“Ask me anything: The answer is a robot! …I’m a roboticist.” -Dr. Rodney Brooks
2012/10/15 Leave a comment
On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending Rodney Brooks’ first public talk on the Baxter robot, “A New Class of Industrial Robots.” Although, there wasn’t a great deal of new technical information available beyond what the barrage of press exclusives has already announced, it was a fascinating look at the thought process that went into building the Baxter. I’ll attempt to share some of the ideas that he shared at Carnegie Mellon to best of my deficient note taking abilities. You can can also watch the video here.
My general impression is that the Baxter is a real product. That’s really exciting to see in robotics! We don’t get true products all that often. I mean this robot can be used by people who cannot code and don’t know how to do math. You can use a Baxter at a basic level just by pressing some buttons and moving the Baxter’s arms. A ‘power user’ might use the menu system to enable (or more likely disable) features that make the Baxter so easy to use. A forthcoming software development kit will let the robotics engineers tinker if they like. The overall impression I got however is that the Baxter is a not a fundamental breakthrough so much as a breakthrough product. It is designed around a specific set of user needs, responds to their preferences, and doesn’t attempt to do everything. I could see how it might delight people who need a box packed or something sorted.
Another interesting aspect of the Baxter is how it takes an alternative design approach to current industrial robots. The Baxter focuses on tasks that have some degree of compliance. Most industrial robots are focused on precision. It will be interesting to see how these two classes of robots end up interacting, competing, and complementing one another.
ReThink has an ambition to bring back a lot of manufacturing value to the United States. The idea that much of the drudgery in a factory can be completed at an all in cost of $3/hr definitely puts the economic rationale for taking production offshore into question. We all know that there are tremendous efficiencies achieve from having production close the large markets and design centers, this will make it possible to further substitute capital for the lowest skill labor and create many more valuable manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“Advanced Manufacturing doesn’t mean manufacturing advanced stuff.” Dr. Brooks pointed out that although employment in manufacturing has remained stable or declined over the last several decades, the output of American manufacturing has been on a nearly uninterrupted increase. This has been driven, in part, by a march up the value chain into business to business and complex products. Dr. Brooks hope that the Baxter will let us look at having
Why isn’t Baxter mobile? First, Baxter doesn’t need to be mobile to fulfill its intended function and adding mobility probably would add cost and complexity that the customers don’t require. Baxter can be moved on casters easily by a worker, but it doesn’t need to move on its own for most applications. Second, Dr. Brooks’ non-compete agreement with iRobot prevented him from working on mobile robotics until recently. Maybe, we’ll see a mobile Baxter soon.
Finally, I’m really curious to see how the end effector strategy plays out. ReThink is going to publish an interface that includes mechanical, electrical, and software specifications. Currently they provide an end effector that appears to be only a two finger gripper that can be customized for size to some degree. I’m curious if there will be a lot of end effectors that come out and to what extent the Baxter and ROS become a platform for further innovation in robotics.
The Baxter was designed in conscious analogy to the PC. Will it usher in a new age of robotics the way the PC did? From a business perspective will Baxter-type platforms become commoditized and can ReThink retain its edge? Dr. Brooks was refreshingly humble about the future, but it was clear that he is optimistic and willing to learn more from the market for this disruptive product.
If you’re going to RoboBusiness have fun at the public unveiling of the robot!
East Coast Chauvinism in Robotics: Time to Face Facts, Silicon Valley is Kicking Our Ass
2012/06/24 Leave a comment
A cleaned-up version of this article became my first post on Hizook. http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/06/25/east-coast-chauvinism-robotics-time-face-facts-silicon-valley-kicking-our-butt#comment-971
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I have lots of love for Pittsburgh in particular, but it really pisses me off when people on the East Coast repeat a bunch of falsehoods (See #8) about how Boston and Pittsburgh compare to Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Many people in Pittsburgh and Boston—including people I call friends and mentors—smugly think that the MIT and CMU centered robotics clusters are leading the world in robotics. This is demonstrably false.
If leadership in robotics means forming companies, making money, or employing people, then Silicon Valley is crushing everyone—no matter what the Wall Street Journal editorial page says about their business climate. I’ve previously published an analysis of the Hizook 2011 VC Funding in Robotics data that shows that the Valley gets 49% of total VC robotics investment worldwide.
I’d now like to add an analysis of U.S. public companies (see bottom of the page). Basically, the ‘Pittsburgh and Boston are the center of the robotics world’ story is even more ridiculous if you look at where public robotics companies are located. Silicon Valley is crushing the other clusters in the U.S. at creating value in robotics and in building a robotics workforce in public companies. (A forthcoming analysis will show that this true worldwide and if you include robotics divisions of public companies not principally engaged in robotics such as Boeing and Textron.)
77% of the workforce at public robotics pure plays is in Silicon Valley companies. An astounding 93% of the market capitalization is headquartered in Silicon Valley and even if you exclude Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) as an outlier, the Silicon Valley cluster still has twice as much market capitalization as Boston.
The public companies that I deemed to meet the criteria of being principally engaged in robotics, that they had to make and sell a robot, and not have substantial value creating revenues from businesses not related to robotics are listed in the table below.
The one company that I believe might be controversial for being excluded from this list is Cognex (NASDAQ:CGNX). However, while trying to do decide on whether to include them, I found their list of locations. They have three locations in California including two in Silicon Valley. That means that this ‘Boston’ company has more offices in Silicon Valley than in Boston. I’m not an advanced (or motivated) enough analyst to find out what the exact employee breakdown is, but combined with the fact that they make vision systems and supply components rather than robots, I elected to exclude them. I acknowledge that a similar case could be made about Adept (NASDAQ:ADEP) that just made a New Hampshire acquisition, but I have decided to include them and count them towards Silicon Valley. I do not believe that either of these decisions, substantively impact my finding that Silicon Valley is the leading cluster when it comes to public company workforce and value creation.
I’m hoping the people who are spreading the misinformation that Silicon Valley has to catch-up to Boston and Pittsburgh will publish corrections. I believe that this is important, particularly because I want to see Pittsburgh reclaim its early lead in robotics. So many robotic inventions can trace their heritage back to Pittsburgh, it is a real shame that Pittsburgh has not used this strength to create the kind of robotics business ecosystem that one would hope.
It is impossible for communities to take appropriate action if they do not understand where they stand. I hope that this new data will inspire the Pittsburgh community to come together and address the challenges of culture, customer access, and capital availability that have been inhibiting the growth of Pittsburgh’s robotic ecosystem before they lose too many more aspiring young entrepreneurs—such as me—to the siren song of California.
1,100
463
20%
2%
183
43
3%
0%
768
577
14%
2%
174
135
3%
1%
1,924
21,840
36%
88%
619
606
12%
2%
429
1,110
8%
4%
171
13
3%
0%
5,368
24,787
100%
100%
Filed under Clusters, Commentary, Economics, Finance, Public Companies Tagged with Boston, business, California, Clusters, drones, economic, Equity, financing, hizook, market capitalization, New England, Public Securities, robotics, Silicon Valley, Stock, VC, Venture Capital, workforce