Robotics

Spot, the sometimes controversial, always impressive autonomous quadruped from Boston Dynamics, has a cool new house. That’s thanks to a company called Percepto, which created a smart home for Spot that increases the robot’s utility in industrial and inspection scenarios.Though Spot recently got kicked off the NYPD after becoming something of a symbol of technocratic authoritarianism, the platform has legions of fans in a more prosaic but practical sector: infrastructure inspection. In this context, Spot is more like a terrestrial drone, a roving autonomous sensor platform that inspects industrial and public works infrastructure with a pace and endurance that would be hard for any human team to match.The smart home is like a dog kennel for the robot, safeguarding it while it charges in the field in between missions.”Early this year, we released a charging dock for Spot, unlocking the opportunity for customers to deploy remote inspection solutions with Spot. The Percepto Base for Spot widely expands the potential use cases for Spot by offering superb protection from the elements,” said Michael Perry, Vice President of Business Development at Boston Dynamics. “The enclosure, combined with Percepto AIM, provides our mutual clients the ability to automatically and autonomously deploy Spot in isolated but vital locations regardless of the weather conditions.”Florida Power & Light, which has used Percepto’s Sparrow drone for a number of years, is one of the first companies to showcase the integration of Spot along with other robots for autonomous outdoor remote inspection as part of their hurricane recovery plan. The robots are managed by Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring (AIM) platform. The AIM software controls open and closure of the Base without the need for on-site staff to man the robot.Percepto’s version of Spot is equipped with a dual payload of 4K and thermal cameras, as well as Percepto’s onboard module enabling live streaming during missions via secure LTE. Along with its Sparrow drone, Percepto is betting the increased capabilities for its Spot deployment will give customers remote air and ground inspection capabilities in easily deployable packages.”Percepto are proud to build upon our autonomous inspection offering that began with Sparrow, the most widely deployed drone-in-a-box in the world. The Base for Spot uses the same sophisticated and trusted AIM software to integrate remote autonomous inspections from the sky to the ground, inside and out, for a holistic and accurate picture in real time,” said Dor Abuhasira, CEO and Co-founder Percepto. “A team of inspection robots on site without the need for human supervision is the future of safer, more reliable inspection and we are excited to add further solutions to our offering.” More

A company that designs precision motors used in Mars and lunar exploration is teaming up with an open source drone architecture company. maxon, whose technology is enabling the autonomous helicopter Ingenuity and rover Perseverance to explore Mars is announcing a strategic partnership with Auterion, the company building an open and software-defined future for enterprise drone fleets.That may seem like an obscure bit of industry news, but it actually points to a dawning reality for the enterprise and government drone sector: The drone sector for government and enterprise is largely being reshaped out from under the shadow of DJI, and open source is taking a lead role.A bit of recent history: As I’ve written, the drone industry has reached an inflection point, with a handful of companies, and most notably DJI, dominating the industry. As a result of the reigning monopolies, it’s nearly impossible for any single company to compete against overwhelming market share, along with an inability to easily scale and the fact that companies need to essentially reinvent the wheel to innovate.  But that’s changing, in large part because DJI, a Chinese firm, is now persona non grata when it comes to American governmental and many enterprise applications. That’s left an opening for a sort of sector-wide reset, and open source has emerged as an important driver of recent innovation and partnerships. A strategic partnership between a precision motor company and a drone company that provides enterprise and government with an ecosystem of software-defined drones, payloads, and third-party applications within a single, easy-to-use platform based on open-source standards has far-reaching potential for the sector.”The partnership between Auterion and maxon provides access to the very best drone technology that also addresses impending federal legislation in the United States,” said Kevin Sartori, co-founder of Auterion. “We’re seeing utility companies and others that specifically require drone service providers to offer systems compliant with regulatory executive action. Ultimately, our open-source, software-defined ecosystem built with outstanding partners like maxon is what will instill greater trust in drone components and autonomous technologies.”According to the companies, with the new partnership enterprise customers will benefit from an open ecosystem of avionics and motors integration in the drone industry, which joins Auterion’s module Skynode and maxon’s best-in-class BLDC motors, like the EC 87 flat UAV motor. The implementation will use open-source standardization that’s critical for the drone industry’s next phase of enterprise scaling and smooth workflow management. Across every commercial, government and non-profit use case, open ecosystem integrations support component upgrades and mixed portfolios of small, medium and heavy-lift drones, carrying a wide variety of specialized payloads or cargo. More

President Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plan looks to tackle America’s roadways, expand broadband access, improve electric grids, and invest millions into manufacturing. That all sounds great, but it’s not quite so simple.To boot, we also need to consider how these areas will be inspected in order to allocate resources and then to maintain this investment. There is currently no way that existing crews can inspect all this infrastructure effectively, and if we cannot inspect the infrastructure reliably, we cannot reasonably expect to spend repair dollars. Enter drones. To truly modernize and future proof America’s infrastructure, it’s a safe bet that drones should play a key role enabling quick inspections and spotting developing issues prior to them debilitating an electric grid or roadway. Goldman Sachs forecasts the total drone market size to be worth $100 billion— driven by the need for better data collection in commercial industries like agriculture, mining, energy, and infrastructure. The once nascent industry is on the precipice of breaking into the mainstream and the Biden infrastructure plan could be the tipping point.New autonomous drones will help to complete more missions per year than ever before, keeping these infrastructure investments in working condition. But there are hurdles to this vision, and it’s incredibly important to get it right as major budget allocations are being discussed.I recently had a chance to connect with Reese Mozer, the cofounder and CEO of American Robotics, the first and so far only autonomous drone manufacturer to win FAA approval for pilot-free drone flight, about how commercial drones can help reshape America’s infrastructure. He offers a fascinating look at how critical drones could become to any infrastructure overhaul and to the future prosperity American commerce.GN: It seems like inspection is the big overlooked question mark when talking about an infrastructure overhaul. Just how big is the inspection challenge when it comes to Biden’s proposed plan?Reese Mozer: The infrastructure in the US needs a concerted effort to bring it into the 21st century. Most of our infrastructure, be it the transportation infrastructure that are our lifelines, or the electric and data grid that connects everyone and everything, is aging, and falling behind from a security and integrity perspective. 

This infrastructure ages and deteriorates quite differently across different parts of the country for reasons related to local climate, usage, demographics, as well as local regulatory pressures and appetites. For example, the road infrastructure in the Northeast US is affected heavily by snow and snow removal-related activities compared to vast areas of the west and southwest, where the deterioration might be driven by higher temperatures and winds. Similarly, railyards and other rail infrastructure in the northern states face different challenges compared to those in the southern parts of the US.Accurately knowing and tracking the state of the infrastructure via well-planned and frequent inspection activities will be critical in identifying the areas that need immediate attention, as well those areas that have a multiplying effect across the rest of the system. The need for good inspection practices and technologies goes beyond just trying to find and fix existing issues. A timely inspection regime would allow companies to track changes and deteriorations, and take preventative measures to actually prevent problems from occurring, and vastly extend the life of our existing and new infrastructure.The sheer amount of infrastructure that we have, and the geographical spread of it combined with the widely varying environments they are located in means that regular inspections of our infrastructure is going to be critical to ensure that all efforts to repair, fix and expand our infrastructure succeed. I believe there is a lot of new and effective technology, including robotics and AI, that innovative US companies can bring to bear on these challenging problems that would make this an economically viable and sustainable win for the entire country.GN: How is the development of detect-and-avoid technology, smarter autonomy, and edge computing enabling drones to work better and provide greater value to commercial users? Reese Mozer: The commercial drone industry is growing quickly and providing significant benefits to the American public. Detect-and-avoid technology, smarter autonomy, and edge computing is key to enabling expanded operations beyond visual line of sight which is critical for the industry to truly take off. The economics behind paying for a visual observer or pilot on the ground to monitor a drone flight today simply don’t make sense and have significantly hampered enterprises’ and commercial users’ ability to justify building out a drone program.It’s important to remember that for the vast majority of commercial use cases flying a drone once or twice a year has little to no value. Typically, to see the benefits of drone-based data collection, flights need to be conducted multiple times per day every day, indefinitely – to cover enough area, survey at a proper resolution, and detect problems when they occur, and potentially before they occur. Today, the average hourly rate of hiring a drone pilot in the U.S. is about $150, and can get as high as $500 / hour. Thus, overcoming the human costs associated with commercial drone use has been one of the biggest hindrances to the market and has impacted the viability and implementation of this technology on a mass scale.Combining Detect-And-Avoid (DAA) technology with smarter autonomy allows for fully autonomous operations (with no pilots or visual observers) to be realized in a safe and scalable manner. The use of edge computing reduces the costs and latencies associated with the delivery of the information collected by the drones to the end customers. Edge computing also enables advanced AI-based algorithms to be trained and used for specific end customer uses with the right context (from the edge) incorporated into the data and the information.For the past five years, American Robotics has been developing a suite of proprietary technologies designed specifically to produce the industry-leading solution for safe automated drone flights that is economical and scalable.  The Scout System™ incorporates multiple novel risk mitigations including proprietary DAA sensors and algorithms, advanced automated system diagnostics and failsafes, automated pre-flight checks, and automated flight path management. If anything were to deviate from the expected, safe operation plan, our drone systems take immediate action to correct, such as altering its flight course and returning to the base station. GN: Is the regulatory environment currently conducive to using drones for inspection on infrastructure projects? Is there room for improvement/evolution in your mind?Reese Mozer: The regulatory environment for the use of drones for inspection purposes has improved since 2015 when commercial use of drones was allowed for the first time in the US. Widespread use of drones for inspection requires they be operated within the line of sight of a pilot, which constrains them to fly only a short distance from the pilot. The regulators (FAA) have granted a few extended line of sight operation approvals which extend this operational range of drones but at the cost of adding more human capital to keep an eye on the drones and for other air traffic. The approvals have also been very infrequently granted. In January, American Robotics became the first company to be allowed to operate drones without any humans required for the operations in the field i.e fully remote and automated. This is a major step in the evolution of drone regulations in the US, and sets the precedent for more of such advanced and complex operations to be permitted as long as the safety and operational requirements posed by the FAA are met. As we at American Robotics conduct more operations with time, we continue to work with the regulators to push the boundaries of drone technology and regulations in a safe and reliable manner. We expect to share the learnings from our work with the FAA with the rest of the industry, and spearhead the evolution of drone regulations in the US and worldwide to allow for more automated and scalable drone-based inspections and data collection.  GN: How readily has the commercial consumer adopted drone technology for inspection purposes? What sectors seem more ripe and which have yet to widely adopt drones for inspection.Reese Mozer: In the commercial sector, we are still just scratching the surface of what’s possible and how this technology will be integrated and scaled. Until humans are no longer required to be part of on-the-ground operations, it’s difficult to make the case for drones in most scenarios. Imagine if every time a logistics robot moved across the warehouse floor, a human had to follow it around keeping their hands on a controller and their eyes fixed on the robot. American Robotics’ groundbreaking and exciting FAA approval is an important and significant step forward for the commercial drone community as a whole. The commercial drone industry looks forward to building on American Robotics’ success and continuing to work with the FAA toward safe integration of UAS into our National Airspace System.We are working closely with our partners in the energy, agriculture, and oil & gas sectors to scale their use of drone-based data collection, and asset management functions, and have shown significant process improvements are possible leading to very real positive outcomes for these partners. This has been made possible because of the technology and regulatory breakthroughs that we have made in the use of drones in the industrial and commercial space. More

Usage data from a leading provider of delivery robots suggests the pandemic has been a boon to automation. Starship Technologies, which has been operating commercially for three years in limited pilots and in settings like college campuses, has announced that its deliveries since the beginning of the pandemic have quadrupled globally.The last year and change has been a kind of hothouse for automation firms, who have seen their technologies’ adoption grow quickly in a world that values sterile interactions and shopping at home like never before. If that sounds dystopian to you, it won’t help to add that some of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic seem to be robots and AI, particularly in sectors like delivery and logistics.”This past year has been a game changer for autonomous delivery, moving adoption ahead by years,” said Ahti Heinla, Co-founder and CEO of Starship Technologies. “When we launched commercial delivery three years ago, we didn’t expect to be at the point we are today. We marked the significant milestone of one million deliveries in January 2021 and we’ve since surpassed 1.5 million deliveries. These rapid developments have also helped us scale the business, so we can provide a lower cost of delivery than any other option available.”Starship was quick to carve out a strategy of targeting college campuses, a savvy move that sidesteps murky regulatory stances in many cities on the use of delivery robots on public streets. College campuses are full of hungry customers and with centralized food services providers, an ideal testbed for robotic delivery.The company says it has set delivery records repeatedly over the last year in its campus deployments.”I hadn’t even heard of robot delivery before I started school and now I don’t see a future without it,” said Claire Sunderman, a student at Bowling Green State University. “I’d be perfectly happy to have a robot deliver a lot more things because it would save me so much time. Now that I am graduating, I will really miss the convenience and seeing the robots on campus everyday – I wish I could take one with me!”  That sort of attitude bodes well for companies like Starship, which aren’t just proofing technology but also training a new generation of adopters. But for widespread adoption to occur, automation firms still need to tackle the thorny issue of local regulatory hurdles. So far, companies like Starship, either out of prudence or because they don’t have deep enough pockets, have avoided the blitz mentality of Uber and Bird, which left local regulators scrambling to react, and have opted instead for a more methodical rollout. 

The pandemic, which has changed attitudes about convenience and delivery nationwide, maybe be the opening these firms have been waiting for. More

Over the last year, Crocs emerged as a stay-at-home comfort essential and experienced unprecedented demand. As a result, the company quickly outgrew their distribution center and moved their e-commerce fulfillment into a larger pop-up warehouse. Included in the design was a recommendation to bring in automation to improve throughput, mitigate the risk of labor challenges and optimize capacity. That’s where the robots, and in particular the automation solutions of a firm called 6 River Systems (6RS), come in. Since implementing 6RS’ wall-to-wall fulfillment solution, including its collaborative mobile robot Chuck, Crocs has seen a 182% pick rate improvement. This increase in throughput was critical during the 2020 holiday peak season, and allowed Crocs to handle up to 4ok units per day, ensuring they were meeting heightened customer expectations.Robots have become essential to scaling, and the solutions can now be brought online with unprecedented speed and minimal downtime. I spoke with Jerome Dubois, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of 6RS, to learn more about why warehouse automation was an essential component to scaling Crocs’ fulfillment operation and what the future holds for operations optimization.GN: The setup and integration in the Crocs case seems quick. How does 6RS prioritize reducing downtime and how is it possible the automation solution is up and running so quickly?Jerome Dubois: Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Crocs has quickly become a comfort essential while most daily activities have been confined to our homes. As a result, their ecommerce demand took off in 2020 beyond the retailer’s expectations, and Crocs realized the need for a second distribution center to fulfill this heightened demand. The Crocs’ team tapped our wall-to-wall fulfillment solution, powered by our autonomous mobile robot (AMR) Chuck, to help support fulfillment operations. Chuck is a collaborative mobile robot that uses machine learning and AI to guide associates through their work zones to help them minimize walking, stay on task and work more efficiently. Chuck, along with our cloud-based software and partner integrations, supports the entire fulfillment process. 

The full design, integration and deployment for Crocs was completed in under 3 months just before holiday peak 2020. When go-live took place in early October 2020, the site ramped from first pick to full volume in just two days. To achieve this, our team has an extensive, collaborative planning stage for any deployment. We develop a detailed plan before hitting the ground, which includes warehouse design and mapping, clear business objectives and a roadmap for achieving them. When designing a warehouse plan, every decision can have a significant impact on operational efficiency. Once a clear plan is in place that is tailored to that warehouse, implementation is usually quick and seamless. This timeline is fairly typical for our implementations as we prioritize our clients’ time and help them achieve results as quickly as possible.GN: What’s the sweet spot for 6RS in terms of manufacturing capacity and ROI. In other words, at what size would implementation start to make sense?Jerome Dubois: In most cases, 6 River Systems can accommodate several different capacities due to the flexibility that our wall-to-wall fulfillment system provides. The system allows for Chucks to be added or removed based on demand and available labor. The solution can be used in all put-away, picking, counting, replenishment and sorting tasks, helping associates work faster while also reducing picking errors. The power of our solution really shows in warehouses over 20,000 square feet that average a unit volume greater than 15,000 per day. These warehouses typically have over 5,000 SKUs with associates picking for at least 8 hours per day. On average, customers of all sizes improve pick rates by 2-3x and see ROI in less than a year.GN: Are there other customers you can speak about publicly that might resonate with readers?Jerome Dubois: One of our customers that might resonate with readers is Office Depot, a household name in the office supply space and one of the largest suppliers in the U.S. When Office Depot’s demand began shifting across e-commerce, B2B and retail, Office Depot found itself fulfilling more customer orders that contain fewer items per package. The company turned to 6 River Systems to help address the challenges of increased order volume and varied consumer purchasing behaviors by implementing Chucks. As a result, Office Depot improved warehouse safety, engaged and rallied its staff, reduced needless walking and sped up training with 6RS and Chuck. They eliminated warehouse injuries by 100% and reduced associate training time down to just one day. Full case study here. More

A transcription and captioning company that’s helping to move the industry toward artificial intelligence has made a key acquisition to firm up its market position. For many in industries like journalism, the news is bitter-sweet, heralding new levels of efficiency and accuracy in transcription but also signaling the dying days of the venerable transcriptionist.

Verbit, which bills itself the world’s largest AI-powered transcription platform, has acquired captioning company VITAC. The move will help Verbit secure its position as a dominant force in the professional transcription and captioning market, which is critical to sectors like legal, media, education, government, and enterprise.As a journalist, I have a fond relationship with human transcription professionals. The degree to which professional transcribers go to get a spelling correct or to include a list of probable words in a garbled section of audio can border on heroic. The mere act of having something transcribed has often been a sort of unofficial delineation between veteran journalists and up-and-comers, for whom the initiation rites of transcribing interviews themselves are as brutal as they are tedious. And for niche applications, including some medical and specialty academic spheres, human-led transcription may still be necessary.But sentimentalism aside, this has long been an industry headed for innovation. The rise of voice recognition technology and the power of machine learning to parse spoken language with help from immense datasets means the writing has been on the wall. AI-only transcription is still far from perfect, but companies are increasingly relying on AI for a first pass at transcribing audio.San Francisco-based Verbit utilizes a hybrid approach to transcription. In-house, AI-based technology transforms both live and recorded video and audio into what the company claims are 99%+ accurate captions and transcripts for the education, legal, media, and enterprise industries. Human transcribers act as clean-up crews to increase accuracy.”We are thrilled to further strengthen our position as the market leader in the transcription and captioning industry in partnership with VITAC. This opportunity allows us to expand our offerings for the media vertical and provide advanced transcription capabilities to our current education, legal, and corporate customers,” said Tom Livne, CEO and Founder of Verbit. “The combined company will harness decades of transcription and captioning expertise to offer customers a best-in-class solution based on our proven technology. We will continue to invest in our platform, toptalent, and domain expertise to evolve and develop our solutions to meet our customers’ dynamic needs.”VITAC, which has focused on communication accessibility via captioning, is responsible for captioning hundreds of thousands of programming hours each year, with clients including every broadcast company and most cable networks, as well as Fortune 1000 Corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies.

“We’re delighted to join the Verbit family and bolster their leading position in the transcription industry globally,” said Chris Crowell, CEO of VITAC. “We’ve been incredibly impressed with Verbit’s rapid growth and technology advantages, and together we look forward to serving more of this dynamic industry with clients across all vertical segments.” More

A provider of drone-in-a-box systems for applications like inspection and monitoring received a new certification that will make it easier to provide solutions to the defense sector. Easy Aerial recently announced its Easy Guard ground station—essentially a portable hangar for a drone—has received its certification of Military Standard Specification MIL-STD 810G, a standard and broadly recognized defense-industry certification that designates technology as field-ready military equipment.This is significant because it underlines the growing crossover between UAV solutions developed for commercial applications like inspection and pursuits like surveillance and situational awareness that are used by police and military customers. A number of providers now move fluidly between commercial industries and public security & defense, making some privacy advocates uncomfortable. But for a sector that’s growing but still trying to catch its footing as the regulatory environment evolves, UAV developers are keen to take advantage of the broad applicability of rugged and task-agnostic hardware, and defense and security, which are embracing drones, represent a market with deep pockets.”In an era where safety and reliability are non-negotiable, we take great pride in the fact that not only do we offer state-of-the-art security technologies but that this technology is backed by hardware with a proven track record for withstanding even the harshest environments,” said Easy Aerial CTO Ivan Stamatovski. The drone hangar known as Easy Guard, which resembles a Pelican case, enables a drone system to take off, land, and charge in the field, all while keeping the system mobile and easily deployable. It features an automated roof opening and closing system and is made from rugged and weatherproof military-grade materials. It can be deployed from a standard pickup truck traveling up to 25 miles per hour and is equipped with sensors and four external cameras for situational awareness at the deployment site.Another company, Exyn Technologies, has been similarly pushing the development of switch-hitting UAV for security and defense applications, as well as commercial applications. Exyn began developing for the enterprise and is active in sectors like oil and gas and infrastructure inspection. The company’s drones are designed to work in complex, GPS-denied environments where unknown terrain and uncertain ground conditions can make life perilous for soldiers. Those abilities make the drones well-suited to defense applications as well. In contrast to other unmanned aerial vehicles used for ground warfare, which predominantly rely on a pilot, Exyn’s drones are fully autonomous and operate without the need for a human operator or pre-loaded maps, functionality original developed for the commercial space.”Our aerial robots provide unique capabilities that the Government is seeking to develop and deploy. They are completely self-sufficient and a significantly valuable asset in providing superior situational awareness,” said Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn, told ZDNet last year.

Easy Aerial has experienced a dramatic increase in demand for its expanding line of ISO9001-certified free-flight, tethered, and hybrid drone systems. The company expects this trend to continue with the addition of Easy Guard MIL-STD-810G certification. “With this superb achievement, Easy Aerial continues to revolutionize and set the standard for the drone-in-a-box industry by delivering robust and reliable products that fulfill an increasing demand for high endurance autonomous, drone-based, monitoring and surveillance systems for military and commercial customers around the world,” said Ido Gur, CEO of Easy Aerial. More

As artificial intelligence becomes more versatile, we’re entering an interesting moment of human-machine intermingling. The latest example? The negotiating table.A company called Pactum is a good example. Purveyor of an AI-based platform that enables global companies to automate personalized commercial negotiations at scale, the company has leapt into the fray with an $11M Series A, all with a focus on getting customers the best possible deal.”While other AI companies focus on reducing labor costs, Pactum focuses on adding value to the bottom line. All businesses make purchases, which means that any firm will be able to benefit from our automated Negotiation-as-a-Service (NaaS) offering,” said Martin Rand, CEO and co-founder at Pactum. “Although this technology has so far been limited to the most innovative enterprises, Pactum will open the door to all businesses to benefit from AI’s value generation potential – starting with Fortune 500 companies but by no means ending there.”The funding brings the company’s total investment to $15m, and the latest round was led by Atomico, with participation from commerce players like Metaplanet (Jaan Tallinn), Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver, TransferWise Chairman & co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, and Teleport co-founder Sten Tamkivi.The value proposition here is interesting because it marks a departure from the usual AI pitch. Pactum is a web-based tool and some of the brand language sounds similar to what you’d hear from other AI developers. The system is meant to “add value” and “save time” by aligning client values with their negotiation partners and then using best-practice negotiation strategies to secure “win-wins.”The novel part is that Pactum is less about driving efficiencies, which is the standard line for hawkers of AI, and more about unlocking existing capital through tangible savings. A spokesman cites a use case involving a Fortune 500 client that Pactum was able to save $1.5m per month, money that’s immediately available to be deployed elsewhere. It calls its flagship offering Negotiation-as-a-Service (NaaS).”Fortune 500 procurement leaders have told us that negotiated agreements are the backbone of their economic engagement, but that their practices for managing supplier contracts are currently filled with inefficiency, uncertainty, and untapped value,” said Ben Blume, Partner at Atomico. “Martin, Kaspar and Kristjan recognized this and, with Pactum, have pioneered a unique approach that makes the negotiating process more supplier-friendly and improves outcomes for both parties. Combining deep expertise in negotiation with world class AI talent, we believe Pactum is exceptionally well positioned to develop a new kind of automation solution, with the ability to create significant amounts of value for both buyers and suppliers of all kinds.”

Pactum will use the funding to scale deployment. More