Source: RoboBusiness

We’re back from our yearly sync with the robotics industry happening at RoboBusiness. As usual, there were great talks and great people to meet. To be honest, I felt less frenzy this year than in the previous 2-3 events. Are people becoming more realistic about the promise of robots or am I just becoming immune to the ambient buzz? There were a lot of local players not at the event. Maybe they’re just busy working at making their stuff work after a surge in investment, as shown in the Boston Consulting Group presentation.

Credit: Robotiq

 What’s different this year?

Last year’s trendy topic was logistics. There were still a decent amount of content about the topic this year. While connected robots and AI were touched upon in 2015, they were in every second session this year. In 2014, Jibo was announced and this year we saw various similar ideas from companies during the Pitchfire. In 2013, telepresence was a hot topic. This year, it was totally off the radar (no Beams were running around).

Theme of the year: IoT

Just like at Automatica last summer, it almost felt like the robotics event was morphing into an IT event. So much so that Michael Loughlin — Founder and CEO of Nelmia robotics insight — joked that it looked like manufacturers forgot that their job is to build stuff.

James Kuffner, from Toyota Research, started the show with his keynote on cloud robotics, how it’s enabled by pervasive broadband communication and the public cloud. FANUC drew a lot of interest with their Zero Down Time (ZDT) system that combines connected robots and business processes to make sure that all robots are repaired before they go down. Omron and Rethink were also there to present their vision of what it means to connect robots. It rose many interesting questions about data ownership, the role of the integration channel and the many ecosystems that might arise from connecting robots.

Close second: Artificial intelligence

Source: Robotiq

Kuffner also touched on the topic in his keynote explaining that now  there are plenty of powerful open source AI, what you need is good data. Sachin Chitta from Kinema Systems was on the realistic side explaining that deep learning in computer vision has a long way to go. We need to know where something is as much as what it is. The massive quantity of data required for applying deep-learning techniques is not easy to get (you can’t scrub it off the web). In the medical side, Verb Surgical explained how they plan on using sharing of data and AI to help doctors operate, perceive and decide. Again, will they be able to get the amount of data that the new deep learning algorithms require? If they can, they will be on their way to democratize medicine, transforming the art apprentices learn from experts into a science purely based on data.

2016 pitchfire

It definitely takes guts to get on stage pitch your startup idea in 2 minutes to a panel of VCs and a crowd of attendees. Kudos to the ones who’ve done it (Catalia health, Parihug, Genesis dimensions, Franklin robotics, Kobi, Cubit, Endurance robotics, Luxrobo, iris automation, qqqtech, Scanse, Rokid, Moti and Semio).

For the most part, the pitches were really well done. Kobi Company, the lawn mower, snow blower, leaves blower robot received first place. Coming from a place where we have a lot of snow, leaves and grass to mow, I was quite surprised by the winning idea, which to me did not seem realistic at all, both from a technology and a user standpoint. My bet would have been on Catalia Health. Let’s bet on who will be more successful in 3 years?

For other companies who wanted to meet VCs one-on-one (which might be wise), there were also VC hours where you could arrange meetings. The pitchfire was sponsored by Siemens who just launched their Next47 initiative, wanting to engage more with smaller innovative companies.

Robots in China, what’s the real deal?

China has been on everybody’s mind in the robotics industry for a few years now, even more recently with the acquisition of KUKA by Midea. There were two experts at the event to enlighten us about what’s really happening with robotics in China: Tom Green from Robotics Trends and Georg Stieler from STM China.

Bottom line: Yes, there are a lot of robots sold in China, but it’s not as easy as it seems and it’s not growing as fast as the rumors go (it’s actually growing at 33% CAGR according to STM). The market is different. The lack of integration know-how is slowing adoption. Companies are starting to understand that.

For instance, Bosh is conducting integration in China even though they don’t do it in all of their other markets around the world. Georg had great insight explaining that the local Chinese robot brands succeed in the simple use cases but foreign robots are more popular in demanding robotics tasks requiring high precision and speed.

Cobots are getting mature

Collaborative robots are now over the hype, entering the plateau of productivity. I was moderating a panel of three interesting speakers. We gathered our notes in this blog post.

Tim Kelch from JR Automation, a large system integrator, presented his view of cobots. The team at JR benchmarked several cobots and installed about a dozen power and force limited robots and much more traditional roots in collaborative applications. Tim argued that their simplicity is oversold, showing several TED talks, articles and videos (including one from Robotiq) that were responsible for creating the hype and false expectations. Here are a few clarifications:

• Collaborative robots that are simple to program are URs and Rethink.
• KUKA, ABB and FANUC all have collaborative robots but are still programmed with the conventional programming tools targeted to skilled integrators.
• We never proclaimed that cobots were the most innovative robots, quite the opposite. As I mentioned in my presentation at 2013 RoboBusiness, cobots today are tools but not the most advanced autonomous robots that will become a reality in a few years.
• Another thing that we’re also pretty clear about is that the simple things are really simple with UR and Rethink, but the complex things are just as, and in some cases even more, complex than with traditional robots. That’s one of the things that we explain in our Getting started with cobots eBook and talks.
• One place where I do agree with Tim is that integrating the robots with different tooling and machines is where most of the challenge is today. That’s exactly why we work on making our products plug & play and why we created the DoF community.

Source: Robotiq

A new building block for industrial robots?

The harmonic drive is pervasive in industrial robotics. They make the component you can find in most of the industrial robots. Harmonic drives have a quasi-monopoly and represent a significant cost in most robots. That’s why everybody was intrigued to see a potential alternative developed by SRI, only to realize that it has been licensed to… Harmonic Drives.

Does the robot industry have an innovation problem?

Tony Melanson challenged the robotics industry in the audience explaining that robots are not the end of the story. It’s obvious that the industry is innovative technologically, making new things that were never possible in the past. But it’s also true that the industry must put the robot in perspective, it’s only one aspect of innovation and that innovation should cover other aspects of the business.

Silicon Valley and robotics

Source: Robotiq

I am always impressed with the robotics activity in the Valley. At the same time, I am doubtful of the big corporations who follow the herd and open an office there to invest in robotics. Yes the ecosystem has a lot to offer, but the demand is also really high. In other words, it’s really a red ocean of investors where a few good ones get the best companies and all the rest have lower quality ones. There are a lot of other untapped robotics clusters worldwide who offer great investment opportunities.

When I compare the environment, with where we are located in Quebec City, I estimate that it would have cost us 5x as much to operate Robotiq in Silicon Valley than in Canada. That means you need to get equivalent financing, growth and value increase to match it. We could definitely not have bootstrapped Robotiq there like we did here. Bootstrapping is not always the best way to go, but it should not be dismissed as a viable route if you’re in it to create a strong company in the long run. As discussed with an investor at RoboBusiness, last year’s most successful IPO was from a bootstrapped company.

RoboBusiness will stay in Silicon Valley next year, so save the date: Sep. 27-28, 2017.

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:

IBM’s Rob High chats with Nao during RoboBusiness 2015 keynote. Source: Robotics Trends via Twitter

“Cognitive computing will be to computing what transaction processing is today.” So said IBM’s Robert High in his keynote talk at RoboBusiness yesterday. In less than 10 years the volume of our business computing will change from transaction processing to cognition processing.

This is an important enough trend to stimulate IBM to put over $1 billion into their Watson group – a group working on healthcare, legal and other industry segments that can benefit from the same cognition processing technology that enabled Watson to win at Jeopardy. And it’s an important enough trend effecting the human-machine interaction space that it is noteworthy in relation to the RoboBusiness conference.

High, CTO of IBM’s Watson Group, described the emerging era of embodied cognitive computing leading to providing cognition as a service, as a 3rd hand such as a lab technician might need, or as a concierge as Jibo and Echo (and human concierges) offer, as an office assistant might provide, and in field settings like search and rescue. The cognition process involves machines interacting with humans in writing, verbally, with tactile and visual cues, and with gestures.

In another talk, ABI Research’s Dan Kara described how technology is transitioning to have constant connection to the Internet of Things (IoT) – from self-describing tags telling robots what they are – thereby supporting the robots perception and manipulation processes – to robots acting as gateways for all the IoT devices that might need to communicate with the robot and perhaps each other, to the ultimate situation of everything being ubiquitously connected to everything.

Ten winners of Robot Launch 2015 were announced – details can be found here – with the Grand Winner being CleverPet, a stylish consumer device responding to the needs of pets and their owners.

“There were winning startups in every category,” said competition organizer Andra Keay. “Every investor could find something to interest them, from cloud based simulations and new sensing technologies to eldercare, rehabilitative and social robotics.”

In the exposition hall – with over 70 exhibitors – one could see the first public appearance of the new Sawyer robot from Rethink Robotics performing a machine-tending application. Across the aisle was Softbank and Aldebaran’s Pepper robot high-fiving and smiling at passers by.

These were just a few of the highlights of day one of RoboBusiness, an annual business-focused robotics conference and trade show produced by EH Publishing.

Tomorrow’s keynote presentations include Ray Kurzweil talking about the coming merger of robots and biology.

More to follow.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to several robotics companies at the company showcase at RoboBusiness 2014, which took place in Boston, Massachusetts.

The following is an ordered list of the people interviewed.

1. Norm Domholt (1m 40s), CEO of NPC Robotics,  talks about their modular remote operate vehicle Black Dog.
2. Annemarie Laudanski (6m 20s), Lead Field Applications Engineer at Xsens, demos their inertial motion capture system.
3. Carl Vause (9m 14s), CEO of Soft Robotics, speaks about the capability of the soft robotic manipulators, which can be used to pick fruit, among other applications.
4. Konrad Fagertun (13m 56s), COO of NLinks, tells about their new robot which drills holes in ceilings – a laborious and difficult task for humans.
5. Asim Ikram (15m 51s), CEO of Neo Robotics, discusses the market for robots in the Gulf Cooperation Council region.
6. Harri Valpola (21m 40s), Head of Technology at Zen Robotics, talks about the companies waste sorting robotic system.
7. Dick Zhang (26m 15s), CEO of Identified Technology, speaks about their self-piloting aerial drone systems for automated energy, mining, and construction site monitoring, surveying, and mapping.

Links:

• Download mp3 (18.8 MB)
• Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
• Subscribe to Robots using RSS

Transcript

Norm Domholt (1m 40s), CEO of NPC Robotics:

Audrow Nash: Hi, can you introduce yourself and your company?

Norm Domholt: Yes, thank you. My name is Norm Domholt and I’m president of NPC Robotics. Today, at the show, we’re featuring and debuting our latest invention. We’ve been working on it for three years and it’s called the Black Dog.

Audrow Nash: Now, you have the Black Dog here. Can you describe it?

Norm Domholt: Black Dog is a remote control mobile platform. It’s designed modularly, so that it can be repaired in the field without probing with any sort of instruments and with the use of one particular tool – a quarter inch hex wrench. All the parts can be taken apart and replaced in minutes.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me a bit more about how it’s modular?

Norm Domholt: We realized, through our experience with Battle Box, that the teams that seemed to win were the teams that designed their robots to be repaired quickly and without the need to take apart wiring.

It’s something that can be plugged in and replaced quickly. So, we decided that there should be around eight components in here that can be replaced with the use of this one tool and they should all be modular. There are no internal wires that you have to worry about, so everything unplugs and plugs together very quickly.

Audrow Nash:  So it’s a trunk-treaded robot that has two motors driving everything and it’s three feet long, a foot tall and two feet wide?

Norm Domholt: Yes, 42 inches long, 22 inches wide and 12 inches tall. It weighs 200 pounds and it goes four miles an hour. It’s got a lot of torque. Each motor is two-and-a-half horsepower – that’s a 24volt lithium battery.

Audrow Nash: Can you give me some examples of how it could be fitted with different components in the field?

Norm Domholt: Yes. Let’s say a SWAT team buys our robot power base; there are many different applications and mission-specific needs that they could have throughout a day. For example, they go to a house with something suspicious going on inside. They can put a telescoping camera, called RibbonLift, on the robot, within – say – ten seconds. They can then maneuver it to the building from a safe distance. If they hear shots fired and see there’s no need for the camera, they can pull the robot back within seconds, take their camera off and put a 300 pound bullet-proof shield on instead. Then, a SWAT person could operate this with a thumb throttle, while crouching behind the shield, and approach the house from a safe position. He can direct it to come back and hurl a teargas canister through the window. It could be adapted to any particular use very quickly.

Audrow Nash: Very good, and can you tell me at what stage of production your company is?

Norm Domholt: We’re debuting this today. We were hoping it would be a little further along and we could operate it. Some of the electronics are not completed yet; the mechanics are almost done and the modularity is complete. The technology that’s going in is already in place and, in another two months, we’ll be testing at facilities – breaking down doors, going through hallways, up and down stairs. We’ll be testing to see how far – wirelessly – this thing can go into a building.

Audrow Nash: Who would be interested in this product?

Norm Domholt: The same people who would be interested in a multi-purpose tool. Police can use it, the home-owner… Who would use a power-base? SWAT, the oil industry, hazardous waste…

Audrow Nash: So, lots of applications?

Norm Domholt: A lot of applications, yes.

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Norm Domholt: You’re welcome, thank you.

Annemarie Laudanski (6m 20s), Lead Field Applications Engineer at Xsens:

Audrow Nash: Hi, can you introduce yourself and tell me about your company?

Annemarie Laudanski: Hi, my name is Annemarie Laudanski and I work for Xsens, we do animation promotion capture.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me about what you have set up at this booth and describe it?

Annemarie Laudanski: Today we’re trying out our inertial motion capture system. It’s a full body- measure-capture system built of 17 inertial sensors. In each of these, there are 3-D accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers. They’re used to measure the movement of arms and legs and send information wirelessly to the computer, where it’s translated into a bio-chemical model. So, we can measure exactly what someone is doing and portray that on our software.

Audrow Nash: At the booth you have a dancer?

Annemarie Laudanski: We do, yes. We hired Ashley. She’s the cheerleader for the Boston Celtics and she’s with us during the conference to showcase the use of our system.

Audrow Nash: You mentioned you were using exonorometers, gyroscopes and Megnatometers. So, it doesn’t require any external visual system to track them? You’re just taking the raw data from all of these sensors, running that through, and then feeding it to a model, to develop a person?

Annemarie Laudanski: That’s right. The exonorometers measure how fast each limb segment is moving, the gyroscopes measure the rate of turn of the limb and then we use the megnatometers to correct the drift in the other sensors. A fusion of these three sets of sensor data is sent wirelessly to the computer where it’s combined with our calibration procedure to build a human model. The calibration takes an average reading from the sensors, while the subject is standing still for five-seconds. This is a known position for taking sensor data, that then informs each of the trackers, so that the model is built correctly.

Audrow Nash: I see. As the dancer moves, it’s happening in real time.

Annemarie Laudanski: Yes, all of it is done in real time so all of the sensors are sending data at 30 bites per second to the computer and everything is shown with a latency of, at most, ten milliseconds, which is mostly due to the Microsoft operating system we are working with.

Audrow Nash: What are some applications?

Annemarie Laudanski: The applications are really wide for this type of technology. They go from entertainment purposes, where people are using it for movie and game design, to movement science, where it’s used for sport, rehabilitation or ergonomics and also human-robot interaction. So, you can even have someone in the system and driving a robot, or building up a database of human movements that can be used to program one and allow it to move like a human would.

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Annemarie Laudanski: Thank you.

Carl Vause (9m 14s), CEO of Soft Robotics:

Audrow Nash: Hi, can you introduce yourself and the company?

Carl Vause: I’m Carl Vause and this is Soft Robotics Incorporated. We’re a Boston-based company that got spun out as a research group at Harvard about a year ago. We’re taking soft robotics technology and making it real, producing commercial products to solve new problems across a variety of markets.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me about what you’ve displayed at the booth?

Carl Vause: At the booth today we have two soft hands: A very large hand for handling pumpkins, shoe bags and objects of very weighty geometry, and a small-handed, or short, robotic arm. What we wanted to show here is that, currently, there are a lot of problems with robotic manipulation. Manipulators don’t do well with soft, curvy, easily damaged objects and they don’t do well in unstructured gripping scenarios.

What we have solved using soft actuators is the ability to pick up anything with this arm, from a prickly cactus, which you would never pick up with your bare hand, to a racket ball or a cupcake. We want to show that, with almost no control system, building a very clever, soft actuator can solve a problem that has been vexing robotics: How to develop a gripper that is as adaptable and conformal as a human hand. People are spending millions of dollars to solve this problem using traditional hard robotics.

Audrow Nash: Can you describe the hand and the smaller robotic arm?

Carl Vause: One is a four-finger hand. It’s based on proprietary actuator geometry. We use vacuum to curl the fingers out of the way and they pressurize to create a grasp. We have a three-finger gripper as well. It actually has fingernails, so it can access a low profile object like a circuit board.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me some potential applications of these soft hands? I know there are a lot.

Carl Vause: A lot, but how do you interface a robot with something that has an unknown shape? Or when the position is unknown? Or something easily damaged? Agricultural processing is interesting. Picking lettuces heads, for example. There’s a danger of introducing E. coli into the food chain, so washing and cleaning lettuce. Robotics companies and the US Food and Drug Administration want to automate that task. But robots today can’t handle lettuce, because their heads vary in size, shape and weight, and they are delicate objects. So, one of the things that we really wanted to do with our soft robotic technology is unlock that market for automation, and automate data handling.

They can even work in wet conditions; there are no electrical connections here. You can sterilize them and wash them down with bleach at the end of the day. It really does bring automation into the agricultural process. It makes it a reality.

There’s also a light-weight version for working side-by-side with a human collaborator. In a lab, for example where you need to be careful what you touch. A manipulator can pick up a range of lab instruments, or tools, and hand them safely to you. It has the credentials of collaboration.

Audrow Nash: The ones that you have on display are on open feedback loops. As in, they don’t sense what they’re picking up, they just actuate. You’ve talked a little bit about embedding sensors into the fingers in the hands. Can you tell me more about that?

Carl Vause: We can easily embed sensors to give an object grasp detection. We can embed it in our proprietary manufacturing process, in simple off-the-shelf sensors and feed them back into something very basic. If you want it very simple, take an Arduino and provide passive grasp detection. That’s very simple.

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Carl Vause: Alright.

Konrad Fagertun (13m 56s), COO of NLinks:

Audrow Nash: Hi, can you introduce yourself and tell me about your company?

Konrad Fagertun: Yes, my name is Konrad Fagertun. I’m a co-founder of NLink Robotics. We’ve come all the way from Norway to Boston, to showcase the world’s first mobile drilling robot. We’re excited to be here at Robobusiness, showing what we’ve been working on for the last two years.

Audrow Nash: Can you describe the robot to me?

Konrad Fagertun: Yes. The challenge in the construction industry is hard labor – manual work – and the hardest of all is drilling holes in concrete ceilings. So, we made a mobile drilling robot. It comprises a mobile lift – that can drive around – and, on top of that, is a robotic arm holding a rotary hammer drill. It thrusts that up to the ceiling and can drill holes wherever you want. It uses lasers and cameras to position itself, so it can drill to a millimeter’s precision. This can be done hundreds of thousands of times, say for a large shopping mall or an office building. It’s repetitive work.

The robot is a little bit bigger than a man, and can reach several feet high, so you don’t have to get up on scaffolding or stairs to do the work; the operator can stand on the ground, safely at a distance. But, if he wants to get close, no problem, the robot is certified to work with humans, so it doesn’t matter if it crashes into your arm, it won’t hurt you and it’ll stop. It’s useful for electrical contractors, plumbers, mechanical engineers…

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Konrad Fagertun: Thanks.

Asim Ikram (15m 51s), CEO of Neo Robotics:

Audrow Nash: Can you introduce yourself and your company?

Asim Ikram: Yes, my name is Asim Ikram and I’m the CEO of Neo Robotics in Dubai.

Audrow Nash: What do you guys do?

Asim Ikram: We’re a new start up in Dubai, not limited to robotics. In that region, they are not exposed to robots at the moment. We are starting at the lower level, to introduce smart apps and ICT, Information Communication Technologies. Then, we want to switch to robots, because the customers are the same.

Audrow Nash: So, basically you’re acting as a liaison between companies in the US and outside for bringing robots into Dubai?

Asim Ikram: Into the GCC region – the Gulf Cooperating Countries. There are six of them in the Middle East:  Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Emirates and Qatar. They have a strong focus on technology, they’re teaching robotics and megatronics and have labs at almost every university. The industry will develop but, at the moment, there’s no pull from for robots.

Audrow Nash: What are some of the more popular technologies that are being brought to Dubai?

Asim Ikram: Not so much industrial robotics, but there are new production lines coming up that have industrial robots in the blueprint. Those lines should start operating in six months. The financing and planning is already done. Healthcare and education, that’s much further ahead. On the education side, there’s big competition between the private schools that are teaching things like systems programming. Now they’re also trying to get robots into the classrooms and teach with them. There’s a lot of movement there.

Audrow Nash: What robotics opportunities do you think there are in Dubai for engineers and entrepreneurs from the rest of the world?

Asim Ikram: There’s a lot of work in real-world drone applications. Already, highway police are using drones. They’ve also started making some national identity card deliveries with drones. Real applications of technology are moving fast. On the security side, I’ve seen a lot of civil defense robots for bomb disposal.

Audrow Nash: How did you decide to take this opportunity and form a company?

Asim Ikram: I’ve been working in this market for some time and I’ve been seeing a lot of pull in different areas. Healthcare and education are moving very fast and the industrial side will come up in the next one or two years. There are a few robotics service companies, but not many locally so I found a gap. It’s a good time to start something.

Harri Valpola(21m 40s), Head of Technology at Zen Robotics:

Audrow Nash: Can you introduce yourself and your company?

Harri Valpola: Yes, hello. I’m Harri Holopainen. I’m one of the founders of Zen Robotics Company in Helsinki, Finland. Currently, our main application is robots that have learnt to pick up waste. A little bit like WALL-E…

Audrow Nash: It looks a little different than WALL-E. Can you describe the robotic system you have?

Harri Valpola: Whereas WALL-E is cute, a small Hollywood robot, our robot is more like an large industrial scale model. It doesn’t look like a human; it’s not cute, but it works very efficiently. It’s powerful. It can lift and throw objects that weigh up to 20 kilos – 40 pounds – like they were nothing.

Audrow Nash: It looks like a conveyor belt and has robotic arms that move around and pick objects off of the conveyor belt and throw them to sort them. Am I correct?

Harri Valpola: Yes. It works in a similar way to human hands. All around the waist is a conveyor belt. The robot recognizes the objects and sorts them, exactly as a human would do, but faster. It’s also stronger and it doesn’t break.

Audrow Nash: What kind of sensors are you using to identify the material? What waste are you sorting now?

Harri Valpola: We are currently focused on construction and demolition waste. The sensors we are using are tailored for that particular waste. The most important material we’re sorting is  wood, followed by mineral-based parts and metal. We’re using sensors that can discriminate between these. They include metal detectors and spectrometers.

Audrow Nash: Where have you implemented the system and what sort of feedback are you getting from customers?

Harri Valpola: Currently, we have three customers in Europe; two in Finland and one in Holland. We’ve been developing this system for two years and now it’s working and customers are happy. We’re ready to scale up, now we have the product, so that other customers can start making use of this solution.

Audrow Nash: What’s the benefit of sorting the waste?

Harri Valpola: In Europe, at least, there are many companies that are floating in waste. Population densities are so high, there’s no place to put it. The only real option is to sort the waste. There are many valuable raw materials there. Sorting stones is not important but there are valuable metals, like copper and aluminum, and also wood. That’s particularly useful in Holland because they don’t have forests, and it can be recycled and used as a construction material.

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Harri Valpola: Thank you.

Dick Zhang (26m 15s), CEO of Identified Technology:

Audrow Nash: Interviewer:  Can you introduce yourself and tell me about your company?

Dick Zhang: My name is Dick Zhang from Identified Technologies. We build and scale drones for commercial data capture. We work with construction and energy industry clients and help deliver data and insights. We get this information either by deploying robots on the ground, or by utilizing commercial planes and helicopters. It’s very expensive, it’s very dangerous and it’s very slow.

We deliver insights by collecting massive scale amounts of data on what has happened in the past, what’s going on now and what’s going to happen in the future, through predictive capabilities.

We collect the data via a three-part system: an autonomous drone, a dock station, that swaps batteries and uploads data, and a client dashboard that can be used to interact with and control the system from the cloud, from anywhere in real time.

We’ve been working with really exciting partners in energy and construction for the last six months. I run the business, look for exposure and develop partner and client relationships.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me a bit about the demonstration – the drone, the quadcopter – you have on your booth?

Dick Zhang: The drone itself, everything inside, in terms of hardware, is really off-the-shelf components. Our dock station, that swaps batteries and outputs data, that’s all proprietary mechanical design and hardware. The software system is also proprietary. So a lot goes into flight control – safety checks, process checks, maintenance, things like that.

Audrow Nash: Swapping the batteries, is that automated?

Dick Zhang: Yes, that is automated. On the docking station, there’s a carrousel with six batteries that are always charged. It inserts another battery when the drone needs to fly.

To tell you a story, what inspired all of this was a talk with one of our clients. They run 5,000 job sites around the world. They bought an Internet tool but had no idea how they were going to train 1,500 people to use it. So I automated a system and made it self-operating and self-sufficient. We were able to employ 1,500 really rapidly across the country and across the world.

Audrow Nash: Is it totally self-sustaining?

Dick Zhang: Yes, right now all you need is a standard power plug. Future generations will evolve generators, solar panels and wind fans. But, apart from the source of power, everything happens on its own. It flies itself, captures data and swaps batteries.

Audrow Nash: What kind of navigation do you use on the drones?

Dick Zhang: Navigation in drone technology has become really sophisticated over the last couple of years. We have a combination of GPS and inertial sensors on board, so that, three or four hundred times every second, the drone is saying to itself: “I need to be in position XYZ. Right now I’m not there, but I’m close. Let me get there.” So, four hundred times every second, it’s making these corrections and adjustments so that it can fly along the path that the computer programmed.

Audrow Nash: Other than the IMU and the GPS, what other sensors do you use? Do you have a vision system for landing on the platform that swaps the batteries, and some other sensors?

Dick Zhang: Yes. Now we are working with cameras. We’ve done some early tests with our partners on infrared and gas effect. We do a lot of work in energy. As part of this start up growth, we’re going through a crafty process of crawl, walk and run. It’s the vision that enables the most capabilities, to help our clients right now, with the resources that we have. Now, to touch on how we land, that’s a huge problem. So, we built a proprietary vision system based on ultrasound. There’s a beacon and a dock and a transceiver, where you listen and triangulate.

Audrow Nash: Okay, so you use GPS to get it close enough…

Dick Zhang: Exactly.

Audrow Nash: Then the ultrasound takes over by localizing the sound somehow?

Dick Zhang: Yes, exactly.

Audrow Nash: Okay, thank you.

Dick Zhang: That was awesome. Thank you.

All audio interviews are transcribed and edited for clarity with great care, however, we cannot assume responsibility for their accuracy.

I’ve read a wide range of reports and single-topic reviews about the presentations and about some of the exhibitors at last November’s RoboBusiness Leadership Summit held in Pittsburgh. I didn’t feel that any of those reports truly captured what I saw and thought. I was there for the whole thing. So what did I see and what do I think? What stuck in my mind?

First, I’m appreciative for having been able to attend RoboBusiness. The get-together of 400 souls with a common interest in the business of robotics was certainly a good place to meet people, many of whom I’ve only corresponded with. Many came up to me after seeing my name tag and were very glowing in their comments about my two websites (The Robot Report and it’s blog Everything-Robotic). That was fun, somewhat embarrassing, yet nice to hear.

But back to RoboBusiness — the depth of content left something to be desired. As did the constant schedule of short-duration presentations and events — they left no time to mingle, chat privately, have chance encounters — without missing something (in case there was something to miss), and have dinner(s).

Dan Kara, CEO Electra Studios

Dan Kara’s keynote presentation – and his speaker/topic introductions throughout the conference – were more informative than any of the presentations themselves.  Dan talks fast and but his words are clear. He can cover a lot of territory in a short period all the while keeping people’s attention. Dan was the previous CEO of RoboBusiness but has moved on to found a start-up (Electra Studios) providing educational and research robotics products and services integrated with new-tech media tutorials and instructional guides (all presently in stealth mode).

I think the Giant Eagle Distribution Center field trip first thing on day one started me off somewhat jaded. It was a terrible showcase for Seegrid‘s robots, the sponsor of the tour. The robots appeared to need time-consuming manual entry (as well as barcoded data) to get started. Then, after the robotic lifts took the pallets to where they were to be stored, they just dropped them off; they didn’t put them away. A human worker, driving a radio-dispatched forklift, had to do that. Each unmanned drop-off saved a minute and a half of a lift operator’s time but it probably cost that in setup time.

Seegrid’s vision-guided pallet truck

Although Seegrid had four robots at the center, two were out of sight, one was idle, and the other took a very long time to instruct it about what it had aboard and where it was to go with its load. Yet all the while there were 30-year old high-bay robotic lifts that were working away picking up and storing skids of materials in 700′ long aisles and 50′ floor-to-ceiling racks. Both old and new tech were shown and the employes preferred the old — I asked them and that’s what they said. I’m a fan of Seegrid; they have some very innovative vision-guided driverless industrial-grade pallet trucks and tractors. But, at the present time, they don’t lift their load up to put it away in a rack – a temporary but serious drawback. I’ve heard rumors that Seegrid is planning to divest itself of the construction of the lifts, tugs and tractors and leave that to Raymond, a long-established global provider of lift trucks, and forklifts, and focus instead on their guidance and material handling systems. Great idea if the rumors are true. A win-win for both companies.

RoboBusiness 2012 seemed somewhat like that warehouse tour and also like the political debates of the 2012 election cycle (without the spirited rhetoric): a bit shallow with important topics either glossed over or missed entirely.

Mobi Mobil Robot by Bossa Nova Robotics

Bossa Nova Robotics‘ ballbot mobile platform Mobi launch was heavily featured at the conference when it really shouldn’t have been given that much attention. But hey, they were a paying sponsor and it was a neat presentation with a sleek and stylish ball-bot. As I see it, BN Robotics is attempting to do what iRobot, Adept and other mobile robot platform builders are already doing: providing a platform and hoping that buyers will have mobile applications which they can make work on their mobile platform. What we saw was BN’s fundraising pitch; not really their business plan. BN is trying to use a CMU patent to product engineer it down to a consumer product – a feat that they are good at doing. This iteration of the ballbot platform – for sale to academics – is an attempt to make money while trying to find a more commercial niche that can make their company profitable. Selling the platform for $20,000 is ridiculously high. Many companies have far better mobile bases for similar or less cost. The ballbot concept for home use is temporarily flawed and needs more development time. For their presentation at RoboBusiness they were required to invent and deploy a kick-stand emergency shut-off, a klunky but regulation-satisfying solution. When the folks at BN told me about their new ballbot platform, the idea was that they could provide the platform for $300. That price point would enable problem solvers to experiment with BN’s platform and somebody else’s arm(s) because the platform cost would be insignificant. When they hit that price point their Mobi mobile robot will be an exciting addition to the robotics industry. From Bossa Nova’s point of view it was a successful presentation, conference and result. They’ve sold out their production capability for the year!

Aldo Zini, CEO, Aethon and John Krolicki, VP, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

User experience is the missing element in many robotic start-up companies. I’m not referring to the sophistication built into the hardware or software; I’m talking about the user finding value and making use of that value in his daily work. At RoboBusiness much of the talk was from the perspective of the robot developer; not the robot user. One exception was the talk by John Krolicki, the VP of Facilities and Support Services, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center describing the successful use of the Aethon TUGs, and the presentation on the subject by Aethon CEO Aldo Zini. This, to me, is what the business of robotics is all about: applying technology to solve real problems – and using the metrics of the business involved to attest to its validity and value. Thus Krolicki was the best guest speaker for the audience. He showed, using metrics relevant to his operations, that Aethon’s TUGs and MedEx systems effected good results for the hospital.

Aethon’s line of TUG mobile robots

Aethon has received much press over recent months including a spot on CBS News 60-Minutes. Their revenue has surged and, in 2012, they deployed 77 TUG robots which have made 84,000 deliveries and traveled 17,000 miles doing so.

Perhaps my disappointment at RoboBusiness was that Krolicki’s and Zini’s presentations, and the whole afternoon spent on Quality of Life Robotics, were the exceptions and not the norm for the conference.

Which type of sessions do robotic business leaders want to attend? It seems to me they weren’t asked that question; rather, the sponsors dictated the agenda. Which brings up the question whether RoboBusiness is there to sell exhibition space and newsletter subscriptions or inform; to have brief presentations about robotic products or about real-world needs that can be solved with robotics; to advertise sizzle and magic or stick to the title of the conference: Leadership Summit.

The majority of the sessions left me wondering. The sponsors appeared to be the answer. The financial crisis is over and EH Publishing, the parent company to RoboBusiness, is expanding their events and subscription magazine, a weekly online report costing $1,000 per year.

Every week, robots are making 60,000 food deliveries to patients in 150 hospitals across the United States. A lovable robotic baby seal is transforming the lives of hundreds of individuals suffering from dementia in Denmark. For thousands of small business owners in manufacturing and assembly, a $20,000 robot is a welcome competitive edge after years of offshoring. And a self-driving car that has logged 100,000 miles could be commercially available in five years.

Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks (left), Russian investor Dimitri Grishin, Bosch VC Jan Westerhues, and Robotics Trends’ Richard Erb discuss robotics investment trends

A robotics conference has never been so energizing: three days of talks and demonstrations that collectively signal to a usually cautious robotics community, ‘it’s time to change the world’.

Bossa Nova Robotics debuted project mObi, a new platform for HRI research

That was RoboBusiness 2012 — for me, at least. Four-hundred robotics researchers, entrepreneurs, business managers, sales professionals, and analysts descending on a hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh certainly had their own intentions for attending the event, but for me it showed that robotics technology is capable of turning into really great products and successful businesses today, and not just for military and assembly line applications.

If, for a moment, you’re staring at your roomba puttering along your floor with a knack for failing to complete a seemingly simple task while longing for the false promises of a personal robotic butler, please bare with me. Let’s break down the key drivers and enablers that have led me to such an optimistic conclusion:

1)   Open platforms and systems integration
For a long time, most robotics researchers and developers created custom hardware and/or software for each new experiment or product, which required a lot of upfront investment just to pretty much reinvent the wheel. Someone interested in building a remote telepresence robot needed to think about motor control, chassis design, sensor interfaces and signal conditioning, power, processing, communications, and user interfaces. That’s not the case anymore, as previous articles here have discussed. Open source software such as Linux, ROS, OpenCV, and PCL have contributed to a coalescence of practices that are speeding up system development and furthering scientific research at a fascinating rate. Readily available platforms and components like Arduino, Turtlebot, Kinect, PR2, Pioneer, and NAO are doing their part on the hardware side, allowing researchers to build on and validate each other’s results. ROS was a primary topic of discussion in at least three talks at RoboBusiness, while nearly every robot or manipulator arm in the showcase featured ROS compatibility. That didn’t exist only a few years ago. In fact, one talk from CoroWare President Lloyd Spencer focused exclusively on open platforms, and Clearpath Robotics is successfully delivering ROS-running robots to real-world customers.

2)   Workforce Development
For two decades, robotics competitions at all levels of education have inspired students to become engineers. Whether it’s FIRST, VEX, BEST, Botball, the Trinity fire-fighting contest, or the various events funded by professional societies like AUVSI and IEEE, we have a generation of competition graduates who are ambassadors for robotics technology with practical expectations. They are developers, researchers, and future adopters, and that cannot be undervalued. In terms of curriculum and institutionalization within the United States, we are furthering change with efforts like Project Lead the Way that, according to Robotics Education & Competition Foundation Chairman Joe Astroth at RoboBusiness, is serving 5,000 schools and 500,000 students. Three leading universities have robotics Ph.D. programs and dozens more have M.S. and B.S. degrees, which is not an easy task for schools that tend to think along departmental and disciplinary lines. As we move forward, this new workforce with unique talents will infuse existing products and technologies with robotic elements like computer vision and autonomous navigation. Additionally, they’ll be buoyed by the country’s renewed focus on entrepreneurship and maker culture, and follow dreams for new systems borne out of their competition events and formal studies.

3)   Unmanned systems success
As I noted in my report from this year’s AUVSI Unmanned Systems conference, the market for UAVs and UGVs in defense and surveillance applications is incredibly strong. Not a week goes by without hearing a story of how a teleoperated robot on the ground saved a soldier’s or police officer’s life. These systems are delivering results (in addition to raising ethical and legal questions), and a growing ecosystem of component suppliers will continue to benefit commercial robotics applications. Furthermore, advancements in reliable communications and robust system construction will translate to better commercial products.

4) Social and Demographic changes
Several talks at RoboBusiness repeated the same demographic statistics and facts I’ve been hearing at other conferences, reports, blog, and NSF meetings for some time:

• Over 70 million 65 and older by 2030 in the U.S. alone.
• Nursing home costs increasing 10% annually.
• Half of working adults will become informal caregivers.

These numbers paint a picture of a crippled healthcare system without technological adoption that facilitates longer in-home living and more efficient patient care. In the U.S., Europe, and Japan, demographics are quickly becoming a driver for new businesses and products. For example, iRobot and InTouch Health demonstrated their new RP-VITA product, developed out of a partnership between the two companies. In fact, InTouch CEO Dr. Yulun Wang delivered his entire presentation through the telepresence robot with an impressive video quality through the hotel’s standard WiFi network. Off-site specialists can control the robot through an iPad or PC and simply click on patient locations on a map as the robot autonomously navigates to the bedside.

So that’s where we are right now, a lot of promising drivers and a small but growing number of successful businesses with increasing product adoption. While the technological challenges are immense but generally doable, we must not underestimate the systems problem – the social, cultural, and policy dynamics that can easily hamper a product’s chances.

Paro responds to touch, recognizes its surroundings, and emits real baby seal sounds

Consider the story portrayed by two back-to-back talks from Nordic countries: Adam Hagman from Sweden’s Robotdalen partnership, and Claus Risager from the Denmark Technological Institute. Robotdalen has created impressive partnerships between academia and industry to translate research into products and get them to the people who benefit most from functions such as augmented hand gripping. In both Sweden and Denmark the Bestic is a small robotic arm that helps users independently feed themselves, and it has been hugely success in transforming lives at the modest price tag of $4,000.

And then you have Paro, the cute robotic baby seal originally developed in Japan that has benefited hundreds of patients suffering from dementia across Denmark alone. Presenter Claus Risager noted that Denmark was one of the first to make a large purchase of the robots even as it didn’t quite catch on in Japan. Its healthcare system and culture have enabled the robots to serve as pet therapy for dementia patients, oftentimes calming tempers and soothing moods. I met the Paro at RoboBusiness, and it’s freaking adorable. Simple, reliable, and effective – that’s where robotics products are going.

This article first appeared on Robots in DC.

The new robot targets the thousands of small manufacturers that rely on simple, repetitive tasks in their assembly line. Baxter aims to augment the tasks human workers perform in product assembly and packaging. As Chairman and CTO Rodney Brooks discussed the company’s and product’s philosophy and features, product manager Mike Bugda removed a white sheet to unveil the red and gray robot with two (right) arms and a moving LCD screen with varying facial expressions.

In the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) symposium, researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, University of Texas at Arlington, Denmark, and Sweden discussed robotic technologies in the areas of assistive care, rehabilitation, therapy, and activities of daily life assistance. We’ll have a longer write-up later in the week, but here are some talking points:

• The QoLT center at CMU has produced 10 technologies, with several entering commercialization: VibeAttire, FPV/Whozat, SleepMedia, Distant Architect, Virtual Valet, Romibo, MemExerciser, PT Coach, Health Kiosk, Ergonomic Lift Chair
• Robotdalen in Sweden is partnering between academia, industry, and the public to accelerate prototype commercialization, which has proven very successful. One demonstrated product was a robotic sleeve that helps individuals with weak grips by augmenting them.
• Similarly, in Denmark, academic-industry partnerships are helping get robots into homes and assistive care centers. An assistive device for eating is changing the lives of hundreds of people (and going for a modest $4,000), and the Paro robot, imported from Japan, has been hugely successful in care centers to help improve positive emotions.