Robotics Clusters
This page explores the relative strengths of the leading robotics clusters–hopefully using data rather than opinions. If the data is incomplete or incorrect, please let me know.
Cluster Activities
New England |
Silicon Valley |
Western Pennsylvania |
|
| Local Robotics Cluster | http://masstlc.org/clusters/robotics.html | http://www.svrobotics.org/ | Informal |
| Does Cluster Survey | Yes | No | No |
| AUVSI Chapter | Yes | http://www.auvsi.org/siliconvalley/Home/ | http://www.auvsi.org/Pittsburgh/Home/ |
| AUVSI Chapter Focus | Aerospace and defense technical interchange; work on technical advisory committees for standards and regulations | NASA, hobbyist UAS; relating The Valley to the wider unmanned systems community | Community convening, working on starting a student robotic manipulation competition, improving business climate for robotics businesses in Allegheny region |
| Meetup.com Test | Meetup.com “Boston” | Meetup.com “San Francisco” | Meetup.com “Pittsburgh” |
| Meet-up.com “Robot” | 5 | 14 | 1 (An anime meet-up) Update: Pittsburgh has a real robotics meet-up, I started it. |
| Meet-up.com “Hardware” | 3 | 17 | 2 |
| Other Community Support | Maker Faire | ||
| Homebrew Robotics | |||
| Swissnex | |||
| DIY Drones (Editor lives in Berkeley) | |||
| Robot Launch Pad | |||
Venture Capitalist Interest
Source: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/03/01/venture-capital-vc-funding-robotics-2011
| New England | Silicon Valley | Pittsburgh | |
| 2011 Venture Capital Funded Companies | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| Value of Deals ($M) | 34.1 (18% of global) | 95.1 (49% of global) | 26.7 (14%) |
| Counts Medorobotics as Boston, though it originated in Pittsburgh | Does not count numerous “angel” funded companies in the same size range as VC deals | This is $25M in growth capital for RedZone and a raise of $1.7M for Aethon |
Incubation
This is based on my best efforts to find incubation resources through the clusters on-line presence, reports, Xconomy, etc. Tellingly, many of the incubators that do accept hardware do not feature this prominently on their website.
| New England | Silicon Valley | Western PA | |
| Incubators Accepting Hardware | Several incubators accepting hardware (10<n<20) | Many incubators that accept hardware (n>15) | A few incubators accepting hardware (n<5) |
| Dedicated Hardware Incubation | – | Lemnos Labs (Dedicated to Hardware) | – |
| Dedicated Robotics Incubation | – | Robot Launch Pad (Dedicated Robotics Accelerator) | – |
| Hacker/DIY Spaces | Artisan’s Asylum | 3 TechShops | HackPittsburgh
TechShop (Coming Soon) |
For more on hacker spaces try: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackerspaces
Federal Government Support
Please Criticize my methodology. I’m lazy, but I at least want to have facts and data about this. But it looks like Boston gets the prize for federal support. I’m open to adjusting the methodology to just look at basic research if someone has a good way to count consistently.
| Gov. Investment (in Thousands of Dollars) | Massachusetts | California (Okay I admit it, SoCal is a big chunk) | Pennsylvania (Similarly, includes Philly) |
| “Robotic” FY2011 USAspending.gov | $86,400 | $16,500 | $35,600 |
| “Unmanned” FY2011 USAspending.gov | $329 | $33,700 | $657 |
| Total | $86,729 | $50,200 | $36,257 |
Source: USASpending.gov FY2011
Robotic:
Unmanned:
Public Companies and Workforce:
| Company (1) | Ticker | Employees (2) | Market Cap $M (3) | % of Employees | % of Market Cap | Robotics Cluster |
| Accuray |
NASDAQ:ARAY |
1,100 |
463 |
20% |
2% |
SV |
| Adept |
NASDAQ:ADEP |
183 |
43 |
3% |
0% |
SV |
| Aerovironment |
NASDAQ:AVAV |
768 |
577 |
14% |
2% |
SV |
| Hansen |
NASDAQ:HNSN |
174 |
135 |
3% |
1% |
SV |
| Intuitive Surgical |
NASDAQ:ISRG |
1,924 |
21,840 |
36% |
88% |
SV |
| iRobot |
NASDAQ:IRBT |
619 |
606 |
12% |
2% |
BOS |
| MAKO Surgical |
NASDAQ:MAKO |
429 |
1,110 |
8% |
4% |
Other |
| Stereotaxis Inc. |
NASDAQ:STXS |
171 |
13 |
3% |
0% |
Other |
| Total |
5,368 |
24,787 |
100% |
100% |
||
| Silicon Valley |
4,149 |
23,058 |
77% |
93% |
SV |
|
| Boston |
619 |
606 |
12% |
2% |
BOS |
|
| Pittsburgh |
– |
– |
0% |
0% |
PGH |
|
| Rest of U.S. |
600 |
1,123 |
11% |
5% |
Other |
|
| Total |
5,368 |
24,787 |
100% |
100% |
||
| Silicon Valley (without ISRG) |
2,225 |
1,218 |
65% |
41% |
SV | |
| Boston (without ISRG) |
619 |
606 |
18% |
21% |
BOS | |
| Pittsburgh (without ISRG) |
– |
– |
0% |
0% |
PGH | |
|
Rest of U.S. (without ISRG) |
600 |
1,123 |
17% |
38% |
Other | |
| Total |
3,444 |
2,947 |
100% |
100% |
||
| (1) Companies are U.S. public companies that have been identified by Frank Tobe’s or my own research as principally engaged in robotics | ||||||
| (2) Employee Count as of Last 10-K Filing | ||||||
| (3) Market Capitalization as of 6/24/2012 | ||||||
Sources: Everything-Robotic.com, Robotic Business Review, SEC EDGAR System, Google Finance Data retrieved 6/24/2012
Culture, State support, innovation pipeline, etc… looking for measurements
robocosmist 
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