A plant-moving robot from Harvest Automation. Source: harvestai/YouTube

In a Boston Globe story by Scott Kirsner, it was revealed that Harvest Automation’s CEO has departed, as have 3/4 of the 30 employees that worked there in 2015. The company is attempting to sell its e-commerce bot and system technology to keep the company alive.

Harvest Automation started in 2009 with a goal of providing robotic solutions to businesses that employed large numbers of low-cost labor. They found a niche within agriculture in nurseries. Growers needed labor to rearrange pots regularly. So Harvest built a rugged little robot that works in swarms to pick up and transplant pots as required. It appeared to be successful with sales doubling in each of the last two years. Their initial clients were some of their initial investors – nursery owners around the U.S. who provided guidance and industry experience as well as funding.

But then John Kawola joined the company in 2012 as CEO and promptly began to develop another labor-saving robot which was to work in warehouses: the OmniVeyor.

Watch the video of how it works here:

Kawola reasoned that the agricultural market was “interesting but small.”  The OmniVeyor was pre-marketed in 2015 and was scheduled to be launched in Spring 2016. Quoting from the Boston Globe article:

It was designed to transport a plastic totebox around a warehouse, so that workers in the aisles could simply pull an item from the shelf and drop it into the tote; then, the bot would go to the next aisle where it needed an item. At the end of the process, the bot would report to a packing station where all of the items in the order would be transferred to a box, sealed up, and sent off to the customer.

Unlike the ag robot group, the warehouse group didn’t have the range of experience offered by their nursery investors and the resulting system and robot were somewhat flawed. According to one distribution center (DC) owner who previewed Harvest’s new OmniVeyor material handling robot, the system required a platform 16″ off the ground upon which the OmniVeyor would slide totes. But warehouse space is at a premium and floor space is even more valuable. It was an unworkable solution. Innovation has to solve problems; not create them. Consequently, the DC owner wasn’t a buyer.

Nor, it seems, were any others. Let’s hope that Harvest Automation is able to find funding to keep its ag robot group going.

Amazon announced that at the end of September they had 30,000 Kiva robots at work in 13 fulfillment centers, effectively doubling the number of Kiva bots that it had in 2014. “Our intent is to use [Kiva robots and the Amazon Robotics subsidiary] more widely, so stay tuned.”

UPDATE 11-1-2015: Added Grenzebach’s G-Com storage and picking system to the list of vendors offering competing systems to Kiva’s.

Phil Hardin, Amazon’s director of investor relations also said:

The wider use of robots at fulfillment centers has had a direct impact on productivity. It’s a bit of an investment that has implications for a lot of elements of our cost structure, but we’re happy with Kiva. It has been a great innovation for us, and we think it makes the warehouse jobs better, and we think it makes our warehouses more productive.

Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012 and recently renamed it Amazon Robotics. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon. This left a big gap in the marketplace for robotic innovation in distribution and fulfillment centers because Kiva’s goods-to-man technology was taken in house by Amazon.

Distribution centers (also referred to as warehouses, DCs, fulfillment centers and package handling centers) are principal parts of the order processing and fulfillment process. As the e-commerce boom continues to grow, warehouse managers need to find new suppliers to meet their automation needs for their DCs. Amazon is just one of many online e-commerce providers in need of robots and automation; Alibaba and Jingdong in China and Flipkart and Snapdeal in India are also big e-commerce companies adding robots to their warehouses.

eCommerce is the fastest growing segment of retail. In 2013 it represented less than 10% of overall retail, but has been growing at nearly 15% annually and is expected to continue at that rate for the remainder of the decade. Online retailers are having to change their operations to meet this growing demand.

A few startups are beginning to enter the market to fill the gap left by Kiva:

Fetch Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup, recently received $23 million in equity funding from SoftBank to scale up operations. The Fetch robot is a mobile manipulator that can be autonomously deployed to pick orders and place items into a pod on the companion Freight robot, which then autonomously navigates to a packing station. Multiple Freight robots can support Fetch robots and all are coordinated and monitored by a real-time web-based communications and information system that allows warehouse managers to know where robots are, how orders are being fulfilled and inventory status.

GreyOrange, a Singapore-based Indian startup, is beginning to distribute their Butler robots — square versions of Kiva’s round robots — along with their goods-to-man warehousing system, which is also very similar to Kiva’s system of moving portable shelving to a picker/packer station for picking and then returning them to a dynamic warehouse location. GreyOrange offers exactly the same process and sells the mobile robots, mobile storage units, pick/put stations, charging devices and warehouse control system. GreyOrange received a $30 million equity investment from a group of VCs to enable international expansion to Japan and China, and hire 25 additional people in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Harvest Automation, a startup initially focused on moving potted plants from one location to another — a very labor-intensive task in the nursery segment of the agriculture industry. Their HV-100 mobile robots reduce labor headcount and costs and provide needed pot manipulation at very low cost. Now that Harvest Automation has mastered the task and successfully brought their product to market, they are expanding into the warehouse with their new TM-100 mobile material handling platform. The rugged TM-100 enables workers to pick and place goods in a cart, which then autonomously whisks off and navigates to a selected destination for further processing.

In addition to the startups mentioned above, old-line companies are also entering the market. The 55-year old German-headquartered Grenzebach Group is a good example. Grenzebach has held interests in KUKA, Inos Automation, SnoxStellar AGVs, and Swisslog – all involved in robotics, vision systems and materials handling as well as their new G-Com mobile storage and picking system. Grenzebach is still the controlling partner in all but KUKA and Swisslog. [KUKA bought back it’s shares from Grenzebach and acquired Swisslog for $357m in September, 2014.] BLG Logistics was awarded the German Logistics Award 2015 for an installation in the warehouse of a trading company of 74 Grenzebach G-Com robots, delivering goods from 800 shelves to five picking stations.

Bottom line

Amazon isn’t the only e-commerce warehouse operator adding robots to their automation arsenal.  Think Coca Cola, Walmart, Nike, Ikea, FedEx, and UPS. And there are hundreds of name-brand suppliers of warehousing automation technology such as Westfalia, Egemin, Schaefer, Swisslog, Vanderlande, Daifuku, Intelligrated, JBT, Knapp and Thiele to name just a few. There is a transition in technology to reduce fixed racking and conveyor costs in favor of dynamic storage and mobility methods. Thus far only Kiva and these new startups are offering that level of disruptive system, but the big companies are sure to enter the fray soon with competing products.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• SoftBank invests in Fetch Robotics
• Competing robotic warehouse systems
• GreyOrange gets $30m for mobile robots
• Team RBO from Berlin wins Amazon Picking Challenge convincingly
• Robots in Depth: Melonee Wise on building robots, and robot companies

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

photo: KMel Robotics

New Chinese robotics investment fund; the RIA says 2014 North American robotics set new sales record; marine robotics company gets acquired. These stories and many more … 

Kmel Robotics, the Pittsburgh-based flying entertainment robot startup that became famous when they did a show using a swarm of lighted drones at the Cannes Film Festival, sold to chipmaker Qualcomm for an undisclosed amount. Qualcomm recently partnered with TechStars to set up a San Diego-based accelerator that plans to annually fund up to a dozen robotic startups.

TM-100 robot from Harvest Automation

A Sole Source Notice of DARPA contracting with KMel to provide a fleet of fast lightweight autonomous (FLA) mini drones may have forced KMel partners to seek funding and partners to scale up. We won’t know the real reason or amounts involved until Qualcomm provides that information in their quarterly SEC filing.

Harvest Automation, located just outside of Boston, is getting $2.9 million as part payment in an as-yet uncompleted funding round to start a new product branch: the OmniVeyor, a mobile device focused on e-commerce companies moving items around their warehouses. According to the Boston Business Journal, Harvest Automation has already raised $25 million for their agricultural robots and have sold over 100 of them to more than 30 farms around the U.S. with an active sales program underway to increase those numbers significantly.

photo: Oceaneering

Oceaneering International, the Houston-based marine engineering and services company serving the offshore oil and gas industry, is buying C & C Technologies for $280 million. In the image above, one can see all the drilling, rig and oil and gas operations going on in offshore deep waters. Lafayette, LA-based C & C provides ocean-bottom mapping and survey services using customized AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles). Oceaneering has a fleet of ROVs and AUVs and a design and manufacturing unit that makes ROVs and expects to maximize use of those ROVs in support of the mapping and survey services C & C provides. The acquisition is anticipated to be completed in early April. C & C’s sister company ASV (Autonomous Surface Vehicles) is not involved in the Oceaneering acquisition.

The Robotics Industries Association (RIA) reported that 2014 was the strongest year ever for North American robotics. Their detailed statistics will be sent to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), combined with other data, and compiled into the IFR’s annual report of industrial and service robotics.

27,685 robots valued at $1.6 billion were ordered from North American companies during 2014, an increase of 28% in units and 19% in dollars over 2013. Robot shipments also set new records, with 25,425 robots valued at $1.5 billion being shipped. Shipments grew 13% in units and 6% in dollars over the previous records set in 2013.

The automotive industry was the primary driver of growth in 2014, with robot orders increasing 45% year over year. Non-automotive industries also grew at 7% over 2013. Plastics and Rubber (25%), Semiconductor and Electronics (21%), and Metals (16%) were the prominent non-automotive industries.

According to Alex Shikany, Director of Market Analysis for RIA, the fastest growing applications for robot orders in North America in 2014 were Arc Welding (+58%), Spot Welding (+57%), Assembly (+16%), and Material Handling (+11%). RIA estimates that some 230,000 robots are now at use in United States factories, placing the US second only to Japan in robot use.

Han’s Laser Technology, a Chinese provider of laser processing equipment for marking, welding, cutting, drilling and solar, has, according to China Money Network, partnered with Guosen H&S Investment Company Limited, the private equity arm of state-owned financial service company Guosen Securities Company Limited, to establish a new $160 million fund to invest in the Chinese robot and artificial intelligence sector. Han’s Laser employs 6,200 people and plans to use the fund to improve its competitiveness in high-tech sectors such as laser systems integration, linear motors and visual identity.

Resort Savers RSSV, a Chinese companies that acquires market-ready petroleum industry technologies for installation and distribution in China, particularly technologies to clean oil storage units and recover usable oil, invested $2 million for a 20% share of Worx America, a designer of automated and robotic solutions that help improve efficiency and systems output for the energy industry. The Worx automated robotic system quickly cleans and recovers clean oil from container waste sludge, resulting in increased sales and decreased tank cleaning time giving RSSV the ability to offer proprietary solutions for onshore, offshore and subsea oil production, refining, cleaning and reclamation.

These two trends are causing a double whammy for American farmers:

1.    Shifting migration patterns have come to a point where migration from the US into Mexico is slightly higher than from Mexico into the US. From a high of 2.9 million inflow from Mexico to the U.S. in the late 1990’s to the present 1.37 inflow vs. 1.39 outflow, things have radically changed.

2.    Mexican workers are moving into other industries from traditional farm work, while at the same time Mexican farms are increasing their wages in an attempt to keep farm workers from moving to higher-paying factory and office jobs, adding additional pressure on agriculture in the US.

Consequently the metrics of using robotic solutions in agriculture is rapidly changing.

Harvest Automation has provided an economic robotic solution for the nursery and greenhouse sector of the ag industry. Other companies are busy field testing various robotic devices for harvesting, pruning, weeding, providing data, etc. Things are happening fast. Stay tuned!

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Harvey: A working robot for container crops
• Harvest Automation rolls out bots for nurseries
• Lay of the land: Unmanned systems coming to commercial agriculture
• From precision farming to autonomous farming: How commodity technologies enable revolutionary impact
•  Matching technology to value creation: Drones in agriculture

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

In mid-2012, four HV-100 robots from Harvest Automation achieved an elusive milestone in robotics: the robots were purchased by a customer and began everyday farm work.  HV-100s, also known as Harvey robots, distribute and collect container-grown plants in greenhouses and on large nursery farms.  Since their introduction, more growers have adopted Harveys, and to date, Harvey robots have moved well over three million plants.

The first crop robots to achieve commercial relevance are now entering service in the nursery and greenhouse sector of agriculture.  Contrary to popular imagination, expert prediction, and much academic research, the first successful agricultural robots are engaged in activities other than fruit and vegetable picking or row crop maintenance.  This article examines the forces that drive the choice of application for commercial robots, describes an early agricultural robot, and suggests areas for further development.

Harvey’s Market

To better understand Harvey, some details of how ornamental plants are grown will be useful.  The plants (classified “specialty crops” by the USDA) for sale at your local garden store begin life under controlled conditions.  Seeds deposited into multi-well trays germinate and, after a few days, the plug containing the sprout is transplanted into a large soil-filled container.  Initially containers sit crowded together, but they soon must be moved apart, or “spaced,” so that the plants can continue to grow without entwining and damaging each other.  Although little known outside the industry, spacing is a critical operation in the life of almost every horticultural plant.  Spacing is one of several operations Harvey robots perform.

A big problem for growers is that spacing is one of the least desirable jobs on the farm.  The task involves bending over, picking up one or more containers in each hand (containers weight up to 22 pounds apiece), walking a few steps, and then bending over again to carefully place them in a specific, predefined pattern. Workers do this task daily throughout the growing season under conditions that range from >100°F heat to cold drizzle.  The work is seasonal, injuries are common, and pay is low.  Labor supply problems are widespread.

The undesirable nature of spacing work results in high turnover; growers find it difficult to predict how many workers will show up on a given day.  Shortages lead to triage.  When too few workers are available, growers perform only the most urgent jobs and neglect others.  Such compromises can affect the yield and quality of the plants and the profitability of the business.

Labor headaches give the nursery and greenhouse industry a strong incentive to adopt robots.  In fact, we have encountered virtually no growers who were unwilling to consider using robots.  The industry offers abundant opportunity for robots: in the US alone, the nursery and greenhouse sector produces about $17 billion worth of plants annually.  An estimated one to two billion container-grown plants are sold every year, and each plant is typically picked up and moved several times during its life at the farm.

Harvey’s Function

In a typical spacing operation plants loaded on a wagon are pulled to an outdoor growing bed.  A multi-tine forklift moves the closely packed plants to the ground en masse (pallets are not used).  From here, the plants must be shifted into a regular pattern that gives them room to grow.

When workers perform the spacing task they often use a grid or other guide aligned with a cord stretched along the edge of the bed.  The guide, marked with tape or paint spots, helps workers position plants accurately in the desired pattern.  The guide is advanced down the bed as workers fill in the pattern.

When robots are used for spacing, a human “robot wrangler” first extends a special robot-detectable tape (called a boundary marker) along one edge of the bed.  The wrangler then places at least one container downfield; this establishes the row where the robot will begin placing plants.  Next the wrangler dials in certain parameters via the robot’s user interface.  Parameters include the spacing pattern (rectangular versus hexagonal), the desired center-to-center distance between plants, and the bed width.  Finally, the wrangler points the robot toward the source of plants and presses the start button.

A planar laser range sensor mounted on the robot measures range every half degree throughout a 180°+ field of view.  Containers appear as semicircles in the range data.  The robot uses this information to locate and approach the nearest accessible container.  The robot grasps the container, picks it up, and then turns in the direction of the boundary marker.  Special boundary sensors scan the ground as the robot moves forward.  When sensors locate the boundary marker, the robot turns to align with and then follow the tape.  Soon the pattern of already-spaced plants comes into view.  The robot locates the next empty position in the pattern, moves to that spot, and deposits the plant it carries.  Afterward, the robot drives back up the bed looking for the next container.  The robot proceeds in this way until there are no more plants to move.

Obstacles (i.e. items that are neither plant containers nor other robots) present a challenge when they appear in the work area.  Robots attempt to respond appropriately by stopping or avoiding the obstacle.  However, current limitations in both sensing and perception leave all robots with less than a human-level appreciation of their situation.  For Harvey this means sometimes reaching for the pant leg of a stationary worker as though it were a container.  Beyond built-in programming protections, worker safety is ultimately assured by Harvey’s relatively small size and weight.  A significant advantage of small robots is that any errors they make or failures they experience become an annoyance rather than a hazard to worker well being.

Harveys can operate in teams.  They do not communicate robot-to-robot but rather recognize each other in the range sensor data.  When one robot encounters a teammate, the following robot waits for the lead robot to get out of the way before continuing with its task.

The technology built into Harvey robots is designed to be the simplest and least expensive that is able to accomplish the required task.  Two items commonly found on outdoor robots that manipulate objects are RTK-GPS for navigation and a six degree-of-freedom arm for object pose control.  Harvey uses neither.  RTK-GPS was excluded in favor of the boundary system for reasons of cost (centimeter-resolution system are expensive), reliability (GPS signal dropouts degrade performance), and user friendliness (the distinctive boundary tape ensures that workers and robots have the same understanding about where plants will be placed).  The simple nature of the manipulation task allows Harvey to perform its job using only an inexpensive, robust, one degree-of-freedom manipulator.

Harvest’s insistence on simplicity, and that every onboard system earns its keep have important consequences.  Development time is minimized and the cost of the robot becomes affordable to growers.  Also, the robots are straightforward enough that even workers with little education can use them effectively.

Harvey’s Rationale

Predictions of the imminent arrival of agricultural robots have been common for perhaps 50 years or more – see for example the Spokane Daily Chronicle’s Robot Farm Machines that Take Over Farm Work (1955), and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Robot Pickers May be a Part of the Future (1983). Robots that pick fruit or vegetables or that weed fields have often been forecast.  But rarely, if ever, has anyone foreseen small robots that would lift and carry potted plants.  Why did Harvest choose such an unanticipated application?

Like any product, a robot striving for commercial success must clear hurdles involving market, technology, and price.  First, the robot must provide a function or service that customers genuinely want.  A robot that fails this test is at best an attractive curiosity.  Second, developers must find a way to construct a reliable robot using existing technology.  Ignoring this constraint can transform a planned development into an interminable research project.  And third, the robot’s price must be competitive with existing solutions to the problem the robot is designed to address.  If the price is too high, potential customers will choose existing solutions and shun the robot.

Robots designed to accomplish long-predicted agricultural applications, say picking oranges or tomatoes, are necessarily more complex than Harvey.  Such robots await the economical solution of interesting research problems in vision, navigation and manipulation.  Harvest’s desire to reach market in a timely manner at a development cost investors were willing to support with a product customers wanted to buy forced us to look beyond commonly predicted applications.  (Some would argue that commercial developers should recoil from any type of robot researchers find interesting.)

Measured against the challenges of market, technology, and price, horticultural plant spacing is very appealing.  The market is large and potential customers are dissatisfied with the status quo.  Fortuitous aspects of the application mean that the technology needed to implement a solution can be relatively simple.

Harvey’s Future

The UN/FAO report How to Feed the World in 2050 (Rome, 2009) estimates that within 37 years world food production must increase by 70% to match demand.  The challenge is that farmers will have access to no more water or arable land than is available today.  The only option is to increase crop yield by making more efficient use of existing resources.

Every autumn at county fairs across the nation, home gardeners and backyard farmers demonstrate one response to this challenge.  By lavishing attention on each plant as it grows, these hobbyists deliver impressive yields of championship produce.  Today’s large farm machinery treats every plant the same but small agricultural robots—by caring for each plant individually—have the potential to make every plant a champion.

Yield and quality are maximized when each plant receives exactly what it requires at the moment of need.  Large numbers of small, inexpensive robots can make this possible.  Robots will constantly monitor soil and plant health.  They can add fertilizer and micro-nutrients as needed, enable pest-resistant/soil enhancing poly cultures, harvest individual fruits and vegetables at the ideal maturity level, prune plants strategically, and eliminate yield-sapping soil compaction.

Eventually the difficult problems blocking development of the long-predicted agricultural robots will be solved.  But the question is how can we avoid waiting for research breakthroughs and instead make progress today?  Harvey offers a hint.

Harvest picked the plant spacing application because it best matched practical market, technology, and cost constraints.  That same filter can be applied to direct the development of the next generation of agricultural robots.  By identifying market-worthy applications that are a small technical step from existing applications we achieve several goals.  Technological risk and time to market are minimized and the cost of the new product becomes predictable.  As an example consider two possible targets for future Harveys: harvesting pumpkins (or perhaps watermelons or cantaloupes) and maintaining food crops grown in containers.

Handling melon-like produce appears near-term because, like the containers Harvey handles now, melons are found on the ground, have a graspable cross-section similar to containers, can be distinguished from vegetation, and are not overly delicate.

Robots that minimize the cost of handling plants grown in containers could cause farmers to switch some food crops from in-ground planting to containers.  Growing crops in containers has several advantages.  Containers allow increased yield by extending the growing season: plants sprouted indoors would move outdoors once the weather warmed.  Another advantage is that, rather than have workers stoop to harvest low-growing fruit in the field, robots could bring plants to workers.

The need is great and the technology – if thoughtfully applied – is available.  The next several years should prove an exciting and productive time for robots in agriculture.

Additional Information

Harvest Automation website:  www.harvestai.com

Source: Travis Deyle, Hizook.com

This chart may not reflect all of the equity investment activity in the robotics market but it is a far cry from the $6.9 billion that went into 997 venture funded deals in web and Internet startup companies over the course of 2011. This chart also doesn’t mention the many acquisitions, strategic partnerships and mergers that occurred. The most recent is the acquisition of French Cybernetix by Technip, an oil resources and ROV service provider to the industry.

Deyle describes why he thinks VC funding for robotics is a tough nut to crack:

Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no “Google-scale” breakout success stories (i.e., IPOs). One of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm.

Although these 14 companies represent just a sliver of the 100+ robotic startups that are getting funded in one way or another, they do offer insight into those that are of interest to the venture capital community. Of the companies listed in the chart, it is interesting to note that two are foreign and the biggest investment is for a robotic hair implant device for balding men.

VGo telepresence robot, Harvest Automation’s nursery robot, Liquid Robotics’ wave glider.

1. Restoration Robotics and their new ARTAS System provide image-guided technology for hair follicle harvesting. It’s a massive market, hence the large investment. They received US FDA clearance mid-2011 and treated their first patient in August, 2011.
2. Redzone Robotics was featured by Pres. Obama last year and, in addition to the 2011 funding, received an additional $8.5 million just a few days ago. Their wastewater systems – pipe inspection and cleaning robots – provide critical environmental assistance to municipalities, contractors and engineering firms. Again, a big investment for a big marketplace.
3. Liquid Robotics and their wave gliders have been much in the news. They presently have four wave gliders traveling different paths across the Pacific and making their data available to scientists and lay people worldwide. Their gliders are valuable additions to the arsenals of scientific and environmental agencies, fisheries, aquaculture, pollution detection and resource discovery companies as well as defense/security and law enforcement agencies. Hence the large investment.
4. Aldebaran Robotics, a French company, makes the Nao and newer Romeo robots which they sell to schools and for robotic soccer and other competitions to promote STEM education, a limited but growing marketplace, hence the midrange venture investment.
5. Medrobotics is a Carnegie Mellon spin-off focused on surgical applications using flexible snake-like robotic devices for minimally-invasive procedures. Like other medical start-ups, there is a long lead time for product refinement and FDA clearances. Medrobotics has received funding in almost every year since it’s inception in 2005.
6. Tibion Corporation, is a Sunnyvale, CA start-up, providing bionic legs for stroke rehabilitation. This form of robotic-assisted rehab therapy, therapy with the use of an exoskeleton, is a big step forward from the $300,000+ fixed-position machines previously used.
7. MakerBot Industries, the 3-D printer maker for the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crowd, and featured at Maker Faires held all over the country to mammoth and enthusiastic crowds, services the DIY, prototyping, small run, and hobby communities while more expensive 3-D printers support the additive manufacturing sector. The Maker Faire Bay Area DIY innovation festival will be held in May in San Mateo, CA.
8. Harvest Automation has a lot of good things going for it: (1) many of it’s investors are the very same ag businesses that will be buyers of the robots, (2) although focused on nursery automation to begin their business, they are poised to broaden their scope into many other facets of the ag industry, and (3) the key players are experienced in the business of robotics.
9. Orbotix is the developer of the sphero smartphone-controlled robotic ball. The ball has no buttons, no battery box, no socket or cord for a charger (although it does have a cup-like charging dock). Shake it and it glows; put it on the floor and direct it anywhere with your iPhone. It’s a Bluetooth-based, wirelessly-charged device first shown at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas.
10. ThinkLabs is an Indian education company focused on science and technology. It uses simple robots, sensor enhanced devices, and robot competitions to provide hands-on inspiration for students taking their courses.
11. Precise Path Robotics began as an entity to participate in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and has migrated it’s navigation system into robotic lawn mowing and other robotic devices to provide maintenance and conditioning robots for the golf course market.
12. VGo Communications has thus far produced 2,000 telepresence robots and plans to lower the cost to near $2,000 in their next production run. You may have seen the ABC News stories about the high school student who couldn’t leave home but nevertheless, through the use of the VGo, attended the local high school, piloting his VGo from class to class and up and down the school elevator.
13. Aethon is a Pittsburgh, PA based mobile robot company that makes robotic carts and tugs for the hospital industry… tugs to pickup and deliver food, medicine, waste materials and general supplies. The company began in 2001 and has had many rounds of financing. This round of $1.74 million was less than the $2.5 million targeted.

1. CyPhy Works, a maker of small unmanned flying robots used to inspect bridges and other public infrastructure, has also received federal grants and research awards to develop its technology for both commercial, governmental and defense clients.

Travis Deyle, is a postdoc researcher at Duke and a recent PhD from GA Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he was a member of the Healthcare Robotics Lab and a frequent blogger at Hizook.com. Fortunate for us, he kept a file of 2011 venture funded robotic projects and turned it into an interesting chart:

Source: Travis Deyle, Hizook.com

This chart may not reflect all of the equity investment activity in the robotics market but it is a far cry from the $6.9 billion that went into 997 venture funded deals in web and Internet startup companies over the course of 2011. This chart also doesn’t mention the many acquisitions, strategic partnerships and mergers that occurred. The most recent is the acquisition of French Cybernetix by Technip, an oil resources and ROV service provider to the industry.

Deyle describes why he thinks VC funding for robotics is a tough nut to crack:

Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no “Google-scale” breakout success stories (i.e., IPOs). One of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm.

Although these 14 companies represent just a sliver of the 100+ robotic startups that are getting funded in one way or another, they do offer insight into those that are of interest to the venture capital community. Of the companies listed in the chart, it is interesting to note that two are foreign and the biggest investment is for a robotic hair implant device for balding men.

VGo telepresence robot, Harvest Automation’s nursery robot, Liquid Robotics’ wave glider.

1. Restoration Robotics and their new ARTAS System provide image-guided technology for hair follicle harvesting. It’s a massive market, hence the large investment. They received US FDA clearance mid-2011 and treated their first patient in August, 2011.
2. Redzone Robotics was featured by Pres. Obama last year and, in addition to the 2011 funding, received an additional $8.5 million just a few days ago. Their wastewater systems – pipe inspection and cleaning robots – provide critical environmental assistance to municipalities, contractors and engineering firms. Again, a big investment for a big marketplace.
3. Liquid Robotics and their wave gliders have been much in the news. They presently have four wave gliders traveling different paths across the Pacific and making their data available to scientists and lay people worldwide. Their gliders are valuable additions to the arsenals of scientific and environmental agencies, fisheries, aquaculture, pollution detection and resource discovery companies as well as defense/security and law enforcement agencies. Hence the large investment.
4. Aldebaran Robotics, a French company, makes the Nao and newer Romeo robots which they sell to schools and for robotic soccer and other competitions to promote STEM education, a limited but growing marketplace, hence the midrange venture investment.
5. Medrobotics is a Carnegie Mellon spin-off focused on surgical applications using flexible snake-like robotic devices for minimally-invasive procedures. Like other medical start-ups, there is a long lead time for product refinement and FDA clearances. Medrobotics has received funding in almost every year since it’s inception in 2005.
6. Tibion Corporation, is a Sunnyvale, CA start-up, providing bionic legs for stroke rehabilitation. This form of robotic-assisted rehab therapy, therapy with the use of an exoskeleton, is a big step forward from the $300,000+ fixed-position machines previously used.
7. MakerBot Industries, the 3-D printer maker for the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crowd, and featured at Maker Faires held all over the country to mammoth and enthusiastic crowds, services the DIY, prototyping, small run, and hobby communities while more expensive 3-D printers support the additive manufacturing sector. The Maker Faire Bay Area DIY innovation festival will be held in May in San Mateo, CA.
8. Harvest Automation has a lot of good things going for it: (1) many of it’s investors are the very same ag businesses that will be buyers of the robots, (2) although focused on nursery automation to begin their business, they are poised to broaden their scope into many other facets of the ag industry, and (3) the key players are experienced in the business of robotics.
9. Orbotix is the developer of the sphero smartphone-controlled robotic ball. The ball has no buttons, no battery box, no socket or cord for a charger (although it does have a cup-like charging dock). Shake it and it glows; put it on the floor and direct it anywhere with your iPhone. It’s a Bluetooth-based, wirelessly-charged device first shown at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas. 
10. ThinkLabs is an Indian education company focused on science and technology. It uses simple robots, sensor enhanced devices, and robot competitions to provide hands-on inspiration for students taking their courses.
11. Precise Path Robotics began as an entity to participate in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and has migrated it’s navigation system into robotic lawn mowing and other robotic devices to provide maintenance and conditioning robots for the golf course market.
12. VGo Communications has thus far produced 2,000 telepresence robots and plans to lower the cost to near $2,000 in their next production run. You may have seen the ABC News stories about the high school student who couldn’t leave home but nevertheless, through the use of the VGo, attended the local high school, piloting his VGo from class to class and up and down the school elevator.
13. Aethon is a Pittsburgh, PA based mobile robot company that makes robotic carts and tugs for the hospital industry… tugs to pickup and deliver food, medicine, waste materials and general supplies. The company began in 2001 and has had many rounds of financing. This round of $1.74 million was less than the $2.5 million targeted.
14. CyPhy Works, a maker of small unmanned flying robots used to inspect bridges and other public infrastructure, has also received federal grants and research awards to develop its technology for both commercial, governmental and defense clients.

Pure science is an integral part of robotics and often leads to solutions for strategic needs for an audience of willing buyers. Here are a few examples of that process from companies with products scheduled to hit the marketplace in the next four years.
Harvest Automation

• Servicing ornamental horticulture market ($35 billion industry)
• Focused on nurseries and greenhouses and their continual need to move potted plants
• Each robot to produce 10,000 hours of production and do the work of one laborer
• Will be in field beta testing in 2012; full rollout of commercial product in 2013
• This year’s field testing quite successful
• More than 10 prospective nursery clients signed on to be test sites and contributed to the development process
• Fully venture funded until 2015 projected profitability

Foxconn – throwing all the other numbers out of whack

• Building $223 million R & D and manufacturing facility to produce assembly-line robots
• Plans to go from 10M present number of robots to 300M by end of 2013 to 1MM by end of 2015
• Mammoth rollout in Western terms; but not for Asian factories
• Hiring 2,000 Taiwanese engineers and scientists to make it happen
• Foxconn has had problems managing all their employees (1.2 MM)
• Replacing 1 million dull, dirty and dangerous tasks in their own factories with robots will eliminate 500M positions; Foxconn says they are planning to move up those 500M rather than lay them off; also saves necessity to hire 500M more workers
• Robots will likely be low-level polishers, painters, welders and transporters with intricate assemblies still done by human hands

Sea Robotics

• Office of Naval Research sponsored research to develop robotic underwater device to clean ship hulls
• Science is to mimic the behavior of sea creatures
• $1 billion in excess fuel and cleaning attributable to biofouling – barnacles and biofilm adhering to ships hulls
• Hull Bug, Sea Robotics new robot, is a fully autonomous submersible that figures out how to efficiently traverse a complicated three dimensional environment consisting of the contours of a ship
• Sensors determine clean or not clean thus robot can determine the surfaces it has yet to sweep
• Other sensors inspect for barnacles and they are removed differently
• Cool and descriptive video and an in-depth report on the details of the project
• Currently being tested with deployment in 2015 across the US Navy’s fleet

These three examples are just the tip of an iceberg of near-term robot deployments. Other announcements include hoped-for companies like Heartland Robotics and the commercialization of DARPA science projects such as the ARM Project which is slated to complete in 2014, to niche robot markets like the one to maintain and inspect high voltage transmission lines from the Electric Power Research Institute due to be deployed in 2014.

Heartland Robotics’ project is a big hope for American-based robotics businesses if and when it produces a factory assistant robot – a co-robot – for small and medium-sized enterprises.  Similar to Harvest Automation – Heartland has enlisted manufacturer partners to help them help each other. No field trials yet nor planned dates given.

DARPA’s ARM Project is developing software and hardware that enables a robot to autonomously manipulate, grasp, and perform complicated tasks, with humans providing only high-level supervision. The ARM robot will be able to adapt to unstructured, dynamic environments. Imagine a two-armed security robot unzipping or unsnapping personal luggage and then rifling through searching for illegal objects and then closing it back up again.

All of this activity is online and heading for a bright robotic future and I haven’t even mentioned the healthcare field where robotic assistants of all types are flourishing and in line at the FDA and European CE agencies awaiting approvals… but that’s another story next month.

Harvest Automation didn’t start out with the idea of building robots for greenhouse operations, instead they looked around for a market where their initial efforts, to develop what was essentially a larger, more powerful version of the Roomba (without the vacuum), would be applicable outside of the initial context, instead of their having to start from a blank slate for each application.

They settled on agriculture, beginning with a machine to move potted plants around, operating alongside human workers. It isn’t hard to imagine how this platform might develop in various directions to perform other horticultural tasks, eventually evolving into a scalable system capable of applying intensive methods to large land areas. That’s not the stated goal of Harvest Automation, but the profit motive may very well lead them in that direction.