the area of manufacturing. But the acquisition of Nest is definitely a consumer play. Frankly, at this point, I think, it may be not so much about any coherent behind-the-scenes grand strategy as much as that they are starting to feel like something big is going to happen to follow the revolutions that came with the personal computer, the internet and the smart phone. Many people are seeing signs that the next big revolution may be robotics.

For Google, Amazon etc. this may be more about announcing some kind of interest in this space and to jump into the game as early as possible. I think there’s a lot of R&D going on internally to figure out where and how exactly to go and approach it.

So while it’s definitely exciting times and more and more startups are launching with interesting ideas, there are still some unknown variables. It’s important for big corporations like Google to figure out the unknowns in this multi-billion dollar market as early as possible, and to do this before the competition does.

Do you see any down side to large companies getting involved in robotics?

Despite all these announcements the market is still at an early stage of development, so the really fierce competition is ahead. It’s not that the market is divided between big companies, after all these news – far from that. Just as a comparison … it’s difficult to launch another smart phone in the market today because the market is fairly mature and is divided between the big companies. But in the robotics market, and in the consumer robotics market specifically, it’s the opposite.

The barrier of entry for robotics startups has been getting lower and lower the last few years. And all these announcements lead to increased investor interest, which means more money for robotics and hardware startups … more investors ready to consider these kinds of companies in addition to the traditional Internet and mobile companies. I just can’t think of any significant downside – at least not at this point and not for the next two or three years.

Possible problems could include losing top talent, or losing access to components or research, or support for community and open source projects, which all have impact on research and startups …

All good points and let’s consider them one by one.

Regarding top talent, all these companies that were bought are fairly small. I deeply respect all these people and I know many of them, but I hope these acquisitions will inspire more robot students or engineers to go out there and start their robotics companies, or it will inspire younger students to select robotics when they pick their majors at universities. I think that the cumulative positive impact will be so much greater than the loss of these people to big corporations.

I also agree that it’s startups that are primarily innovating in new markets rather than the big companies … but it’s not like these people won’t continue to do research. And Google has a lot of money and resources and these people will continue their work with other talents they meet there. It’s very possible that these talented people will be able to accomplish more given the vast resources they’ll have access to inside these big companies. So I urge you consider not just the negative side of this, but the  positive sides as well – word ‘loss’ has too much of a negative connotation, in my opinion.

The second concern you mention is lack of access to components …

Yes, to components, ROS, research findings…

Not necessarily. When big company is buying component technology, of course, it often ceases to be open-source. Discussion of open-source ideals are wholly different topic, but my point is that it is not necessarily means decreased access – may be quite the opposite. Often there is an interest of a big company to make certain technology a dominant platform, therefore, great investments are made to attract more developers to it, improve it, explain benefits etc. And if it will turn out not to be the best platform – competitors or same open-source community will be quick to offer alternatives, especially, again, at this stage of market development, when barriers to entry are quite low.

If you could ask Andy Rubin any question what would it be?

One of the main challenges for consumer robotics market – whether we are talking about connected devices and the Internet of Things or more traditional consumer robotics like Roomba – it pretty much comes down to applications and business models. We can imagine some of the interesting applications or verticals where robotics could make a significant impact, but we can’t always imagine all the possible  areas and ways where robotics can be applied to make our lives better – there are just so many of them, and many are far from being obvious. So I would be interested to know how he thinks robotics can make our lives better in a significant fashion, beyond the usual suspects we already know about, like agriculture, drones etc.

And the same question about business models can be asked from a different perspective: at the moment hardware companies are selling hardware, but it’s getting commoditized … and you have to think about software and data and the cloud connectivity of the hardware components you are making. So, how can business models that are familiar to Google (like advertising, subscriptions, internet) be applied to robotics and consumer hardware companies? And of course, what kinds of new business models will emerge as a result?

We’ve talked about Google and Amazon. Who are the other big new players in the robotics space that are known for things other than robotics but are starting to have an impact in the field …

There may be many more than we are aware of. Like Tesla – of course it’s an automobile company but more and more its top management is starting to say that they are essentially an IT company, considering how connected the car is and how advanced the driving functions and so on. And the same goes with the other automobile companies that are working on self-driving cars.

And the problems they are solving, whether they are BMW or someone else, are very related to the problems the robotics industry in general is facing right now. The advancement of computer vision is basically what the whole robotics industry is reliant on in terms of future growth and potential. Also autonomous capabilities … We’re not talking about the holy grail of full autonomy any time in the foreseeable future, but the algorithms and the decision-making processes needed for these new (semi) autonomous cars may spill over into the startup world tomorrow. Eventually it will impact the whole market in a very significant and positive way.

Many of the big corporations today may essentially be involved in robotics already. For example Foxconn and other manufacturing companies are starting to use robots. And more and more companies in agriculture and mining are beginning to use unmanned vehicles. They are starting to understand that adopting these technologies earlier than their competitors is a necessity if they are going to survive. Robotic capabilities are becoming the basis of their long-term competitive advantage.

To make a comparison, almost everyone involved in physical commerce today is finding that their internet capabilities are getting closer and closer to the heart of their business. I think we will find the same thing happening with robotics. It’s not so much about the specific companies’ names we can come up with today … because in the future it will be almost everybody, just like how almost everybody these days is involved in the internet or is using software or computers.

What do you think are the most interesting recent robotics acquisitions?

It depends on how you define robotics. Is Nest as a robotics company? I for one define it as a consumer robotics company but I can imagine that many people will not agree with me. I believe everybody will eventually agree with this definition but not maybe today. I think the Deep Mind announcement is also very interesting. AI and related software is a very important enablers of robotics.

What do you think about Dyson’s announcement of the $8million (5 million pound) UK research facility specifically into home robots?

It’s an awesome announcement. Dyson himself is an iconic figure, as well as his company. They have been making products that we are used to seeing both in the home and the office, and they’ve been able to make them differently, both in terms of design and in terms of capability. And it’s great when such a company pays significant attention to robotics.

The thing is – it’s not enough to make a good-looking coffee maker or washing machine anymore because people are getting more and more used to smart devices in their homes and cars. Increasingly they are expecting smart capabilities for the same amount of money. And it is possible now to deliver a much smarter device – with Internet connectivity – for almost the same price as a so-called ‘dumb device’.

All this attention is just another confirmation that very soon the fact that you are making smart devices with robotic capabilities will stop to be the competitive advantage and will start becoming the threshold capability. I think Dyson is foreseeing this (probably somewhat ahead of their competitors) – but  eventually everyone will follow.

Grishin Robotics is investing in consumer robotics… Do the recent announcements change any of your plans? 

No. There are a lot of very interesting application areas and verticals in the robotics market, whether it’s health care, agriculture, or manufacturing, but Grishin focuses on consumer robotics simply because we see huge potential, both from the market perspective and from the perspective of having a positive impact on people’s lives. This potential is much greater when we’re talking about robotic products that the average person can buy for $100-$200, and when there are so many prospective customers out there. It’s really all about impact. Big corporations and governments have been benefiting from robotics for so long, but average people have yet to benefit. We think it’s time to change that.

You could say, then, that the recent announcements have validated Grishin Robotics’ interests …

Exactly. In June 2012, when Dmitry Grishin launched the firm, a fair number of people told us that we were absolutely crazy. When so many smart people are telling you that you’re crazy, you have to think that you may not necessarily be right, but at least you’re probably doing something interesting. But when in the end it turns out that you are even may be right … it does feel good.

 [Edited by Hallie Siegel]

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See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Suitable Technologies Beam Remote Presence Robots

Two very visible things struck me as indicative of why the show was packed with enthusiastic exhibitors and attendees. One was the use of Beam remote-presence robots on the exhibition floor. Palo Alto start-up Suitable Technologies brought two dozen Beam robots to the show and rented them by the hour to people calling in from around the world. They worked flawlessly, moved freely and accident-free, carried on conversations with passersby and exhibitors – a perfect solution for those who couldn’t physically come and experience the trade show portion of RoboBusiness. There was even a Beam Hour where the show floor was closed to all except exhibitors and Beam attendees. A high-tech solution to broaden the high-tech audience of RoboBusiness.

Unbounded Robotics UBR-1 Mobile Robot

The other was Unbounded Robotics and their new UBR-1 one-armed mobile robot. Built by many of the same team that built Willow Garage’s two-armed robot PR2 – a robot that launched and sold for $400,000 in 2009, the new $35,000 UBR-1 is as capable as the older PR2 but it is now affordable whereas very few could pay for the PR2. This price drop phenomena was talked about by speakers and in private conversations. Words like “plug and play,” “convergence” and “confluence” were used to describe it.” “In just five years — from $400,000 to $35,000! Amazing.”

The UBR-1 appears to have encapsulated for all to see a major trend happening in robotics over the last five years: sensors, cameras, batteries and other component costs have been and continue to drop dramatically and, combined with mobility and ever-more-powerful CPUs, those lower costs are enabling cheaper more capable robots — such as Unbounded’s UBR-1.

With 2D and 3D sensors, scanners and cameras, more capable lighter and smaller batteries, and all the other functionality developed and incorporated in ROS and the PR2, Unbounded Robotics will begin shipping UBR-1 units next summer. First units will go to academia but shortly thereafter commercial versions will begin shipping to companies for various mobility tasks such as machine tending and material transport. After that, Melonee Wise, CEO, suggested additional application areas being developed for the hospitality business – mobility tasks like room service delivery and after-room-cleaning inspection. Other applications could include restocking shelves and, with the proper software, limited eldercare. The new UBRs will be manufactured and assembled in Silicon Valley. Unbounded is in the process of closing their “A” round of funding.

Invest, Innovate, Implement

“Invest, Innovate, Implement” was the theme for RoboBusiness 2013 and it was carried throughout with extensive speakers, panels and workshops. Funding methods and understanding what VCs think and want were a big part of the show. It started with a 3-hour workshop sponsored by Grishin Robotics, the start-up funding entity of the Russian VC Dmitry Grishin. It was followed by an evening session where a group of start-ups presented their elevator pitches in front of four venture capitalists. There was also a breakout session with VCs discussing today’s investment trends and how they view them in relation to investing.

ROS-Industrial

As costs come down and component systems become more capable, many companies are moving to add advanced vision and perception systems, path and grasp planning, and networking capabilities to their existing robots. One way to accomplish this is by having a ROS-Industrial front end – a common open-source language familiar to most engineering and robotics students – where one can design and simulate cross-platform vision systems and other additions before implementing them. ROS-Industrial, a non-profit open source robotics operating system organization, provides a common framework for robotics applications and is proving to be a good resource for rapid development of new components and uses for existing robots.

Google’s Self-Driving Cars

Google’s Chris Urmson, Director, Self-Driving Cars, a keynote speaker, showed not only the history but the complexity of the process of robotic self-driving cars. There’s a whole lot going on as a Google car moves along it’s path.

Notice the red circle in the left top picture. With 360º vision provided by the scanner, the car has to process every type of information, everywhere, including behind and around corners. In the top right picture, there are lights, pedestrians, lane markings, etc., all identified and color coded and tracked by the onboard computers. When maps are available, comparisons to what the car is seeing versus what the map says is there is another input to the massive data processing – 1 GB of data every second – that occurs thousands of times every second.

RoboBusiness 2013 had over 500 attendees and 60 exhibitors. Next year’s show will be held in Boston.

Dmitry Grishin at the Skolkovo Robotics conference in Russia.

As part of our series on high-risk, high-reward robotics, and as a follow-up to his recent Robot’s Podcast interview, I asked entrepreneur and venture capitalist Dmitry Grishin to talk to us about how he manages risk in his global investment company Grishin Robotics. 

[HS]
How would you define high-risk, high-reward robotics from an investor’s perspective?

[DG]
I don’t look at companies in terms of ‘this is high risk’ and ‘this is low risk’. I have a different approach: I try to find a company where I believe in what they’re doing, where I believe in the founders, and I really believe that this company can be a great success.

I like to look at it from a pragmatic perspective, so first I want to know what kind of practical problem the company wants to solve. Second, I want to understand the market, because inside robotics you have a lot of smaller markets … telepresence, home automation, security, etc. So I want to know how big this market is. And of course, very critical for me is the team: how it’s organized, what’s the background of the founders, and how they work together.

You say that teams are really important. How much does a founder’s personality or reputation factor into how you perceive the investment risk?

In my experience founding an Internet company, I learned that you definitely have to have a person who understands technology: it’s very critical that one of the founders understands how to build robots and how the technology works. But I find that the best combination is to have two people: one who is more technical, and another who is more of a strategic marketing, sales and product kind of person.

It’s rare to find these two kinds of skills in one person. A lot of the time, when technology people start companies, they’re very excited about the technology but they pretty much don’t know what to do with it. They say, ‘We have some super cool technology,’ but when you ask, ‘How do you want to build your business? What’s your plan?’ they don’t know the answer. Unfortunately this problem is very common.

If people are missing some of these skills, do you see it as your role to provide some aspect of that in terms of mentorship? Or do you expect the companies that you invest in to already have those skills in place?

I try to find the companies that already have those skills in place, or that at least have the potential to go there, because I think these skills are critical. If within the company you don’t already have product DNA or a good understanding of the customer, for example, it’s very difficult to create this culture from the outside.

I can definitely help with experience and help explain the market, but I don’t want to be the leading guy. I don’t want to tell people what to do. I’m available to entrepreneurs to answer their questions and give some advice, but it should be their decision in the end. It’s only the way you can build a good company. I think that if an investor starts to manage the company, it’s just a road to nowhere.

So essentially what you’re saying is that, even if the market is perhaps more risky, you might be willing to invest in a company as long as the right team is in place, if they’ve got all the skill sets, and the right product to solve a problem. Is that correct?     

Yes, but it’s also important that I personally believe in this market. For example, in the early days of the Internet, nobody understood exactly how it worked, or what businesses there would be around it, but there was a group of people who really believed that the Internet would one day be a big business and make a big impact.

The same is for me. I really believe in robotics in general, and particularly in several markets inside of robotics. Of course there are still lots of questions in terms of how exactly it will work, and what kinds of business models will be successful, but I definitely think the robotics market will be very big – and what’s more interesting – that it will solve a lot of problems for human beings.

What are the robotics markets that you really believe in right now?

I really do believe in telepresence, but of course this market is in a very early stage, and the companies involved here need to prove that they can find the right products and the right audience for these products. 

Would you say that some markets in robotics are more risky than others at the moment?

Yes absolutely. There are definitely already some more established markets, like vacuum cleaners, for example … the market is already there and everybody understands that you can sell a vacuum cleaner to a customer. But of course you already have players there: iRobot, Samsung and LG entering this market, and a lot of Chinese companies as well.

On the other side, you have something like telepresence. We know that police and military organizations are already buying a lot of this, so it’s wanted, there’s a market. But it’s less predictable in the consumer market because it’s at such an early stage.

You tend to invest in more mature consumer robotics and not so much in moonshots. Is this because there’s a lack of well-considered moonshot proposals out there to choose from, or are you just not interested in those kinds of projects?

First of all, I think mature is not the right word for the companies that I’m investing in. I think of mature as a public company that has a big valuation. If you ask me whether I’m going to invest in a very early stage, the answer is no. I want to invest in a company that already has some kind of prototype … If you want to try to start something, you really need to invest at least a small amount of money yourself, or have some kind of support from your friends or family, or from a source like Kickstarter … because if a team is successful at building some kind of prototype and is able to get some sales from it, it’s a sign that the team has the experience to take a concept to a first project, and this is an important criteria for me.

Can you tell us about any particular robotics technologies that you would classify as being especially visionary or innovative? 

I think there are two kinds of innovation: one where you create something absolutely unusual, and another where a product already exists but you figure out how to bring it to the level where millions of people can use it. An example of this second kind of innovation is the iPhone: touch screens existed before, smart phones existed before, but Apple created a product that millions of people started to use, and this kind of innovation is no less important than the innovation of inventing something new.

But if you’re asking about absolutely new directions that have very high risk and yet are potentially very promising, I see the space market as one very interesting area. Satellites, for example, are getting very cheap to make and though they are very high risk, I find them very promising. I also think that anything related to robotic cars is a very interesting market for investing, and yet very high risk because there still needs to be significant innovation to bring these technologies to the market. Drones can also be in this category.

Is resistance to adopt these technologies on the part of the consumers a part of what makes them risky?

I think there’s a lot of resistance, and infrastructure and people’s minds change slowly at first. But once some level of change has been achieved, adaptation happens very quickly. If you look at the first cars or railroads, we initially saw very slow adaptation, but then the adaptation accelerated.

My belief is that robotic cars will repeat pretty much the same route as hybrid cars, where we spent ten years using electric and gas cars together before there was some kind of visible market share. And this is not just an example, it’s a model we should be using: anytime we are thinking about a robotic product that involves a lot of people and infrastructure, we should be thinking about hybrid models. Mercedes Benz, for example, introduced a car that can park itself, but you still need a person to drive the car. I think the two technologies – self-driving cars and cars driven by people – will live together for quite some period of time, maybe ten or twenty years before they merge together.

In the Robots Podcast interview from last November you said that a lot of people have good ideas, but the time isn’t always right for investment. Is there a right time to invest in higher risk initiatives? Is now a good time?

Definitely right now is the right time for the robotics market in general, and I really believe that the biggest innovations will be done first by startups. With robotics, it’s not just software, it’s also hardware, and ten or twenty years ago it was almost impossible for a small startup company in robotics to get going because it was too expensive. But now electronic components for robots are really cheap, and 3D printers help a lot with prototypes … so you can have a team of three to five engineers working on a product, and then they can change it based on feedback from users in a test market. The whole process of product development is accelerated significantly.

Do you have a message for young entrepreneurs and students out there who are getting ready to enter the robotics market?  

Right now you have an opportunity that didn’t exist ten or twenty years ago. Right now you can start a robotics company, and the market you create will be able to change people’s lives.

I want you to think about this: if you have a good idea and a good team, come to us and we’ll try to help. Just focus on what kind of problem you are solving – not the technology – and think about your team very deeply, because the people with whom you co-found will be very important for your future success.

NanoSatisfi, a Silicon Valley based cubesat startup, today received $300,000 investment from Grishin Robotics bringing their total seed funding to $1,750,000, not including their initial successful Kickstarter campaign of $106,330 and CEO Peter Platzer’s personal investment. NanoSatisfi aim to provide affordable space satellite access to everyone through their autonomous cubesats. The first launch dates have been booked for summer and fall 2013.

NanoSatisfi’s founder and CEO Peter Platzer intends to bring Moore’s Law to space. The first NanoSatisfi cubesat will have approximately 1000x more computational power than the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Due to the expense and length of time to successfully launch something, spacecraft have lagged far behind the rate of change on earth. We landed men on the moon with slide rules and computers that don’t hold a candle to any smartphone today.

Platzer plans to leverage Moore’s Law to get many small satellites launched and unlock a wide range of citizen science and crowd sourced uses. It costs $350,000 to build, launch and operate one satellite which is expected to generate $750,000 revenue. Grishin’s investment will extend the number of satellite launches in NanoSatisfi’s near future. By utilizing the most widely adopted satellite standard, NanoSatisfi does not need a dedicated launch for their 10cm x 10cm x 30cm satellites. Platzer has developed a “profitable de-risking and scaling strategy to target the 25bn+ enterprise space data market”.

Each satellite is a cube weighing about 1 kilogram, equipped with cameras, a Geiger counter, a spectrometer, a magnetometer, and an evolving array of sensors. As described in TechCrunch, “ArduSats are designed to be active for about two years, at which point they’re replaced by new ones incorporating the latest technology. For example, even though the second ArduSat is launching only a few months after the first, its camera will actually be more powerful, thanks to rapidly dropping price.” [Anthony Ha]

The US Whitehouse has recently honored Platzer as a US Champion of Change for his vision for the future. Platzer had always been interested in space exploration but was impatient with the state of the industry. Although he trained as a high-energy physicist, Platzer spent most of his career on Wall Street in finance. This turns out to be a good combination for creating a strategic approach to space robots.

Silicon Valley is starting to recognize that hardware and robotics startups may be the next big thing. NanoSatisfi has been incubated at Lemnos Labs, who aim to bring the ‘silicon back to the Valley’, and have successfully incubated several other robot startups. And yes,   these are space robots, operating autonomously.

NanoSatisfi’s first satellite is currently being readied for launch in Japan, with JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. NanoSatisfi are offering control of their cubesat for as little as $250 a week, opening the doors to all sorts of experimentation and big amounts of data. They’ve opened the Ardusat Control Center for Kickstarter backers, who can now start writing code for the ArduSat without needing to download the Arduino IDE. Backers will be able to code straight from the web to the testing infrastructure and then to download their data after completing their experiments on the ArduSat.

Already, 5 students from Finland have done a ‘space camp’, learning everything from orbital mechanics to space law. Each student successfully completed Arduino experiments that ranged from using a vacuum chamber to test and ultrasonic distance sensor under extreme temperature variations, to using a luminosity sensor to detect and measure the length of lightening strikes. What else could we do with a spacebird’s eye view of the world?

Bolt, Ben Einstein’s hardware and robotics accelerator in Boston, today announced the close of their first funding round and the opening of the first round of applications for 2013 hardware startups. Bolt has a 4000 sq ft high end prototyping shop under their offices in the Downtown Crossing district and plans to open the doors in May.

Strategic investors Logitech, Autodesk and Grishin Robotics join with angel investors including Semyon Dukach, Mick Mountz, Eran Egozy, Brad Feld, and Bruce Sachs to raise $3.5 million in funding. Xconomy reports that a “regulatory filing suggests Bolt is planning to raise a little less than $5 million in total, which should let it operate for a couple of years.”

Bolt exists to help early-stage hardware companies get their products to market. Our core program offers cash, mentorship, shop equipment, professional engineering staff, financing and manufacturing relationships to 10 startup companies every 6 months. But we’re happy to provide advice to any hardware startup, even ones that don’t apply to our program. You can send a note asking for help with a specific product at any time to: help (at) buildatbolt (dot) com. [bolt.io]

As Ben Einstein points out, Bolt is providing something similar to Lemnos Labs in San Francisco, or Haxlr8r in China, or Techshops anywhere, and he believes that hardware experience is critical to nurturing hardware startups. It’s something that typical accelerators – like Y Combinator – can’t provide.

The core team at Bolt has a good mix of skills and experience in hardware startups. Ben Einstein is a product designer and entrepreneur who previously ran Brainstream Design and he says he’s most comfortable with a face full of metal filings. Axel Bichara is a venture capital veteran with a mechanical engineering background. Axel was a partner at Atlas Venture, cofounder of Premise (acquired by Computervision) and lead investor in SolidWorks (acquired by Dassault Systemes). Scott Miller was VP of Engineering at iRobot, and has built 3M units of robots like Roomba. Scott is also the founder and CEO of Dragon Innovation which has overseen the far-east manufacturing of products like Pebble, Zeo, and Orbotix.

Bolt also provides access to a stellar array of mentors with experience specific to robotics and hardware, such as Mick Mountz (Kiva) and Brad Feld (Foundry Group). Projects’ founders will receive seed capital, access to office and prototyping facilities, and extensive support from a full-time engineering/design staff and a wide array of hardware-centric mentors. Bolt’s program is focused on key aspects of ideation and development of any successful mass-market hardware products, including manufacturing and commercialization.

I suspect that after this first application round, Bolt may find it easier to take applications on a rolling basis rather than a tranche.

10. Robot and Frank Film looks toward elderly care future

Among films like Real Steel and I, Robot, Robot & Frank emerged from the Sundance Film Festival as a refreshing film that offered roboticists a realistic vision for robots in elderly care.

9. First robotics ethics and law conference

The University of Miami School of Law hosted the first conferenceon legal and policy issues relating to robotics, a sign of things to come as unique enable robotics technologies raise new philosophical and legal concerns for lawyers and policymakers.

8. Baxter brings manufacturing robotics to small businesses

For four years, Rodney Brooks’ Heartland Robotics (now called Rethink Robotics) remained in stealth mode as many wondered what the acclaimed researcher and iRobot co-founder was plotting for the “manufacturing” domain. Finally, we met Baxter, a two-armed robot that can be programmed by demonstration to perform pick-and-place tasks. But it’s the small $20,000 price tag that is turning heads.

7. Amazon acquires Kiva for $775M

Amazon shocked the robotics world with its $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, maker of the automated warehouse logistics robots. It may not be a price we’ll see again any time soon, but the purchase signals a maturation of mobile robots that have become an integral part of business logistics.

6. Robonaut, Curiosity pave the way in space, WAVE glider robot traverses Pacific

With recent news in Washington considering the future of NASA, 2012 was a great year for the agency’s robotics program. First, Robonaut aboard the International Space Station began the year with an iconic handshake with the ISS commander. Since then, it has performed a variety of tasks in flipping switches, turning knobs, and grabbing handrails. b. Of course there was the “terrifying” Mars landing of the Curiosity rover in July. Armed with an arsenal of tools and laboratory equipment, Curiosity is turning out to be a successful robotic explorer. And just this month we learned that an autonomous wave glider robot from Liquid Robotics completed its one-year, 9000-mile Pacific voyage from California to Australia.

5. U.S. Government flexes muscle with DARPA ROBOTICS challenge and NRI

Back in 2004 when DARPA announced its first Grand Challenge in robotics, a reliable driverless car was a dream. Now, well, see the #4 story of the year below. The blue sky agency is at it again with the Robotics Challenge, a $34 million effort with the goal of producing a capable humanoid robot for disaster response scenarios. An added innovation to the challenge is an open-source simulator being developed by the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), which will serve as a contribution to the community but also permit a software-only team to earn a humanoid hardware platform and advance to the second phase of the challenge.

A year after the Obama Administration announced the National Robotics Initiative, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $50 million in funding toward collaborative robots. While the amount is small compared to programs in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, the NRI is the first coordinated research funding focus in the U.S. for non-military robotic applications. For that, U.S. efforts come in at number five.

4. Driverless car legislation becomes law

The Google self-driving car has racked up 300,000 miles on the road as California, Florida and Nevada (last year) passed legislation setting up the procedures and requirements that will be needed for commercial driverless products. Several others, including D.C., are reviewing bills. With car manufacturers now introducing advanced sensors and increasing autonomy features in upcoming models, the legislation is ahead of the technological curve for once.

3. ROS turns 5

The Robot Operating System from Willow Garage. There’s not much more to say than I already have in previous posts. But a five-year anniversary for an open-source robotics software framework that continues to grow is a significant achievement. How fast has it grown? According to Tully Foote’s blog post at ros.org, there are 3699 public ROS packages (up from 1600 three years ago), 90 community-supported robot platforms (up from 50), and people are using ROS on all seven (yes, seven) continents. The recently launched Open Source Robotics Foundation is also a good sign for a sustainable movement.

2. Maker and start-up culture pushes robotics

In the same year that the iRobot Roomba celebrated 10 years on the market, we saw an acceleration of viable robotics businesses and products. For years many said that venture capitalists wanted nothing to do with hardware startups; they were too risky and required upfront capital, manufacturing, and inventory. That has clearly changed now, with increasing investments in robotics startups and entrepreneurs figuring out how to create products and solutions using robotics technology. The prestigious Y Combinator program funded Double Robotics and their price-shattering telepresence robot. Dmitry Grishin, a Russian investor, launched Grishin Robotics with $25 million of his own funds to invest in personal robotics companies. As of this writing, he’s invested in Double and the RobotAppStore. Furthermore, The Robot Report’s detailed map of nearly 1000 companies indicates 173 startups, 89 in the U.S. alone (not including many others still in stealth mode). And lest we forget the crowdfunding movement, which has spawned several robotics products and dozens more related “Internet of Things” devices. Some of our favorites: Romo, Hexy the Hexapod, OpenROV, and Autom.

Feeding into this hardware movement has been the growing maker culture, with a combination of 3D printers, hacker spaces, and inexpensive microcontrollers like the Arduino reducing the barrier to tinkering, building, and experimenting. Similarly, the Do-It-Yourself drone community has taken off with Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson leaving his post to take over 3D Robotics full-time.

1. Drones take center stage

It seems a week didn’t go by without a major story involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they continue to be used in warzones in Afghanistan and shadow campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and the horn of Africa. Regardless of the ethics, sovereignty concerns, and the like, drones have saturated the national discourse and are here to stay on the battlefield, and there is little doubt we will begin to see remote-controlled and semi-autonomous UAVs in domestic surveillance and commercial applications as soon as 2015 in the United States. For these reasons, they take the number one spot.

Have another top story we didn’t list? We’d love to hear them! Let us know in the comments section.

I interviewed Elad Inbar, CEO of the RobotAppStore, just before the announcement that Grishin Robotics was investing $250,000 in this cloud robotics market play.

For Grishin Robotics, the future is in the clouds. Grishin Robotics are investing $250,000 into RobotAppStore, an online marketplace for robotics applications. It seems that Grishin is betting on the robotics industry following the same patterns as the smartphone or personal computing industry. But can robotics be compared to either personal computing or smartphones, given the lack of a unified robotic platform or even a common robotic function?

Elad Inbar, the founder of RobotAppStore believes that we are seeing the same sort of convergence in robotics as happened in the mobile phone industry. In the early days of the phone industry, developers used to have to build a different ring tone for every single model of phone, even phones from the same company. This convergence in robotics owes a lot to the development of ROS and the increasing use of COTS or common technologies.

RobotAppStore and Grishin Robotics also have infographics on robot apps and cloud robotics.

Read more from our Startup Series.

For Grishin Robotics, the future is in the clouds.

Grishin Robotics are investing $250,000 into RobotAppStore, an online marketplace for robotics applications. It seems that Grishin is betting on the robotics industry following the same patterns as the smartphone or personal computing industry. But can robotics be compared to either personal computing or smartphones, given the lack of a unified robotic platform or even a common robotic function?

Elad Inbar, the founder of RobotAppStore believes that we are seeing the same sort of convergence in robotics as happened in the mobile phone industry. In the early days of the phone industry, developers used to have to build a different ring tone for every single model of phone, even phones from the same company. This convergence in robotics owes a lot to the development of ROS and the increasing use of COTS or common technologies.

Since opening in 2011 in San Francisco, Elad and RobotAppStore have built up an inventory of hundreds of apps for dozens of different robots, from the Roomba vacuum cleaners, to Spheros, AR Drone quadcopters and humanoids like the Aldebaran Nao robots. The apps range from the entertaining, like a Roomba delivering a birthday cake and singing “Happy Birthday”, to the eminently practical, like an app giving an early overheating warning for the Nao.

The market feedback is that consumers who purchase one robot app, go on to purchase all the available apps for their robot. Inbar also finds that many people who contact the RobotAppStore don’t have a robot yet, but see the AppStore as a gateway to learning more about robots, so he’s launched Robopedia, a ‘wikipedia for robots’. Another way that Inbar is building the ecosystem of cloud robotics is by providing support for robot app developers, creating documentation to help developers make a career out of writing software for robots.

The personal robotics market is a rapidly growing industry – estimated by ABI research to hit the $18 billion mark in 2015. According to RobotAppStore estimates, based on figures provided by UNECE, IFR, ABI Research and BCC Research, more than 30 million programmable robots have been sold to date.

“Robotics is a combination of good hardware and software – thus, the important role of a project like the RobotAppStore in the market ecosystem is unquestionable. The concept of ‘Cloud robotics’, which implies ability of all robots to connect to the internet, share a common knowledge database and seamlessly upgrade their functions in real-time, is a soon-to-be future; one reminiscent of the of personal computer industry. We believe that the strong team behind RobotAppStore coupled with their ability to leverage the advantages of having strong community already built around the product, can make this future closer”, said Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, Co-Founder & CEO of Mail.Ru Group.

“The support provided by Grishin Robotics is a great vote of confidence in our plans for the company,” said Elad Inbar, Founder & CEO of RobotAppStore. “It shows their belief in our vision and the importance of the marketplace for robotics applications. The robotics industry has reached its tipping-point with broad market acceptance, usability of robots, and the ability to extend the robots’ capabilities. Being a part of Grishin Robotics’ portfolio provides high synergy with other robotics companies and better resource utilization. We are excited to use this funding to secure our place as THE market-leader of the consumer and educational robot-apps industry. I would like to thank our community of developers, and invite awesome and creative developers to join us!”

I interviewed Elad Inbar, founder of RobotAp Store, for the Robot Startup Series, where he speaks in more depth about Grishin’s investment in RobotAppStore and the synergy of their vision of cloud robotics.

For Grishin Robotics, the future is in the clouds.

Grishin Robotics are investing $250,000 into RobotAppStore, an online marketplace for robotics applications. It seems that Grishin is betting on the robotics industry following the same patterns as the smartphone or personal computing industry. But can robotics be compared to either personal computing or smartphones, given the lack of a unified robotic platform or even a common robotic function?

Elad Inbar, the founder of RobotAppStore believes that we are seeing the same sort of convergence in robotics as happened in the mobile phone industry. In the early days of the phone industry, developers used to have to build a different ring tone for every single model of phone, even phones from the same company. This convergence in robotics owes a lot to the development of ROS and the increasing use of COTS or common technologies.

Since opening in 2011 in San Francisco, Elad and RobotAppStore have built up an inventory of hundreds of apps for dozens of different robots, from the Roomba vacuum cleaners, to Spheros, AR Drone quadcopters and humanoids like the Aldebaran Nao robots. The apps range from the entertaining, like a Roomba delivering a birthday cake and singing “Happy Birthday”, to the eminently practical, like an app giving an early overheating warning for the Nao.

The market feedback is that consumers who purchase one robot app, go on to purchase all the available apps for their robot. Inbar also finds that many people who contact the RobotAppStore don’t have a robot yet, but see the AppStore as a gateway to learning more about robots, so he’s launched Robopedia, a ‘wikipedia for robots’. Another way that Inbar is building the ecosystem of cloud robotics is by providing support for robot app developers, creating documentation to help developers make a career out of writing software for robots.

The personal robotics market is a rapidly growing industry – estimated by ABI research to hit the $18 billion mark in 2015. According to RobotAppStore estimates, based on figures provided by UNECE, IFR, ABI Research and BCC Research, more than 30 million programmable robots have been sold to date.

“Robotics is a combination of good hardware and software – thus, the important role of a project like the RobotAppStore in the market ecosystem is unquestionable. The concept of ‘Cloud robotics’, which implies ability of all robots to connect to the internet, share a common knowledge database and seamlessly upgrade their functions in real-time, is a soon-to-be future; one reminiscent of the of personal computer industry. We believe that the strong team behind RobotAppStore coupled with their ability to leverage the advantages of having strong community already built around the product, can make this future closer”, said Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, Co-Founder & CEO of Mail.Ru Group.

“The support provided by Grishin Robotics is a great vote of confidence in our plans for the company,” said Elad Inbar, Founder & CEO of RobotAppStore. “It shows their belief in our vision and the importance of the marketplace for robotics applications. The robotics industry has reached its tipping-point with broad market acceptance, usability of robots, and the ability to extend the robots’ capabilities. Being a part of Grishin Robotics’ portfolio provides high synergy with other robotics companies and better resource utilization. We are excited to use this funding to secure our place as THE market-leader of the consumer and educational robot-apps industry. I would like to thank our community of developers, and invite awesome and creative developers to join us!”

I interviewed Elad Inbar, founder of RobotAp Store, for the Robot Startup Series, where he speaks in more depth about Grishin’s investment in RobotAppStore and the synergy of their vision of cloud robotics.

It was announced today that Grishin Robotics  was investing $250,000 into Y Combinator startup Double Robotics. Double Robotics have already sold out their first order of affordable telepresence robots and look poised to meet the increased demand in high tech low cost consumer robotics with this investment (see previous post “Double Robotics – Crossing the Chasm?“).

Double Robotics, a recent graduate from Y Combinator (http://ycombinator.com), builds telepresence robots, characterized by ground-breaking price ($2,499, can be pre-ordered now for $1,999), great design, light weight and high level of simplicity — it works right “out of box” and uses iPad as a platform.

Double Robotics already has $1.2 million (600 units) in pre-orders (in one month since the launch), from 44 countries around the world. Customers include 24 universities, as well as 17 Fortune 500 companies. Since the first production run of Double has already sold out, the investment from Grishin Robotics will be spent primarily on scaling manufacturing, as well as hiring and further product development. New pre-orders will be delivered in early 2013. Engineers interested in career in Double Robotics can get in touch with the company by the e-mail jobs@doublerobotics.com. [Press Release NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Sep 21, 2012)]

Double Robotics have just moved into their own premises in Mountain View, and it’s encouraging to see that Silicon Valley startup culture is producing such good returns for robotics, both for robotics professionals and for the hopes of robot companies looking for investors. The time is ripe for consumer oriented robots that are more than toys. Sophisticated robotics have become affordable – largely by leveraging smartphone and tablet technology and internet connectivity. This aligns with Dmitry Grishin’s background as cofounder of mail.Ru, the giant Russian mail and media service. It will be interesting to see if Grishin stays in the comfort zone of communication robotics in the future, or steps out into the world of more task oriented robotics.

“Investment in Double Robotics perfectly fits our strategy,” said Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics. “It is a consumer-oriented product with potential to fit a broad range of applications and has already generated strong consumer demand. It’s also important that the price of the product makes it accessible to the wide audience. In addition, the team has creative approach to design and is keen to build user-friendly products — both are very important focus areas for next-generation personal robotics companies. Double Robotics is well positioned to leverage the unique potential of the prominent telepresence robotics market. We have a great belief in Double Robotics team and its product.”

“We are thrilled to have Grishin Robotics and Dmitry Grishin, in particular, as our largest investor to date,” said David Cann, Co-founder of Double Robotics. “We read about the new investment firm and Dmitry’s experience in the field of robotics in June 2012 when the fund was announced. The timing was perfect, as we were just beginning the Y Combinator program with our prototype robot. After our public launch in August, we met with Grishin Robotics and were immediately impressed with their mission and deep knowledge of the robotics industry’s past mistakes and potential future. We look forward to working with Grishin Robotics in the years to come as we build our business.” [Press Release NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Sep 21, 2012)]

Double Robotics, the Ycombinator company behind ‘wheels for the ipad’ is a fantastic showcase of the new breed of affordable consumer robotics. But can they cross the chasm? These guys know how to create a beautiful accessible easy to use robot. And so far, also how to market it.

Double Robotics’ first production run has sold out with over $1 million in orders. This combination of good initial marketing, affordable price point and getting preorders has allowed Double Robotics to avoid the Series A funding bottleneck.

Good news? In general, yes. However, I don’t believe that Double Robotics have found product/market fit. They’re using a shotgun strategy to cross the chasm, to make the move from early tech adopters to mainstream customers. It might work.

This is a challenge many robotics startups will face. Do you focus on selling your robot as a completely new solution with an unknown product/market fit? Or do you spend more time doing customer development, creating product/market fit in a specific vertical?

Ultimately, this raises the question of crossing the chasm vs race to the bottom.

Geoffrey Moore’s concept of a chasm (to be crossed) in the classic adoption cycle describes the difference between early adopter customers and the general market, and the resulting dilemma. Selling to the first segment of your cycle doesn’t guarantee selling to all segments, in spite of the hype your early evangelists drum up.

Double Robotics may have > $1 million in preorders, but at $2000 ea, that’s only 500+ orders. The early tech adopter market at that price point is probably 10-100 x larger. After that, Double need a more pragmatic model.  (I would argue that selling to educational, health and govt related organizations will keep the long tail wagging happily for years to come.  The value add can be simply in increasing the tech savvy reputation of organizations, eg. for $2500 ea my organization is going to be seen to be delivering innovative technological solutions regardless of ultimate practical use.)

Double are pitching a problem solved – cheap easy to use telerobotics – rather than a product for specific market uses. When someone discovers a viable business model, then Double may have the early mover advantage but it rapidly becomes a race to the bottom.

The race to the bottom, like the tragedy of the commons and the prisoner’s dilemma, occurs when communal good is overshadowed by individual greed. The moment that a product/market fit for cheap telerobotics emerges, competition for those market segments will inspire ever cheaper solutions. Robotic vacuum cleaners have been in a similar position. Originally, iRobot, Evolution Robotics/Mint and Neato, were specialist robotics companies with vacuum cleaners as their primary product. Now companies with robotic vacuum cleaners number in the dozens, from cut price clones like Metapo and iTouchless to large consumer appliance/electronics manufacturers like Samsung.

First mover companies have to compete to retain market share with companies that don’t fund research, development, or support and this can in turn damage overall market penetration. Less tech savvy consumers (like my family) have gone to purchase a whizz-bang robot vac and come away from the experience disappointed with the lack of features, the performance, robustness and reliability. Ipods might be mp3 players but not all mp3 players are ipods.

If an idea finally matures, like robot vacuum cleaners, then the originals are also competing against large companies who can access economies of scale including in support, like Samsung. Robotics is in an interesting situation – does it become subsumed into the next product iteration, where every product has robotic features and none worth talking about. Cars are a good example. Or do the ‘robotic’ features carry enough value for niche (robotics) companies to flourish?

Is ‘wheels for your ipad’ going to be a robot company or just another ipad accessory? And can Double Robotics be more than just an early adopter robot toy?

[published on The Robot Launchpad Sept 12 2012]