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Credit: University of California - San Diego — Credit: University of California – San Diego

A new U.S. Robotics Roadmap released Oct. 31 calls for better policy frameworks to safely integrate new technologies, such as self-driving cars and commercial drones, into everyday life. The document also advocates for increased research efforts in the field of human-robot interaction to develop intelligent machines that will empower people to stay in their homes as they age. It calls for increased education efforts in the STEM fields from elementary school to adult learners.

The roadmap’s authors, more than 150 researchers from around the nation, also call for research to create more flexible robotics systems to accommodate the need for increased customization in manufacturing, for everything from cars to consumer electronics.

The goal of the U.S. Robotics Roadmap is to determine how researchers can make a difference and solve societal problems in the United States. The document provides an overview of robotics in a wide range of areas, from manufacturing to consumer services, healthcare, autonomous vehicles and defense. The roadmap’s authors make recommendation to ensure that the United States will continue to lead in the field of robotics, both in terms of research innovation, technology and policies.

“We also want to make sure that research solves real life problems and gets deployed,” said Henrik I. Christensen, a professor computer scientist at the University of California San Diego, and the document’s lead editor. “We need to make sure that we are making an impact on people’s lives. ”

The Roadmap first edition came out in 2009 and led to the creation of the National Robotics Initiative by President Barack Obama. Researchers led by Christensen updated the document in 2013. They are revisiting the roadmap now ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Christensen, who is the director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego, gave a preview of the roadmap’s main findings during the Contextual Robotics Forum Oct. 28 on the UC San Diego campus.

The 100-page document highlights the following major findings and recommendations:

Unmanned vehicles and policy

The advances in the field of self-driving cars have far outpaced the predictions researchers made in the 2013 edition of the roadmap. But autonomous vehicles still have several obstacles to overcome, the researchers said. “It is important to recognize that human drivers have a performance of100 million miles driven between fatal accidents,” Christensen said. “It is far from trivial to design autonomous systems that have a similar performance.”

Self-driving cars need to become more like industrial robots, which can run autonomously for three years without human intervention, he added. Also, the many methods and technologies used in the field of self-driving vehicles need to be resolved into a single standard. “Systems integration might not get a lot of press, but it is essential,” Christensen said.

Finally, local, state and federal agencies need to formulate policies and regulations that ensure these cars can share the road safely with vehicles driven by people. Regulations and policies also need to be put in place for unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones or UAVs. When this is done, UAVs could revolutionize the way we ship goods by air, monitor the environment—and much more. They could help first responders during natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

Researchers also need to get better at controlling swarms of UAVs and robots. “Currently, it takes a small group of people to run complex UAVs. This ratio needs to be inverted so that one person can control a small group of UAVs and other autonomous robots. Human-robot interactions should resemble the relationship between an orchestra conductor and musicians,” Christensen said. “Individual players need to be smart enough to take cues from the conductor and play on their own.”

Health care and home companion robots

Source: Fraunhofer IPA/photo: Jens Kilian

A major wave of companion robots is about to enter the market, as the population of developed countries ages. For example, 50 percent of the Japanese population is over 50 years old. “We need to help the elderly stay in their homes,” Christensen said. “And robots can help us get there.”

To reach this goal, robots will need to have a better understanding of their surroundings and become more reliable. Existing systems are equipped with basic navigation methods. But long-term autonomy with little or no human intervention needs to be the goal. In addition, robotic home companions will need to be able to perform a wider range of tasks.

It is also essential that robots be easy enough to control so that they can be used by everyone. That means that home care robots, for example, need user interfaces that are no more complicated than a TV remote.

“This needs to be moon shot for robotics research,” Christensen said.

Manufacturing

In recent years, the need to customize products such as cars has increased dramatically. For example, a high-end vehicle can feature millions of different options, from the color of its seats to the configuration of its electronics. As a result, manufacturers have turned to increasingly sophisticated technology to drive assembly lines. This in turn has brought many factories back to the United States. In the past six years, the U.S. manufacturing sector has added 900,000 jobs. “Tremendous growth in robotics doesn’t have to mean job losses,” Christensen said.

But this expansion of robotic systems in industry must overcome two major obstacles, the roadmap states. Researchers need to develop user interfaces that will allow workers to operate robotic systems with little or no training. In other words, user interfaces need to become more like video games, Christensen said.

Also, robots’ manipulation skills need to improve dramatically, to match at least the dexterity of a young child. Right now, the most advanced robots have the grasping abilities of a one-year-old, Christensen said.

An Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things

For all applications, the core challenge is flexible integration of robotic systems with human operators and collaborators. Researchers envision an environment where physical systems are linked wirelessly via smart sensors and smart chips, within an industrial Internet of Things. This will make it easier for robots to navigate their environment and work with people. At the same time it is important to design these systems to be secure so that they cannot be hijacked or used in cyber attacks.

Amazon is at the forefront of this movement and owns 40 percent of application program interfaces, or APIs, related to IoT—which are open source, Christensen said. “This is going to create a whole new economy,” he said.

Education

Robotic systems will dramatically change everyday life both in the home and at work in coming years. As a result, the public and the workforce need to be trained to interact with these systems. Training needs to happen at all levels, from kindergarten to 12^th-grade and in trade schools before college. But most education efforts need to be focused on kindergarten through 12^th-grade. Too many young people are dropping out of high school and will be left behind by this new economy based on robotics and the Internet of Things, Christensen said.

“We need to empower people to use robots,” he said. “We need to realize that most of the interfaces we design today for robotic systems aren’t easy to use.”

A shared robotics infrastructure

Researchers also are making a call to build a common, shared research infrastructure for robotics here in the United States. The research network would expand existing sites, with a focus on testing autonomous driving, medical and health care robotics, micro- and nanorobotics, agriculture robotics, UAVs and underwater robotics. Each site would need about $3 million to be revamped into a shared facility.

“We need to invest to make sure the United States remains a leader in the field of robotics,” Christensen said.

Read the entire document here.

The 2016 U.S. Robotics Roadmap is partially sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the University of California San Diego, Oregon State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Key executives leaving (or were requested to leave) Goggle’s drone delivery Project Wing; GoPro recalls all of its newly launched Karma drones and doesn’t offer a replacement; DJI slashes prices. What’s going on?

Funding for drone makers has bottomed out although new applications using drones are still getting funded, e.g., home and business security drones. Consumer purchases are weak with DJI and Parrot’s line of products capturing most of the market, and DJI’s aggressive lowering of prices forcing startups and other makers to focus on specialized tasks. There’s turmoil in the drone industry.

GoPro’s Karma

GoPro Inc recalled about 2,500 drones – all of their shipments thus far – for a refund – after just a couple of weeks on the market. Units had sudden power outages. GoPro didn’t say when or if it would offer a replacement product. GoPro’s much-delayed Karma project is also threatened by competing and lower-priced camera drones from DJI and many others.

DJI lowers prices

Part of DJI’s strategy exhibited over the past few years is to offer newer and better products faster than the competition and reduce prices of previous versions in conjunction with the new launches. Their price slashing has enabled them to dominate the market. DJI discounted its popular Phantom 3 drone to about $300 today from $1,000 at the beginning of the year.

3D Robotics offers new product

3D Robotics – an early drone startup that raised more than $125 million, has seen its consumer business all but crash and had massive layoffs shortly after releasing its Solo consumer drone – a competing product to DJI’s Phantom 3 – at a price ($1,500) higher than the Phantom 3. Co-founder and CEO Chris Anderson said:

“It’s no fun watching prices fall by 70 percent in 9 months” [referring to DJI’s price-cutting].

In a retrenching effort, 3DR unveiled a new commercial camera-equipped drone (the Solo) with imaging software designed for construction companies. 3DR’s plan is to outfit the Solo with new technology to capture 3D images that show the shape, size and volume of items at a construction site.

“It might be too little too late for 3DR,” said industry analyst Patrick Egan. “They aren’t the only company that is going to have problems.”

Google’s Project Wing

From a recent Wall Street Journal article:

“Alphabet, Google’s parent, has been developing delivery drones in its research arm since 2012 with the hopes of transforming logistics. But the drone project—dubbed Project Wing—has had a bumpy ride, with its original head departing in 2014.

Alphabet last month pushed out the project’s chief, Dave Vos, and its top commercial executive, Sean Mullaney, in large part because of conflict between the group’s engineers and its commercial team, according to the people familiar with the matter. It also issued notices to several other Project Wing workers, giving them 90 days to find other positions within Alphabet, one former employee said.

An Alphabet spokeswoman said the company is committed to Wing and the concept of delivery drones. Astro Teller, the new temporary head of Project Wing, has spoken recently about the potential for delivery drones to not only upend logistics, but also, reinvent the concept of ownership by giving people access to some goods in minutes versus having to keep such items on hand for the rare moments they are needed.

“We believe that opening the skies to faster, more efficient transportation of goods is a moonshot worth pursuing.”

Lofty goals indeed for Google and Teller. But turning the corner from research, testing, and product engineering to a functioning product that conforms to FAA and other governmental regulations and is secure from pranksters, children and thieves is another matter altogether and there’s a ticking clock of competitors hoping to get to market first.

Many, many companies, including Amazon, DHL, Walmart and UPS are aggressively developing drones and landing/delivery systems for same-day and/or speedy delivery.

senseFly, DelAir and other B2B providers thrive

While many drone-makers overestimated demand from hobbyists and other consumers, they now see big opportunities selling to businesses. There is strong interest in software and services that can make aerial imaging useful for industries including insurance, construction, agriculture, and entertainment. senseFly, a Parrot company and DelAir, the new owner of Gatewing (a drone and service provider to Trimble’s global agricultural division, join startups and others (see chart below) that are focusing on software to make sense of images, whether it’s the angle of a pipe laid at a new construction site or damage to a roof from a hurricane or collision-avoidance. The drone itself is just a tool in the overall objective.

Parrot, whose stock has plummeted from $25 to $8 so far this year, predicted that 2016 would be a “bloody year” for drone makers. Parrot CEO Henri Seydoux, in an interview in Forbes in November, 2015, predicted 2016 would be a year of reckoning for the consumer drone space and that 2016 would be a ‘bloody’ 12 months for any company designing and selling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for hobbyists. It’s just the nature of the consumer electronics business, he said, noting that increased competition will see a commoditization of the flying robots and perhaps even the collapse of some of the weaker companies.

“There are now a dozen companies doing these types of drones. It will put a lot of pressure on the market.”

Bottom line

Delivery drones will happen someday soon; drones in agriculture and construction are already happening; drones for governmental and defense/security purposes will continue to happen. What we are seeing today is a consolidation process: commercial makers are separating into consumer or business providers; although the Drone Industry Insights chart shown below is already outdated, the big makers, Parrot, DJI and Ehang are hanging in there with substantial sales. Not shown on the chart are all the defense contractors that produce drones for the military; these vendors have pretty much given up on finding niche commercial markets and are, instead, focusing on improving their products and systems.

Certainly 2016 is living up to Seydoux’s predictions. Even the recent spinoff by Trimble of its Gatewing division is indicative of the consolidation and refocusing of efforts toward providing meaningful services using drones rather than selling drones. They’ll leave that – selling drones to hobbyists and consumers – to the few companies that are able to emerge from the dropping prices of the commoditization of this type of camera drone.

The broad market will continue to grow in all three segments (consumer, commercial and military) as will the variety of end-to-end business models. Quoting Drone Industry Insights:

“There are plenty of niches waiting to be discovered and occupied. Hardware will become more capable allowing new applications. Advanced drone operation regulations will allow new use cases with a high grade of automation. The drone ecosystem is strongly technology driven and market growth will additionally be catalyzed by developments outside the drone market environment (e.g. mobile phone industry, etc.).”

For the next three weeks, Robohub readers can vote for their “Readers’ Pick” startup from the Robot Launch competition. Each week, we’ll be publishing 10 videos. Our ultimate Robohub Readers’ Favorites, along with lots of other prizes, will be announced at the end of November. Every week we’ll showcase different aspects of robotics startups and their business models: from agricultural to humanoid, from consumer to industrial and from hardware to robotics software. Make sure you vote for your favorite – below – by 18:00pm UTC, Wednesday 23 November, spread the word through social media using #robotlaunch2016.

Choitek Mark II Robotics Platform | USA

Our idea is to accelerate robotics research by providing a large mobile manipulator platform that is robust, easy-to-use, and accessible. The low cost will allow a large number of hobbyists, educators, and students to enter the robotics research ecosystem. For schools, researchers and hobbyists, the product’s main appeal will come from its large size, low-cost, ease-of-access and excellent documentation across a variety of channels.

FoldiMate | ISR

FoldiMate’s goal is to save marriages around the world! We have developed a patented robotic method to fold clothes. FoldiMate is easy to use and anyone in your family can use it. Laundry will be neatly folded with consistent, high-quality folds. Foldimate will also speed up your laundry time which means more time to do the things you really enjoy. Each item can be treated with perfume and fabric softener while it is being folded, plus it also has an optional de-wrinkling system. FoldiMate will soon become a must-have in every household around the world.

Halodi| NOR

Halodi´s vision is to provide a vast number of robots to the mass market. We believe the time is right for Eve, a robot that is affordable for ordinary people, with strength and reach of a human. Our concept is that of simplified, but capable, and high-quality mechanics paired with a cloud “brain” that enables very advanced data processing, cross learning and continuous upgrading of the functionality. The concept of the mechanics, with our own very strong Revo1 servo motors and differential joints, means that Eve can be produced for a fraction of the cost of ordinary robots without sacrificing quality or versatility.

Kamigami Robots | USA

Kamigami robots are the world’s first commercially available biomimetic robot that doubles as an app-controlled STEM toy. Build, program, play, evolve is our motto and our mission is to get an affordable, accessible entry-level robotics kit to every kid in America. Kamigami are the robot sidekick you get to build yourself. About the size of a small shoe, they fold up from a flat sheet with no tools required. Once built, you can drive, play pre-loaded games or design and program your OWN games — all through the app. Educators already love us as an entry-level coding lesson. With a super low barrier to entry but high potential for creativity, we believe Kamigami can make anyone a maker, or programmer, or tinkerer!

MOTI: A Robot for Habits | USA

Imagine being able to exercise regularly, practice an instrument, or go to bed earlier without having to force yourself—this is the vision of MOTI: to empower people to live the lives they aspire to, one habit at a time. By combining specific insights from behavioral science, social robotics, and human-centered design, we have created a simple yet powerful closed-loop system based in emotional engagement rather than just quantification. The hardware design is based upon habit loop theory to give the right triggers and rewards to help people make positive, strategic changes in their lives.

Robomotive: NLD

We can turnkey integrate our in-house developed combination of Industrial Robots (all known brands like ABB, Fanuc, Yaskawa Motoman and Kuka) with 3D vision. This way we make robots flexible and adaptive for example for usage in 3D bin picking, order picking, kitting and robot assembly. We’ve based our innovation on our broad experience with conventional industrial robots and our first successfully integrated 3D vision applications in Dutch factories.

sciRobot | USA

sciRobot is dedicated to promoting independent living and active aging. Alzheimer’s is one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide. Family caregivers are exposed to emotional, financial and physical difficulties for about 5 years till their loved ones are moved to a care center. Research shows that regular physical activity has significant improvements in affective state, functional skills and sleep quality of the people with Alzheimer’s. Improvement in all of these areas can help ease the stress caregivers often feel from intensive caregiving duties.sciRobot is creating the activity companion robot ACRO to help Alzheimer’s family caregivers motivate their loved ones to stay more active.

Semio | USA

Semio is developing a standardized software platform to allow humans to interact with and use technology (ranging from smart devices to personal robots) through natural communication, such as speech and body language. Our software platform allows technology developers to create/integrate (through developer tools) and deploy (to an app store) speech/gesture-based applications to be executed by smart devices, and allows non-expert technology users to access (from the app store) and use (through natural communication) those applications. Our software enables a smart device to automatically recognize speech and body language from a human user, make decisions about how to respond (specified by the developer for the application), and act based on those decisions while also providing its own speech and body language to the user. This natural communication interface increases the usability of smart devices by non-expert users.

The Virtual Robotics Toolkit | CAN

The Virtual Robotics Toolkit, is a STEM (Science Technology Education and Math) education tool that teaches children and adults alike the fundamentals of engineering, coding and 3D design using a simulated environment. Robots now make up $95 million USD of the $8 billion education technology market. It is our belief that the best way to engage the next generation of STEM learners is through the use of simulation technology that makes possible the opportunity to learn 21st-century skills at a fraction of the price of physical hardware.

UniExo | UKR

UniExo is modular exoskeleton, which will change stationary medical equipment to mobility devices, and improves rehabilitation movements of people, without any additional help from doctors. Our product helps to save medical institutions for the purchase of medical devices. This positive effect on the quality and the period of rehabilitation clinics. Therefore people are using this device will not engage in a self-treatment. The device also allows you to keep statistics of rehabilitation that are is important for hospitals and the Ministry of Health.

Who is your favorite robot startup? (round three)

Amazon's Echo sales have exceeded 4 million and they are ramping up to sell 10 million in 2017; Google's Home has received positive reviews and have just begun selling in large numbers; but SoftBank's Pepper and Cynthia Breazeal's Jibo have either failed or are stalled. Why?

The bots: Amazon Echo Alexa vs. Google Home

Amazon's success with Echo has revealed a consumer acceptance of voice-controlled devices housing virtual digital assistants. Xiaoice, a Microsoft Chinese language bot, has millions of users and can identify photos and carry on playful discussions as if it were a real person. Xiaoice's acceptance has confirmed that there is a broad user base for these types of bots. What Alexa proved is that there is a growing market of people willing to engage with internet services at home without a screen. That transition, to voice interactions and artificial intelligence, could be a predictor of what's to come in the near future. Alexa doesn’t need Google. People talk to it and ask it about the weather or recipe ingredients; it looks up things to buy. They search with it. Wait! They search with their Alexa Echo? Google has spent years building intelligent voice assistants for phone and tablets, and now suddenly here’s Amazon stealing its thunder. Hence the newly launched Google Home

Forbes recently compared Amazon's $179 Echo to Google's $129 Home:

Amazon Echo has a ring of LED lights that tell the user when it’s listening and when it’s processing a request. Users can rotate the top of the device to control volume. There are two buttons on top of Echo: First is an action button for turning off a timer or alarm, or waking up the device for voice commands; the second is a mute button that turns the microphone off so it’s not listening.

Google Home has four colorful LED lights sitting on top that tell the user when it’s listening. It also has a bit more options for physical input: the top of the speaker has a touch surface for playing or pausing audio; changing volume; or starting requests. Like Echo, there is also a mute button.

Amazon Echo is powered by Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. Echo wakes up to the word “Alexa” to begin taking your commands. Right off the bat, the device makes it easy to set timers or alerts, ask what the weather is, play music. Echo users can manage all the settings and features in an Alexa app. The app is also where users can enable and browse through s0-called Skills — Amazon’s version of an Alexa app.

Google Home is running on Assistant, which is Google’s latest version of its virtual assistant for responding to users’ requests in a conversational manner. Users trigger Google Home with “OK, Google” or “Hey, Google” to start controlling it. It’s able to do the usual — set timers, tell the weather, play a song. But because Google has a lot of information on its users with access to calendars and emails, it can get to know users a lot more intimately than Amazon can right now.

Another important aspect of these two devices is how well they work as a platform for third-parties services and devices. Amazon’s Alexa has more than 3,000 “skills” and can do everything from summoning an Uber to ordering a pizza to turning up the temperature. Google is also creating a specialized developer kit with apps being called "Actions," and which are separated into two types: Direct Actions and Conversational Actions. Direct Actions are for the kind of tasks that are straight forward — like turn on a light, or play a song on Spotify. Conversational Actions are for a bit more complicated requests like ordering an Uber, where there needs to be some back and forth happening — it needs to know where you want to go and what level of Uber service.

Amazon's Echo doesn't sell in China. Nor does Google's Home. Here are a few other bots, two of which sell in China:

JD.com, China's largest online direct sales company, sells a similar product to the Echo and Home devices: the DingDong Smart Speaker. The DingDong Smart Speaker uses the JD+ super app (called "Jingdong Weilian") to allow full voice control of all products in the JD+ ecosystem.
Baidu, the Chinese telcom giant, is selling Duer, a conversational virtual assistant service. The assistant service provides quick and easy access to Baidu’s various Internet services and engages in a dialogue with users rather than simply being voice-controlled.
Fabriq, a French startup, is a speaker device that sells for $50 and uses Amazon's own Alexa functionality. With almost all of Alexa's smarts -- everything from music and news to third-party skills, smart home control, and jokes -- Fabriq offers plenty of tech appeal in an attractive little package.
C|Net said: "Fabriq proved to be a capable Alexa gadget. It did a nice job understanding my voice commands, and though it sometimes needed to think a second or two longer than the Echo before pulling up a song I had requested, I came away satisfied with the user-friendly smarts. At just $50, it shows a lot of promise."

The mobile social companions: Pepper and Jibo

Two notable social robotic ventures are having a different experience than Amazon and Google:

Although SoftBank has sold slightly more than 7,000 Pepper robots to consumers and businesses in Japan and France, and still plans to launch in Taiwan, China and the U.S. very soon, their emotion engine - Pepper's main selling point - will be turned off.

"I'm not sure that being able to read emotions can add to service," said Morten Paulsen, who covers industrial automation giant Fanuc Corp. as head of Japan research at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets. "There are several Peppers in my office building, but I don't see anyone gathering around them anymore. They are basically animated iPads."

Many people have reported seeing Peppers idle and in corners instead of out front greeting and interacting with people.
Jibo, the much-publicized first product from social robotics pioneer and MIT professor Cynthia Braezeal, has had a series of setbacks and delays including having to refund all non-English-speaking Jibo orders and most recently having to split their initial deliveries into Beta or hold-til-later groups (I'm in the latter). Beta's are being delivered now so we'll soon hear from the community how well it performs and meets expectations.

Many other mobile robots have been announced but haven't come to market just yet. Asus' Zenbo, at $599, is quite interesting; Buddy from Blue Frog Robotics seems to have run out of money after it got panned in an MIT Technology article; and Future Robots FURo is selling in small numbers as mobile information kiosks.

Bottom line

Can it be that consumers don't care as much about the mobility aspect as they do about price and conversational interaction? Or is it mismanagement problem, as Bloomberg reporters Pavel Alpeyev and Takashi Amano suggest in their BloombergTechnology report on Pepper and SoftBank?

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For the last few years, there have been very few stock IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). Promising companies have been acquired instead, eg: Kiva Systems and Universal Robots. But two robotics-related companies have recently filed: one for the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the other for the New York Stock Exchange.

Myomo, a Cambridge, MA medical device robotics startup, is using the new Reg-A crowdfunding method to seek funding for their new MYO stock to be listed on the NYSE MKT Exchange. The Reg-A rules, known as “Regulation A+,” were adopted by the SEC as part of the JOBS Act that became effective June 2015. Regulation A+ is designed to allow early stage growth companies to raise up to $50 million in a crowdfunded-like public offering through a process that provides streamlined and lower-cost access to the capital markets for the issuer and provides investors the opportunity to participate in an IPO for these potentially high growth companies.

Myomo has designed and developed a myoelectric upper limb orthosis that supports weak or deformed arms. Their device helps users regain the ability to perform ADLs (activities of daily living) using EMG signals to drive small motors that allow users to extend/flex elbows and open/close thumb and fingers.

The IPO is expected to finalize January 2017 and the proceeds will be used to fund Myomo’s sales and marketing expansion, product development, repayment of debt and for working capital and other general corporate purposes.

ZMP, a Tokyo-based service robotics provider of mobility products, has partnered with DeNa, a provider of a broad range of mobile and online services including games, e-commerce and entertainment content distribution, to develop a fleet of autonomous Level 5 robot taxis (and started a company by that name, Robot Taxi) in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. ZMP also partnered with Sony to develop the new AeroSense UAV startup.

ZMP has filed for an IPO of approximately $82 million and plans to be traded on the TYO Mothers Market exchange under the symbol 7316. It said that funds would be used for research and development to strengthen its self-driving technology as well as fund affiliate Robot Taxi. ZMP will begin trading Dec. 19 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers Market for startups.

In President-elect Trump's interview with the NY Times yesterday, when discussing jobs, closed factories and factories that may leave the country, he was asked: "Are you worried that those companies will keep their factories here, but the jobs will be replaced by robots?

Trump responded as follows: (transcript from NY Times)

They will, and we’ll make the robots too. It’s a big thing, we’ll make the robots too. Right now we don’t make the robots. We don’t make anything. But we’re going to, I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we’re going to do that. We’re going to have more factories. We can’t lose 70,000 factories. Just can’t do it. We’re going to start making things.<br>

I was honored yesterday, I got a call from Bill Gates, great call, we had a great conversation, I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple, and I said, ‘Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.’ He said, ‘I understand that.’ I said: ‘I think we’ll create the incentives for you, and I think you’re going to do it. We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.’ But we’re going for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of regulations, regulations are making it impossible. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, I mean I could sit down and show you regulations that anybody would agree are ridiculous. It’s gotten to be a free-for-all. And companies can’t, they can’t even start up, they can’t expand, they’re choking.<br>

I tell you, one thing I would say, so, I’m giving a big tax cut and I’m giving big regulation cuts, and I’ve seen all of the small business owners over the United States, and all of the big business owners, I’ve met so many people. They are more excited about the regulation cut than about the tax cut. And I would’ve never said that’s possible, because the tax cut’s going to be substantial. You know we have companies leaving our country because the taxes are too high. But they’re leaving also because of the regulations. And I would say, of the two, and I would not have thought this, regulation cuts, substantial regulation cuts, are more important than, and more enthusiastically supported, than even the big tax cuts.

It's true that 2/3 of the robotics industry and 100% of industrial robots are manufactured outside of the U.S. by non-U.S. companies. The industrial robot industry was started in America but the companies making those original robots were sold and moved off shore, never to return except in the form of sales and service offices and research and support centers. [Adept Technologies, the last American industrial robot manufacturer, was sold last year to Japanese industrial components and robot manufacturer OMRON.]

In China, Japan, Korea and throughout the EU, governments are providing significant credits and incentives to make (or in the EU and Japan, to keep) robot-making in-country. These are strategic investments of billions and billions of dollars. It's having a good effect worldwide. For example, China's in-country robot production rate is growing exponentially. Yet thus far in America, through the American Manufacturing Initiative and other measures, less than $100 million has been earmarked for robotics and less than $50 million towards manufacturing them in the U.S.

Let's hope that Trump does what he says he's going to do regarding robots and robotics in America.

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In the last six years, (2010–2015), according to the IFR (International Federation of Robotics), US industry has installed around 135,000 new industrial robots. The principal driver is automation in the car industry. During this same period, (2010–2015), the number of employees in the automotive sector increased by 230,000.

This news affirms the conclusions of a study conducted by the market research firm, Metra Martech, “Positive Impact of Industrial Robots on Employment,” that there will be growth in robot use over the next five years resulting in the creation of one million high-quality jobs around the world. “Robots, in addition to the auto industry, will help to create jobs in some of the most critical industries of this century: consumer electronics, food, solar & wind power, and advanced battery manufacturing to name just a few.”

“The rapid rise of robot use in the United States is impressive for several reasons,” said Jeff Burnstein, President of Robotic Industries Association.

The industry’s largest user, the automotive industry, has accelerated its purchases of robots and at the same time created more jobs in the manufacturing process.
There has been strong growth in the use of robots in general industry, as robots further penetrate industries such as life sciences, warehousing, and semiconductor and electronics manufacturing.
The use of robots is rising in small and medium sized companies who see robotics as a key factor in improving productivity and product quality in order to stay globally competitive. We expect these trends to continue well into the future.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, car manufacturers and component suppliers will continue to be heavy users of robots. In addition, more and more new companies specialized in electric or autonomous vehicles that are starting up in the United States and are in need of modern and efficient production facilities. The electronics industry continues to be the fastest-growing emerging industry for industrial robots in the United States (2014-2015 = +41%). Increasing numbers of orders can also be expected from the metals and machinery industry, the rubber and plastics industry, the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, and the food and beverage industry.

We’re delighted to announce that UniExo is the winner of the “Robohub Reader’s Pick” in the Robot Launch 2016 global startup competition. Are Robohub readers on the same wavelength as our panel of VC, investors and expert judges? We’ll find out next week when we announce the overall winners of the Robot Launch 2016 competition!

The Robot Launch competition attracts early stage robotics and AI startups from all over the world to pitch their ideas in the hopes of winning investment or acceleration through mentorship and industry clusters. Robohub is an ideal venue for the competition as it reaches into robotics research labs around the world.

Robohub president Sabine Hauert said, “Congrats to Andra and Silicon Valley Robotics for organising such a wonderful competition! There are so many wonderful startups striving to make robots a reality in our everyday lives. Robot Launch this year featured a wealth of startups, ranging from robots for education and healthcare, to robots that fold our laundry, or help us on the shopfloor. I have immense admiration for these startups that need to create new markets, while mastering software, hardware, product design, and business. The least we can do at Robohub is provide them with the visibility they deserve, so they can reach the investors and users that will make their startups a success. I hope everyone will have a close look at all the contestants from this year’s competition and spread the word, there is so much potential here!”

UniExo from Ukraine wins The Robohub Reader’s Pick, after a strong campaign in their local media! Followed by: Internet of Robots, Halodi, Labs Cubed, Hibotics, Foldimate, sciRobot, Robotics Materials Inc, bridgeOS, The Virtual Robotics Toolkit and Franklin Robotics.

UniExo | UKR

Internet of Robots | Poland

The Internet of Robots is a system designed for easy assembly of robots. It’s internet, electronics, hardware and software combined. You can send data, manage environment data and see what your robot sees. Just pick the modules and start creating your Internet of Robots.

Halodi| NOR

LabsCubed Inc. | CAN

Throughout history, we have seen how new and revolutionary materials drive innovation. Amazingly, some of our best engineers have designed solutions to major problems with energy, medicine, computers, and aerospace, but they’re missing the materials to make them a reality. At LabsCubed, we are creating a fully automated testing system to help material creators bring us all the materials of the future sooner. From 3D printing to space exploration, the materials of the future will change our lives. By revolutionizing materials testing, LabsCubed will make the future possible.

Hibotics | USA

The ERAD (Elevated Robotic Assistive Device) technology is centered about “mobile robotic devices that don’t take up floor space.” While floor-based mobile robots may have great potential for automating processes and assisting people (i.e. the disabled and infirm or home/industrial security), their need to navigate around objects (people, furniture, stairs, pets..) makes them expensive while still not alleviating the potential for a sense of obtrusiveness on the part of the users.

FoldiMate | ISR

sciRobot | USA

Robotic Materials Inc | USA

We provide a novel tactile sensor that can measure proximity, contact and force. Our sensor sits where the rubber hits the road in robotic grasping and manipulation and is extremely low-cost and orders of magnitude more useful than any competing technology. Proximity helps the robot to align its hand with an object and avoid obstacles. Contact sensing allows the gripper/hand to create a constraint with the object without disturbing it and force allows it to gently handle an object and better understand how the object is located in the hand. We are selling the sensor for a growing number of platforms including Rethink Robotics Baxter/Sayer, Kinova Jaco and many more to come. We are also providing full-stack software that make manipulation easy.

bridgeOS | Portugal

bridgeOS, by Bridge Robotics, is a cloud-based platform to run service robot applications. It allows users of service robots to easily manage and use robot applications with different robots and different skills. bridgeOS also provides developers not expert in robotics with a framework to help build robot agnostic applications.

The Virtual Robotics Toolkit | CAN

Franklin Robotics | USA

We are developing a weeding robot for home gardens. Solar powered, autonomous, and self-sufficient, Tertill maintains a weed-free vegetable or flower garden.

I was reading Steve Blank’s blog on machine learning start-ups yesterday, where he described how technical infrastructure innovations follow a Hype Cycle with characteristics defined by the Gartner Group.

The Hype Cycle follows the life cycle of emerging technologies and will be applicable to the new generation of robotic vision technologies currently being developed by the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. Robotic vision, as the name suggests, encompasses both robotics and computer vision, each has been moving through new hype cycles, despite such technologies first appearing more than 50 years ago.

As described by Gartner Group, hype cycles progress as follows:

Phase 1 – Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

Phase 2 – Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.

Phase 3 – Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

Phase 4 – Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallise and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

Phase 5 – Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

The new wave of robotic and computer vision technologies are in Phase 2 of the hype cycle, the peak of inflated expectations. Each year scores of robotics and computer vision start-ups are acquired, often for huge amounts of money. My sister, Andra Keay, is the managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics, which supports innovation and commercialisation of robotic technologies. At one stage it was common for new robotics start-ups to exit the start-up scene before even finding their feet, acquired by larger players. See this great timeline of robotics acquisitions put together by CB Insights:

The story is similar for computer vision start-ups. Index lists just some of the recently acquired CV companies. Some are acquired with little fanfare, such as the speculated acquisition of ZurichEye by Facebook. Computer vision sometimes applies artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the subject of Steve Blank’s blog, and all technologies seem to be hitting the peak of inflated expectations. Phase 2 is a great place to be if you’re a start-up but not necessarily a great place to be for the acquirer, who gains technology, teams and tools but not necessarily much additional revenue and profit.

Robotic vision is the gateway to a whole new set of technologies, developed by bringing robotics and computer vision together. While robotics is about machines that perceive and interact with the physical work, computer vision involves methods for acquiring, processing, analysing and understanding images using a computer. Combining the two produces the key technologies that will allow robotics to transform the way we live and work by giving robots visual perception. So, where is robotic vision on the hype cycle?

Robotic Vision is in Phase 1, just kicking off, with research groups like the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision developing a few proof-of-concepts like the crown-of-thorns starfish robot, COTSbot and the agricultural robots AgBotII and Harvey. It will soon be heading into Phase 2, which is a great time for new start-ups looking for a big early exit — but will the window of opportunity for robotic vision companies be narrow?

Given the high level of current interest in fields related to robotic vision, start-ups developed around these new technologies will need to enter the market soon. Companies based on the interlinked fields of robotics, machine learning, AI and computer vision have been acquired by corporate giants such as Google, IBM, Yahoo, Intel, Apple and Salesforce, at increasing rates since 2011 (see CB Insights). How long can the hype continue before we enter into Phase 3, the trough of disillusionment?

The risk for robotic vision is that by the time start-ups have formed around newly created technologies, the hype cycle for related technologies will change. If robotic vision doesn’t get a foot in the door, RV technologies will skip the peak of inflated expectations altogether. On the plus side, robotic vision technologies will also enjoy an accelerated path towards the slope of enlightenment on the heels of related technologies. Good news for the application of robotic vision to solve real world challenges but bad news for robotic vision start-ups – unless they form soon.

Yesterday, Onalytica released a report “Robotics: Top 100 Influencers and their Brands” that analysed interactions between robotics influencers and brands on Twitter over a period of 90 days. What they found was pretty interesting:

“ we analysed over 551K tweets mentioning the keywords: “Robotics OR Robotic from 18th September – 18th November 2016. We then identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. What we discovered was a very engaged community, with much discussion between individuals and brands.”

We’re proud to say that Robohub, as a brand, was ranked #10 out of 100. That makes us one of the top robotics-focused blogs. Not too shabby for a non-profit organisation that started 4 years ago!

Contributing Robohub experts were also on the list, namely: Ryan Calo, Andra Keay, Sammy Payne, Sabine Hauert, and Hallie Siegel.

You can download the full report for free here, which describes their PageRank methodology, data, and rankings.

Seventeen robotics-related companies got funded for a combined total of over $225 million. Four more got acquired. Three went public to raise funds. And one failed.

Fundings:

Seven Dreamers Labs raised around $60 million in a Series B round that included Panasonic, SBI Investment and Daiwa House. This Japanese startup has a new laundry folding robot (Laundroid) that was a hit at CES and CEATEC Japan.
Zoox, a secretive Silicon Valley startup working to build its own self-driving cars, has quietly raised $50 million (in October) in a Series A round led by Composite Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund.

“At Zoox what we’re creating...is not a self-driving car any more than the automobile is a horseless carriage. We’re not building a robo-taxi service; we’re actually creating an advanced mobility service,” said founder Tim Kentley-Klay in October. Earlier, in May, it was disclosed that Zoox would be deploying a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles by 2020 for ride-sharing services like those Uber offers.

Shenzhen FLYPRO Aerospace Tech, a Chinese startup, got around $23 million in a B round (in March) from Shenzhen Capital Group. FLYPRO produces two types of quadcopters: a racing drone and a camera drone.
Farmers Edge, a Canadian precision ag data consolidator/integrator startup, has raised another $18.3 million - the 3rd raise in 2016. This time the round was led by Sustainable Dev Tech Canada (SDTC) with $6.1 and the remaining $12.2 coming from unidentified sources and existing partners. These new funds are earmarked to help the company reduce fertilizer, water and pesticide in their next generation of h/w, s/w and agronomic decision support systems.
SimToo, a Shenzhen-based UAS startup, raised around $13.6 million in a Series B round led by Renmin Group, Duoniu Media, Lanhai Ark and Hanjing Family Office, all Chinese VCs. SimToo makes a foldable follow-me hands free camera quadcopter called a Dragonfly. Priced at $443, Dragonfly has sold over 20,000 units via online and offline channels and the company expects to realize a profit this year.
Jibo, the much delayed social robot developed by MIT’s Cynthia Braezeal, raised $13.1 million and are continuing the search for an additional $15 million. Jibo has raised $65.4 million thus far. Ther most recent announcement delayed shipments until November for people willing to be Beta testers and didn’t say when fully functioning Jibos will ship to those early buyers that don’t want to Beta test (I am one of these).
Movendo Technology, an Italian startup based in Genoa, raised around $11 million to develop a specialized robotic rehabilitation platform. Sergio Dompé was the primary investor. The new company will develop, manufacture and market medical devices at a site in Genoa, near IIT, The Institute of Italian Technology, where the first product (Hunova) will be developed, assembled and then introduced to European and US markets.
GreenValley International, renamed from True Reality Geospatial, a provider of satellite and drone data and analytics, raised $10 million in a Series A round in April led by Northern Light Ventures and including SF Investments.
Rapyuta Robotics, a Swiss and Japanese A.I. startup and spin-off from Zurich's ETH, got $10 million in a Series A round in September. Rapyuta is developing and building multi-robotic systems for the security market.
LifeRobotics, a Tokyo-based startup developing a narrow one-armed co-bot, raised $9 million in a Series B funding from Global Brain, Mitsui Fudosan, Koden Holdings, Mizuho Capital and Golden Asia Fund. Funds will be used to scale up for mass production of the co-robot and improving services for customers. LifeRobotics raised $4.4 million earlier this year.
Airobotics, an Israeli UAS startup (not to be confused with AI-Robotics, a Beijing startup), received an additional $6 million in a combined Series A and B round concluded in June. Backers included BlueRun Ventures, CRV, UpWest Lab as well as private individuals such as Noam Bardin, the CEO of Waze, and Richard Wooldridge, Google ATAP’s COO. Airobotics provides an on-site and on-demand automated drone platform that allows companies to run missions to monitor, inspect, survey and secure large industrial facilities and other strategic sites via aerial data collection, processing and analysis. The company currently has a team of 70 people.
ecoRobotix, a Swiss ag startup with a sensor-laden solar-powered mobile robot, raised $2.97 million led by 4FO Ventures and Investiere.ch, a platform for online investment, and Business Angels Switzerland.

"In creating this innovative working tool, adapted to the needs of farmers for whom soil conservation is a priority, we aim to demonstrate that high-tech has a place in the agriculture of tomorrow, alongside traditional inherited wisdom. This is not intended to devalue human labour, but makes it less taxing and less hazardous to health, while being sustainable in both ecological and economic terms," said Steve Tanner, co-founder of ecoRobotix.

Varden Labs, a SF self-driving car startup and Y Combinator Winter participant, raised $2.2 million in a seed round in March led by Maven Ventures and included additional money from Funders Club.
Sunflower Labs, a Silicon Valley startup raised $2.1 million in a seed funding round led by General Catalyst and other unknown funders. Sunflower is designing home security sensors, apps and products including a smart drone. Its sensor-laden smart lights are solar-powered, and can detect motion, sounds and vibrations while illuminating the perimeter of a property or its walkways. The lights communicate with a camera-equipped quadcopter. Whenever there’s uncommon activity identified by the smart lights, the quadcopter flies to where the action is, to capture video and transmit it to the cloud where clients get notifications via a mobile app when there’s activity detected on their property. The app learns, over time, what kind of commotion is routine and which is abnormal.
Tend.ai, an Oregon startup providing cloud software robots tending multiple 3D printers, raised $2 million in seed funding from True Ventures, a SV early stage VC.
AI-Robotics, a Beijing medical robotics and exoskeleton startup (not to be confused with Israeli startup Airobotics), got $1.8 million in a seed round.
Nauto, a SV self-driving car vision systems startup, received an undisclosed amount in additional Series A funding from BMW, Toyota and the insurance company Allianz. Nauto’s technology combines real-times sensors, forward-looking cameras and cabin-view cameras to understand the driving context in real-time. Nauto is selling their system and its predictive capabilities to vehicle fleet managers and insurance companies.

Acquisitions:

Tesla is acquiring Germany’s Grohmann Engineering, an integrator of factory systems technology including robotics. Tesla will turn Grohmann into a new subdivision dedicated to helping Tesla increase the automation and effectiveness of its manufacturing process. Although no disclosure was made regarding how or how much was paid, Grohmann’s 2015 revenue was $125 million and they employ around 800 people in facilities in Germany, the US and China.

“This will really be our first acquisition of significance in our whole history,” explained Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk on a call discussing the news, noting that Grohmann was their “first choice” in terms of bringing on expertise to help it “build the machines that build the machine.”

Prox Dynamics, an Oslo, Norway, developer, manufacturer, and distributor of aerial sensors and UAS that are small and light, for covert surveillance systems, was acquired by FLIR Systems for $134 million.

"This acquisition adds a unique unmanned aerial systems capability to our portfolio. The Prox Dynamics team has created a highly-differentiated solution, incorporating our Lepton sensor, for advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that fits well with our vision for growth for our Surveillance segment," said Andy Teich, President and CEO of FLIR.

RoboRobo, a Korean educational robotics kit and course provider startup, was acquired by Shenzhen-based Shengtong Printing for $62 million in cash and stock. RoboRobo raised a small angel investment from Zhen Fund in 2014 and received $10 million from New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. last year. The company was set up in 2012 in Beijing as the general agent in China for South-Korean based educational robot courses and tool developer Roborobo. Now, it operates 16 schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, and other cities.
Jorgensen Engineering, an Odense, Denmark integrator, has sold to Zano, a Swedish holding company (and not to be confused with UK Torquing Group's Zano, which recently failed) for $35 million. Jorgensen had annual sales of $40 million. Jorgensen will be folded into Zano’s Industrial Solutions unit which supplies customer-specific automation solutions for the food and medical technology industries, in addition to packaging machines for beverage and other food packaging.

IPOs and equity crowdfundings:

Moley Robotics, the UK two-armed cooking robot that’s received so much publicity, has achieved 92% of it’s £1 million (around $1.25 million) equity crowdfunding round. Sadly U.S. citizens can’t participate. Investors get 2.6% of equity for their £1M.
Myomo, a Cambridge, MA medical robotics startup, is using the new Reg-A crowdfunding method to $50 MILLION for their new MYO stock to be listed on the NYSE MKT. Myomo has designed and developed a myoelectric upper limb orthosis that supports weak or deformed arms. Their device helps users regain the ability to perform ADLs (activities of daily living) using EMG signals to drive small motors that allow users to extend/flex elbows and open/close thumb and fingers. The IPO is expected to finalize in January 2017 and the proceeds will be used to fund Myomo's sales and marketing expansion, product development, repayment of debt and for working capital and other general corporate purposes.
ZMP, a Tokyo-based service robotics provider that has partnered with DeNa to develop a fleet of robot taxis (and started a company by that name) in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, has filed for a IPO of approximately $82 million and be traded on the TYO Mothers Market exchange under the symbol 7316. funds would be used for research and development to strengthen its self-driving technology as well as fund affiliate Robot Taxi. ZMP will begin trading December 19.

Failures:

Zano from Torquing Group - a Kickstarter star and failure. Fascinating in-depth study of what happened and why here.

Continue reading →

Vidi Systems from Switzerland is the overall Grand Winner of the 2016 Robot Launch global startup competition, beating out many US contestants in a field that included sensors, artificial intelligence, social robots, service robots and industrial solutions. Overall, the European robotics startups performed very strongly this year with 8 making The Shortlist for awards. Canada also had good representation with 3 entries, but the rest of The Shortlist were based in the USA, even if they had originated in Israel or Hong Kong.

Switzerland based ViDi Systems provides deep learning vision software dedicated to automated aesthetic inspection & classification for a wide range of applications in pharmaceutical, med-tech, watch Industry, automotive, logistics center, bottling industry, textile, printing, ceramics, photovoltaic etc. Robot Launch judges said that they picked ViDi Systems for their “great early traction, impressive customers, strong team and large market potential”, noting that while ViDi Systems were clearly one of the most mature startups in The Shortlist, that they had achieved a lot in a comparatively short period.

The Robot Launch Grand Winner receives mentorship from Silicon Valley Robotics, Odense Robotics, QUTbluebox and the Australian Center for Excellence in Robotic Vision, connections which, along with the feature on Robohub.org, will be very useful for a startup interested in global expansion.

In contrast, the next most highly ranked startups, Robolink and Franklin Robotics were very young, with Robolink shipping educational robotics from San Diego, drawing on a background growing the local maker community. And Franklin Robotics developing an affordable gardening robot based on team expertize gained as founders at iRobot and Harvest Automation.

Robohub president Sabine Hauert said, “We’re delighted at Robohub to be working with Andra Keay to provide Robot Launchers with extra visibility to reach investors, partners, and future users. The quality of the startups this year was impressive, seems that Robot Launch raises the bar year after year!”

All of The Shortlist were evaluated by a team of investors and expert judges from venture capital firms and robotics clusters, including Intel Capital, Grishin Robotics, InnoSpring, PropelX, ElevenTwo Capital, Comet Labs, Root.vc, Singularity U’s Explorers Fund and Sony Ventures. Behind the scenes, there are some term sheets being offered to select startups. We can’t say more, but we can announce the rankings and other awards.

Odense Robotics and Invest in Odense are offering an incubation award for the Best European Startup team (2 persons) as follows: Travel to / housing in Odense, 1-month for 2 persons in Odense (travel/housing value 1500 USD), access to all Odense Robotics StartUp Hub facilities, Robot Innovation Hall, the other startups in the Hub, for one month (during May / June 2017), preparing for the JUNE PITCH SESSION – for the board of Odense Robotic StartUp Hub where they might be selected as one of two StartUps to enter the Odense Robotic StartUp Hub (12 months).

ODENSE ROBOTICS AWARD for EUROPEAN STARTUP:

Robomotive
ViDi Systems
Halodi
Tactile Robots
bridgeOS

With special mention of the USA teams (perhaps a good time for a holiday in Denmark?):

Robotics Materials
Cubits

Silicon Valley Robotics will offer a startup membership to all of The Shortlist, providing introductions to investors in Silicon Valley, access to network events and hosting in the new Robot Launchpad accelerator space. We are also coordinating demo opportunities at expos around the world. Although there were no shortlisted startups from the other regions, QUTbluebox and the Australian Center for Excellence in Robotic Vision will be offering mentorship and ‘down under’ connections to the Robot Launch winner.

vidi-team — ViDi Systems Nicholas Corsi at the W.A. de Vigier Awards

The overall top scoring startups were:

ViDi Systems
Robolink
Franklin Robotics
Robomotive
MOTI: A Robot for Habits
Robotics Materials
TransRobotics
Kamigami Robotics
SD3D
Foldimate
Labs Cubed
Halodi
Ourobotics
Modular Science
Parihug

Startups that stood out from the shortlist were the bio robotics startups:

Labs Cubed, Ourobotics and Modular Science

The social robots:

MOTI, Parihug and nominee sciRobot

The service robots:

Franklin Robotics, Halodi and Foldimate

The robot sensors:

Robotics Materials and Transrobotics

The ROS robotics startups:

ViDi Systems, Robotics Materials, Halodi, Choitek, Semio, and bridgeOS

Competition organizer Andra Keay said that the range of startups was always a good indicator of the overall robotics industry growth areas. “I can’t wait to see what next year brings. After all, this year we already new industrial applications, bio robotics and several new sensors. We also saw a strong showing from social and service robots, ranging from full humanoids to restaurant delivery robots, from smart devices to software helping robot developers build advanced behaviors.”

Finally after last week’s popular vote, did the Robohub Readers agree with the judges? Not this time! So, perhaps there are more hidden gems in The Shortlist:

Intel is establishing an autonomous driving division; hacker George Hotz is open-sourcing his self-driving software in a bid to become a network company; LiDAR and distancing devices are changing. What's it all mean?

Intel:

Semiconductor giant Intel, in a strategic move to become THE supplier of chips to the fast-emerging self-driving industry, is reorganizing and creating a new division. Fortune magazine said:

The decision is a bet not just on a future of connected devices; it’s also a wager that vehicles will be the centerpiece or at least a core component in the world of IoT. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has predicted that by 2020, the Internet of Things will include 50 billion devices and each user of those gadgets will generate 1.5 gigabytes of data every day. But, he has said, the average autonomous car will create about 40 gigabytes of data each minute.

That’s a lot of data to process and who better to handle the load? Intel.

Intel in recent months has made key acquisitions and strategic partnerships in pursuit of their autonomous driving division's plans:

A partnership with German automaker BMW and Israeli Mobileye to produce self-driving cars for city streets. The companies plan to develop the technology as an open platform that can be used by other automakers or ride-sharing companies.
Delphi and Mobileye announced they will use Intel's “system on chip” for autonomous vehicle systems.
Intel acquired three companies with related products and plans for self-driving cars:
1. Yogitech is a semiconductor design firm that specializes in adding safety functions to chips used in self-driving cars and other autonomous devices
2. Arynga, which was acquired by Intel's Wind River Unit, develops software that enables vehicles to received over-the-air updates—a capability used frequently by automaker Tesla to enhance performance and fix security bugs in its cars
3. Itseez, a company that specializes in machine vision technology that lets computers see and understand their surroundings - a necessityfor autonomous vehicles which need to be able to perceive the world around it.

Comma.ai and George Hotz:

In a move toward becoming a network provider, and in response to a recent NHTSA letter which caused Hotz to cancel his self-driving aftermarket kit, Hotz announced his plans to open his software code and hardware designs to the world. On November 30th all of the code and plans were posted on Github.

Hotz is encouraging people to build their own self-driving kits. His software enables adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist for certain Honda and Acura models.

Fortune magazine quoted Hotz as saying:

"The future is not hardware. If you look at a lot of companies’ business models now it has a lot more to do with ownership of networks than hardware sales. We want to make this as easy as possible for as many people as possible,” Hotz told Fortune, noting that the company even redesigned parts of the Comma Neo to make it easier for hobbyists to build.

nuTonomy:

NuTonomy, an MIT spin-off and autonomous vehicle systems startup that’s been testing its technology in Singapore, announced it will begin testing its self-driving Renault Zoe electric vehicles in an industrial park in South Boston in the next few weeks. Although the area is a public area, NuTonomy will, because of the nature of the industrial park, still be somewhat removed from normal vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

Oryx Vision:

Oryx Vision, an Israeli startup which recently got $17 million in a Series A funding round, shows off its new coherent optical radar which uses a laser to illuminate the road ahead, but radar to treat reflected signals as a wave rather than a particle. In an article in IEEE Spectrum, it was revealed that:

The laser in question is a long-wave infrared laser, also called a terahertz laser because of the frequency at which it operates. Because human eyes cannot focus light at this frequency, Oryx can use higher power levels than can lidar designers. Long-wave infrared light is also poorly absorbed by water and represents only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation that reaches Earth. This means the system should not be blinded by fog or direct sunlight, as lidar systems and cameras can be.

One of the potential cost savings of Oryx’s technology comes from the fact that its laser does not need to be steered with mechanical mirrors or a phased array in order to capture a scene. Simple optics spread the laser beam to illuminate a wide swathe in front of the vehicle. (Oryx would not say what the system’s field of view will be, but if it is not 360 degrees like rooftop lidars, a car will need multiple Oryx units facing in different directions.)

The clever bit—and what has prevented anyone from building a terahertz lidar before now—is what happens when the light bounces back to the sensor. A second set of optics direct the incoming light onto a large number of microscopic rectifying nanoantennas. These are what Oryx’s co-founder, David Ben-Bassat, has spent the past six years developing.

“Today, radars can see to 150- or 200 meters, but they don’t have enough resolution. Lidar provides great resolution but is limited in range to about 60 meters, and to as little as 30 meters in direct sunlight,” says Wellingstein. He expects Oryx’s coherent optical radar to accurately locate debris in the road at 60 meters, pedestrians at 100 meters, and motorcycles at 150 meters—significantly better than the performance of today’s sensor systems.

Regarding other industry improvements and inventions, the IEEE Spectrum article also said:

But don’t write off lidar just yet. Following a $150 million investment by Ford and Chinese search giant Baidu this summer, Velodyne expects an “exponential increase in lidar sensor deployments.” The cost of the technology is still dropping, with Velodyne estimating that one of its newer small-form lidars will cost just $500 when made at scale [at present, the price on the website is $7,999 for the new PUCK shown on the right].

Solid-state lidars are also on the horizon, with manufacturers including Quanergy, Innoluce, and another Israeli start-up, Innoviz, hinting at sub-$100 devices. Osram recently said that it could have a solid-state automotive lidar on the market as soon as 2018, with an eventual target price of under $50. Its credit card–size lidar may be able to detect pedestrians at distances up to 70 meters.

That’s not quite as good as Oryx promises, but is probably fine for all but the very fastest highway driving. The window for disrupting lidar’s grip on autonomous vehicles is closing fast.

What's it all mean:

Fast-emerging may be a catch-all phrase but it seems appropriate to the various parts of the self-driving vehicle marketplace. There are multiple stakeholders about to be disrupted as I wrote about in April:

The stakeholders are numerous and the effects can be devastating. Think secretaries, airline reservationists, and all the others disrupted during the emergence of the digital era. The transition to self-driving vehicles and car-sharing systems is likely to cause similar worldwide disruptions.

Consider the insurance industry. If accident rates go down by 90%, as many are predicting, premiums will need to go down too because the reserves for payouts, which are built into the rates, will go down as well. Also there will likely be fewer insured drivers and car owners thereby lowering the pool of insured people.

Consider hotels and motels and their real estate values and employees - particularly those along the major highways. Why stop at a motel when you can snooze comfortably in a long-haul high-speed driverless car? This will likely effect short-haul airlines and airline employees as well.

Think about professional drivers - truckers, taxies, limos, buses, shuttles. It is expected that many will be replaced by on-demand point-to-point self-driving devices.

The list of stakeholders also goes on in the auto manufacturing industry and all the Tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 component providers and wannabees. As self-driving vehicles show their needs - for example, the need for low-cost distancing vision systems - new products will be developed and new vendors could replace old ones, hence the posturing by Velodyne, LeddarTech, Quanergy, Bosch, Valeo and all the other LiDAR providers. As the technologies emerge, it becomes clear that vehicles will be the core component in a larger connected world, streaming massive amounts of data to be analyzed in ways we haven't even fathomed yet, hence Intel's new division and the new chips from Nvidea, Qualcomm and others. It's a fast-emerging marketplace on multiple fronts.

Times and our definition of cars are changing day by day - and fast emerging - a true moving target!

Continue reading →

Europe’s roadmap for robotics released its latest version on 2 December. The MAR is updated annually as priorities, technologies and strategic developments shape European research development and innovation. This version of the MAR relates to the Horizon 2020 robotics work programme defined for the 2017 call in ICT25, ICT 27 & ICT-28.

The MAR is the result of community input, mostly from Topic Groups, and a transparent process to identify priorities. The MAR is updated at each Horizon 2020 Call. Readers are encouraged to engage with this process and to contribute their knowledge to the content of this document. It will then reflect and sustain a live discourse on the current state of robotics technology. This can be done by joining euRobotics and by contributing to the associated Topic Groups.

It contains the following changes from the previous MAR release:

Introduction

This section remains substantially unchanged from the ICT-2016 version except for the addition of a brief overview of ICT-25, 27 & 28.

Domains

Since there is no Domain priority specified in ICT-2016 & ICT-2017 all of the Domain sections remain as an illustration of the breadth of robotics application. Some minor updating has taken place to the lists of current projects.

Two additional sub-domain sections have been added: Construction Robotics, Laboratory Robotics.

Robot Categories

The Robot Categories section remains unchanged from the ICT-2016 version.

Abilities

The Ability section remains unchanged from the ICT-2016 version.

Technologies

The technology section contains some additions to the Navigation section.

Innovation

The Innovation section on Standards has been updated to reflect changes in standards since the 2015 MAR publication.

You can download the release here.

If you liked this article, you may want to also read more about Horizon 2020:

Horizon 2020 projects on Robohub

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The Beijing World Robot Conference (WRC), sponsored by Beijing City, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the China Association of Science and Technology, was held October 21-25. It was big, long, ran over a weekend and gave a run-down of the breath of China’s fast-emerging robotics industry.

More than 145 vendors filled the exhibition hall which was separated into international and domestic industrial robots, and service and special purpose robots. In the main forum, 45 sessions comprising individual and panel presentations took place in the main auditorium with seating for 1,000 over three of the five days of the event. Rodney Brooks described how collaborative robots are helping bring flexibility to electronics manufacturing; KUKA’s Bernd Liepert described how manufacturing benefits through the use of robotics; and IBM’s Grady Booch and many others discussed the future of AI in relation to robots, manufacturing, self-driving cars and cloud processing and connectedness; to name just a few of the Western speakers.

The audience consisted of business executives, government personalities, academics of all types and from all across China, Korea, Japan and the EU, robot manufacturers and their sales staffs, and, particularly on the weekend, whole families – from children to their great grandparents.

A variety of contests and challenges focused on young people peppered the event: an unmanned driving challenge, an underwater robot competition, a RoboCup Challenge of robots playing soccer, and a youth challenge to work with other kids to get a robot to shoot hoops. There was even Star Challenge, a reality show about robotic startups and their key people, that will soon be broadcast on Chinese satellite and network TV.

Most of the WRC reviews that appeared in Chinese and international media emphasized the abundance of human-like robots such as JiaJia, a super realistic robot capable of micro facial expressions and basic conversation, from the University of Science and Technology of China. She was the media hit as can be seen in this video which shows JiaJia, an old man in traditional Chinese clothing drawing Chinese characters with a brush, and a few other mobile robots.

Other media showed a man flying a bionic butterfly drone, a badminton-playing robot that took on the crowd, and SmartTuna, a swimming industrial robot that finds leaks inside underwater pipelines which swam through clear plastic pipes for all to see.

Business executives from companies that were users or candidates to use robots in their businesses were exposed to a wide range of applications and uses throughout the conference and by demonstrations on the exhibition floor. The conference program was forward-looking and addressed subjects such as Russian and Israeli co-operative partnerships, healthcare and surgical developments, collaborative robots, self-driving vehicles, drones, and research challenges that must be met for the industry to progress and succeed.

About 40% of the robots on display at the show were industrial, while the rest were service and specialized robots.

According to the China Robot Industry Association, 68,000 industrial robots were sold in China in 2015, up 20% compared to the same period of 2014. China accounted for about a quarter of robot sales globally in 2015, making the country the biggest market for industrial robots for three consecutive years. 32,996 industrial robots were manufactured in China last year, up 21.7% year on year.

China has set goals to be able to make in-country 150,000 industrial robots in 2020, 260,000 in 2025 and 400,000 by 2030 and Shenzhen-based Siasun Robot & Automation, China’s largest domestic robot manufacturer, had the largest exhibition space to show their full range of robotic products.

In April, the Ministry of Industry, the Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and other ministries jointly issued a development plan for the next 5 years which included these goals and stressed the need for service robots as well as industrial ones, hence the emphasis at the show and in the conference program of the growing importance of non-industrial robots as consumer and entertainment products, social assistants and helpers and for all manner of use in business.

The Chinese government is determined to stimulate robot development in China. According to statistics released by the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, China’s domestic robot industry in 2015 was just $243 million, albeit a year-over-year increase of 55%.

At the conference, Vice Premier Liu Yandong urged enhanced research and development of the industry. She said related policies should be improved, human resources should be developed, and global communication should be enhanced.

According to Ms. Yandong, the development of robotics technology plays an important role in supporting intelligent manufacturing, enhancing production efficiency and improving the people’s well-being, which ushers in a new era of economic and social development. She also said:

“The Chinese Government attaches great importance to robotics technology innovation and industrial development, and expects to speed up the development of intelligent industries represented by robotics and strengthen cultivation of innovation talents, improve synergized education mechanism and incentive evaluation mechanism integrating industries, universities, research institutes and users, and help innovation talents give full scope to their expertise; advance international exchange and cooperation, jointly develop international standards for robotics, intensify application for patents and protection of intellectual property rights, and strive to establish a robotics development pattern of inclusive development, resource sharing and complementary advantage.”

In a move consistent with many other recent acquisitions of stars within the robotics industry, Liquid Robotics announced that they sold their company to Boeing’s Autonomous Systems for Defense, Space & Security division.

Liquid Robotics‘ Wave Gliders have traveled over 1.2 million nautical miles for a variety of partners and clients and an even greater number of commercial, defense and scientific applications.

Partnering with Boeing and the British Royal Navy, Liquid Robotics provided a version of their wave gliders hooked up with Boeing’s acoustic sensors for anti-submarine warfare missions and also to gather data that contributed to sensor prediction models and provide real-time data on weather and ocean conditions critical to safe operations for the Navy.
In a three-year-old strategic joint venture with Schlumberger, Liquid Robotics has been providing environmental measurement services and speciality products to Schlumberger’s global offshore oil and gas presence.
Working in conjunction with the Pew Charitable Trust “Project Eyes on the Seas,” Liquid Robotics Wave Gliders patrol the 840,000 square kilometers of remote marine habitat around the Pitcairn Islands. Experts in a Virtual Watch Room remotely direct the Wave Glider using both satellite surveillance and their knowledge of the habitat.

Financial terms weren’t provided for the deal, but it is the second acquisition of an unmanned undersea vehicle maker this year by a major defense firm. General Dynamics Mission Systems acquired robot maker Bluefin Robotics during February, also for an undisclosed amount. In recent years many stars in the robotics industry have been acquired by bigger and less known companies in the industry: KUKA by Midea, Universal Robots by Teradyne, Kiva Systems by Amazon and Hansen Robotics by Auris Surgical to name just a few.

Liquid Robotics, which started in 2007 as the commercialization of the tools used to track the songs made by whales, has grown to employ around 100 people in the Bay Area of California and in Hawaii. They raised over $81 million in six rounds of venture fundings to become the nimble, well rounded, low-cost, self-sustaining ocean observation provider they now are. They will become a subsidiary of Boeing’s Autonomous Systems for Defense, Space & Security division.

“With Liquid Robotics’ innovative technology and Boeing’s leading intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance solutions, we are helping our customers address maritime challenges in ways that make existing platforms smarter, missions safer and operations more efficient,” said Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.”

A recent article in The Washington Post by Morgan Stanley strategist and author of “The Rise and Fall of Nations” Ruchir Sharma, provides a nuanced overview of the issues of jobs, robots, productivity and income disparity.

In the article, Sharma suggests that because the labor pool isn’t growing fast enough to support our needs, it may not be long before economists worry about a global shortage of robots to fill those needs.

“In many industrial countries, from Germany to Japan to South Korea, growth in the working-age population has already peaked, acting as a drag on the economy. Widely overlooked, however, is the fact that the population-growth slowdown is unfolding even faster in the emerging world.”

China, the most prominent of those emerging countries, is already feeling the effects of four disruptive population trends:

China’s working-age population growth just turned negative and China is expected to lose 1 million workers each year for the foreseeable future.
Of those coming of working age, because of education and other social reasons, they don’t want to work in factories.
China’s elderly share of the population is rising twice as fast as in the U.S. and four times faster than in France. Unlike France and the U.S.
Given the widespread political backlash against immigration, compensatory immigrant increases to offset ageing workforces are unlikely.

Sharma cited an instance where Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel prize-winning psychologist/economist who wrote “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” a 2011 best seller, had occassion to comment on the subject:

“Asked by an alarmed dinner companion about the threat robots posed to jobs in China, Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman responded: “You just don’t get it. In China, the robots are going to come just in time.” No wonder Beijing now offers heavy subsidies to companies involved in industrial automation.”

Strategic long-view planning such as that exhibited by the Chinese series of 5-year plans focused on bringing robotics to China, creating an in-country robotics industry, and expanding the use of robots to provide social assistance in addition to industrial production, is being replicated in Japan, Korea and throughout the EU.

It remains to be seen how this will play out in the U.S.

If you enjoyed this article about robots and jobs, you may also want to read:

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Teledyne Technologies, which specializes in deepwater gas and oil exploration and production, oceanographic research, air and water quality environmental monitoring, electronics design and development, factory automation and medical imaging, in an all cash $780 million transaction, will acquire British imaging sensor maker E2V Technologies.

Teledyne’s offer represents a 48% premium on last weeks E2V’s closing price. [Both Teledyne and E2V are members of the ROBO Global Robotics & Automation UCITS Index, an index of 82 stocks from around the world that reflect the robotics and automation industry (and of which I am a co-founder).]

E2V’s imaging devices, machine vision cameras for sensitive, high-speed inspection processes, industrial processing systems, and other sensors, enable a range of industrial robotic and automation systems to work more efficiently and for space science and astronomy applications. E2V also provides high reliability semiconductors and board-level solutions for use in aerospace, space and radio frequency communications applications. For the year ended March 31, 2016, E2V had sales of approximately $300 million.

“We have followed e2v for more than a decade. Over time, as both Teledyne and e2v evolved, our businesses have become increasingly aligned. In fact, every business within e2v is highly complementary to Teledyne. As important, there is minimal product overlap,” said Robert Mehrabian, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Teledyne. “For example, we are both leaders in space and astronomy imaging, but Teledyne largely provides infrared detectors and e2v provides visible light sensors.

“In machine vision applications, e2v’s advanced capabilities in proprietary CMOS sensor design add to Teledyne’s strengths in cameras and vision systems. While Teledyne designs advanced mixed signal circuits for government and commercial applications, e2v’s broader product portfolio enhances our offerings and channels to market.”

Big year for acquisitions

Both Teledyne and E2V are members of the ROBO Global Robotics & Automation UCITS Index, an index of 82 stocks from around the world that reflect the robotics and automation industry (and of which I am a co-founder). ARCAM, Swisslog, Kuka, Mako, Zygo and Atmel were other publicly-traded stocks which also got acquired in 2016 and recent years.

Of the 48 acquisitions thus far in 2016, only 30 disclosed the amounts involved. However those 30 transactions totaled an astounding $17,500,000,000!

Aerial MOB by 5D Robotics
Aesynt by Omnicell
Affymetrix by ThermoFisher
Arcam AB by GE
Ascending Tech by Intel
Bluefin by GD Mission Systems
Cabinplant A/S by CTB
Cruise Automation by GM
Dematic by Kion Group
Drone Services USA by Howco
E2V by Teledyne
Eagle Scout by Deveron UAS
Ecoclean Group (Dürr) by Shenyang Blue Silver
Ergopedia by Pasco Scientific
Gatewing (Trimble) by Delair-Tech
Gimatic by Agic Capital
Grohmann Engr by Tesla
Hansen by Auris
Hocomo by DIH Intl
Intelligrated by Honeywell
Interactive Motion Technologies by Bionik Labs
iRobot Defense by Endeavor
Jaybridge Robotics by Toyota
Jorgensen Engineering by Zano
KraussMaffei by ChemChina
KUKA by Midea
Liquid Robotics by Boeing
Maverick Technologies by Rockwell Automation
Mikrotron by Ambienta
Moodstocks by Google
Movidius by Intel
NDC Automation by Dematic
Otto Motors by Uber
PAS by Swisslog
Paslin by Wanfeng
Point Grey Research by FLIR Systems
Prox Dynamics by FLIR Systems
Retrotech by Egemin
RoboRobo by Shengtong Printing
SLM Solutions Group by GE
SVIA by ABB
Thrust UAV by PCS Edventures
Time Domain by 5D Robotics
Tumblejump by Apple
Turi by Apple
Voith by Triton
Westfalia Group by Horizon Global
Zimmer Biomet by Medtech

One CEO of a selling company, Enrico Krog Iversen, who sold Danish Universal Robots to American Teradyne in 2015, when asked if it was a trend that robotics-related companies were exiting to larger companies or funds instead of going public, said:

“Exiting to a larger company will often make sense not only for financial reasons, but also for people reasons – opening up for new/more career opportunities. You will become part of something bigger and can instantly get access to additional resources. Naturally there are also some political considerations if you choose this path.

Exiting to a fund is also a good financial solution and you will probably get access to a very strong board who can help you develop the company faster.

An IPO may bring more money on paper, but it is a very restricted way to exit and it is also very bureaucratic to run a listed company. In our case, I preferred to have a good sum of money in the bank instead of a lot of money on paper. Also I did not personally fancy all the bureaucracy and politics that goes with being CEO of a listed company.”

The Robot Report’s annual recap of fundings, acquisitions and IPOs wil appear just after the new year. Stay tuned.

The White House released a new report on the ways that artificial intelligence will transform the US economy over the coming years and decades.

Below is shortened version from the original post.

On December 20, In order to ready the United States for a future in which artificial intelligence (AI) plays a growing role, the White House released a report on Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy. This report follows up on the Administration’s previous report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, which was released in October 2016, and which recommended that the White House publish a report on the economic impacts of artificial intelligence by the end of 2016.

Accelerating AI capabilities will enable automation of some tasks that have long required human labor. These transformations will open up new opportunities for individuals, the economy, and society, but they will also disrupt the current livelihoods of millions of Americans. The new report examines the expected impact of AI-driven automation on the economy, and describes broad strategies that could increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs.

AI-driven automation will transform the economy over the coming years and decades. The challenge for policymakers will be to update, strengthen, and adapt policies to respond to the economic effects of AI.

Although it is difficult to predict these economic effects precisely, the report suggests that policymakers should prepare for five primary economic effects:

Positive contributions to aggregate productivity growth;
Changes in the skills demanded by the job market, including greater demand for higher-level technical skills;
Uneven distribution of impact, across sectors, wage levels, education levels, job types, and locations;
Churning of the job market as some jobs disappear while others are created; and
The loss of jobs for some workers in the short-run, and possibly longer depending on policy responses.

In the cases where it is possible to direct mitigations to particularly affected places and sectors, those approaches should be pursued. But more generally, the report suggests three broad strategies for addressing the impacts of AI-driven automation across the whole U.S. economy:

Invest in and develop AI for its many benefits;
Educate and train Americans for jobs of the future; and
Aid workers in the transition and empower workers to ensure broadly shared growth.

Read the entire White House summary here.

Download the PDF report here.

You can also read these articles about AI and the White House:

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Sophisticated household robots are only just starting to show up in our lives, but all the building blocks for a veritable “Cambrian explosion” of robotics are there, as Gill Pratt described it when he was running the recent DARPA Robotics Challenge. The service robotics industry is emerging, and we will soon be seeing robots of all shapes and sizes making their first forays into our everyday lives.

This is borne out by the recent explosion in robotics and AI funding, which saw robotics investments increase exponentially over the last five years. While approximately $1 billion was invested in robotics between 2009 and 2014, roughly the same amount was invested in 2015 alone and 2016 is on track to double the total investment again.

According to the CBInsights October 2016 report into “The State of Enterprise: Robotics”, these new investments are largely clustered in autonomous vehicles and the service robotics industry, with strong growth noted in enterprise focused robotics companies.

“Over 50 enterprise-focused robotics companies have raised $259M across 63 deals this year (as of 10/5/2016). These companies are building robots for industrial automation, manufacturing, warehouse automation, and restaurant services, among other tasks.

At the current run-rate, deals to enterprise robotics startups are projected to cross 80 this year, beating last year’s record of 73.

Figure from CB Insights blog “Robotics Startups Funding”

As few as five years ago, the robotics landscape looked simple. While drone and autonomous vehicle technologies were beginning to emerge and cause some excitement, most of the robotics industry was industrial, and the remainder of the landscape was comparatively arid and boring: a few hospital robots, some robot vacuum cleaners, and a few toys and educational robots.

The emergence of the service robotics industry as a serious economic force has taken many people by surprise. It has also made it more difficult to make sense of the robotics landscape, particularly because the new service robotics businesses impact so many markets and applications, making categorization and statistics difficult to obtain, and trends hard to analyze.

The impact of the internet on the retail sector is a marked example. The demise of physical retail has been hyped since the first dot com bubble, and perhaps this hype has lulled us into a false sense of security. But the huge decline in value of most major US retailers over the past decade is simply shocking. At the same time, robotics offers a potential solution to the pending economic disaster that is threatening the bricks and mortar retail industry. Early signs indicate that robotics is bringing manufacturing back to the US, enabling small batch, just-in-time production in a range of areas from automotive to electronics to biomedical.

Now it seems service robotics solutions in the retail and consumer spaces are offering new ways for brick and mortar companies to likewise maintain their competitive edge. And helping to shape these solutions are a number of Silicon Valley startups featured in this report: Catalia Health, Cleverpet, Bossa Nova, Fetch Robotics, Savioke, Marble, Dispatch, Dishcraft, Momentum Machines, Eatsa, Fellow Robots and Simbe. Indeed, Silicon Valley is at the epicenter of emerging service robotics industry.

Since 2010 Silicon Valley Robotics has been tracking early stage robotics startups and supporting them as they grow. Many of these companies are creating fundamentally new interactions and products, and as they do so, are leveraging the latest business model concepts, including various twists on “Robots as a Service” and “cloud robotics”. With so much new ground being broken, we saw a need to share their stories so that the industry as a whole can learn and grow, too.

Our first report on “Service Robotics Case Studies in Silicon Valley 2015” looked at enterprise robotics companies like Fetch Robotics, Adept, Fellow Robots, and Savioke, who occupied the space between backroom logistics and front-of-house customer service.

The new “Service Robotics Case Studies in Silicon Valley 2016” takes a deeper dive to explore how robotics companies are driving changes in how we interact — not just with technology — but with our pets, our health care providers, and our retail experience.

CleverPet (B2C) >> changing how people interact with their pets and delivering data-driven interactions at the far end of the spectrum of the new behavioral robotics.
Catalia Health (B2B2C) >> changing how people interact with their medication and life choices, but also how healthcare providers interact with patients >> intelligence built in by experts; allowing for smarter, data-driven interactions.
Simbe (B2B) >> allowing retail managers to interact more efficiently with their stock

A clear theme is that each of these robotics startups can unlock data-driven insights with potentially enormous additional business upside by leveraging the ubiquitous connectivity that is being made possible by cloud computing, and more specifically, cloud robotics. Emerging cloud robotics technology enables far more than the simple ability to continuously update and upgrade a physical product, or even to augment the intelligence of that product; it allows robots to become active mobile big data collectors.

Another important theme is how the RaaS or “Robots as a Service” model is maturing, with a range of transactions and applications (e.g. commission-based vs rental-based etc.) to complement the roll out of cloud robotics. Robots are no longer being marketed as simple products for sale, but as sophisticated tools for gaining insights and creating value and driving customer change.

Our second set of case studies and commentaries looks at how accelerators and investors are supporting the drive towards RaaS and finding business models that map robotics technologies into existing business structures, in areas ranging from health to consumer, hospitality to retail.

HAX >> helping startups focus on business models via programs like HAX Boost
Lemnos Labs >> seeing opportunities for RaaS, working with startups on developing their business plan
Comet Labs >> analyzing how intelligent machines can reimagine retail from logistics to customer experience

Every case study and commentary in this report underscores the fundamental importance (and reliance) of human-robot interaction to the service robotics business model — a trend that is sure define the industry well into the future. With so many ‘humans in the loop’ it will become critical that we design robots and businesses that set a high bar for safety, privacy, and ethics. For this reason, we are pleased to announce that Silicon Valley Robotics has just launched a “Good Robot Design Council” with industry expert advisers in an effort to develop design guidelines for the robotics industry that can help fill the ethical gap between standards and laws.

To that same end, our next service robotics reports will focus on self-driving vehicles, agriculture, and other ‘niche’ verticals, with an emphasis on the increasing importance of human-robot interaction, and a look at which aspects of design make good robots and successful businesses.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy:

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New U.S. Robotics Roadmap calls for regulation, research and education

Lofty goals crash land while B2B drones prosper

GoPro’s Karma

DJI lowers prices

3D Robotics offers new product

Google’s Project Wing

senseFly, DelAir and other B2B providers thrive

Bottom line

Robot Launch 2016 – Robohub Readers’ Pick round three

Why are some social robots selling well, whilst others are stalled or failing?

The bots: Amazon Echo Alexa vs. Google Home

The mobile social companions: Pepper and Jibo

Bottom line

Two robotic stock IPOs coming to market

Let’s hope Trump does what he says regarding robots and robotics

US auto industry installed 135,000 robots and added 230,000 jobs

Who did Robohub reader’s vote for in Robot Launch 2016?

Where is robotic vision on the Hype Cycle?

Robohub is a top 10 brand in robotics

November fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures

Fundings:

Acquisitions:

IPOs and equity crowdfundings:

Failures:

ViDi Systems wins the Robot Launch 2016 competition

Self-driving cars, networks, and the companies and people that are stimulating development

Intel:

Comma.ai and George Hotz:

nuTonomy:

Oryx Vision:

What's it all mean:

Latest release of Multi-Annual Roadmap (MAR) for Horizon 2020 now online

Beijing World Robot Conference drew big crowds and notable speakers

Liquid Robotics acquired by Boeing Defense, Space & Security

Robots may save the global economy

Teledyne Technologies acquires British imaging sensor maker E2V Technologies

Big year for acquisitions

White House report: Artificial intelligence, automation, and the economy

Looking towards service robotics in 2017