Everything-Robotic by The Robot Report

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report

This mash-up of our list of 159 robotic start-up companies onto Google's global map graphically displays how widespread robotic inventions and inventors are dispersed around the world and particularly around major robotic research centers. For the purpose of this mash-up, we are defining a robotic start-up as a company established to develop a concept or product or robotic-related service for sale but doesn't yet have it all together. They have established a business and are in motion toward their goals but haven't made any sales or aren't fully funded, haven't finished developing the product, or all of the preceding.

Each red marker shows the start-up company name, city and website link. This is good free publicity for start-up companies, good for job-seekers, good for the robotics industry and informative for investors and gadget freaks everywhere. Robotics is happening, and it's happening at a rapid pace all over the globe! And this mash-up is just a tiny reflection of that revolution.

Interestingly, there are very few industrial robot start-up companies; mostly the new companies are service robotic companies, a generic term for every form of robot except those used for industrial-grade manufacturing: surgical; healthcare; defense; space; security; personal service; shop assistance; unmanned aerial, underwater and ground vehicles; toys; vision enabled, etc.

These start-ups appear to be clustering in the Bay Area (Silicon Valley) of California, around Boston, Pittsburgh, Tokyo and Stockholm - all of which correspond with the locations of notable government or university-sponsored robotics research facilities, and in and around New York City. Each of those areas have ongoing entrepreneurial assistance programs for technology projects and provide nurturing and social get-togethers with prospective investors and fellow inventors and roboticists.

Many other young robotic companies have pushed beyond the start-up phase into one of our other directory categories shown below. And many more are missing because they are too stealthy to have a web or social media presence just yet or are in a language that is difficult to search and translate. Hence my personal request: if you know of a robotics start-up that isn't included on the map, please send the information to: info@therobotreport.com. Thank you.

Although only 159 start-up companies are plotted, The Robot Report’s database has over 1,800 robotics links separated into the following categories:

... Industrial robot manufacturers
... Service robots for governmental and corporate use
... Service robots for personal use
... Ancillary businesses serving the robotics industry
... Start-up companies
... Educational and research facilities

Later this year we will be producing another mash-up from our database. Red markers will show the industrial robot makers, blue markers will show where service robotics companies are located, and green will be for start-up companies. Stay tuned! This one should be particularly illuminating.

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report

The business of unmanned aerial, underwater and ground vehicles -- originally funded by DARPA, NSF and other government-sponsored research programs -- and the many ancillary businesses involved -- has grown quickly and dramatically. Lobbying for its interests has been well-funded by defense contractors and very successful in advancing the defense side of the industry. Movies show the technologies in use: e.g., the latest Bourne movie has a Predator strike and also a drone making a pickup of materials at a specified location.

But when the focus broadens beyond military budgets, Congress often leads the way to other opportunities. The mandated integration of unmanned systems into the U.S. national airspace by 2015 has many unmanned vehicle manufacturers re-marketing their technology for civilian purposes.

Large tank showing tethered ROV with exhibition hall in background.

Underwater and ground vehicles are farther along in that process than the aerial segment. This fact is evidenced by the flurry of underwater projects, joint ventures, and acquisitions being undertaken by the oil and gas exploration and mining industries. The recent Schlumberger joint venture with Liquid Robotics is a good example. The initial purpose of the venture will be for surveillance; seep/spill detection; and communications gateway services.

It can also be seen by the steady movement toward driverless trucks and cars by Google and the auto industry and driverless tractors for agri-business. These large-scale projects involve enormous consumer revenues and are overshadowing military UGVs like bomb disposal and military truck convoys and space projects like the Mars rover Curiosity.

Mobile remote presence devices such as iRobot and InTouch Health's new RP-VITA robot are also taking root and finding multiple uses in the health care sector. iRobot is an example of a robot company diversifying into non-defense endeavors even though their basic research dollars have come from DARPA and the DoD.

As much as aerial "drones" have been in the news for their surveillance and bombing prowess, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have not made too much headway toward commercialization because they cannot, at present, fly in civilian airspace and, even if the rules were changed, they still couldn't fly without serious modifications. A recent $2,000 Research & Markets report on the prospects for the global unmanned aerial vehicle market for the next four years shows only limited growth; 4.28% CAGR through 2015.

Thus interest was high and the questions pointed and serious at the AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International) North America's Conference & Show in Las Vegas this week. Five hundred fifty exhibitor companies manned the show floor and 9,000 industry attendees listened to presentations and strolled the exhibition halls.

FAA Acting Administrator Michael Huerta

At the keynote presentation, Michael Huerta, FAA's Acting Administrator and Leslie Cary, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICOA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Group Secretary, discussed the timing, process and complexities of the Congressional mandate to provide rules, regulations and facilities which would allow unmanned aircraft into the civil airspace by September, 2015.

The consensus of the people I talked with afterwards was that both the FAA and ICAO, although they "talk the talk" of enabling the transition, are far from where they need to be to truly make it happen.

The FAA, which is currently understaffed and underfunded, has its hands full because they are in the process of changing their technology from 2D to 3D - an immense and complex transition - and are also searching for a new director. They have yet to mention how they plan to regulate and enforce the new rules or how they plan to underwrite and test collision avoidance and communication systems.
The FAA isn't the only player in the Congressional mandate and inter-agency issues are complex, political and far-reaching. Also involved are the DoD and the FCC and the international ICAO.
There were many comments about ICAO's timetables which extended 10 and 20 years from now, and which certainly trails the American deadline of September, 2015. Their insistence that UASs be remotely piloted with a licensed pilot and individually certified aircraft and ground systems was thought to be too stringent. They coined the term RPAS: Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems. The one decision ICAO has made is that model aircraft will not be covered in their new rules even though these aircraft could hinder the airspace.

Because UAS technology is here to stay and will only grow in size, there are steps being taken to comply with what the industry expects the rules to be. These include setting up multiple-state UAS testing centers and establishing two new schools for unmanned flight training, one in the US and the other in Europe. These new entities will be able to customize their curricula and procedures to prepare their clients for various licensing and certification requirements once they are established by the FAA and ICAO.

Along the line of making changes that are inevitable, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) adopted guidelines for the use of unmanned aircraft systems by law enforcement agencies. The guidelines provide an outline of how to use UAS safely and responsibly and with respect to individuals’ privacy. The adoption of the IACP guidelines follows the recent adoption of AUVSI’s “Code of Conduct” for those who design, test and operate UAS.

Industry executives know they will have to change from the loose and unusually permissive regulatory situation they have had up until now. As the war in Afghanistan scales down, a portion of the industry's forward-thinking companies are focusing on commercializing their product lines and are attempting to wean themselves away from defense contracts even though there will still be a large business in the civilian first-responder marketplace.

Also, since most of the current UASs do not have the systems or maneuverability to safely fly in civilian airspace, the industry needs to enhance its products to be more robust, incorporate redundant systems, situational awareness and other collision avoidance sensors and communication systems. These are not insignificant modifications and there have been a few notable recent incidents of lost-link and mid-air collisions, including the recent clamor when a UAV lost its link and was on a direct course for Washington, DC. Present-day payload systems used in manned aircraft, although very capable, are also big and heavy. They will need to be miniaturized in order to be able to fit into the limited payload capacities of UASs.

A Few Companies Transitioning to the Civilian Marketplace

Although the robotics sub-set of the aerospace/defense industry quite large, dynamic and technologically advanced, it has not been highlighted in The Robot Report. Because of my personal bias, the opposite is true. It was with that partiality in mind when I walked the exhibition halls of AUVSI and overheard conversational fragments that included words like "war," "killing," "fear," "nervousness," etc., that I searched for companies that were making an effort to modify and market their products outside the military/defense/security sector.

Here are a few of the companies transitioning to the civilian marketplace:

Canadian start-up Eqquera UAVs
for forest fire fighting and tanker operations.

AeroVironment's has repurposed it's Qube portable UAV for use in public safety applications such as law enforcement and first response. The system provides a portable aerial vantage point to help public safety workers perform their duties more safely and effectively.
Canadian start-up Eqquera demonstrated their novel and creatively designed UASs for forest fire fighting and nuclear and arctic surveillance.
HDT and The Johns Hopkins University presented their MK2 robotic arm for rehab purposes and a two-armed version with significant torque and lift capabilities for general purpose shop and factory work.
i2Tech, one of many electronic and vision systems providers at the show, has a line of light weight, low-power, stabilized camera and thermal imaging systems for health care, industrial testing and surveillance.
Both Kairos Autonomy and Brock Technologies have low-cost kits which are able to convert any existing ground vehicle into an unmanned system and Autonomous Solutions just received a patent for a kit-based autonomous clip-on tethered unmanned convoy system.
Israel's RoboTeam's multi-purpose line of mobile tactical ground robots were described as solutions for homeland security and public safety.
MDL's displayed their tiny 43-gram USB-powered micro laser module for distance metering.

HDT, a predominately military provider, is partnering with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab to build advanced prosthetic and robotic health care prototype systems. At the show they displayed their two-armed MK-2 robot, a portable, lightweight and reasonably-priced device with high torque and lift capabilities capable of holding and using portable hand tools.
Many additive 3D printing systems had booths and showed how their machines were able to work with exotic metal substances and to provide specialized capabilities well beyond the MakerBot 3D printers we all know and love:

ExOne Digital Part Materialization
Harvest Technologies Stereo Lithography
Morris Technologies additive metal manufacturing

Finally, TOR Robotics provided a long list of civilian uses for their quad-copter that are also valid for the whole UAS industry:

This year’s AUVSI show was transitional in the sense that the majority of the exhibitor's businesses has come from governments around the world, and those governments —like the U.S. — are facing significant cuts in spending. Hence the need to step up the lobbying to keep spending high (as appears to be the case of the large aerospace conglomerates), or seek ways to modify products and transition to the commercial marketplace (as can be seen by the short list of companies described above).

By Babs Carryer, Adjunct Prof, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Advisor,
Carnegie Mellon University, Editor and Author, New Venturist**

Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

Sometimes a company is founded because it stumbles upon a niche that it can fill better than any other company. Such a company is RE2 (Robotics Engineering Excellence). Founded by Jorgen Pedersen as a contract engineering house to fill a need for unmanned systems engineering expertise within Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), RE2 now provides mobile manipulation systems for defense and safety.

Another company finding their unique niche is Liquid Robotics. More about them later.

RE2 began with an SBIR

A lot of robotics companies started with defense research objectives. Some, like iRobot, have branched into other applications commercializing what they developed for the DoD into consumer products. RE2 has stayed in defense because it’s really good at what it does – providing high torque, high payload robotic arms and manipulators.

Arm manipulation is a niche within defense -- a large niche -- as it is in robotics in general. Capitalizing on research and product development to meet the military's high torque, heavy payload requirements, RE2 is not only a provider to the military but is beginning to commercialize those special capabilities into non-defense applications as well.

RE2 is a success story for the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program. Founded in 2001, RE2 remained a contract engineering firm until 2005. The company won its first DoD SBIR in 2006 to develop a small robotic arm for unmanned ground vehicles. The Phase I and Phase II awards, totaling $850K, set the course for the future of RE2. The military was keenly interested in the RE2 approach because existing robotic arms weren’t very strong or precise. CEO Jorgen Pedersen puts it, “That was enough for us to focus on and realize that we could solve those problems. Then later we realized the arms needed to be faster, more modular, and less expensive. We fulfilled on those capabilities too.”

Those first SBIRs allowed the company to become a recognized expert in mobile manipulation. SBIRs also allowed the company to grow over a several year period from six to 18. Since then it has won dozens of SBIRs that have helped fund the development of its robotic technology and provide jobs. Today, RE2 employs 60 and is growing by about 20 every year.

RE2 never had any outside investment. It never needed it, given the string of SBIRs. But Jorgen doesn’t believe that the awards represent money without a return: “We have provided the DoD with $6.5 million in revenue return so far from their $850K investment in our first SBIRs. On the SBIR commercialization index, we are 90 out of 100 because they know that we have a 90% chance of commercializing technology over anyone else.”

Liquid Robotics: A Passion for Whale Songs

Liquid Robotics has developed a unique wave glider for science, oil and gas exploration, oil production management, environmental and spill detection and a myriad other applications using only renewable energy. It has blossomed into a very promising start-up company with a broad market: any business which needs to monitor, measure, surveil and explore our oceans. Liquid has recently created two new entities to handle its success: a joint venture with Schlumberg and a new Defense/National Security subsidiary. Liquid will soon be offering a new business: ocean data as a service for those who don't wish to own and operate their own wave gliders. Clients specify their data needs, geographic areas and duration and Liquid Robotics provides the data.

The Wave Glider development was the result of a single man’s passion for whale songs. Joe Rizzi, Chairman of Jupiter Research Foundation, had a love for the sounds of whales as they migrated along the coasts of Hawaii to Alaska. He wanted to capture their songs “live”. Not an easy task -- to develop a device capable of capturing the pure sounds of the whales and stay out at sea for extended periods. After a few years experimenting, Joe enlisted Roger Hine, a mechanical engineer and Stanford University robotics expert, to help develop an unmoored, station-keeping data buoy. It was from this partnership they developed the first Wave Glider.

The original intent was purely to invent a way to capture whale songs. After they had developed the first Wave Glider and were testing in the waters off of the Big Island, they were approached on the possible commercialization of their invention by entrepreneurs looking beyond whale songs.

Early funding was predominately done by the non-profit Jupiter Research Foundation. Roger Hine came to the project with his own funds and then headed Liquid Robotics, which, in 2007, was spun off from Jupiter Research, with angel investors and mutual friends of Joe and Roger. This money seeded the early development and critical endurance/mission testing. In May/June of 2011, Vantage Point Capital Partners and Schlumberger invested a Series D round of $22M.

A Common Thread

RE2 and Liquid Robotics share one common thread: they provided a solution involving robotics to solve a real need. They didn't provide a technology and then search for applications that fit that technology. RE2's Jorgen said, “Even on the military side, it’s still not about the robotics. We are helping to save lives. What is the price of a human life? What is the amount of money that the military will invest to train and protect their most valuable resource, people? If we can help disarm the improvised explosive device (IED) on the road, that’s a no-brainer. And that’s a market need!”

Jorgen cites the acceleration of viable robotics companies from the September 11, 2001 catastrophe: “9-11 was bad but it was a catalyst for ground robotics. In 2002 there were four robots deployed. By 2004, it had gone to12. By 2005, 163, and by 2006, 2,000 robots, an order of magnitude jump each year. 7,000 robots were deployed by 2010.” Jorgen sees that trend continuing as robots are demystified and integrated into products and services.

Similarly, Liquid Robotics had a need to develop an autonomous unmoored, station-keeping data buoy with enough renewable energy to power a platform full of sensors and devices capable of capturing the pure sounds of whales.

British Petroleum (BP) began using Liquid's wave gliders in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill disaster:

"Initially we will be calibrating a set of nine optical sensors to monitor water quality, including trace amounts of dispersed oil, and will then add acoustic monitoring of marine mammal activity," said Roger Hine, president and CEO of Liquid Robotics. "We look forward to working with BP on this extended research program."

Data collected by the deployment was posted on a public website for all to see. News spread and oil, gas and military executives saw a fit of Liquid's gliders with their oceanographic needs. Schlumberger, an international supplier of technology, integrated project management and information solutions for the oil and gas industry, took an interest which led to their 2011 funding and 2012 joint venture with Liquid.

Conclusion: Build a Product That Satisfies a Specific Need

Colin Angle, CEO and co-founder of iRobot, has consistently held that we are going about developing the robotics industry wrong: “The idea that a humanoid robot with arms would push a vacuum cleaner is an image that has set many expectations and, in some ways, has set back the industry,” when, by just rethinking what needs to be done, we can build a product that satisfies a specific need (vacuuming), as iRobot did with their Roomba line of robotic vacuums. "I used to think that I was a self-respecting high-tech entrepreneur, but it took me becoming a vacuum cleaner salesman to actually have some success for my company, my investors and myself."

** Portions of this article have been excerpted with permission from "It takes the military to spawn robotics."

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

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

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

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

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

Source: Siemens Annual Report

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

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

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

Source: Rockwell Automation Annual Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Keyence Annual Report

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

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

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

Source: Mitsubishi Electric Annual Report

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

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

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

Teco AC motor drives

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

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

* * *

What I See:

Frank Tobe
Editor/Publisher
The Robot Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, Credit Suisse didn't mention other areas for automation and there are many. One example is hospital automation -- a big market for pill dispensing robots, mobile tugs to deliver linens, meals, trash and medicines, autonomous cleaners of all types and remote presence robots. Three public companies of note are Swisslog (SW:SLOG), Adept (NASDAQ:ADEP) and iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) and two at-present privately-held companies are InTouch Health and Aethon.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

My friends have been kidding me for months about the movie Robot & Frank (because my name is Frank, I've got gray hair, and I'm way into robots -- I research, edit and publish The Robot Report and this blog). I have a Photoshop'd poster with my picture instead of Frank's since, as news of the movie trickled out, they likened me to the crotchety character played by Frank Langella.

Actor Frank Langella on the left; robot analyst Frank Tobe on the right.

Finally, a few days ago, a group of us went to see it and, although it was sad and sweet, and generally a fun and entertaining movie to watch, it was a disappointment to me on many levels.

The story is about an older guy who lives alone in a rural area. Frank is grumpy, slovenly and abusive, except with the local librarian, whom he likes. His son drives a long distance to check up on him once a week and the visits aren't pleasant. His daughter is off in some foreign land taking photos. His ex-wife is long gone.

The story brightens when the son gives Frank a robot to help take care of him. It is purposed to lead him away from his curmudgeon state (which we later learn is dementia) toward a more healthy life. Frank, who at first hates the idea, finds that the robot is trainable and can do some things better than he can, like pick a lock or crack the combination on a safe. This excites him to once again do what he used to do: be a jewel thief. It's a mundane Robin Hood type plot but the two principal actors (Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon) make it a better film because they play their roles so convincingly. I don't want to tell more of the story because the movie is worth seeing.

From a robot enthusiast's point of view, however, the movie left a lot to be desired. First (and I hate to break this to you), the robot wasn't a robot after all. It may have looked like Honda's Asimo, but it was really Rachael Ma dressed up in a robot costume made by a Hollywood effects company (Altrerian). She walked and moved just like Asimo and moved her head empathically during periods of dialogue but it wasn't even a speaking part for her; a male actor read the lines that were the robot's voice.

Second, regarding the robot's voice, the director ended up printing out all of the robot lines in sequence and having Peter Sarsgaard read them straight through without watching the scenes. It yielded the best balance and consistency for their goal of robot-like speech. If it ended up sounding a little inhuman, that was fine.

The real issues about ethical, psychological and social concerns of a robot providing assistance and life coaching for a person with serious aging and psychological issues, or about a robot assisting or participating in illegal activities with that person were only lightly touched upon. Instead the issues were defined by the paradigm of living alone or in a residential care facility.

When asked by a reporter from The Christian Science Monitor about the ethical question of having robots take care of the elderly and replace human caregivers, director Jake Schreier replied:

I don't have an answer for that. I mean, we certainly touch on it. I think the key for [screenplay writer Christopher] Ford and I was to sort of make it ... you could call it a "future agnostic" movie. This is in the sense that it's not saying that robots are going to kill us, and it's not saying that they're the answer to all our problems. I think there are some issues with them, and there are some amazing things that they can do—and the future is like that. I think it's important to not be reflexively afraid of the future, to try to take in what's coming and try to look at all sides of it and see what the positives and negatives are. Hopefully the film lets you have that distance and form an opinion or let you have your own ideas about it, but it isn't leading you too strongly down one path or the other.

In another interview that appeared in The Huffington Post, the reporter asked Schreirer and Ford how they decided on the simple design of the robot, who looks a lot like Honda's walking ASIMO robot, and whether they ever considered other designs that were more futuristic and high tech.

JS: The segment of robot design aimed at elder care seems to be oddly focused on these little white spacemen. It's not just the ASIMO, Toyota has a similar one too, and there are others. We just felt it made sense to stay in that vein. I think they benefit from their simplicity -- it allows us to project more emotion onto them.

CF: The robot always had that kind of design, even from the original short I did in film school. I was taken by the image of this tiny little space suit-looking man walking around through a dusty old cottage. I know Jake always liked that image and it was the kernel that we tried to stay true to when we expanded it into a feature.

After the movie, as the credits rolled, there were cameo videos running alongside the credits showing many service robots doing bits and pieces of home or assistive tasks. Some of them were caring for the elderly, or interacting with real people playing chess, or cleaning up and doing various tasks. Each video clip was known to me for its limited present-day capability but hopeful for a more efficient and flexible near-term future similar to the futuristic robot in Robot & Frank.

By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report

Yesterday was the launch of Rethink Robotics' Baxter shop assistant robot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Other stories about Baxter and Rethink Robotics from reliable sources:

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

Distribution centers (DCs) are massive warehouses that receive, inspect and store goods for later picking, packing and shipping to end-users, re-distributors or retail outlets. Products can be everything from books, pharmacy goods, clothing, office goods, food, drinks, shoes, produce, household items and pet supplies to diapers. And quantities can be one or two individual units to 20-100+ cases.

Driving the expansion and change in DCs are (1) online sales and consumer expectations of speedy delivery, (2) enhanced data manipulation capabilities, multidimensional processing and integration of new-tech mobile robotics into material handling, (3) proof that goods-to-man methods saves money, reduces labor and increases productivity, and (4) a current need to develop more cost-efficient centers (caused by delays and skittishness to make capital investments during the economic crisis). E-commerce sales are growing at an annual compounded growth rate of 8.5% - double that of supercenters, club and dollar stores. Supermarkets and convenience stores are growing as well. The quantity of materials that are moved daily through DCs is staggering as are the streams of data and algorithm considerations. [Source: Nielsen TDLinx & Nielsen Analytics]

The immensity and complexity of the supply process can be seen in this video showing how a Giant Eagle supermarket is resupplied from its regional distribution center:

Amazon has and continues to lead e-commerce-driven distribution with their pick-to-cart method (otherwise known as man-to-goods) and their promise of speedy economical delivery. Workers run around and fill carts and deliver them to conveyors where they are transported to packing stations where individual shipments are processed and staged for pickup by FedEx, UPS, etc.. The metrics for this are 160 picks per hour. The video below shows that process.

Kiva Systems disrupted those metrics and increased worker productivity by reversing the man-to-goods process. This method brings the goods to the packer (goods-to-man). As Kiva's success became proven in the field, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775 million and is beginning to install Kiva systems in their new warehouses. It is estimated that the new Kiva metric for Amazon consumer goods is 600 items per hour.

These metrics translate into fewer employees and lower warehouse costs, which include not only the structure but the inside storage and material handling equipment as well. Steve Banker, a consultant at ARC Advisory Group, recently wrote in Logistics Viewpoints:

If you conduct a Google search on “Amazon distribution center,” you come across announcements over the past year for DCs in Virginia, New Jersey, and South Carolina. According to these articles, warehouses costing roughly $50-65 million will employ 1,500 to 2,000 workers.

But then I came across an article about a new Indiana DC. This DC is costing $150 million and the company is only promising 1,000 new workers. Could this be one of the new warehouses that will be using Kiva? The employment numbers seem to add up. This DC will employ at least one third fewer workers.

European DCs tend to be smaller than those in the US where massive centers for Wallmart and Amazon often exceed 1 million sq ft. Amazon has said that it will be filling its new 1 million sq ft distribution centers with Kiva robots. According to their financial reports, they are opening 12 new Kiva-equipped centers in 2012 with more planned for 2013. That is a lot of Kiva mobile robots, and this demand will surely keep them busy building and integrating those devices and their related software systems into Amazon's distribution scheme. In fact, Kiva has already laid off most of their sales and marketing staff but has increased their support staff to assist their new owner (and biggest client). As Amazon leads the consumer products industry to same day delivery, Kiva robots help give them that flexibility. [One-day turnaround isn't unique to Amazon; it is often a necessity. Think produce: vegetables, fruits, baked goods. These goods regularly move in and out of DCs within 24 hours.]

Kiva's acquisition by Amazon has created a void in innovative material handling technology just at the time when companies that had put off building or improving their DCs because of the economic crisis are now ready to invest again. Kiva's low cost for warehouse shelving and speed of installation in bare-boned facilities are far cheaper and faster than any other method offered.

However, Kiva-equipped distribution centers aren't the only methods available for handling robotic-assisted fulfillment. There are many new technologies as well as older-style methods now augmented with various robotics to handle the myriad types of warehoused goods. Amazon, Zappos and other consumer sales companies warehouse and ship small-quantity consumer items. Food distribution and intra-company distribution centers process on the case level. One east coast DC for a chain of groceries regularly processes 20 million cases per week. DCs not only focus on getting their goods in and out of the system but also concentrate on maximizing productivity and keeping their labor costs as low as possible.

Handling, distribution, transport and delivery - and the amortization of DC setup charges - often represent more cost than raw materials and manufacturing combined. Consequently, warehousing and material handling are a big business for hundreds of different types of companies: conveyors, rollers, racks, vision systems, hoists, shelving, electric motors, slides, barcode readers, printers, ladders, gantries, tugs, forklifts, autonomous lifts and tugs, skids, totes, carts, and software systems of all types, to name just a few. Big players in the field include Intelligrated, Egemin Automation, Fromm, Daifuku Webb, Adept, Frog AGV Systems, Seegrid, Fuji, Edict, Omega Lift, Nordock, Interlake Mecalux, Automated Packaging, Itoh Denki, etc. Most of these vendors augment the man-to-goods model.

There are three companies transitioning to offer goods-to-man functionality: Symbotic, Swisslog and Dematic. The latter two have been in the material handling business for quite some time and have introduced many new robotic solutions. Swisslog is publicly-traded (SLOG:SW); the other two are privately held. All three of these vendors emphasize maximizing warehouse density which can be seen by level upon level (multiple vertical rows) of floor to ceiling racks.

Symbotic

Symbotic's Matrix Rover travels along shelf rows picking and restocking as required but can also operate autonomously on warehouse floors.

Symbotic, previously named CasePick Systems, is a recent spin-off from C&S Wholesale Grocers, the largest grocery supply company in the US. For the past seven years C&S has been the test bed for the development of Symbotic's line of products which include floor to ceiling high-density shelving and racks, storage and retrieval software, hardware systems, palletizer robots and robotic rovers. Now, as a separate company, they are a provider to C&S as well as other companies.

Symbotic focuses on handling skids and cases rather than on open-box or individual items. In an automated case/pallet warehouse, utilizing available storage area, including height as efficiently as possible, is the goal. Symbotic attempts to maximize usable space by providing and/or integrating all of the shelving, conveyors, stackers, robotic systems, robotic rovers and software, often reaching 17 rows high with the number of aisles limited only by the square footage of the warehouse. It's like multi-level chess except on 17 levels!

Guided by extraordinarily complex software, rovers speed along their row to pick or replenish cases of goods. Once a case is grabbed, the rovers take their goods to a Symbotic-invented device which enables the transfer of cases from multiple rovers at all levels of the shelving structure simultaneously, to a device for getting them down to floor level and then to a conveyor/tug system. The material is then moved to a station where Symbotic integrates heavy-duty Fanuc robotic arms in a palletizing process which then stacks the goods for shipment.

Swisslog

Left to right: Swisslog's AutoStore drop-down rovers, Tornado lifts and SmartCarriers.

Swisslog builds modularized conveyors, stacker cranes, row rovers (called carriers) and autonomous tugs as well as their new AutoStore robots. Swisslog can handle open-case light goods and pallet/case systems. Swisslog provides European style material handling often characterized by high capital and operating costs and lots of mechanical devices. They enjoy very high productivity and space utilization in return.

Swisslog's new AutoStore rovers race along the top of modular aluminum storage racks which are located just below ceiling level. The rovers reach down to get bins of targeted goods which are vertically stacked on top of each other. Then they race to a lift/crane which drops the goods down and conveys them to pick and pack stations and/or pallets for shipment. Once the bins have been picked, they are returned to the stack in the same manner.

Swisslog, as its name implies, is European and as such, must always be able to handle unique existing space considerations, often having to adapt to some very unique building configurations. Swisslog claims that their methods maximizes both vertical and horizontal space enabling them to process up to 1,000 picks per hour.

Dematic

Dematic goods-to-person shuttles are located at every level in all aisles and are
serviced by high-speed elevators where material is lowered down to processing stations.

Dematic, headquartered in Luxembourg, is an established European style provider and integrator of logistics and material handling solutions. They offer almost every type of storage solution imaginable and provide distribution and handling for B2B and B2C as well as grocery, apparel, food and beverage and general merchandise.

Dematic provides conveyors, tugs, sorters, lifts and a variety of software for warehouse management, order fulfillment, RFID and SAP solutions and transport maximization. They use all of the different picking methods: pick by voice, pick by light, RF picking, etc.

Their most recent product addition is their row Multishuttle, a robotic rover that travels each row in each aisle in the warehouse picking orders and delivering them to a lift which sends them onward to a packing station.

Software

As is the case in most robotics, smart software is critical to its success. Imagine the algorithms involved in resource allocation to determine which product goes in which bin; which order gets assigned to which station; which pod comes to which station; which robot should get which pod. Then compound that with the problems of integrating that solution into a SAP, IBM, Oracle, Manhattan Associates, or Red Prairie fulfillment system. Then add customized delivery optimization solutions (such as sequencing skids in a truck to delivery routes and sequencing the contents of skids to how they are offloaded in the store) to the mix and you have some really complex software packages.

All of the companies mentioned in this article (Amazon, Kiva, Symbotic, C&S, Dematic and Swisslog) blend techniques from AI, controls systems, machine learning, operations research and other software and engineering disciplines into their mobile robotic platform. All are focused on transforming fulfillment to the goods-to-man methodology because of the increased productivity gains and all are pioneering as they go because goods-to-man is new territory, software-wise.

Summary

This article originated as a profile of one company as they began to robotically augment distribution centers. But, as I gathered information, the story has morphed into a review of why Kiva Systems' innovative methods - the goods-to-man methodology - is far superior to other older styles of fulfillment. These older style man-to-goods methods are characterized by serious labor costs, heavy turnover, high cost shelving, conveyors, lifts, and transport and other systems to get targeted materials to a picker/packer or palletizing operation. Robotics, if used at all, is used to augment the worker's reach, mobility and lifting. The new-tech companies profiled above (Swisslog, Symbotic and Dematic) have begun to implement goods-to-man systems incorporating old and new style racks and shelving and all seem to be doing the same thing: building multi-layer shelving upon which rovers troll the levels and aisles picking their stuff and shuttling it off to an elevator which sends it via conveyors or otherwise to pick/pack or palletizing stations, all controlled by colossally-complex proprietary software.

They can't build the machines fast enough to satisfy the demand, particularly from Italian end-users. A1 Concepts Let's Pizza machines are in Europe and soon will be coming to the US. The devices don't just reheat frozen pizzas; they create an authentic 10.5" pizza, made from scratch with fresh ingredients in less than 2-1/2 minutes. The machine mixes dough, rolls it out, adds toppings, cooks the pie and then dispenses it in a take-away box... all in less than 3 minutes!

Cupcake
Cupcake ATMs from Sprinkles Cupcakes have been running so smooth that the ATM cupcake machine will be expanding to other locations. There was a bigger line outside the Beverly Hills store to try the ATM cupcake machine than going inside and buying in-store.

Robotic frozen yogurt and ice cream kiosks are beginning to populate malls, student unions and various public facilities. Robofusion, a South Carolina interactive kiosks manufacturer, has partnered with Sodexo, a large provider of integrated food and facilities management services, to provide Reis & Irvy's frozen yogurt kiosks in various malls and public places including The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

On the horizon are restaurants with iPad/tablet menues and robotic servers -- there are already experiments like this going on in China -- and noodle cutting, falafel cutting and sushi roll rolling and cutting machines.

Common to all these new devices are simple-to-use order entry and payment screens, the acceptance of currency, coins and credit cards, and the "watch factor," i.e., the ability to see what's going on inside the machine.

Hungry?

In July, the Parrot Group partnered with senseFly, a Swiss start-up and spin-off from the Swiss EPFL, and invested $5.3 million to help senseFly grow. Their initial plan was to develop a high volume manufacturing capability and fund rapid growth and new product development. The eBee is the first such product from that venture. The just announced 3' wingspan eBee can fly for 45 minutes in 45km/hr winds, and will enable users to take their own aerial photos and produce precise ortho-mosaics and 3D models. senseFly has also established an impressive global network of resellers which presently excludes the US (because of FAA regulatory limitations).

senseFly, working with another Parrot Group partner and another EPFL spin-off (with a similarly intentioned $2.5 million equity investment from Parrot to spur growth and development), Pix4D, has developed a suite of software which can create a flight path and take 2D geotagged images and then process them into 3D maps.

Below is an EPFL/Pix4D video displaying additional information about the process of filming, tagging and creating 3D maps and images.

When senseFly's UAVs are allowed into civilian airspace, there are a myriad uses:

Aerial photography
Mapping
Mine and quarry surveys
Emergency response
Agricultural and cattle monitoring
Remote sensing
Surveying (general and archeological)
Urban and regional planning
Infrastructure management
Etc.

As civilian airspace opens to drones like those from senseFly, the sky begins to offer unique perspectives to view and understand our environment. One can see a near-term future where images and data can be captured at low cost, anywhere, any time, and without complex infrastructure or long preparation time and transformed into useful management tools, maps and surveys.

“We are witnessing a revolution whereby flying drones are no longer exclusive to the military but are quickly spreading into the civilian world. In 2010, Parrot surprised competitors and fellow researchers alike when they hit the market with their iPhone-piloted quadcopter for filming and gaming. The same year, senseFly revolutionized the job of surveyors by providing fully autonomous flying cameras capable of producing precise 2D and 3D maps within minutes. Both companies are focused on developing very lightweight drones with the strong belief that this is critical to their use by the public at large – far beyond the military”, says Jean-Christophe CEO and co-founder of senseFly.

Foxconn-built robot FoxBot. Source: TechWeb.com.cn

Foxconn, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision (2317:TW), has begun deploying their own brand of industrial robots to their factory in Jincheng, Shanxi Province, China, according to various reports from China news sources. Shanxi Province is an area where Foxconn is partnering with local governments - spending $16 and $27 million respectively - to build factories and employ 200,000+ local workers. One of those new factories is earmarked to manufacture robots.

The turquoise industrial robot shown above is called a FoxBot and about 10,000 of them have been manufactured and deployed since 2011 into one of the Foxconn factories in Jincheng. Loosely translated from multiple Chinese articles, the FoxBot is described as:

Only can be engaged in some simple and repetitious tasks. Priced at $20,000 to $25,000. There are different versions. Some appear crab-like, others act as lifts, some as pick and place robots. All appear to be capable of precise movements.

One article said that although some robots were already being deployed, progress is slow and that Foxconn will only deliver and install 1/10 of the 300,000 projected for the end of 2012. But there have also been recent news stories about a series of negative incidents similar to the ones 18 months ago that prompted Foxconn to announce plans to launch their own robot-making facility and their intention to deploy 1 million robots by 2014.

Workers and security guards got into a tangle which shut one factory down for 24 hours.
Chinese labor rights groups complained about underage vocational students being forced to work at Foxconn factories.
After a 20 month hiatus, there was another suicide incident at one of the Foxconn plants.
A couple of key Foxconn executives left the company.
A hospitalized brain-injured worker was "ordered" by Foxconn to leave the hospital.

In each of these instances, the truth is much less inflammatory than the headlines. Nevertheless, there appears to be a reoccurrence of instances of worker unrest and seemingly unfair labor practices, at least from a Western perspective.

Chinese news sources say that Foxconn has a four-pronged program to alleviate their labor and growth problems, one of which involves the development and deployment of 1 million robots as quickly as possible. At present, Foxconn employs 1.2 million workers, 400,000 of which are directly involved with Apple projects.

It should be mentioned that some of the incendiary headlines for these stories are attention grabbers because of Apple's preeminent status, their successful iPhone and iPad products and their continued use of Foxconn as their principle contract manufacturer. Samsung, Sony, LG, Google and others are all competitive with Apple.

***

Also in the news, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China and a Foxconn plant this week on a visit to meet with the Mayor of Beijing about undisclosed issues. State media reported that China's vice premier promised Cook the country would boost intellectual property protection.

"To be more open to the outside is a condition for China to transform its economic development, expand domestic demands and conduct technological innovation," the official Xinhua news agency cited Vice Premier Li Keqiang as saying.

Apple has relationships with China Telecom and China Unicom to sell its iPhone, with the only other Chinese carrier, China Mobile (the country's biggest operator), also looking to clinch a deal.

All of these decisions and news items play a role in Foxconn's decision to automate much of their Apple production and assembly activities. Some Apple products are designed at the outset for automatic assembly. But the frequency of product design updates and changes also plays a role, since frequent changes mean robots must be reprogrammed to meet the new needs.

References:

http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2012-09-27/00277659712.shtml

http://www.morningwhistle.com/html/2012/Company_Industry_0823/213653.html

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/weekly/2012-10/05/content_15797110.htm

http://www.techweb.com.cn/it/2012-01-13/1141572.shtml

http://tech.hexun.com/2012-10-14/146742101.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/12/us-apple-china-idUSBRE89B0BX20121012

Games, sensors and robots are among the tools beginning to come to market to help aging people live in their homes as long as possible.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

Source: BusinessWeek Magazine

In December, 2003, BusinessWeek Magazine interviewed Joseph Engelberger, the robotics pioneer. The article was entitled "How Robots Lost Their Way." Included in the article was a plea for money to build an eldercare robot which Engelberger thought could be built with then-current technologies, rented for $600 per month, operated at a cost of $1.25 per hour (compared to healthcare homeworkers who cost around $15 per hour) and developed at a cost of less than $700,000.

"The robot I'm working on will be two-armed, mobile, sensate, and articulate. It doesn't need to communicate a great deal to meet the needs of an 85-year-old. A human can ask: "What's for lunch?" and the robot can respond with what it's able to make, or it can say: "We're going to Johnny's," or "We just had lunch." The voice recognition, behavioral systems and artificial intelligence necessary to do this are ready. Most of the other technologies are, too. We don't need more navigation development -- getting around an apartment is easier than moving through a hospital or on Mars, which robots do now. I could prove this functionality with the right partner for about $700,000 in 14 months or less."

I phoned him and started a many-day conversation on the subject. He was a fun character to talk with and I learned much in the process. But when we got to the part where I offered him the money he said he needed, he said, "No. I don't want your money. You're just an investor. I want money and partnerships with Panasonic (NYSE:PC), or Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Philips (NYSE:PHG) or Siemens (NYSE:SI); they're in the business [healthcare products], have deep pockets, and have what I need for the robot to be successful: [1] design and manufacturing capability and [2] marketing experience in the health and eldercare marketplace."

Nine years later Engelberger's eldercare visions are still a work in progress in research labs around the world. Products are emerging but very slowly and their solutions are not as broad-based and flexible as Joe imagined. Most are single-purposed and not for home use; and none are produced by the companies Engelberger mentioned. Panasonic (NYSE:PC) has a line of robotic hospital devices; Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) discontinued their iBot stair-climbing wheelchair; Honda (NYSE:HMC) and Toyota (NYSE:TM) showcase their walking research robots but other than robotic lawn mowers (Honda) don't have any robots available for purchase.

Although recent European studies indicate that there is resistance to having elderly people minded by a robot, when given the choice of robotic care versus moving into a care facility, the resistance disappears. Another study from GA Tech showed that seniors preferred robotic help for household chores but not for personal needs (help getting dressed, bathing, etc.). This knowledge - and the spreading aging demographics of Japan, the US and other countries, is propelling research into home healthcare robots such as the one which appeared in the movie Robot & Frank earlier this year. The many stakeholders in robotic healthcare (family members and caregivers; healthcare providers; technology providers; aging or disabled individuals) all have similar goals: to provide independence, preserve dignity, empower those with special needs and provide peace of mind to all of the stakeholders.

Every major robotics university and research lab has some form of healthcare and quality of life research including home care robots: GA Tech has Cody; CMU has HERB; the Fraunhofer Institute has Care-O-Bot, Yale, USC and MIT are running a NSF-funded Socially Assistive Robotics project; CIR and KAIST in Korea have their own robot projects, etc. Nevertheless, the multi-purposed home healthcare robot Joe Engelberger envisioned back in 2003 still hasn't emerged - and specifically hasn't surfaced from any of the major home healthcare providers. Instead, present-day strategy appears to be to provide high-cost, high-need, single-purpose devices, spun off from university research, and marketed to hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, and wait until the technology develops further - or the political climate changes dramatically - before releasing Engelberger-style lower-cost, more capable, multi-purposed robots designed to be affordable and mass produced by the likes of Panasonic, Siemens and Philips, for home use.

Why are there so few products released and why aren't there any fully capable devices like Engelberger described? I asked roboticist and blogger Travis Deyle who was a member of the Healthcare Robotics Lab at GA Tech while working on his PhD. Hizook, Travis' blog, is a site that provides robotics news for academics and professionals:

"There are easier markets than eldercare. To build a viable home robot requires significant expertise in a number of sub-fields, which naturally opens doors to other markets that are easier to monetize. Consider Kinect, Siri, IMUs (inertial measurement units with accelerometers and gyros), photo mapping like Google Maps, etc. We've seen MAJOR industries and products pop up around each of these. Why focus on building an integrated system when there's so much fertile ground in these other markets?"

"The political climate in the US just isn't committed to robot healthcare solutions -- at least not in juxtaposition to defense robots. Just imagine a DARPA robotics challenge for healthcare robots... Instead of BigDog, we could have Service Dogs; instead of PetMan, we could have an in-home helper; instead of soldier extraction, we could have robotic nurses. Sure, DARPA's current challenges will ultimately help advance all of these, but why not tackle it head on? The saddest part... real healthcare robot advances (like Johnson & Johnson's old iBot wheelchair) are discontinued due to burdensome regulatory environments. Half of Mr. Engleberger's $700,000 could be eaten up by consumer safety certifications."

"Scaling up from prototype to a mass-produced eldercare product is massively expensive. It's possible to build a prototype home healthcare robot for $700,000. But investor confidence in the business plan and subsequent funding is often more significant than the actual technology. Consider Rethink Robotics. Sure, they're making strides in mass-production of low-cost robots, but their real innovation is discovering a VC-appealing business model to make it happen. And even then... Rethink required more than $60 million to get over the initial hump. Even Kiva (an arguably less-complex robot) required $33 Million in VC funding to scale up before the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) acquisition. There's just no way to bring such a robot to market for under $700k at this time. Engelberger hedged this by saying he wanted a deep-pocketed partner to handle the burden of production, inventory, marketing, and distribution. And that doesn't even address the hardest part: software." (See below for a outline of the software considerations.)

The eldercare/healthcare marketplace isn't limited to robotic solutions. In fact, there are many competing propositions. Here are a few that come to mind:

Convenient apps on PCs and tablets like GrandCare and QuietCare
Home robots like iRobot's (NASDAQ:IRBT) vacuums and bathroom and kitchen floor cleaners
Multi-sensored kiosks or stations for health monitoring (taking blood pressure, measuring body temperature, heartbeat rate and pulse oximetry, listening for heartbeat irregularities, etc.)
Fully-sensored and high-bandwidth houses (Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) Labs)
Multiple and single tasked mobile robots to detect people lying on the floor, remind them about taking their medications, provide remote video and audio for caregivers and medical personnel, act as a security robot in the night to detect intrusions, fire and smoke and to call for help, etc.
Remote listening stations and dispatch centers
Combinations of all of these schemes

RobotDalen projects: left to right: Giraff, Bestic and Zoom

Governmental and other agencies, particularly in countries with socialized medical systems [countries without insurance providers] such as Sweden and Denmark, have stepped in to develop necessary devices where healthcare consumer product companies have yet to tread. For example, RobotDalen, a Swedish public-private consortium has funded the development of needed robotic products such as Bestic, an eating device for those who cannot feed themselves; Giraff, a remote-controlled mobile robot with a camera and monitor providing remote assistance and security; TrainiTest a rehabilitation robot that measures and evaluates the capacity of muscles and then sets the resistance in the robot to adapt to the users individual training needs; and Zoom, an all-terrain, battery-powered four-wheeler intended for people who have difficulty walking. Once fully developed, Zoom will be able to drive up stairs and steeper terrain in a manner that is safe and secure for the driver.

Hector and friend.

Another public-private partnership is the EU-funded $10 million CompanionAble Project which created a robotic assistant for the elderly called Hector. The project integrates Hector to work collaboratively with a smart home and remote control center to provide the most comprehensive and cost efficient support for older people living at home. Although Hector doesn't have any arms, he does have storage space for drinks, keys, and other items and his communication skills have been honed to work intuitive and effectively with seniors. Needed legislation and ethical considerations are also addressed in this very comprehensive P-P project. The four year project, in the final stages of field trials in Holland and Belgium, is now seeking multi-year funding to extend their research before commercialization.

"CompanionAble addresses the issues of social inclusion and homecare of persons suffering from chronic cognitive disabilities prevalent among the increasing European older population. A participative and inclusive co-design and scenario validation approach drives CompanionAble involving care recipients and their close carers as well as the wider stakeholders. This is to ensure end-to-end systemic viability, flexibility, modularity and affordability as well as a focus on overall care support governance and integration with quality of experience issues such as dignity-privacy-security preserving responsibilities fully considered."

In the U.S., funding from the NSF has been focused on concept development projects like the Socially Assistive Robotics project referenced above, and university quality of life projects. Very few have reached the stage where commercialization is warranted.

From left: InTouch Health's RP-VITA remote presence robot; VGo in pediatric out-patient setting; new Double Robotics Double device.

Remote presence robots, which didn't exist when Engelberger talked with BusinessWeek, have recently turned up in a variety of forms -- from simple Skype video chats on a mobility platform (Double Robotics) to serious medical assistance remote presence robots such as provided by the partnership between iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) and InTouch Health , Giraffe (shown above) and VGo Communications' post-op pediatric at-home robots for communication with parents, nurses, doctors and patients. Remote devices with the ability to carry things, similar to Hector (shown above), may be the next breakthrough followed by adding a single arm and a repertoire of tasks which that arm can perform and then, later dual arms and app stores full of programs the robot can follow.

Entrepreneurial activity in the eldercare space is very limited. Hoaloha Robotics, which is in the stealth phase of their development, may have the chops to bring a product to market. Tandy Trower, CEO and Founder, who previously served as the founder and General Manager of the Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) robotics group that created Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, outlined the design plans for his eldercare robot:

"Beginning with features and functions already commonly included in today’s personal computers and adding autonomous mobility and a few additional components with innovative applications and a human-centric interface design, the Hoaloha design will not only take existing PC experiences directly to the user –wherever they are - , but also open up new ways for individuals to stay connected, informed, and entertained while improving safety and access to remote services."

"The Hoaloha application framework will also provide integration of discrete technological solutions like biometric devices, remote doctor visits, monitoring and emergency call services, medication dispensers, on-line services, and the increasing number of other products and applications already emerging for the assistive care market."

"In addition, because the design is also based on wireless PC technology, the Hoaloha solution will provide a bridge to the existing digital and Web-enabled world."

"Finally, at the heart of the Hoaloha design is its ”human-centric” user interface. Designed to leverage and integrate natural interface modalities like speech, vision, and touch technologies, its interface is designed to be socially interactive and easy to use."

One can only hope... and, like Joe Engelberger, be a bit frustrated with the slow progress thus far.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

Click to explore the map.

Well... almost 1,000. Presented on this map are 977 robot manufacturers and the top 20 robotics universities and research facilities. Every type of company; every facet of the industry; most industrialized countries of the world are represented. From big companies like KUKA, ABB and Fanuc to start-ups like Redwood Robotics in California and Etnamatica in Sicily; from Iceland to Western Australia. These companies are robot makers; they may or may not also be robot users. That's for another map.

Red markers reflect 200+ industrial robot makers; Green is for the 170+ start-up companies; and Blue is separated into two groups: "S" for service robots for governmental and corporate use while "P" covers service robots for private or personal use. Yellow is used to show the location of the top 20 robotic research and educational facilities. A country-by-country table is shown below.

The global map does not cover an additional 825 ancillary businesses such as image systems, software developers, engineering and consulting firms, integrators and resellers, designers, servo, laser and stereo camera providers, etc. Nor does it cover 225 other educational facilities and research labs. These can be found in our Ancillary Businesses and Educational and Research Facilities Directories.

The map is also limited by my own research capabilities, language translation limitations, and scarcity of information about robotics companies in emerging countries. It show a single entry for a company headquarters regardless how many branches, subsidiaries and locations that company might have.

In spite of all those caveats, at first glance I was impressed by the sheer quantity of the markers. One can easily see that many of the start-ups and service robotics companies are located near prominent Yellow-marked universities and research labs in clusters surrounding Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Harvard, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Willow Garage, the University of Tokyo and TITECH, etc. Or areas of innovation and energy like Seoul, Korea, Israel and New York City.

Red markers - industrial robot makers - stand out for their predominance in the industrial sections of the world: Germany, Switzerland and Central and Western Europe and the UK, Japan, Korea and the Great Lakes area of the US.

Blue markers - service robots (every other type of robot except industrial) are everywhere as are Green start-up markers. These are the emerging robotics companies in non-industrial robotics: robots used in healthcare, scientific labs, for defense and security, in academia, as toys, for remote presence and autonomous mobility underwater, on the ground and in the air and for a myriad of other uses.

This map will continue to grow above the 1,000 mark as I continue my research. If I've missed your company or companies that you know about, please send me a message.

Finally, for those of you who might be asking how and why this chart came to be, it happened because as I originally attempted to invest in stocks in the industry I found that there was a serious lack of information available about the industry. Most companies are not publicly-traded; they are privately held with no requirement to provide information. Thus I began an intensive research project that took me to Japan, Korea, China, Germany, France, Switzerland and all over the Internet. My eyesight has suffered but not my mind. I love what I'm doing and finding out. In an effort to share my research I set up The Robot Report to track the business of robotics. Later I started the Everything-Robotic blog to supplement The Robot Report with periodic in-depth reviews and insights. Recently I produced a map showing the location of start-up companies involved with robotics. This map replaces that one because it shows start-ups in a bigger context: in perspective to the overall robotics industry itself. I hope you find it useful and illuminating.

by Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

VGo Communications wins infringement lawsuit brought on by InTouch Health and also initiated a patent reexamination where InTouch lost three of their prime patents.

InTouch Health's RP-VITA robot versus VGo Communication's VGo robot.

InTouch Health, a company that has been providing remote presence services to the medical community for the past decade contacted VGo and suggested that they were infringing upon their patents and to either cease doing so or agree to a licensing agreement. A suit followed and, in a Los Angeles Federal District courtroom yesterday, a jury found that VGo Communications did not infringe. More important than the win itself was the fact that the court found the InTouch Health patents to be invalid.

VGo requested that the US Patent Office re-examine four patents held by InTouch. VGo provided supporting documents on why those patents were invalid. To date, the US Patent Office has ruled on three of the re-examination requests and has rejected all of the claims within those patents previously granted to InTouch. The fourth patent is still in the re-examination process.

Thus InTouch not only lost the court case, but the validity of at least 3 out of 4 of their prime patents.

In rhetoric typical of the best political spin doctor, Peter Vicars, CEO of VGo Communication said, "InTouch Health has been taking advantage of an overworked patent system in order to secure invalid patents that they then use to bleed competitors with frivolous lawsuits. New companies are producing competitive products at prices significantly less than what InTouch charges so InTouch is using teams of lawyers to maintain their exorbitant prices."

Rhetoric aside, VGo's low-cost two-way audio video communications combined with remote controlled mobility enables nurses, doctors and social workers to check on patients without having to be physically present. They feel better cared for and appreciate the extra effort. Recovery times are quicker and re-admissions are reduced. More time for the healthcare worker and lower costs for the healthcare organization.

The courts decision is a bigger subject than just InTouch vs. VGo. At a recent conference on remote presence telemedicine the most enlightening thing I saw was four hours of tightly-packed presentations by critical care doctors and hospital administrators, all users of InTouch Health's remote presence robots, all portraying different aspects of why remote presence in health care is relevant, is saving lives and is necessary today and why it will continue to be in the future. Certainly there is room for more companies to assist in this very noble work.

There has been a lot of gossip and more serious discussion within the healthcare devices industry about patents, their use in marketing strategy, their hindering product development, and their true value as intellectual property (IP).

Within the robotics healthcare community, much of that gossip has been focused on Intuitive Surgical and their da Vinci Surgical System. From the beginning, when Intuitive spun out from Stanford and SRI, they immediately had a legal battle with Computer Motion, the inventor of a similar system called Zeus. Since that time Intuitive has regularly contacted competitors to either get them to cease operations or license their patents. Many felt that this thwarted development of competing or better systems than the da Vinci. They have suggested that Intuitive Surgical has made a strategy of amassing large numbers of patents to try to protect their product and market share.

This is the essence of the arguments that people have used against Intuitive Surgical for the past 10 years. Except that no company has asked the Patent Office to reexamine their patents… yet.

In their suit with Computer Motion a decade ago, the outcome was that Intuitive won the lawsuit and the judgement was sufficiently large that the winner was able to take over the losing company for a very small amount (although both companies said that they were merging to combine strengths). Thus the consequences of these patent battles are significant.

Yulan Wang, the founder of Computer Motion, moved on after the acquisition [of Computer Motion by Intuitive Surgical] to found InTouch Health, the very same company that just lost their battle with VGo.

New systems have proliferated in remote presence and robotic-assisted non-invasive surgeries but, in the case of surgical systems, none have yet to make it to market. RAVEN and SPRINT are two such systems presently in the news with reviews indicating that they are viable competitors to the da Vinci system.

The Raven operating system is helping the open-source community advance the state of the art in surgical robotics. In a joint venture between the University of Washington and UC Santa Cruz, the National Science Foundation funded the development of seven identical Raven II surgical robots. Each system has a two-armed surgical robot, a guiding video camera, and a surgeon-interface system built on top of ROS. These surgical robots are linked via the Internet so researchers can easily share new surgical robotics research and developments. Five Raven II robots have been given to major medical facilities at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Nebraska, UC Berkeley, and UCLA.

“SPRINT” is an EU-developed master-slave teleoperated robotic platform designed for bimanual interventions by means of a single access port. The system is composed by two main arms, a stereoscopic-camera, and additional devices, e.g. retractor or other assistive instruments that can be inserted through a central tube left free in the access port after the introduction. The surgeon console is composed of two master manipulators, a foot-switch and a 3D full-HD display.

Single-port surgical system by Intuitive Surgical.

Intuitive Surgical has recently announced their single-port surgical system, a competing concept to the SPRINT system. One can see another patent battle coming.

In the early years of automobile development, a group owned the rights to a two-cycle gasoline engine patent. By controlling this patent, they were able to monopolize the industry and force car manufacturers to adhere to their demands or risk a lawsuit. In 1911, independent automaker Henry Ford won a challenge to the patent. The result was that the patent became virtually worthless and a new association - which would eventually become the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association - was formed. The new association instituted a cross-licensing agreement among all U.S. auto manufacturers: although each company would develop technology and file patents, those patents were shared openly and without the exchange of money between all the manufacturers. By the time the U.S. entered WWII, 92 Ford patents and 515 patents from other companies were being shared between these manufacturers, without any exchange of money - or lawsuits. The best braking system was shared by all as was the best window wiper, and many, many other inventions passed freely from one car company to the others.

If something like this were to happen in the medical robotics arena, these wonderful new inventions would be available all over the world and patients, care-givers and healthcare systems would all share in the benefits and lives saved.

Perhaps there will be a time in the near future when new products like RAVEN and SPRINT will have a similar success as did VGo - maybe even without the costs and resources diverted from product development to fighting court cases.

I've gone a few years in a row to Las Vegas CES and found it VERY interesting for trends in everything "smart," digital and embedded, and not so interesting in terms of robotics. The auto companies have GINORMOUS displays of their in-car infotainment and embedded systems for the future and that is worth the time and effort to go. The keynotes are okay and the press "events" for all the companies are barely worth the fight to get in (and it is a fight).

Often CES is a resource for funding - with companies showing concepts and prototypes. This is particularly the case with robotics and quality of life devices. The most poignant showings will be in the area of quality of life products - from devices that work with autistic kids to smart devices that monitor your vital signs and text or email your doctor when alarms are sounded. All are seeking funding and/or orders; none really ready for prime time as a consumer health product.

Overall CES is predictable: serious competition is on the horizon for Apple on many fronts and iRobot on all their home cleaning products; in-car smart systems are where the crowds will be; robotic toys and gimmicks will appear and then later in the year will disappear; "smart" systems will be the buzzword from appliances to phones, tablets and PCs; and the vision systems people will be showing thinner and smarter TVs and monitors.

But this year I'm taking a break and leaving the reporting to others.

Here's what I wrote in January about CES 2012. Check the story and see how many companies are still in the running. Click on the image to link to the article.

PS: To exorcise the gambler in me during CES this year I'll be in the sun and warmth (and casinos) of Atlantis in the Bahamas.

Today's robotics industry could use some strategic guidance,
particularly in the area of healthcare.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

It is clear to me that the next big markets for robotics are:

SMEs (robot workers and co-workers in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises)
Medical and healthcare (nursing assistance, surgeon augmentation, operating room assistance, therapeutic assistance, home care, remote presence, hospital automation)
Agriculture (robotically automated planting, weeding, harvesting, sorting and packaging)
Embedded systems within our cars, trucks and taxis

But there are hold-ups:

SMEs - cost, safety, training, vision, grasping and manipulation
Health care - safety, acceptance, cost, task training, jobs resistance, communication
Agriculture - low-cost immigrant labor, slow acceptance, lack of government support
Lack of political commitment and public-private consortiums to solve strategic problems

Until a significant breakthrough in these new markets, the biggest market for robots will continue to be the industrial sector - factories and massive processing facilities. That group is poised to see double-digit growth for many years to come as global competition continues to force companies to automate, improve quality, lower spoilage and reduce costs.

Furthermore, large-scale research and pure science robotics projects sponsored by the likes of NASA, DARPA, the EU and the governments of Japan and Korea, and capital-intensive industries, are diminishing in scope and dollars and being replaced by garage businesses full of toys, hobbyist inventions and incremental and transitional products. This change is happening because of enhanced interest in (and understanding of) "smart" consumer products, lower-cost sensor availability, more capable and cheaper CPUs, 3D printers, more flexible and open control software, government preoccupation with other more important priorities, and increased global competitive pressures to reduce cost and increase quality and productivity.

It is these very same low-cost sensors, processors and cameras enabling the auto companies to accelerate their embedded systems into fully functional self-driving cars (see example below).

[NOTE: Companies mentioned without a stock symbol are privately held.]

Transitional Products

Kindle is the poster child of a transitional product. Although a much appreciated holiday gift for the last couple of years, Kindles have already peaked and are being replaced by more multi-functional devices (iPads, smartphones and tablets). 2012 shipments were only 14.9 million units - a 36% drop from 2011. One research firm predicted that 2013 sales will see another 36% drop. Meanwhile tablets and smartphones grew 27.1% in 2012 and are gearing up for a banner 2013.

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

Jeff Bezos used the Kindle to cultivate a different way for readers to buy more books from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). It became a "need" when people saw that the Kindle was light, easy to use, could fit in a purse, could carry a whole library of e-books, worked in bright sunlight as well as at night and didn't cost too much.

Bottom line: The Kindle isn't that different from most other tech devices -- transitional products with something cheaper and more capable just around the bend.

In robotics, the same kind of transitional development is occurring almost daily. Really great inventions, silly ones, temporary solutions, and diversions are all happening simultaneously, seemingly without moderation, guidance or direction. And most are transitional (or at least incremental) with better solutions in the labs or courtrooms waiting for breakthroughs.

Temporary, Incremental and Transitional Solutions

CyPhyWorks new EASE drone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really Great Inventions

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

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

Toys, Kits and Academic Training Bots

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

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

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

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

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

Healthcare Robotics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

If an enterprising firm set up a mutual fund reflecting the worldwide robotics industry, they might choose to separate their picks into three segments, which might look something like this:

Industrial Robot Manufacturers
Service Robot Makers of security, defense and space robots
Service Robot Makers of robots for all other purposes

Although I am neither a broker nor an analyst, I do track the business of robotics and the performance of those companies within the industry publicly traded on various global stock exchanges. In fact, I started compiling and tracking the stocks at the end of 2007, and set up a comparative index, Robo-Stox™, because no brokerage or mutual fund firm had such a fund or funds or index. I began this just in time to watch the stocks tank in 2008 and 2009 and recover in 2010 through 2012. What follows is a wrap-up of what I found of particular interest in 2012.

As can be seen from this 5-year Robo-Stox™ chart, not all stocks have fully recovered their 2007 year-end highs; the average stock hasn't... but many have succeeded in full recovery, particularly in the non-industrial sector. And, as can be seen from the Big-4 chart below, the biggest industrial robot manufacturers did quite well in 2012.

Industrial robot manufacturers

Japanese industrial robot manufacturers did well for the year: all but 2 were up Y-T-D and the group beat the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) 7.3% gain for the year. More than half of the stocks in the index have recovered from their 2008 lows.

The Big Four robot makers (ABB (NYSE:ABB), Yaskawa Motoman (TYO:6506), Fanuc (TYO:6954) and KUKA (ETR:KU2)) did particularly well and all had double digit gains compared to the DJIA.

KUKA's stock was up 22% for the year - the standout performer of the group. KUKA AG has invested heavily in facilities and marketing in China and their long-term prospects appear to be good.

Canadian, US and European industrial robot makers did similar to Japan - slightly beating the DJIA's 7.3% gain for the year with about half having returned to their 2007 highs. I don't know what happened in Korea; almost all of their stocks had a wobbly year with end-of-year prices near the lows for the year.

Service Robot Manufacturers

Healthcare and medical:

Service robot companies, particularly high-tech medical/surgical stocks had a very mixed year.

MAKO Surgical (NASDAQ:MAKO) had two serious slides during the year taking the stock from a high of $44 to it's present low of $12 - all because of missed analyst expectations.
Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) (of da Vinci Surgical Robot fame) also had a roller coaster year with a high of $588, a low of $440, and ended literally where it began the year.

Few companies beat the NASDAQ, which was up 15.9% for the year; but here are a few standouts:

Accuray (NASDAQ:ARAY), whose robotic radiation therapy Cyberknife did quite well during the year, was up 42% from $4.43 to $6.31 at year-end.
Swisslog Holdings's stock, traded on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SLOG:SW), was up more than 45% for the year. Their pill-making and dispensing systems and hospital tugs are doing well and their warehousing robots are also benefiting from the trend to automate distribution centers.
Israel's Mazor Robotics (MZOR:IT) and their spine implant system did well too - up from $110 at the beginning of the year to $229 at year's end!

Military, defense and security:

The cutback in US military spending has had a mixed effect on service robot makers and appears to depend on how broadly they have been able to adapt their products to global security and defense needs:

iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT), similar to MAKO Surgical (NASDAQ:MAKO), also had two serious stock drops during the year - both caused by the company having to restate expectations because of government cutbacks even though revenues from the military represent only 1/3 of gross revenues.
QinetiQ Group PLC (QQ/:LN), on the other hand, a British company, gets 100% of it's revenue from governmental sources. It's stock was up more than 35% for the year as were it's profits.
Many conglomerates have subsidiaries that produce unmanned air, sea and land robots (and their support systems) for defense and security governmental agencies. This is a global market with global players. Elbit Systems (NASDAQ:ESLT), an Israeli company, is a case in point. They have a big UAV operation but that unit's revenues are just a small portion of those from the overal company, thus their stock is certainly not a robotics pure play. Elbit's stock, which had a long slide and a short recovery during 2012, broke even for the year.

Bottom line

Industrial robotic providers had a good year
Military robot makers saw governmental cutbacks reflected in their stock prices and are widening their sales and transforming their products to sell to municipal governments
Surgical and hospital service robot suppliers had a mixed year, the former held up by patents and FDA approvals, the latter (eg, Swisslog (SLOG:SW) did quite well.
Most other new-tech robotic companies are privately or equity-fund held, hence, no idea as to their results other than news about contracts received. For example, venture funded Liquid Robotics, during 2012, established a new joint venture with oil conglomerate Schlumberger (NYSE:SLB) and a new naval division for governmental and Navy contracts. Wouldn't you like to own a few shares of that company?

2012 was a good year for many robotics companies and 2013 seems like it will continue the momentum of equal parts finding robotic solutions to workplace needs but also crowd-funded wild ideas and other digressions.

Also see Filling a need... or feeding a diversion for more stock info.

Hector, the eldercare robot, from the EU-funded Companionable Project.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher,The Robot Report

As the robotics industry continues to grow, enters new industries, and provides new applications, strategic focus is necessary or the overall industry will develop haphazardly and spread out around the world. It is important to remember that the first industrial robot was designed and developed in America but almost all industrial robots today are manufactured offshore and the profits from their sale go to offshore companies.

In the EU and Korea they are stimulating the robotics industry to fulfill national strategic goals such as keeping and growing homeland industry AND solving a particular set of problems, eg, how to help educate Korean children to learn a second language, English, using robots to supplement teachers. Another example of this type of strategic funding is the EU-funded SME project which also had twin goals: keep manufacturers from going offshore and provide robotic assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises, a new marketplace which, with robotic automation, will be able to better compete and remain at home.

The US doesn't have anything similar but it should because robotics is an industry that has passed us by once and could continue that way again without guidance. $100 million in focused stimulation money could go a long way toward re-establishing a leadership role. The American tradition of entrepreneurial funding and product development just can't work on a project of the size and scope that I am suggesting. And the alternative, just let nature take it's course, will likely lead to a similar movement offshore as occurred with industrial robot - where the major manufacturers are located in Europe and Japan.

It seems to me that the next breakthrough marketplaces for robotics will be:

SMEs (robot workers and co-workers in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises)
Medical and healthcare (nursing assistance, surgeon augmentation, operating room assistance, therapeutic assistance, home care, elder care, remote presence, hospital automation)
Agriculture (robotically automated planting, weeding, harvesting, sorting and packaging)
Aerial surveillance and applications
Embedded systems within our cars, trucks and taxis

Scene from the movie "Robot and Frank"

Of these, the one most beneficial to humanity is in the area of healthcare, thus, $100 million focused on stimulating breakthroughs in that industry might be best spent on developing an eldercare robot similar to the one in the movie 'Robot and Frank.' Along that path, that robot could then be turned into a consumer services product for basic home care and, down the road, perhaps even child care. Below is a short list of activities such a robot could provide people wishing to live at home independently:

Cognitive stimulation and assistance
Therapy assistance
Monitor health (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, etc.)
Collaboratively work with smart home environments and a remote control center
Provide mobility assistance
Keeps and reminds of daily calendar
Reminds and delivers medicines, meals and other items
Stores and locates lost items
Can communicate when an emergency is detected
Can communicate when a security breach is detected
Can enable visual communication with family members and care givers
Can coordinate other robotic devices such as floor cleaners, lawn mowers, etc.
Can assist with basic household and yard chores

Imagine someone with legislative connections spearheading an effort to provide a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to design, develop, product engineer, build, market and distribute a cost-efficient robotic device for home health and elder care AND doing so before the competition beats us to the punch. The PPP would include at least one major medical devices conglomerate, a consumer products company, a few quality-of-life university labs, a couple of healthcare insurance systems, representatives from Medicare and the FDA, and an experienced healthcare/hospital/homecare business management leadership team. And they would all agree to share (patent and otherwise) in the research and development and give back when their efforts become profitable.

Many global government-funded PPP projects are further along the research path -- such as Hector, the eldercare robot pictured above -- but none have yet to be turned into commercially available healthcare devices. $100 million will go a long way toward catching up and, hopefully, leading the pack.

Many consumer product companies are encouraging development of add-on robotic devices to provide consumer benefits, eg, Bosch is attempting to provide hamper to hamper service for dirty clothes (sorting, washing, drying, folding). But they miss the bigger picture in the process.

By solving the problems involved in providing unobtrusive but comprehensive eldercare, the US-funded PPP will also be solving many of these same consumer product issues, thus, the consumer products partner can make transitional products. The reason for the insurance company partners is because they are footing eldercare bills at present and would welcome cost-reducing robotic solutions once they were available. They can afford to be first-adopters and pay the premium price of the initial products.

Therefore, if the project is timely, well-managed, goal-driven and has the right team players, an industry could be born and stay in America and spread to other areas of robotic consumer products as well.

by Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

CBS News Reporter Steve Kroft interviews Rodney Brooks at ReThink Robotics.
Click on the image above to see the segment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Industrial Robots; Robot Arms; Cameras, Scanners and Vision Systems; Collaborative Cage-free Robots; Mobile Robots; Robot Operating Systems; Warehousing and Materials Handling; New Technologies, and Jobs

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report

There are fewer manufacturers of industrial robots than one might imagine: only a little more than 200 worldwide. Of these, less than 15 account for more than 60% of the industry's revenue. Thus, at Automate 2013, held in freezing-cold Chicago, KUKA, Fanuc, Staubli, Motoman and ABB all had huge display areas showing their uniquely-colored robots (Kuka = orange; Fanuc = bright yellow; Staubli = white and light yellow; Motoman = blue and white; and ABB = red). These industrial arms are able to carry big loads as was demonstrated by this showy barbell-pressing Fanuc robot transporting two very heavy train wheels and their axle from place to place.

Fanuc robot bench pressing train wheels

In addition to displaying robots in their own booths, colorful robot arms could be seen in many other much smaller cubicles. Integrators, gripper makers, end-of-arm tool makers and vision system providers all showed their products and systems working on robot arms from one of the big robot arm makers, the largest of this group being Schunk and Leoni.

Note that all of the companies mentioned are either European or Asian; that's where the industry is located even though all these companies have marketing and support offices in the U.S.

Cameras, Scanners and Vision Systems:

Despite the powerful presence of the major robot manufacturers, this year's Automate seemed all about integrating vision capabilities into robotic tasks. Camera and vision integrator companies were showing the various applications enabled by such visual additions to robotic technology. These included tools for inspecting for errors; identifying surface defects and missing features; identifying the shape and position of objects; measuring components for sorting and classification purposes; and systems to quickly read and verify markings on parts and labels.

In many other booths, bin and conveyor picking was displayed. Some showed vision systems being integrated with robots and special grippers to look into a randomly organized containers or conveyors and pick out and grab a desired item in an efficient sequence. ABB's PickVision is an example. Their video of a food-handling process [click the image at the right to see the video] demonstrates the system locating, stacking and packing pancakes. During his keynote address to the combined Automate and ProMat audience, Henrik Christensen noted that bin-picking didn't exist 10 years ago and is now just one of many examples of how new cameras, lasers, sensors and software are augmenting robots to new heights and applications. The paradigm was the smoothly-running Industrial Perception (IPI) robot choosing and grabbing randomly stacked boxes from the back of a truck and placing them on a conveyor or pallet. The 3D software and advanced spatial recognition algorithms integral to making the IPI robot work are continuing this progression of new developments breeding new applications.

IPI's robot consists of their new tool designed to grab cases off a truck or shelf, their use of various vision and lighting systems to "see in 3D" [what's out there], and their proprietary software to determine dimensions and exact locations. It then decides which is the safest and most expeditious package to pick, and, using an industrial arm grabs and then swivels around to place the box or package on a pallet or conveyor. It all works quickly and smoothly and seems logical and conceptually easy. But IPI has made a significant breakthrough in putting it all together and making it work seamlessly. To see the device at work unloading random sized cases off of a truck - (as can be seen in the video above from an IEEE/Spectrum posting - is an ingenious achievement yet simple combination of vision, data analysis, a creative gripper and an industrial strength robot arm.

Collaborative Cage-free Robots:

Two robot makers, Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots, have focused on selling to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and both had big crowds of interested prospects. Baxter, Rethink Robotics' new $22,000 two-armed robot, had the biggest assemblage of interested people followed closely by 8-year old Universal Robots, the Danish company displaying their very polished and similarly capable $34,000 robot arm.

Universal's two-armed version costs twice as much and although each arm is "aware" of the other arm, they work separately and need to be programmed separately. Both companies offer new methods of training their robots: Baxter is taught via a graphical interface and direct manipulation of its arms; Universal offers a hybrid of the clunky industry-standard teaching pendant and a simple teaching-style point and click programming environment.

Comparing features beyond training is a bit difficult because Universal mainly sells their robots as single-arm devices; the two-armed version, although similar to Baxter isn't in the same cost bracket:

Transitioning from Industrial to Service Robots:

In fact, Universal Robots' two robots, UR5 and UR10 (5 kg and 10 kg respectively), are more comparable to the new and more expensive lightweight one-arm offerings from KUKA, Yaskawa Motoman and others that are making these new single- and dual-arm robots safe to work un-caged and alongside human workers. Rethink Robotics' Baxter is in a category all its own for the present because of price and capability. There is no cheaper two-armed robot and there is nothing with the capabilities and flexibility that Baxter offers (particularly down the road as they improve it). But competition is coming from creditable players - perhaps as soon as Automate 2014.

The major robot makers appear to be slow in transitioning into this next generation marketplace, perhaps because they are just barely keeping up with the current one which is expanding in double digits all over the world. This may be one explanation for Universal Robots low-cost-of-entry robot having so much success. Or perhaps because they aren't ready to move into the lower-priced arena just yet. Major robot makers are transitioning from single task to multiple tasks, from single arm to dual arms, in large factories and auto plants. The next round of advances, whenever it happens, appears to be the merging of safety, mobility, vision, flexibility and dexterity that enable new collaborative cage-free robots to assist humans in various short-run tasks including assembly, transport, tending other machines, etc.

Robot Operating System (ROS) Industrial:

I noted a growing use of ROS and ROS-Industrial for the development and integration of add-on systems and equipment to existing robots. Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) showed their ROS-Industrial software and libraries and how its use is growing amongst robot manufacturers and integrators. Nearby, an integrator was showing three robots (a Fanuc, Kuka and ABB) all working together - collaborating - on a packaging line. In the example they were all sharing a single control box - a remarkable software achievement. And Gumstix, the $100 computer on a chip, announced support for ROS — and introduced a bootable microSD card with ROS preloaded.

Mobile Platforms:

Another crowd pleaser was Adept and their new mobility platform, Lynx. Adept's line of robots were shown on the recent CBS News 60 Minutes segment about robots and jobs and included an interview with Adept's CEO John Dulchinos. Similar to the platform iRobot developed with InTouch Health, Adept's Lynx doesn't require floor or ceiling markings for it to safely guide itself from place to place. It uses natural feature navigation and is designed to work in existing, peopled environments such as warehouses, factories and offices. It has an innovative blue wheel on the side that communicates status and intent of the robot to surrounding people. Lynx can haul 130 pounds for up to 13 hours at up to 4 mph before needing a recharge. It can be programmed by voice prompts or through a tablet.

Warehousing and Materials Handling:

Across the hallway in the ProMat material handling show held in conjunction with Automate, the major vendors tended not to call their products robots; they referred to them as being automatic or autonomous material handling devices and systems. The booths for Dematic, Swisslog, Egemin, Raymond, Seegrid, Murata, Beumer, Elettric80 and Schaefer were as prominent in ProMat as the big gun robot makers were at Automate. Dematic's booth in particular had overhead screens - like at a basketball arena -- as well as hundreds of feet of moving conveyers, elevators, bins and cases. Perhaps they needed to specially promote at ProMat in order to distinguish their products from Symbotic's very similar ones which debuted last year. Symbotic didn't exhibit at either Automate or ProMat.

It's All About Jobs and New Tech:

Henrik Christensen's keynote address discussed his efforts in the halls of Congress and at the White House to convince lawmakers that automation and job growth were not mutually exclusive. “It’s about how to leverage and empower the workforce, not remove it,” he said. “Once we bring manufacturing here, we also have more control over jobs in the associated supply chain.” He went on to attack the recent CBS News 60 Minute segment which showed many robotic advancements but also implied that robots take jobs, as being "a piece of crappy journalism."

In that same CBS 60-Minutes piece, one of the authors of a study about jobs and the future, said, “Even if offshore manufacturing returns to the U.S., most of the jobs will go to robots.” The International Federation of Robotics, in a press conference the day after Christensen's talk, revealed the contents of a new study it had commissioned. That report indicated a number of trends: (1) the economy always picks up much faster than job growth; (2) for every job created in manufacturing, there are 1.3 jobs created in other areas because of it; and (3) that investments in technology lead to unemployment in the short term, but a much higher job comeback just 3-5 years out.

Further, noting that bin-picking wasn't even possible a decade ago, Christensen suggested that within the next 10 years autonomous cars may be able to serve as driverless parcel carriers and that un-piloted drones may ship packages coast to coast.

He endorsed the concept currently being used by mobile robot company Aethon which provides a service to manually override their robots when the robot signals for help. Generalizing this service to others, Christensen suggested that robots could be serviced and directed by their manufacturer through the cloud as needed so that the customer wouldn't have to be involved with robot maintenance.

All in all the buzz of both shows was that (1) there were more buyers and strong leads than last year and (2) that investment in capital purchases for new robots and warehousing systems, which had been put off for years because of the recession, was now back on and companies were reflecting that with their orders and comments.

Verizon and GE have produced television advertisements that include robots. The ads are playing frequently and nationally. They are good, they're being talked about and tweeted, audiences like them, and they are great promotional pieces for the robotics industry. The ads are indicative of PR and advertising agencies' growing awareness that people are becoming at ease with robots in their everyday life, hence the inclusion in their advertisements.

Click image to see video.

Verizon uses a series of four ads to show how employing their network breaks the barriers of distance. Entitled "Technology That Breaks Boundaries," Verizon shows how their advanced tools are able to push large amounts of streaming data through their network. Two of those ads include VGo Communications' VGo mobile telepresence robots. One ad shows how kids far away from the ocean participated in a field trip to an ocean aquarium; the other ad shows a young home-bound student remotely attending and participating in a class. Both ads are informative, inspiring and memorable.

VGo Communications is partners with Verizon and integrates Verizon's 4G LTE technology into their VGo robot.

Click image to see video.

GE is using their ads to look at the bigger picture occurring in industry today: managing and analyzing huge streams of digital data in a search for quality, productivity and effectiveness. Their corporate philosophy of the Power of 1 is a predicate for the ads: by productivity increases or energy savings of just 1%, enormous industrial savings can happen: 1% fuel savings in aviation could save $30 billion over 15 years; 1% productivity improvement in healthcare equates to $63 billion in savings over the same period. They developed a series of ads on digital workflow to show how these productivity enhancements can occur: with brilliant machines and creative data management and data mining. Two of the ads in the series include robots. The ad shown above is the most interesting.

Click image to see video.

Many robotics industry professionals who saw the January CBS News 60 Minutes segment about robots were disappointed in the piece because it appeared to say that robots took away jobs while also showing some of the most impressive new robotic technologies at work (and described in terms of displacing jobs). Just like they teach in Public Relations 101, you measure publicity by the pound (implying that there's no such thing as bad press). That could be true in this case: lots of people were talking about the show - but they were also seriously thinking and talking about a different and very sensitive subject in America: an assumption that productivity enhancements takes away jobs.

The advertisements by GE and Verizon, on the other hand, are positive, favorable, and stimulate the public's imagination about the value of robots and robotics in everyday life. Perhaps they can help cleanse the bitter taste left from the 60 Minutes show.