If you follow the robotics community on the twittersphere, you’ll have noticed that Rodney Brooks is publishing a series of essays on the future of robotics and AI which has been gathering wide attention.

His articles are designed to be read as stand alone essays, and in any order. Robohub will be featuring links to the articles as they come out. They are worth the read.

Steps Toward Super Intelligence IV, Things to Work on Now published on July 15, 2018.

Steps Toward Super Intelligence III, Hard Things Today published on July 15, 2018.

Steps Toward Super Intelligence II, Beyond the Turing Test published on July 15, 2018.

Steps Toward Super Intelligence I, How We Got Here published on July 15, 2018.

Bothersome Bystanders and Self Driving Cars published July 4, 2018

The Origins of “Artificial Intelligence” published April 27, 2018

Time Traveling Refugees published March 17, 2018

The Productivity Gain: Where Is It Coming From And Where Is It Going To? published February 25, 2018

My Dated Predictions published January 1, 2018

AI/ML Is Not Uniquely Powerful Enough To Need Controlling published on December 23, 2017

What If There Were Men On The Moon Today? published December 18, 2017

The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI published on September 7, 2017.

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto published on August 28, 2017.

Machine Learning Explained published on August 28, 2017.

Sawyer. Image: Rethink Robotics

Rethink Robotics, the Boston-based maker of the Baxter and Sawyer robots founded by iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks, raised an additional $18 million in an unfinished $33 million Series E round led by private equity firm Adveq. 

Previous investors who also participated in the round included Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, CRV, Highland Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs and GE Ventures.

This brings cumulative funding to $131.5 million. The new funding will be used for Rethink’s global expansion initiatives, as well as new product development.

Scott Eckert, President and CEO of Rethink said:

“As we did previously with our Series D round, we expect two closings for different investors. $18M was the initial closing and we will announce additional financing when the transactions are complete.

Sawyer is outselling Baxter ten to one, and we tripled our revenue in 2016. In China, the appetite for Sawyer has been quite high. We’ve sold a large quantity of Sawyer robots. In addition, we are looking to 2017 to be a big year for our deployments in Europe, as we expect to have additional distribution agreements in place in that region soon, as well.”

Transcript below. 

In this episode, we celebrate our 200th episode! That’s over 6000 minutes of robot goodness and nearly 8 years releasing interviews with your favorite roboticists. The podcast is all volunteer run, a special thanks to everyone on the team who’s made this possible! And thanks to all of you for listening in all these years.

To celebrate, our president Audrow Nash has invited a team of old-timers from the podcast team, and one of our favorite recurring guests, Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics.

The panel is composed of Sabine Hauert, Markus Waibel, and Peter Dürr, all co-founders of the podcast, and Per Sjöborg who’s been part of the team for many years now. They discuss their favorite episodes, what area in robotics is most interesting, their best memories, and lessons learned.

Rodney Brooks tells us about latest developments at Rethink Robotics, including their new robot Sawyer, and the Baxter Research Robot. He also tells us about the importance of science communication in a field that is prone to hype and disinformation.

Rodney Brooks
A mathematics undergraduate in his native Australia, Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. From 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, and completed his service as a Professor of Robotics. He was also the founding Director of the Institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. Rodney has been honored by election to the National Academy of Engineering, and has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the now the founder, chairman, and CTO of Rethink Robotics.

Links:

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• Rethink Robotics’ website

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Part One: Panel discussion with the Robots Podcast Team

Audrow: Our first question to the panel is: “What have been your favorite robots podcast episodes?”

Sabine: That was a really tough question. There have been so many episodes over the years – 200 of them – so it is pretty hard to choose. Dario Floreano was one of them; he’s one of the reasons the Robots Podcast exists and he started this all out of EPFL. I also really liked interviewing Bob Full about bio-inspired robots. I also interviewed Rodney Brooks a couple of times, including at the offices of Rethink Robotics. That was fun because I got to tour Rethink Robotics and have a chat with Rod over in his office.

Then there were things that were really outside the scope of what I was used to discussing or studying, like the interview with Ryan Calo, which was about the legal aspects of robotics. That’s something I hadn’t really thought about before, and talking to Ryan back then was quite helpful for me in terms of framing that discussion.

And also Radhika Nagpal – just because she’s in an area that I love and she’s a great researcher.

Audrow: What about you, Peter?

Peter: I’m with Sabine: it’s been really difficult to choose. As the audio editor for the podcast, I get to listen to all the episodes before anyone else and I’m always looking forward to each and every new episode. If you had to pin me down on one, I’m going to go for #166: Quest for Computer Vision, with Peter Corke. I work with computer vision in my day job and I really liked Peter Corke’s insightful interview and his overview over this super interesting field.

Sabine: That interview was one you did, Audrow!

Audrow: Yes, it is – thank you! …  Per, what has been your favorite episode?

Per: I like the episode from the precursor to the Robots Podcast – Talking Robots – with Robin Murphy from Texas A&M, about rescue robotics. Designing robots that actually work and do the task they’re assigned to in a very hard environment – that was great content.

The favorite interview I did had to be the with Mark Tilden in Hong Kong in his amazing apartment. There were probably – I kid you not – 5000 robots there … everything from the Wowwee robots to his BEAM Robotics stuff. It was just amazing to hear his enormous experience and see all those robots, so that was the favorite one to record for me.

But as everyone else has said, there are so many good interviews and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet so many great people. It’s really impossible to choose.

Audrow: What about you, Markus?

Markus: I’ve not been able to pick a single episode either, but I have really enjoyed the business related episodes. I guess that’s how my personal interests have evolved over the years. When we started back in 2006 with Talking Robots, our first 40 or 45 interviews were almost entirely with academics. That was about 10 years ago, and that was what was out there, mostly. But if you look over the interviews we’ve done in the past year, it turns out to be about half industry and half academia, and I think that’s an interesting development for the field.

Sabine: What’s your favorite, Audrow?

Audrow: Like everyone has been saying, it’s really hard to pick. But I think one of my favorites was # 98 on self-organizing systems with Radhika. That episode gave a great overview of the field and it was interesting listening to her describe it. Also #101 on the history and outlook of robotics with George Bekey and Rodney Brooks, because it gave a big picture of what they had seen in field. It was interesting having the interviewer pick into their wisdom, to give me a better perspective on robotics. Those have been my favorite interviews so far.

My next question for everyone is what area of robotics do you think is the most interesting, and why?

Markus: I work with drones every day – small flying machines – so obviously I have a huge interest there.

Apart from that, one area I’ve been really very excited about from the very start is the field of exoskeletons and prosthetics. I think there’s so much potential to increase our independence as we age with these technologies, and as a hobby, I closely follow how these technologies are developing and being brought to market.

Another one is speech recognition. It’s really more AI [than robotics], but I think speech recognition will completely revolutionize the way we interact with technology. Right now data is mostly entered by keyboard or by mouse, and we can’t really communicate with machines in a natural way. I think speak recognition will revolutionize the way we interact with technology across the board if we manage to solve the privacy issues associated with it – which will not be easy.

Of course the next step is then doing something with that speech. I think the prevalent solution right now is to do some type of cloud processing. But with robots like Jibo or Amazon’s Echo, there’s always the big question of whether I really want Amazon or whoever else to listen in on all the conversations I’m having in my house or in my car or in my office. I think it will be difficult to role this kind of technology out in a major way before the privacy issue is resolved.

Audrow: What about you, Per?

Per: Everybody who knows me knows that I love modular robotics and self-reconfiguring modular robotics. There are so many modular systems coming out now (even if they are not self-reconfiguring) – practical systems that are available commercially … off the shelf … and that’s really exciting to me.

I agree with Markus that we’re seeing more startups, and more business being generated around robotics, and also value provided to the customer. That’s probably one of the most exciting things I see in field of robotics as a whole.

Audrow: Peter, tell us what is most interesting to you and why?

Peter: I’m really excited about artificial intelligence. The field has made huge progress over the last few decades. We’ve been able to create computers that can beat humans at chess, and that can not only recognize images (dogs, for example), but can differentiate between them (i.e. different kinds of dogs). They can surpass humans at recognizing human faces, and so on.

We cannot match the human brain (or even animal brains) at certain tasks, but I think we’ve made huge progress in artificial intelligence and I cannot wait to see how intelligent robots will be in the near future. That’s what really excites me.

Audrow: Sabine, what is most interesting and why?

Sabine: Ten years ago when we were starting the podcast, we were worried we wouldn’t have enough material to keep the podcast going every two weeks … that we’d somehow run out of topics. That definitely hasn’t happened. Looking at the topics from the past 200 episodes, they are all very different – it really shows the breadth of the field.

If I had to pick one (and I’m biased because this is the field I work in), I’m quite excited about swarm robotics. The reason is because we have finally reached a point where we can make a thousand plus robots and have them coordinate, and these are the sheer numbers that start to make swarm robotics interesting.

An obvious application is the biomedical field because, whether you’re talking about cells or nano-robots or molecules or chemistry, these are things that work in the trillions. In large swarm numbers, a very simple entity could be helpful for detecting cancers or doing something interesting in the body. That’s the field I’m excited about right now.

Audrow: What are your best memories with the Robots Podcast, Sabine?

Sabine: Starting up the whole podcast, and getting it going.

Markus was doing the episodes for Talking Robots, along with Peter, who has always been there doing the audio. We were all at Dario Floreano’s lab at EPFL in those days, and we used to move the couch against the wall to help soundproof the room so there wouldn’t be any echo. Peter is a professional musician, so he had this super sophisticated setup with real microphones, like the ones used in radio shows. We’d have this whole setup right in the laboratory. It was really fun.

In the beginning it took a lot of time. Audrow, you’ve done an amazing job in terms of continuing the podcast and making sure that we can keep going by having it run so nicely. What’s also fun is to see how it’s evolved into something that works, that’s efficient, and to see just how global it’s become. Per is in Tokyo, Markus is in Switzerland, I’m based in the UK, and Audrow, you’re in the US. Seeing that evolution from all of us in this office at EPFL, up to something that’s this global, that’s been great.

Peter: Now that Sabine is telling the anecdotes from the early days, I have to agree that was certainly fun. I think for me it’s seeing the team grow. I’ve been the constant dinosaur in the background with new people like Audrow stepping up to make the podcast better. It’s been really nice to see.

Audrow: Thanks, Peter! Per what have been your favorite moments?

Per: Being able to work with this amazing team, and being able to go out and meet the interviewees and talk to them about what they’re doing their field. I’ve met so many interesting people doing this, and I’m just amazed by all the people I’ve come to know through this work. If anyone out there is listening, doing interviews is an amazing experience: you should try it!

Markus: I’m with Per on this one. For me, it’s all about the people and the people on this team.

I’ve been deeply impressed and inspired by the excitement, energy, dedication and tenaciousness that people have put forward to make this project come alive stay alive for nearly 10 years. Everybody who’s here today has greatly contributed to making this happen and I’m honored to be part of it.

Sabine: What about you Audrow?

Audrow: It’s working with you all. It was an amazing experience going to the same conferences and seeing everyone in person. We were often on calls like this for our weekly meetings, but seeing you in person and connecting, that’s the best part for me.

The final question I have for everyone is: what have you learned from your involvement in the Robots Podcast?

Markus: I think the key thing I’ve learned is that it really matters what people you work with. I’ve long tried to work with people who are better than me, and I think I’ve been extremely fortunate in that respect and I would recommend that to anyone.

Per: Since I’m not a robotics researcher, what I learned from doing interviews is that, when you’re face to face with this person, you’re really trying to be the voice of the listener in that situation. When I listen to an interviewee speaking, I listen in a very focused, structured way – and that’s been tremendously beneficial for me in in general.

Peter: Listening to all the past episodes I notice that the best researchers and most interesting people have a talent for explaining their research in relatively simple terms. I think that’s extremely difficult and it’s a very useful skill to have. In my opinion, if you cannot explain something in relatively simple terms, you probably haven’t really understood it. It’s quite amazing how the best researchers can explain difficult things because they understand them so well.

Sabine: Tying back to what Peter is saying, what I learned is how valuable science communication is. Of all the skills I learned during my PhD, doing the podcast was probably one of the most valuable. Talking to so many researchers about their work opens your mind to all the different areas you might be looking at during your PhD. You have to learn how to ask questions and to master each topic very quickly so that you can talk to them about it. In terms of selling yourself in the real world afterwards, being able to communicate is a key skill, whether you’re in academia or in business.

Hopefully young PhD students will do the same, and will start blogging and podcasting and doing science communication of their own.

Audrow: Alright, thank you everyone. Happy 200^th episode!

Part Two: Interview with Rodney Brooks

Sabine: Hi Rod, welcome to the Robots Podcast.

Rodney: Thanks for having me. I’m honored to be on number 200! It’s great that you’ve had so many!

Sabine: Yeah, we’re pretty excited. The podcast has been running for nearly a decade now and it’s been great to have you on this show all these years.

How has robotics changed since that first interview when you were telling us about the subsumption architecture?

Rodney: Well, in the last ten years a bunch of things have changed.

In terms of subsumption robots, there are now at least 14 million of them out there in the world, so that’s pretty good. There weren’t anywhere near that many ten years ago. The iRobot Roomba is really a subsumption-based robot, and it’s been pretty successful in that niche.

I think the other big thing that’s changed is ROS. I love ROS, but it could have easily been another competitor. It’s sort of been a winner-take-all situation. The fact that so many people are using it means that people get to work together and exchange things, and it’s really taken off and grown the research arena. It has also let people see what robots could do, helping them move toward a lot more practical applications than we had ten years ago.

Sabine: I think a lot of our listeners might go back and re-listen to your more recent interview about Rethink Robotics. How is the company doing? Can you tell us about Sawyer and how it is different from Baxter?

Rodney: We had always intended to have more than one robot, but with a common software platform. When you buy most industrial robots, it’s like buying a smart phone. The manufacturer says, “If you want a camera, you can buy that as an extra, and if you want a microphone you can buy that as an extra. Oh, and by the way, it’s possible to write programs so that it can operate as a phone if you write the code.” In other words, most industrial robots come as empty shelves.

We decided to have a software stack with intelligence that works across multiple robots, and we use the analogy that iOS runs on iPads and runs on iPhones.

Baxter was our first robot. We learnt a lot from it, it’s a great robot, and we’re still selling a lot of them. At the same time, we saw an opportunity for a smaller robot, especially in China where it could work side by side in close proximity to people. A lot of people still think that China has so much labor they couldn’t possibly want robots, but if you look at the demographics in China, the absolute number of 19 year olds is dropping by 30% over a 10-year period. Nineteen year olds are where the manufacturing labor force comes from, so China is in desperate straits in terms of labor for manufacturing.

Really good, well-run companies that make electronics for the western world will have a labor turnover rate of 16% per month. You can imagine how hard it is to run a manufacturing company when there’s such high turnover. The nice thing about that problem, though, is that the electronics manufacturers in China have had to break down the manufacturing cost into a lot of simple tasks that a new person can be trained to do in just five minutes. That’s ideal for being able put a robot in there, because it’s not a complex task with lots of judgment involved. It’s a fairly simple task that we can train a Sawyer to do in just a few minutes also, and a Sawyer doesn’t quit after a couple of months.

Sabine: The markets are very different between USA and China. Does that warrant different types of robots?

Rodney: If you go into Chinese factories (and I’ve been going into them for over 20 years), people really are just two or three inches from the next person. A Baxter is way too large to sit at one of those work stations, so we had to build a much smaller robot to go after the Chinese market. We also saw that there was a need to be able to handle five kilograms, which is more than the Baxter payload.

Also, people have hips and can lean far forward, but the robot doesn’t have hips, so we needed a long reach on the arm too. Sawyer’s arm is actually longer than Baxter’s, and it’s longer than Universal Robots’ and the Kuka iiwa as well – this is so that it can do the task that a person with hips can do.

Sabine: It’s really great to see the evolution of these robots. We have a Baxter at the Bristol Robotics lab, and that’s the first thing we show everyone when they come into the lab.

Rodney: Yes, that lab at Bristol is great by the way.

Sabine: As we mentioned, it’s our 200^th episode and we’ve been doing science communication for a long time now at the Podcast and at Robohub. I was wondering why you think it’s important for roboticists such as yourself to go out there and spread the word about robotics?

Rodney: I think it’s important so that people can understand what robots can do. We’re seeing in the press a little bit of incorrect information coming from people who are outside robotics and misunderstanding what it can do. The fear of robots taking away all jobs – I think it’s misplaced.

What’s really misplaced is the fear that robots are going to rise up and decide to take over the world. That makes no sense at all to me. But people who are well-known scientists or technologists (but not roboticists) were saying that, and I think it’s doing the whole world a disservice because there’s no chance of anything like that happening anytime soon.

Anyone who works in robotics understands that we can barely get our robots to do most things. They’re not magic machines. I think it’s important for roboticists to talk to the regular press and help them understand that. And it’s important for roboticists to talk to people like you to reach the robot-loving audience and help everyone understand what the significant research problems are that still have to be solved – because there’s plenty of them, and there’s plenty of room for new people coming with new ideas.

I think my role these days is to talk about the plausible things that robots might do in the hope that it will encourage young researchers to come up with brilliant ideas on how to do it.

Sabine: What are these plausible things?

Rodney: I think the thing that’s really going to drive robotics for the next thirty years is eldercare. If you look at demographics in Europe, in North America, in China and even more so in Japan, the ratio of older people to younger people is increasing rapidly. I just saw a statistic yesterday that within a few years a third of all people in Japan are going to be over age 65, and the ratio of people paying into their social security system for every person being supported by social security is going to go from something like 9.5:1 down to less than 2:1 over the next few years.

There are a lot of people who will not be able to pay for the services that they might want, they are living longer, and they – I should include myself – we, we will want our dignity and our independence as we’re living longer, but we’ll need help.

I see the driver assist features of cars turning cars into eldercare robots because it lets people drive safely longer, which lets them have their independence and dignity longer. I also think robots in the home are going to be necessary to help older people.

I was just at iRex, the international robotics exhibition in Japan. There were lot of industrial robots, and a lot of emergency rescue robots following from DARPA Robot Challenge type applications. But it was also interesting to see a whole bunch of booths from various research institutes and universities with robots to help the elderly, to help them with mobility in the house, help them get into bed, out of bed, to help them wash. These robot demonstrations are not going to be deployable in real homes in the next year or three or five, but I think it’s great that researchers in Japan are now turning to this as a place where they can have a real impact.

I think we’re going to need lots of robots to help the elderly so that the rest of society is not completely swamped by this massive relative number of elderly to younger people.

Sabine: I agree that’s a great application. You mentioned the hype and the misinformation. Is that something that’s changed, or has that just always been the case? And what are some of the things that you need to be mindful with your company when you communicate about your robotics today?

Rodney: I think it has changed because of the high profile of some people who have come out and said rather silly things over the last year or two.

But let’s talk about my own obligations at this company. People see our robot and they imagine it can do any task in any factory, and that’s just not true. It can only do a relatively small number of tasks. Our constant thing is to train our sales representatives on what is possible versus what someone would like the robot to do. They have to be able to effectively communicate that, so that people buy the robot with their eyes open to what it really can do for them.

I remember when Baxter was first announced, a prominent blogger said to me, “I’m so disappointed. I thought I was going to be able to have Baxter steer my yacht.” I was thinking, why would you ever think our robot could take the helm and steer a yacht? There are unbelievable expectations of robots, but a general purpose robot – it’s just not going to be able to do something like that for a long, long time.

Sabine: Maybe in another eight years for our 400^th episode?! What can we expect to interview you about by that point in time?

Rodney: I think we’re going to start to see some companies really being in the elder care space. I’m a little more sanguine about all the companies in the social robotics space … I don’t know if there’s enough room for all the companies that are saying they’re going to have social robots in the home. I’ve taken issue with the idea of companion robots – I’m not sure that’s where it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be more about physical help robots. Hopefully in eight years we’ll start to see some of that.

I think the robots we’re building with arms that are safe to interact with will let more people do research in that area. One of the reasons I’ve really pushed the team to make Baxter available as a research robot was that I thought it was important to have a platform where people didn’t need to worry about the safety of the arms, so they could start doing work with the robot in whatever field they chose. And I was hoping some would choose elder care. There are quite a few university labs that are using Baxters to do things like help an elderly person get dressed or help someone in a wheelchair, or quadriplegic to feed themselves, etc. If you used a regular old industrial arm, that would be a pretty tricky and unsafe proposition for coming into contact with people.

Even though this company is aimed at putting robots in factories, I think the technology of these safe arms is going to enable the next wave of research and companies. Within the next eight years I think we’re going to see some startups in eldercare begin to appear.

Sabine: Excellent. Thanks, Rod, for joining our 200^th episode.

Rodney: Thank you for having me. Congratulations on doing this so well for so long!

A significant obstacle to robots achieving their full potential in practical applications is the difficulty in manipulating an array of diverse objects. The Humans to Robots Lab at Brown is driving change in this area by using Baxter to collect and record manipulation experiences for one million real-world objects.

Central to the research at the Humans to Robots Lab is the standardization and distribution of learned experience, where advances on one robot in the network will improve every robot. This research seeks to exponentially accelerate the advancement in capabilities of robots around the world, and establish a framework by which the utility of these types of systems advances at a pace never before seen.

To better collaborate with labs around the world, Professor Stefanie Tellex and the team at Brown use the Baxter robot, an industrial robot platform that has the capability to automatically scan and collect a database of object models, the flexibility of an open source software development kit and an affordable price that makes the platform accessible to researchers all over the world. As a result of the Rethink Robotics Video Challenge, Brown will have an additional Baxter that will accelerate this research, while also providing new opportunities for continued experimentation.

“Our goal in creating the Rethink Robotics Video Challenge was to raise awareness of the tremendous amount of unique, cutting-edge research being conducted using collaborative robots that advances our collective education. The response far exceeded our expectations, and narrowing this down to one winner was an extremely difficult task for our judging panel,” said Rodney Brooks, founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics. “Brown was ultimately chosen as the best entry because the work being conducted by the Humans to Robots Lab at Brown University is critical to helping robots become more functional in our daily lives. There is a stark contrast between a robot and human in the ability to manipulate and handle a variety of objects, and closing that gap will open up a whole new world of robotic applications.”

Educational institutions, research labs and companies from around the world submitted an abstract and video showcasing their work with Baxter in one of three categories: engineering education, engineering research, or manufacturing skills development. The submissions encompassed a wide range of work, including elementary school STEM education, assistance to the physically and visually impaired, mobility and tele-operation, advanced and distributed machine learning and cloud-based knowledge-sharing for digital manufacturing and IoT, to name a few. After a detailed vetting process, the field was narrowed to 10 finalists from the following organizations: Brown University, Cornell University, Dataspeed Inc., Glyndwr University, Idiap Research Institute, North Carolina State University, Queens University, University of Connecticut, University of Sydney and Virginia Beach City Public Schools.

Finalist entries were reviewed by a premier panel of judges, including Rodney Brooks of Rethink Robotics; Lance Ulanoff, chief correspondent and editor-at-large of Mashable; Erico Guizzo, senior editor at IEEE Spectrum; Steve Taub, senior director, advanced manufacturing at GE Ventures; and Devdutt Yellurkar, general partner at CRV.

To view the ten finalist entries, please visit www.rethinkrobotics.com/videos.

Rethink Robotics displayed their new single-armed Sawyer robot at the RoboBusiness Conference and Expo in San Jose on Wednesday. It was Sawyer’s first public outing and the crowd of over 1,600 was paying attention.

Sawyer was running a machine tending application that required opening and closing a door and snapping pieces into place – tasks electronics manufacturers regularly need in their assembly process – and it performed perfectly. With the aid of its new Cognex camera, Sawyer is able to find what it’s looking for even when the piece isn’t exactly where it is supposed to be.

The New York Times recently put Rethink Robotics on its list of 50 technology companies likely to be valued at $1bn or more in years to come. (Also included were 3D Robotics and Airware.) Funders seem to agree, having provided $113.5m in seven rounds of funding.

During my interview with Rethink’s President and CEO Scott Eckert, at the RoboBusiness show, he outlined a rosy future for Sawyer, Rethink, and the company’s other robot, the  two-armed Baxter. Eckert confirmed that, up until recently, Baxter sales were mostly in the US and a good portion were to academia (Rethink only recently passed the 1,000 sales mark). But today, after a software update in June which enhanced Baxter’s speed and precision, its sales are increasing by 40%-70% each quarter. Sales of Sawyer are already backlogged.

It’s clear that Rethink has responded to customer feedback. The new Sawyer robot has a longer reach and more precision than Baxter. The latter has also been upgraded and is now three times faster and twice as precise as the original version. Certainly, Rethnk’s main competitor, Universal Robots, now has more to contend with.

This short video shows a General Electric division, GE Lighting, using the new Sawyer robot.

Robotiq, a Canadian provider of grippers, recently compared Rethink’s Sawyer and Universal’s UR3 robots. Here are the results:

Rethink Robotics, Xenix, Rapyuta, Perceptron, Skydio, Sarcos and JIBO have all announced substantial fundings for a wide range of robotic ventures. Plus there are some new funders joining the fray.

Andreessen Horowitz lead a $3M financing of Skydio, a Silicon Valley startup developing collision avoidance AI systems for drones.

Texas-based XENIX, the germ zapping mobile robot that received a lot of publicity amidst the Ebola news, got $25 million to scale up manufacturing to meet sales demand. A recent Forbes story suggested many additional uses for the disinfection system once it fulfills its hospital orders.

Rapyuta Robotics, a Tokyo startup, raised $3 million to build cloud-connected low-cost multi-robotic systems for indoor and outdoor security applications.

Perceptron, a Michigan vision systems integrator, acquired two small European companies for $15.9 million:

• Coord3, an Italy-based coordinate measuring machine (CMM) designer and manufacturer
• And Next Metrology, a Czech Republic CMM software developer

JIBO, the Cambridge-based IndieGoGo social robot phenom that got 4,800 pre-orders and $2.3 million in crowd funding, received a $26.6 Series A equity boost to help them scale up to produce those 4,800, and hopefully many thousand more, JIBOs. Some of the money will be used to provide developers with SDK kits to help jump start JIBO with hundreds of independent apps.

Perhaps the biggest transaction of the month – but the information is presently not available – is the buyback of Sarcos from Raytheon. Salt Lake City-based Sarcos is the company made famous for their development of the colorful XOS-2 military exoskeleton and was then acquired by Raytheon in 2007. In addition to government contracts, Sarcos has also been involved in entertainment robotics such as the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas and the Jurrassic Park ride in Orlando, Florida.

Boston-based Rethink Robotics, of two-armed Baxter robot fame, got a just-in-time Christmas gift (announced in January) of a $26.6 million Series D equity round to sustain the company until it becomes funded through revenues.

Horizon 2020, the commission used to stimulated robotics-related development in the EU, announced their co-funding of 17 robotics-related projects totalling $87 million. Click here to review details of those 17 investments.

Finally, the small group of venture capital companies focusing on robotics and AI, Robolution, Grishin, Andreesen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Drone.VC, Bosch, Bezos, Google and Lemnos Labs, will be joined by two new ones:

• iRobot has sent up what is expected to be a $25 million fund and has already made its first investment into Paracosm, a Gainsville, FL 3D mapping software and systems developer.
• The Strategic Robotics Fund, in Charlottesville, VA, will come online sometime in the 2nd quarter.

UPDATED Jan 8: In an unannounced funding discovered by Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner, Rethink Robotics sold equity and received $26.6 million a few days before Christmas .

This funding brings Rethink Robotics’ total venture capital to $100.1 million according to CrunchBase. Highland Capital Partners, Sigma Prime Ventures, and CRV (formerly Charles River Ventures) participated in this round, along with new investors GE Ventures and Goldman Sachs. [According to a Rethink spokesman, Baxter robots are already deployed at multiple GE sites attesting to the rapidly changing manufacturing landscape and Rethink’s product adaptability.]

According to Sue Siegel, CEO GE Ventures, “Advanced manufacturing is an important area of focus for GE, both as an investor and a manufacturer. Rethink Robotics is paving the way for a new era of manufacturing in which robots work safely alongside humans, providing new opportunities for manufacturers to improve their production processes.”

“The business of manufacturing is changing more rapidly today than at any time in recent history,” said George Lee, co-chairman of the global technology, media and telecom group and chief information officer for the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs.   “Smart, collaborative robotics have proven to be a significant and disruptive technology.  With a differentiated solution set, an innovative software platform and a forward-thinking product roadmap, Rethink Robotics is well positioned to lead this industry for many years to come.”

Just a year ago Rethink had a 23% layoff after receiving an $11.5 million equity round of funding in November, 2013. Since that time much has happened to improve the product and direction of the company. Baxter, Rethink’s 2-armed robot, got a boost in precision and speed in a major software upgrade at the end of the summer and subsequent sales have shown that this was what was holding up sales to factories and shops.

Rethink, is, at this time, a privately-held company, and doesn’t report its financial information. However it is thought that in the two years to date since they have been manufacturing and shipping product, only 800 Baxters have been sold. If all 800 units sold for $25k, that’s an indication of why Rethink would need this additional funding to sustain its operations and 70+ employes until they hit a profitable (or at least break-even) run rate.

In a recent blog posting regarding what Rethink Robotics’ CTO and Chairman of the Board Rodney Brooks sees in store for 2015, he says that:

• We will begin to see large-scale deployment of collaborative and intelligent robots in manufacturing.
• This will be a breakout year for robotics research.
• It’s been exciting to watch Baxter become the gold standard of human-robot interaction, and even more exciting to see some of the tremendous work talented students and engineers are doing with our robot. And much of their work has nothing to do with improving manufacturing, but with exploring the use of robots in healthcare, elder care, and other endeavors that are critical to the future of our society.
• Emerging technology will be designed to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

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

• Rethink Robotics downsizing: 23% laid off
• Rethink Robotics introduces Baxter Research Robot
• Robots Podcast: Rethink Robotics
• Academic and industry collaboration (Part 1): Interview with Rodney Brooks
•  Startup Series #5: Rodney Brooks, Steve Cousins & Pioneers Festival
• Rodney Brooks: Atificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat

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

A sad day at Rethink Robotics. 21 jobs have been cut in Rethink’s first layoff.

Although Rethink Robotics is downsizing, their action is not indicative of the robotics industry, which is booming and hiring.

The Boston Globe reported that Rethink Robotics, maker of the $22,000 Baxter 2-armed robot, has cut 21 jobs from their staff of approximately 90.

In the Boston Globe article Rethink CEO Scott Eckert said:

The layoffs are the result of Rethink deciding to focus on the market segments that have been most receptive to Baxter since its launch: plastics manufacturing, consumer goods packaging, warehousing and logistics. Our volume trends are encouraging, our customer pipeline is encouraging, and we expect to see significant growth in 2014, however we will be able to achieve that in a more focused manner with fewer resources.

Since 2005, Rethink Robotics (previously named Heartland Robotics) has taken in $73.5 million from Boston-based VCs and Bezos Expeditions (the personal investment fund of Jeff Bezos), the most recent $11.5 million in November, 2013 (source: CrunchBase).

Rethink Robotics’ Rodney Brooks.

Rethink Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Rodney Brooks has been an energetic and eloquent spokesman for building and selling an affordable, safe and easy to train plug and play robot to help US manufacturers — particularly smaller shops and factories. With such a robot, Brooks assured, these businesses could increase productivity and keep jobs from migrating offshore. The two-armed Baxter robot is his vision. Thus it comes as a big surprise that Rethink needs to retrench their operations and cut 23+% of their staff to focus on the few industry sectors in which they have deployed robots.

Brooks has been right on the mark in describing the needs of small and medium-sized manufacturers. He’s defined the marketplace, defined their needs, and gotten people to accept that an easy-to-train robot can help improve productivity, be safe to work alongside and have affordable metrics. He’s even built and funded a company that ramped up to be able to produce 1,000 of these robots a year. But the robot itself doesn’t measure up to those needs at present. It’s been a work in progress — a miraculous achievement but one not fully ready for factory operations. Perhaps this highly publicized ramping up has clouded the focus on improving the product to live up to their promise (and the sizzle that Brooks has been selling).

Baxter’s main competitor has many of the same positive characteristics as Baxter: relatively low cost, it’s safe to work alongside humans, it’s plug and play, and training is relatively easy. Universal Robot’s UR line of robots cost a bit more and only have one arm. However, they work much faster, with more precision, can carry a heavier load and are engineered to have a longer work life.

Universal Robots has sold 2,500+ robots in 50+ countries through more than 200 distributors in the last five years. The Danish robot manufacturer added 50 people in 2013, a 100% increase in the company staff currently totaling 97 worldwide, and is hiring for 2014. They are ramping up to move into larger facilities with a much greater manufacturing capability.

Ed Mullen, the company’s National Sales Manager in North America attributes the growth of Universal Robots to the quality and capability of the robots the company has been able to create. “They meet the expectations of SMEs: a collaborative, user-friendly robot presenting a plug&play automation solution for a wide range of industries. Not only have we been able to penetrate large accounts — supplying the first collaborative robots to BMW and VW — we’ve also been able to get our robots on the shop floors of many small and medium sized businesses that never thought they’d be able to employ a robot due to cost and complexity.”

With financial news reporting big robotic acquisitions by Stryker ($1.5 billion for MAKO Surgical Robotics), Apple ($350 million for PrimeSense) and Google which has set up a robotics division and seeded it with seven start-ups and an eighth acquisition announced today – Boston Dynamics (of Big Dog, Cheetah and ATLAS fame) – it seems clear that the layoff at Rethink is not indicative of the robotics industry in general. In fact, there’s a hiring boom searching for robotics talent country-wide.

How can it be that such a prominent headliner as Rethink Robotics is regrouping? Four likely answers: (1) they were trying to do too much with too many people; (2) they were rushed to market by their VC investors; (3) they provided a product (the Baxter robot) that offered too much but didn’t do it too well; and (4) they haven’t yet finished the development of their product so that it delivers what the buyers want and need: a fast, safe, flexible, cheap and easy-to-train co-robot.

It’s not every day you get to ask pioneering robot startup founders about their journey. The Robolution panel at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna comprised Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics and previously iRobot, Steve Cousins from Savioke and previously Willow Garage, Noland Katter from Anybots, and Walter Wohlkinger and Michael Zillich of Blue Danube Robotics, a new startup from Vienna University. Between them the panelists have started or spunoff well over 15 robotics companies, started the first robotics venture fund and been hugely influential in shaping the current rapidly emerging robot startup space. ‘Fast, cheap and out of control’ was Brooks’s 1987 insight into robot exploration of the solar system, but is very apt today, as drivers like open source software, affordable COTS and crowdfunding expand possibilities.

And here’s an excerpt from a great article on Robohub.org “Is this the right time for robotic startups?” by Torsten Andre who attended the event as a startup founder.

In the end, Rodney Brooks said that the trick is to find applications where robots can do something useful and the customer is willing to pay for it. Costing over $200,000, Willow Garage’s PR2 is probably not one these robots. But, as Steve Cousins points out, robots can also be built for approximately $15,000. Assuming a lifetime of two years, robots have to generate a value of about $20 per day for an investment like this to break even – something he thinks can certainly be accomplished. He expects robots to be present in our day-to-day lives within the next few years, making this indeed the right time to found a robotic startup.

Read more from our Startup Series.

Small and medium shops and factories (SMEs) are an untapped marketplace for robotics but direly in need of automation to remain competitive in this global economy. Two new start up companies: Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots have entered that marketplace. Both companies have U.S. sales in the hundreds of units; Universal has a head start internationally and has sold about 3,000 to-date, but Rethink is way ahead in the US. Both have similar 60-100/mo manufacturing run rates – so the future looks bright for selling flexible, lightweight, low-cost robots that are easily programmed, safe for humans to work alongside, don’t require a caged or roped off area, and perform at affordable metrics.

The importance of this new robotic capability and its effect on jobs was the subject of a CBS News piece on October 5. A few of the quotes from that newscast:

• U.S. productivity and efficiency are three times greater than China.
• Baxter’s effective cost is $3 per hour.
• 3-5 million new jobs will happen this decade due to the deployment of Baxter and other co-robots.

Boston-based Rethink Robotics – the maker of the low-cost two-armed Baxter robot shown above on the left – has already begun to sell to small and medium-sized U.S. businesses (SMEs) as well as schools and colleges. They recently announced beginning to sell to European academic institutions.

Danish-based Universal Robots has started to benefit from sales from their new distributor network in the U.S. supplementing their growing European, Asian and International distributor networks and robot sales.

Each company has provided a video profiling how their client companies are using and benefitting from the use of their respective robots. Although these videos are public relations puff pieces, they are also an information resource describing the needs smaller companies have and the benefits offered by robotics.

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS

Of the two companies, for the present time, Universal Robots UR robots are better able to handle industrial tasks than Baxter robots. Universal’s UR5 and UR10 robots can handle 5 and 10 kilos respectively and have sufficient torque to pull open doors and operate hand tools. They also run faster.

Universal Robots got lots of publicity last month when it became known that a UR robot was working at a VW diesel engine production plant in Germany. It was the first publicly-known instance of a robot working alongside a human in an auto factory. In that example, the robot carefully picks up delicate glow plugs and places them into hard-to-reach drill holes alongside a human who then insulates the cylinder head. The robot acts as an assistant and enables the worker to carry out their activities in an upright, healthy posture, unlike previous methods. This week MIT Technology Review showed another Universal robot, this time at a BMW factory in South Carolina, helping workers perform door assembly by doing the strenuous task of applying door sealant thereby freeing human workers to do the less physical tasks.

In the following video, a 72-person short-run metal products maker displays two applications for their new UR robot: CNC machine tending and loading and unloading a metal bender.

[In a recent case study, machine-loaded costs for a part came to $0.97/part in the U.S. and $0.76/part in China. When a robot was used for machine tending and loading, the total cost shifted to $0.73/part in the U.S. versus $0.76/part in China (including offshore costs like duties and transportation fees). In the study, using the robot boosted efficiency. The machine utilization under manual loading was 82%, when you account for shift changes and breaks. When robots did the tending and loading, the efficiency figure approached 99%. Source: PlasticsToday and Fanuc Robotics.]

RETHINK ROBOTICS

Almost all of the big industrial robot makers have or are working on lightweight and human-friendly arms, but none are offering them at low cost, or with user-friendly training, or the plug and play and safety features. There are other robot startups in the SME marketplace – and on the horizon – but none are as far along in their development and low cost as Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots.

Rethink Robotics’ Baxter

Rethink Robotics‘ new Baxter robot is getting a software upgrade. Big deal? Actually, it is. When Rethink Robotics launched Baxter late in 2012, it was obvious that Baxter needed some improvements. Rodney Brooks promised those improvements incrementally over the next few months and year. Brooks’ vision was to have a hardware platform frequently enhanced with new software and capabilities – and it is happening as promised and on schedule.

Rethink recently launched an academic version of Baxter with a Software Development Kit (SDK) enabling users to train the robot and share their programs with other Baxter owners. Although the SDK academic version is different than the production model, after a while, the concept of an open SDK and an Apple-like app store will be enabled across Rethink’s whole product line.

Just the other day Rethink upgraded their operating system to V1.1 to make it easier to integrate existing factory machine synchronization, I/O and task sequencing and ordering systems into Baxter’s repertoire of programs – a very neat and necessary feature. Now Baxter can integrate and connect with up to 9 digital ports to existing automation systems through signaling. This new update also enables users to coordinate actions across Baxter’s two arms.

Baxters are being produced at a pace for sales of 500+ units in 2013.

Universal Robots UR5 and UR10 Robots

Danish Universal Robots (UR) has quickly built an extensive North American distributor network of 16 experienced robot integrator/distributors.

One of those new distributors, Scott Hendrickson, CEO of Olympus Controls, said: “The quality of new leads has been off the charts. Most of our existing clients are Fortune 500 companies, but now we’re able to better service small business owners on Main Street as well,” he says, attributing the growth to the cost and ease of use of the UR robot. “In typical robot solutions, you multiply the robot cost by three or more to get the end price due to safety guarding and expensive programming. None of this is necessary with the new Universal Robots.” Hendrickson went on to say: “We believe these new robots will soon cross the chasm between early adopters and mainstream users.”

“A key selling point of our robots is that they are continuously upgraded”, said UR Sales Manager Kristian Hulgard. “Once purchased, our users can expect a steady stream of software upgrades giving them access to all the new features on the latest robots to leave the factory. This makes their investment future-proof.”

UR is building 100+ robots a month of which approximately 25-30% are for customers in the U.S.

Both UR and Rethink are finding price acceptability and each have provided case studies of how their robots are being utilized.

Features Comparison

A Couple of Examples of How These Robots Are Being Used

At a Johnson & Johnson factory in Greece, a UR5 is used on a production line where it performs repetitive pick and place tasks as a link between two parts of a production line.

The robot takes bottles of cream from one production line, and places them onto the packaging line. Flexibility is the key requirement because there are several different types of cream containers coming down the line, each positioned differently.

The Greek integrator/distributor, InnoPro Technologies, which sold and installed the robot, said that J&J engineers were 100% satisfied and have even given the robot a name.

A Baxter robot has been deployed at the Rodon Group, a Hatfield, PA injection molder and is among the first plastics processors to deploy a Baxter robot. It is being used for repetitive tasks like picking up parts off a conveyor and placing them into boxes or onto a nearby packaging line.

The robot is being “trained” by the very people it is assisting. Because Baxter is oblivious to heat or noise, it can take on those “hard to fill.”

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

• Rethink Robotics is downsizing
• Unbounded Robotics launch affordable, all-purpose UBR-1
• Co-robots really ARE a BIG thing
• Factory-in-a-Day: EU FP7 invests €7.9M to make robotics affordable for SMEs

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

Rethink Robotics has announced the availability of a bundle, called the Baxter Research Robot, which includes their Baxter robot and a Software Development Kit, for US$22,000.

While there may be non-obvious differences, the robot itself appears to be identical to the Baxter Robot Rethink introduced last year. The SDK requires Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and ROS Electric.

Rethink states “The Baxter Research Robot is recommended by the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) as a research platform suitable for funding proposals.”

From left: Pete Wurman, Rodney Brooks, Russ Angold and Henrik Christensen

 

1. Manufacturing – manufacturing represents 14% of the GDP and 11% of total employment. Close to 70% of net exports from the US are related to manufacturing. Thus manufacturing and robots are a very important area to the general economic health of the country.
2. Medical Robots – with 40+% annual growth over the last few years in the number of medical procedures performed using robots, it is essential to continue to develop and deploy robot systems and to reduce the overall cost of care.
3. Healthcare – finding cost-effective robotic solutions for rehabilitation and necessary household and personal tasks for the more than 11 million Americans living with severe disabilities.
4. Service – annual growth in professional service robots (which includes inspection of power plants and infrastructure such as bridges and transmission lines) is 30%, and in domestic service applications (such as vacuums, lawnmowers and toys), the growth rate is 20%. US companies have dominated this area and it is considered economically important to maintain the momentum.
5. Space – tremendous progress in science exploration of Mars and at the space station through the use of robotics has offered important insights into how the same systems can be used in daily lives. Partnerships such as with NASA’s Robonaut team and GM, and enhanced teleoperation and remote presence consulting are examples.
6. Defense – more than 25,000 robotic systems were deployed in ground and aerial systems in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dual use opportunities are tremendous as the FAA opens civilian airspace to these types of robotic devices. In a decade, airfreight may be transported coast-to-coast or transoceanic by remotely piloted aircrafts. This is another area where US companies have dominated and it is considered important to maintain the momentum.

On Sunday, January 13, CBS News 60 Minutes reported on robots. Their focal point was jobs and the changing nature of work. As a backdrop to their comments they showed Tessla Motors’ robots retooling themselves, Adept’s robots stuffing boxes with packaged lettuce and also assembling Braun shavers, watched ReThink Robots slowly pick and place an item, saw Aethon’s tugs in action in hospital corridors and had a brief glimpse of InTouch Health’s RP-VITA remote presence medical robot and a more descriptive view of the VGo Communications VGo robot at school and for home care. In the process the reporter, Steve Kroft, discussed a new definition of robots and robotics in sharp disagreement from the definitions posed by the International Federation of Robots:

Steve Kroft said, “The broad universal definition is a machine that can perform the job of a human. The machine can be mobile or stationary, hardware or software.”

This is different than the robotic industry’s most recent tentative definition of service robots which, in short, says the following:

A robot is an actuated mechanism programmable in two or more axes with a degree of autonomy, moving within its environment, to perform intended tasks. Autonomy in this context means the ability to perform intended tasks based on current state and sensing, without human intervention.

A robot has to have at least two degrees of freedom plus autonomy. A fully autonous car (2 degrees of freedom (DoF); steering and transmission) would qualify for a mobile robot as would 3D printers. But a washing machine (1 axis; 1 DoF), airline or other kiosk, or adaptive cruise control (all which could be considered as 1 DoF) would not fall under the category of robots. Thus Kroft artfully crafted his own definition to fit what he and his camera crews saw as “robotic.”

Regarding jobs and robots, Kroft relied on the comments of two MIT professors (Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee) who jointly wrote a book entitled “Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy” in which they attempt to answer:

• Why has median income stopped rising in the US?
• Why is the share of population that is working falling so rapidly?
• Why are our economy and society becoming more unequal?

A popular explanation is that the root cause underlying these symptoms is technological stagnation — a slowdown in the kinds of ideas and inventions that bring progress and prosperity. But the two authors suggest a very different explanation. They show that there’s been no stagnation in technology — in fact, the digital revolution is accelerating at an exponential rate. They say in the 60 Minutes interview:

Technology is always creating jobs. It’s always destroying jobs. But right now the pace is accelerating. It’s faster we think than ever before in history. So as a consequence, we are not creating jobs at the same pace that we need to.

The changes are coming so quickly it’s been difficult for workers to retrain themselves and for entrepreneurs to figure out where the next opportunities may be.

The catalyst is computer learning or artificial intelligence — the ability to feed massive amounts of data into supercomputers and program them to teach themselves and improve their performance. It’s how Apple was able to create Siri, the iPhone robot, and Google its self-driving car.

We now have robots gathering intelligence and fighting wars, and robot computers trading stocks on Wall Street.

It’s all part of a massive high tech industry that’s contributed enormous productivity and wealth to the American economy but surprisingly little in the way of employment. We absolutely are creating new jobs, new companies, and entirely new industries these days. The scale and the pace of creation is astonishing.

What these companies are not doing, though, is hiring a ton of people to help them with their work. Because they don’t need that many people to work in these incredibly large and influential companies. To make that concrete, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are now all public companies. Combined, they have something close to $1 trillion in market capitalization. Together, the four of them employ fewer than 150,000 people, and that’s less than the number of new entrants into the American workforce every month and the number of employees that work for GE.

I’d love to open this up as a discussion because the IFR’s definition, still tentative as far as I know, doesn’t cover the growing marketplace of service robot-like devices that perform human tasks. CBS News 60 Minutes did this with their new definition and with their report.

The producers at CBS News 60 Minutes also provided additional web and video extras that you are sure to find of interest:

• The actual segment that appeared on TV
• The transcript of the segment
• The Robot Waltz: An Appreciation (a video of the robots that they photographed for the segment)
• An extended interview with John Dulchinos, CEO of Adept, about how technology is leveling the manufacturing playing field
• An extended interview with Rodney Brooks, CEO of ReThink Robotics, on the same subject

People appear willing to pay more to get the extra features of an iPad or tablet. Thus e-readers were a device for a particular moment in time that has been replaced by a newer technology. This process is analogous to secretaries being replaced by word processing machines and then by PCs, WordStar and Microsoft Word.

Temporary, Incremental and Transitional Solutions

CyPhyWorks new EASE drone.

A great example of a temporary solution is CyPhy Works‘ new pair of drones (EASE and PARC): timely, innovative and providing solutions for specific needs with a transitional solution: a tether.

CyPhy Works began with funding to research methods to view and analyze bridges and other potential security targets but soon concluded that conventional drones couldn’t handle the payload of cameras and instruments, sensor processing, security, and flight duration needed to get the job done.

“The biggest problem with [surveillance] robots today is they send them inside a building, they go down the stairs, no communications; they go around the corner, no comms. You go into a bunker and it’s got some rebar and you don’t get comms,” CEO Helen Greiner says.

“The problems are power and communications. It all comes down to that.”

“When you have a flying vehicle of a size, a diameter that can fit through a door comfortably, it will last for, you know, 20 minutes. And then the customers will want to carry something else, and that something else requires power, and it weighs the robot down and it ends up lasting 15 minutes, and somebody else puts something on and it ends up lasting 10 minutes, and none of it’s acceptable. You would have to be small and fly for at least a few hours to make it useful. With the filament, basically you get high-definition video images all the time, and then it has the added advantages in that it can’t be jammed, it can’t be spoofed, it can’t be intercepted. And it has unlimited power.”

Hence the tether, a clever adaption to today’s limitations enabling the drones to fly for as long as necessary, stream high-def images and sensor data to the base station for processing (instead of onboard), and with security assured (from the device at least) to the base station. [As an aside, the tether is enhanced by having the spooler autonomously controlled by the drone instead of the base station thereby reducing the chances for entanglement. Should it happen to snag or break, the vehicle can use its battery power to fly back to its point of origin.]

An example of an incremental product is the slow but steady movement toward autonomous cars. First there was adaptive cruise control (2001) which automatically adjusts your speed depending on the car in front. Next came active braking (2004), which could detect if a crash was imminent and apply the brakes if necessary. This was followed by lane assist (2008) and self parking systems. The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class by Daimler AG (ETR:DAI), will be the first car capable of fully driving itself (under certain minor limitations) by adding new rear-end sensors, pedestrian awareness and driver alertness cameras. The system will rely on 26 separate sensors, including radar and stereo cameras, to monitor traffic and pedestrians up to 650 feet in front. “Steering Assist” will steer in stop-and-start situations and at speeds up to 124 mph; it will slow entering curves but stay in its lane until the driver takes over. [This is just the beginning folks!]

Other incremental and transitionally useful consumer products include CaddyTrek‘s follow-the-golfer carts, Zodiac Marine & Pool‘s Polaris pool cleaners, Husqvarna‘s lawn mower (STO:HUSQ-B) and iRobot‘s (NASDAQ:IRBT) family of floor care products – all examples of early-adopter products for the tech savvy offering some level of utility for their stated tasks. 3D printers also fall into this category with a range of products from $300 on up to $1 million. The stocks of these companies have been highlighted by many of the analysts in recent months as great buys: Stratasys (NASDAQ:SSYS) (which just acquired competitor Objet), 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) and Arcam AB (STO:ARCM). All three stocks have doubled in the last year. Alas, MakerBot, the do-it-yourself (DIY) phenom, is still privately held.

Really Great Inventions

The da Vinci surgical system by Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG), Kiva’s warehouse robots and goods-to-man concept (Kiva was acquired by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) earlier this year), and Liquid Robotic‘s wave gliders are present-day robotics stars. Each is unique and disruptive to the way things were done and each is just a precursor to how things will be in the near future.

Less well known inventions are the inroads the larger industrial robot makers have been making with lightweight single and dual-armed robots capable of working alongside their human counterparts – without a protective barrier between them. Yaskawa Electric (TYO:6506), ABB (NYSE:ABB), KUKA (ETR:KU2), ST Robotics and Universal Robots all have new products making waves in the industry. Rethink Robotics‘ Baxter is the newest player in this trend toward robotic co-workers.

Toys, Kits and Academic Training Bots

WowWee’s Femsapien, Parrot’s AR.Drone quadcopter and Aldebaran’s Nao.

Toys like Parrot‘s (EPA:PARRO) AR.Drone quadcopter (a present-day global hit) and WowWee‘s line of robotic toys and pets (Robosapien, Roboraptor, etc.) have sold millions of units. Aldebaran‘s Nao robots have a large following in high schools and colleges partly because of their enticing humanoid form, their involvement in robotic soccer games, and their high functionality for low cost.

But there are also toys and other robotic items that whither because the developer didn’t want to be diverted into a business when all he/she wanted was to build something fresh and fun. Many of the tele-presence devices getting crowd-funding in recent months are fun-tech gimmick products with no long-term business plan or even interest in having one.

Don’t get me wrong. Robotic toys are likely to be the precursor to more useful robotic inventions – perhaps from the same inventors. But there is definitely an explosion of this kind of robotic toy – SWIVL, Autom, Sphero, Romo and Botiful being examples.

Within academia, industrial robot companies have donated and made available low-cost robots and teacher’s guides for high schools, junior colleges, tech schools and universities for years to help stimulate STEM careers and robotics in particular. Staubli’s Robot House at SCI-Arc, a leading architectural school in Southern California, is an example. But in recent years, more humanoid and open source robots are becoming affordable. Also helping speed up development are open source software resources such as Willow Garage’s ROS.

Healthcare Robotics

In a few recent articles in robotics and healthcare media, including one by the editor of Robotics Review, there has been a call for leadership – for national direction in strategic areas of the robotics industry, particularly in the area of healthcare. Henrik Christensen and the team involved with the publication and presentation of “A Roadmap for U.S. Robotics: from Internet to Robotics” began the process and it has slowly gained momentum.

Early last year President Obama established the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative which included a section for robotics. The initiative was funded with $500 million, 10% earmarked for robotics. The scope of his directive was to insure that critical (defense and security) products were manufactured by Americans in America. Tom Clancy’s new book “Threat Vector” shows just how critical this can be in his fictional account of a virus planted on a foreign-made hard drive component installed in an American-made disk integrated into a high-security American defense installation.

Other countries – the EU, Korea and Japan in particular – have public-private consortiums working on difficult problems for which solutions are in the national interest, hence the reason why they are funded. Other than the American Manufacturing Initiative, American doesn’t have any such strategically-funded national interest projects (except military and defense).

To my way of thinking, advancements in healthcare shouldn’t be held up or otherwise thwarted because of patents, research funding or other corporate or personal (selfish) rationalizations. Patient care should be paramount, profits and profitability secondary. But that’s not the way it is at present nor will it change without political intervention.

I’d like to suggest a change similar to what Henry Ford did when confronted with a similar situation 100 years ago.

In the early years of automobile development, a group owned the rights to a two-cycle gasoline engine patent. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, Henry Ford won a challenge to the patent. The result was that the patent became virtually worthless and a new association – which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association – was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all U.S. auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, those patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the U.S. entered WWII, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money – or lawsuits. The best braking system was shared by all as was the best window wiper, and many, many other inventions passed freely from one car company to the others. The result was that the user – the car driver – benefitted with the safest and best cars, no matter the brand – and the auto industry flourished as a result.

If an association like the MVMA – with a charismatic and visible leader – were to be launched in the medical robotics arena, perhaps the wonderful new inventions we’ve all read about would become available quicker and with less constraints, patents, and other hold-ups. Patients – you and I – care-givers and healthcare systems would all share in the benefits and lives saved which would come from focused development speed-ups in the robotics-related healthcare marketplace.

Speaking at CMU Robotics Institute as part of their RI Seminar Series, Rodney Brooks, Founder, Chairman, and CTO of Rethink Robotics (originally Heartland Robotics), talked about their new Baxter robot, what drove its design, and the circumstances surrounding the formation of the company. His talk is followed by about fifteen minutes of Q&A.

Link to audio file (34:39)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Rodney Brooks at the offices of Rethink Robotics about their first product Baxter, his ambition to revolutionize manufacturing and latest tips for young entrepreneurs.

Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks built his career as Professor in robotics and former Director (1997 – 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). In the 1980s, he revolutionized the field of robotics by introducing the idea that the world is its own best model, and that to be robust, robots should react to their environment (behavior-based robotics) rather than rely on complex models of the world. From this research in behavior-based robotics, Brooks then studied human-robot interactions with former graduate students, now well known researchers, such as Cynthia Breazeal and Maja Mataric. He is also a Founder, former Board Member (1990 – 2011) and former CTO (1990 – 2008) of iRobot.

In 2008, Brooks founded Rethink Robotics, a Boston-based company aimed at revolutionizing manufacturing and reducing offshoring by making low-cost robots that can easily be taught to help with different tasks on the work-floor by everyday employees. Their first product “Baxter” has five cameras and two arms, each with 7 degrees of freedom, a payload of 5 kg and equipped with interchangeable manipulators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjPFqkFyrOY

In this interview, Brooks tells us about his vision for manufacturing and the design decisions that were taken to address challenges such as vision, manipulation, and human-robot interactions. Businesses will need to “rethink” their idea of automation before embracing adaptable, compliant and human-like robots rather than typical assembly-line super-performers.

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• Rethink Robotics
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Many reporters, including myself, saw Baxter at Rethink’s headquarters in Boston in the past two months but were embargoed from writing about it until today, the launch date.

Looking at the stories – as they appear all over the web and in news print, three stand out, in my opinion, at the head of the class:

1. the Rethink Robotics press release
2. the NY Times article and video by John Markoff
3. and the in-depth story in Spectrum by Ackerman and Guizzo

Markoff’s story uses everyday language and is directed toward a wide audience – the kind of multi-layered audience, multi-interests audience unique to The NY Times; the Spectrum article is for engineers and roboticists.

As an aside, Markoff’s article makes me ever more aware of the difference between a blogger/writer and a paid reporter from a reputable news source. John’s article made me wish I could write like him. I saw what he saw, got the same demo, played with the machine similarly, heard the same details. But I came away disappointed.

• John saw, as I did, that both arms don’t work together. He wrote that they will in the next version. I couldn’t imagine them bringing the product out without the arms working together (although they are aware of each other’s location and can avoid hitting itself).
• John saw, as I did, that it was big but he just described it as a 9′ span that, with the stand, brings Baxter eye-level with a standing worker. I saw it as big and clunky.
• John heard, as I did, that the price was $22,000 yet Brooks had been touting an affordable cost of less than $15,000 for a long time and cited polls that said that the price point for new shop tools was $15,000 or less. John just wrote the facts and let it go at that.
• We both saw that the grasping mechanism was a two-fingered plastic device and heard that, in the future, third party mechanisms could be quickly retooled to enable Baxter to do different tasks. I thought this was an awkward solution and found that Baxter could only lift 5 pounds and didn’t have enough torque to push/screw in a screw which, in my opinion, would be a necessary task for any shop assistant. John just showed what it could do with it’s two fingers.
• John described the need of small shops to augment their workers with robots which can do the dull, repetitive parts of their daily work much easier, thereby freeing up the worker to do higher-level tasks. But he didn’t indicate that this version of Baxter is far away from offering that capability. Nor did he talk about other promises and expectations missing from this launch, namely an app store where Baxter’s training can be transferred to other places where other Baxters are installed.
• We both saw that Baxter’s speed was slow and its precision not too precise but John just reported what he saw; I wondered how long it would take to speed up the processing and enhance the mechanisms to be more precise.

I could go on with the comparisons but, bottom line, John Markoff deserves to work for the NY Times because he reports things as they are. Opinion and spin are left to bloggers and PR people.

Markoff only writes a robotics story every month or so; Ackerman and Guizzo write every week or so. But every day there are hundreds of stories that need sifting to see whether they fall into News or Views and if News, whether the article is applicable for our readers as they do as we do: track the business of robotics.

I wrote this meandering message because of a quote I think appropriate about Baxter: George Carlin, the late comedian said: “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”

Other stories about Baxter and Rethink Robotics from reliable sources:

• Bloomberg Businessweek: Smarter Robots, With No Pesky Uprisings
• Technology Review: Meet the Other Robots Set to Invade Manufacturing
• The Wall Street Journal: Baxter Robot Heads to Work
• PC Magazine: Meet Baxter the Robot, Your Potential New Co-Worker
• Forbes: Manufacturing Gets A Makeover With Baxter
• Popular Mechanics: It’s Time To Welcome Our Robot Underlings, Starting With Baxter
• The Engineer: Rethink Robotics Unveils Humanoid Factory Robot

Max Nisen of Business Insider wrote recently of a list of seven stock picks discovered in a Credit Suisse report on long term trends. One of those trends was increasing global automation (particularly in China) and the seven picks relate to companies poised to benefit from those needs.

The article and list prompted a series of quick personal opinions concerning almost all of their selections which I thought might be interesting to followers of the robotics industry.

Below are the seven Credit Suisse stock picks with a brief description of what the companies do, my best understanding of Credit Suisse’s reason for selecting the stock for the list, and my opinions as to the particular company.

1.  Siemens AG (NYSE:SI)
CS Reason: low PE

Source: Siemens Annual Report

Siemens derives 31% of its profits from factory automation in which they provide everything but the robots: control and monitoring systems, inspection and vision systems, sensor systems, power supplies, manufacturing and warehousing systems, etc. Siemens also makes consumer products and provides transportation systems and health care and hospital products.

FT Comment: Because Siemens is into so many different activities, they are a good conglomerate but not necessarily a good bet for automation and robotics. Their stock moves to a different drummer then a company that is devoted only to robotics such as, for example, FANUC. It may be a good conservative bet for a long-term hold… if you want to invest in conglomerates. Other conglomerates with some involvement in robotics include Textron (NYSE:TST) and Teledyne (NYSE:TDY) for example.

2.  Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK)
CS Reason: possible acquisition target

Source: Rockwell Automation Annual Report

Rockwell provides automation power, control and information systems. Many factory robot systems include Rockwell control boxes to drive their robots and integrate their activities into the larger factory system. Rockwell and its subsidiaries also provide servos, power systems and sensors.

FT Comment: Up until recently the computing power necessary to compute the complex math of robotic movement and control the multiple motors that drive a robot were offloaded into separate boxes for that purpose. Rockwell has been a leader in this field for a long time. But with the cost and size of CPUs dropping and the need for mobility in all the newer-tech robots, Rockwell may face an uncertain future and a diminishing share of the robotics ancillary products and control systems marketplace.

3.  FANUC Corp. (TYO:6954)
CS Reason: Has 20% of global robot market

FANUC is a Japanese company mainly engaged in factory automation equipment including CNC systems, laser products and all forms of robots and robotics. They just completed a new “black” factory for the production of robots for sale in China.

FT Comment: FANUC is predominantly a robotics company and hasn’t suffered too much from the tsunami disaster. They have been ramping up because there is great demand for their robots and systems in China as well as the rest of the world. Unless there emerges a Chinese competitor in the near term — such as Foxconn might become — FANUC has the potential for success over the next many years. Other robot manufacturers similar to FANUC include ABB (NYSE:ABB), KUKA (ETR:KU2), Yaskawa Electric (TYO:6506) and Adept (NASDAQ:ADEP).

4.  Delta Electronics (TPE:2308)
CS Reason: Competitive in Chinese market with high operating profits

Delta Electronics is a Taiwan-based supplier of power supplies, power switching devices, servo motors, and video and electromechanical products. Industrial automation products represent 8% of revenue but 20+% of profits.

FT Comment: Taiwan-based Delta Electronics’ motors are a staple in China and barring anything unforeseen, they are a good bet to continue that trend. However, industrial automation products are a small portion of their gross revenue, are considered a commodity product, and consequently may not be an important component of the value of the company. It may be an interesting company for other purposes, but not automation.

5.  Keyence (TYO:6861)
CS Reason: Will benefit from aging societies investment in automation

Source: Keyence Annual Report

Keyence designs and produces sensors, vision and laser imaging and range-finding technologies used in robot mobility and factory automation applications and vision systems.

FT Comment: Microsoft and PrimeSense blindsided many of the laser-scanner companies with their new-tech low-cost scanners and eloquent software. The marketplace now expects that low cost but, at present, cannot meet its needs for scanning with Kinect-like devices. [This is changing however with better and better software.] That, combined with a slow recovery from the twin economic and tsunami crises have hurt Keyence, a Japan-based company. Even though they are cash rich and profitable at present, they haven’t fully recovered from the economic crisis and their annual reports don’t seem to indicate research efforts that will enable lower cost technologies in the future. Currently there is sharp pressure on pricing and Keyence, Optech, V-Gen, Velodyne and other LIDAR and laser-scanning manufacturers are beginning to feel it. A few of these companies are embracing Kinect-like devices to supplement their product lines but I see the automation marketplace finding newer technologies at much lower cost from newly emerging companies to fill this very necessary vision/mobility task. Notable alternative vendors providing vision systems for robotics and automation include Cognex (NASDAQ:CGNX) and Raytheon (NYSE:RTN). The biggest and most known provider of laser scanners is SICK AG, a privately held company.

6.  Mitsubishi Electric (TYO:6503)
CS Reason: Market leader in computers that control automated production machines

Source: Mitsubishi Electric Annual Report

Mitsubishi Electric designs and manufactures heavy industrial electrical equipment as well as power modules, consumer electronics and robots. 20-30% of their operating profits are derived from the sale of factory automation equipment.

FT Comment: Mitsubishi has been a market leader in industrial robotics and the computers that control them. And they have a big and well-respected sales presence in China. They do not have much of a presence in the emerging service robotics sector however, and this suggests that they will do well as an industrial robotics provider but may not capture market share in either the emerging SME or service robotics markets.

7.  TECO (TPE:1504)
CS Reason: Expanding 10% market share of motors and servos

Teco AC motor drives

TECO is a Taiwanese manufacturer of all types of electrical motors and electrical control products including those used in and with robotics and factory automation. They also have a consumer products line and a big market share in China.

FT Comment: Robots and factory automation systems require all sorts of equipment and systems to do their tasks. Electrical motors and their control systems are integral to that process. But there are many providers and TECO is just one — Yaskawa Electric and ABB are names more familiar to the robotics world that provide similar servos and electrical equipment and systems. To some extent, this is a commodity business with ever-lower prices and global competition; not a particularly appealing market for the long term.

What I See:

Frank Tobe Editor/Publisher The Robot Report

The opinions expressed above are based on what I see happening in factory automation, industrial robotics and other types of robotics involved in the production, movement and handling of products over the next few years.

Industrial robotics as we know it — caged arms welding, painting and manipulating long streams of mass-produced automotive and electrical goods — will continue to grow at a healthy pace as more of the world stays competitive by automating their factories. The major players in this field are robot manufacturers KUKA, ABB, Yaskawa Motoman, Mitsubishi, FANUC and providers of ancillary systems and equipment like Rockwell Automation, Delta Electronics, Keyence, Cognex and others. Many research firms have projected steady growth for this sector at 3-5% CAGR for the rest of this decade.

Other types of factory automation may not be as visible as a robotic arm; instead it might be a process control or material handling system that is robotic in nature. This robotic-like form of automation and industrial robotics are both moving toward produce-on-demand systems which require great mechanical flexibility and complex software and systems. This is a moving target which progresses as technology does — literally changing day by day — and utilizes advanced sensors, fast computer processing, massive data manipulation and complex algorithms.

It’s not just visible robots but whole robotic-like automation systems that are enabling companies to compete with low-cost labor from off shore. This is true even in countries like China which is beginning to upgrade their product quality and worker efficiency while coping with higher wages — and they are doing this through automating as much as they can.

Far more companies are beginning to automate to stay competitive than just big factories. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are propelling the service robotics segment of the robotics industry forward to new capabilities and expectations. SMEs need robots that are plug and play, easily trainable, have vision capabilities, are super flexible and safe to work alongside — just like their iPads and apps from the App Store. Thus manufacturers of stand-alone control systems and companies that provide systems integration may not be as needed in the SME marketplace as they were (and for the time being are) for big factory robotics. New co-robot manufacturers like Rethink Robotics, Redwood Robotics and Universal Robots (Denmark), and software developers like Universal Robotics (US) and their Neocortex control system for 3D sensing of random objects and then integrating that data into user systems (e.g., into Yaskawa’s Motoman 2-armed robots) — all privately held — may become disruptive and take away market share from the bigger companies.

Up until recently, neither vision-enabled systems nor mobility in manufacturing has been economically feasible, but that is changing. Mobile robots today move things from here to there and can be summoned and instructed by iPads. Buyers expect that mobile robotic devices be self-contained and encapsulate their various systems within the device; again, no need for stand-alone control systems or systems integration except, perhaps, in the Cloud. And vision-enabled robotic systems are proliferating and making it possible to get more from existing robots.

Source: Tesla Motors

Case in point is Tesla Motors which uses multiple tools for their robots to allow them to do a quick tool changes and perform multiple functions, e.g., welding, riveting, bonding and installing a component, yet the core robots are old-style fixed-to-the-floor KUKA, Fanuc and Fronius robots and mobile SmartCarts from Motion Controls.

Almost every non-industrial robotic system (which, for lack of a better term is presently called Service Robotics) involved in making, moving or handing products, has the expectation of mobility, safety, vision, trainability without programming, and great flexibility. That is where the industry seems to be heading and the industrial players are slowly transitioning to be able to provide for that need. The companies mentioned above are beginning that transition — but not very fast because they have a healthy and profitable growing industrial market already. Perhaps newer more adventurous companies will move more quickly to capture this market segment.

There are publicly-traded exciting companies out there that will likely benefit from the trend toward automation. 3D printer companies like Stratasys (NASDAQ:SSYS) and 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) will play a key role in this emerging market sector but privately held companies like MakerBot may register to go public and give them some competition. Kiva Systems and their innovative warehousing system was recently acquired by Amazon (the acquisition occurred in lieu of Kiva going public). This reminded me how important Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is in providing material handing in addition to being an online sales force. To quote Bruce Welty in the Huffington Post:

During the California Gold Rush, there were many fortunes made and lost but one of the more enduring successes was Levi-Strauss, a clothier to all miners. Levi’s never had to worry about which miners were going to discover gold; they all needed pants. In the New American Economy, these trends all converge around advanced fulfillment capabilities. Amazon has invested in its fulfillment capability for just that reason. The “Levi-Strauss-like” opportunity of today is in Fulfillment or, more specifically, Robotic Fulfillment.