The Pandemic has propelled e-commerce to stratospheric heights with sales skyrocketing over 30% in 2020, and close to 40% in 2021. Globally, online shopping jumped to nearly $30 trillion led by Alibaba and Amazon. This consumer behavior shift has accelerated the adoption of warehouse automation technologies with packaging systems estimated to climb to $69 billion by 2025. At the center of this revolution are unmanned systems. Robots excel at dull repetitive tasks (like moving pallets), however, humans still exceed their mechanical counterparts in delicate creative tasks that require high levels of tactile dexterity. This paradox has led many roboticists to take a dramatically different approach to use mechatronics to streamline productivity. In place of traditional robots to augment labor, these innovators outfit workers with cyborg appendages to increase employee productivity. The best example of this approach is German Bionic with its CrayX exoskeleton.

Rather than replacing employees with robots, customers of German Bionic elevate their current workforce to new strengths and purposes. Speaking with German Bionic’s CEO and founder, Armin Schmidt, he elaborated on his philosophy of “injecting power” into humans via the exoskeletons. This struck at the heart of the competitive advantage, unlike passive systems like SuitX and HeroWear, the CrayX uses batteries to provide back and upper limb support. Also, the German Bionic systems are packed with artificial intelligence and analytics that track usage and adjust to worker behaviors to improve performance. Now with the fifth generation, it has taken its platform to the next step with walking assistance, longer battery life, and indoor/outdoor environmental casing (fully weatherproof). This product launch comes on the heels of its North American expansion with an office in Boston and USA customers.

The new Cray’s deep learning functionality monitors movement and especially fatigue to optimize performance and inject power into humans when they need it most. “Fatigue is one of the major risk factors for the human when you work for a long time when you get some accident it hurts you. It recognizes your behavior, your movements, and what you lift.” He further explained that they push updates, via the Cloud, based upon dynamic feedback and usage from the field to the user, gamifying their work. “This is the first time the user understands what they lifted during the day,” boasts Schmidt. He further elaborated that with an example, say they “lifted 5 elephants,” worth of goods, seeing that accomplishment makes the worker become more motivated to exceed his goals the next day, similar to monitoring one’s steps on the Apple watch. Schmidt succinctly presents, “We don’t want to create the iron man, but supercharge the human on its weak points. We want to inject power to make the human more healthy.” Schmidt shared German Bionics’ future plans, hinting that the lower limbs are on the first part of a larger product story, as Schmidt is looking to expand to new verticals with new augmentative extremities. Today, they are working with DHL, BMW, Ikea, and close to 100 other customers worldwide with the most units active in the field.

From connected humans to connected cars, artificial intelligence offers the most significant game-changing opportunity of harnessing physical assets on the ground. The topic of automating analog workflow is the impetus for ff Venture Capital’s Drone & Robotics Summit on September 20th in New York City. Already, the ffVC portfolio is revolutionizing farming, logistics, infrastructure, and food deliveries. As governments and startups work to collaborate in redefining the human-machine relationship in our jobs, factories, and homes, the Summit aims to bridge the gaps between inventors, investors, and policymakers. To date, our fund has a roster of keynotes and panels from leading think tanks, academic labs, accelerators, banks, corporate research centers, and startup innovators. If you are interested in attending or speaking at the show, fill in the form today.

Solving Supplychain Woes With Robot-Enabled Humans was originally published in Silicon Valley Robotics on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The ultimate purpose of robotics is to improve the human condition. As organic species, our bodies are vulnerable to damage and disrepair. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics,” the entry on “care robots” highlights its societal benefits over countering dystopian fears: “One reason why the issue of care has come to the fore is that people have argued that we will need robots in aging societies. This argument makes problematic assumptions…Most importantly, it ignores the nature of automation, which is not simply about replacing humans, but about allowing humans to work more efficiently. It is not very clear that there really is an issue here since the discussion mostly focuses on the fear of robots de-humanising care, but the actual and foreseeable robots in care are assistive robots for classic automation of technical tasks.” Understanding the nature of a “care robots” is critical to furthering its development by empowering more people with disabilities with assistive mechatronics. This is the mission of ETH’s Cybathlon competitions, which recently announced its third global olympic-style games for October 2024.

While the pandemic raged across the world in 2020, the organizers of 2nd Cybathlon persisted with their competition to use robots for medical rehabilitation. “We originally scheduled the event for May, and in March we realized we couldn’t do the event. We had three years in preparation, so we had to cancel the event in Zurich in the arena. So we decided we can’t stop the movement, we needed to give the teams the platform to show the world what they have achieved… So we decided to make a global edition which was decentralized with teams setting up race tracks in their home locations,” explains Dr. Roland Sigrist, the show’s organizer. Once Dr. Sigrist had everything in place, Cybathlon 2020 became a 3–4 hour livestream event. As he plans Cybathlon 2024, he shared that this tournament will be a hybrid event with both remote teams and live participants jostling for bot glory in Zurich. Some past Cybathlon standouts include Scewo, a Swiss-based commercial stair climbing wheelchair company, and Imperial College’s Neuromechanics Rehab and Technology lab’s robotic prosthesis. The contest has been gaining in popularity with 66 teams registered in 2016, 100 teams in 2020, and quite possibly 250 in 2024. “We think the new approach is even more inclusive,” boasts Dr. Sigrist. He then unveiled to me that in 2024 Cybathlon will be adding two new disciplines to address the needs of the visually impaired and severe upper and lower limb disabilities.

One of the most promising control methodologies for roboticists aiming to develop medical therapies for quadriplegics and paraplegics is Brain Control Interface (BCI). This technology creates a communication pathway from the brain’s electrical activity to an external device, such as robotic arm or computer. Dr. Jacques Vidal at UCLA first published his seminal work on BCI in 1973, which subsequently led to many new discoveries around repairing cognitive and sensory-motor function. Vini Tripathii is the founder of Invictus BCI, a startup focused on developing a more functional prosthetic hand. She hopes to compete at the 2024 Cybathlon with her BCI-enabled prosthesis. The recently graduated Cornell masters student explains her motivation: “Three years ago, a family member got very sick. It got so bad that doctors had to amputate her hand so that she could live. After the amputation, I thought that once she got a prosthetic, it would fix everything — but it didn’t. In fact, even after getting a premium state-of-the-art prosthetic — she found herself struggling with even simple mundane tasks. After speaking with other amputees and clinicians I realized these were problems shared by millions of people, and that they were inherent in the prosthetic control system. I started researching alternative methods that could provide more intuitive and functional control.” The BCI entrepreneur recently joined NYU Stern’s Endless Frontier Labs to begin the steps to commercialize her invention.

ff Venture Capital (where I’m a Venture Partner) was one of the early investors in the BCI space with its seed investment in Muse in 2012. Since then, the current BCI market is estimated to be close to $2 billion and is estimated to double by 2026. The interest in mastering the cranium has lured the Department of Defense, IBM, and even Elon Musk in pushing the envelope of possibilities. Musk’s startup Neuralink is building brain implants to directly connect cerebral cortexes to computers. Earlier this month at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit, Musk bragged about his ground-breaking investment, “Neuralink’s working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable, and the Neuralink device can be removed safely. We hope to have this in our first humans — which will be people that have severe spinal-cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics — next year, pending FDA approval.” According CB Insights other companies to watch in the space, include: Kernel, Dreem, Thync, Halo Neuroscience, Synchron, BrainCo, Neurable, Flow Neuroscience, Cognixion, Bitbrain Technologies, Paradromics, MELTIN MMI, Neuros Medical, NextMind, Emotiv, Q30 Innovations, BIOS, NeuroScouting, NeuroPace, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s MindMaze.

While the market for BCI is all encompassing with recreational consumer products and psychological therapies, the greatest promise offers the ability of connecting robotic parts to compensate for human frailties. Ms. Tripathii says it best, “The problem lies not in the mechanics of the prosthetic hand, but the prosthetic control interface. Current prosthetic control systems are frustrating for amputees to use as they are unintuitive, capable of only a few grasps and have unreliable performance.” This personal journey led the Cornell scientist to BCI as the solution. “In essence, a BCI decodes neural activity and translates it into an external command: this can be used in a variety of applications, including assistive technology. The BCI decodes the received signals into a hand movement, then passes instructions for the prosthetic hand to perform that hand movement,” explains Invictus’ founder. Tripathii’s company is on the cusp of developing its first prototype complete with a mechanical phalanges for a growing list of potential users.

By 2024, Tripathii hopes to showcase its proprietary robotic hand at Cybathlon and take home 1st Place. As she elaborated, “Cybathlon is a unique opportunity to really test BCI performance in a myriad of day to day activities. It’s an event like no other, where you can really see the capabilities of BCI.” In describing the opportunity further, the innovator exclaimed, “Most importantly, it is a forum where indomitable human spirit partners with human ingenuity to say that we can and we shall not be limited by any constraints. We are very excited to be joining in 2024!” This sentiments aligns very well with the vision of Dr. Sigrist who calls the conference “a movement.” Tripathii professes that Cybathlon is really a catalyst for promoting technology like hers to ultimately change the paradigm of care. “Many of the physical challenges that we currently face, whether from disabilities or old age, will become less of a challenge and more of an augmented task. BCI will transform the way we do things to make the world safer, more productive, and more accessible. It will make it possible to do work more dexterously, accelerate learning, and redefine how we create and interact with art, music and other media types.”

Editor’s Note: Learn more or register a team for Cybathlon 2024

I’m the type of traveler that explores new cities by getting lost, to the chagrin of Google and Apple maps. As more urban centers become connected with AI, resulting in an increasing number of pedestrians looking down, few are left to discover hidden haberdasheries and coffee houses. This was the topic of Dr. Annelien Smets talk last month at the IEEE International Smart Cities Conference. The researcher cautioned civic planners about making their municipalities too smart and interpersonal. “Most of the time we know where to go and how to get there, or at least our phone does. We are so used to having all information at our fingertips that we’re no longer used to searching things…but that triggers a very different state of mind. We’re goal-oriented — there is no room for the unknown,” exclaimed Smets.

While Smets’ emotional sentiments are nostalgically understandable, I recently became aware of a groundbreaking study on how AI bolsters citizen engagement. Dr. Julien Carbonnell’s book, “Democracy Studio: Practical guide to artificial intelligence on citizen engagement” analyzes three leading countries in the field of smart urbanization, — Taiwan, Israel, and Estonia. Dr. Carbonnell shared with me some of his experiences in the field. “I’ve been refining my collaborative management methodology for 10 years, taking various roles in the stakeholders of a city building: non-profit associations to sound out inhabitants of different districts, a think tank with private business owners to build a future-oriented project for my hometown and influence local politics, the real estate company asked for specific visions for land management and a very grounded business model from the existing housing market, and the startups offered that possibilities to experience new business models, trying to reach the support from investors and fast prototyping digital projects,” he outlines. “Once I understood how ML works, I built my own algorithms to analyze citizen engagement on smart cities and started to present it to some fellow researchers, or entrepreneurs of civic technologies and smart cities. The feedback has been very enthusiastic and so I kept pushing my AI models forward by finally coding two computer simulations from my data analysis which allows me to make some more inferences outside of my datasets,” Carbonnell stated.

I nudged him to elaborate on his findings in the varied markets. “My three case studies Taiwan, Israel and Estonia are some of the most advanced digital democracies in the world, with a high penetration rate of technology.” He then proceeded to breakdown his findings, “Taiwan is the number one provider of micro-components in the world, making its industry essential to the smart-phones’ and computers’ global markets. The population benefits an internet penetration rate of more than 83% overall.” He was most impressed by the Holy Land as “science and technology is one of Israel’s most developed fields: the state spent the highest ratio in the world of its GDP in civil research and development in 2015. Local companies, students and citizens benefit from many public and private tech hubs to support innovation.” Remarkably the Baltic nation of Estonia has some of the highest rates of online usage with “98% of all banking transactions and public interaction happening online.”

Carbonnell links the fact that all three countries are small, recently independent, and bordered by hostile neighbors, as the response to a common investment in “tech, science, and education, due to a lack of other natural resources than the human one to exploit autonomously.” He sees this development as survival, “the fast transition to democracies sustained by free-market economies was urged by the necessity to support their existence as independent nations on the sidelines of robust less democratic regimes at their borders.” He further breaks down the contribution of having a strong public-private partnership. “In the three cases, the first customer, in crucial need of innovation, was the State: the public sector ordered a deep refurbishment or reconstruction of main infrastructures and public services. This State transformation created many opportunities for local entrepreneurs to develop companies dedicated to filling the demand in innovation, new technology, scientific research, and education. This dynamic has set the basis of a service economy with the best technicality levels and financial support to innovation. Secondly, the government helps companies reach global markets since they tend to communicate together on their achievement,” the researcher exclaims.

As SmartCities are still in their infancy, Carbonnell observed various deployment strategies of disruptive technologies to guide future instillations: “What has made the success of Taiwan, Israel and Estonia is to have invested in human resources and education to build their contemporary societies. As a result, a wide part of the population is aware of science and technology, works on research and innovation both into the academic and the private sectors, and the population is conscious that it needs to keep evolving and implementing new technologies to support their ideal position in the globalization phenomena.” He remarked that the communal altruistic benefits often outweigh commercial interest. “This is a mindset which is lacking in the oldest free-market economies and democracies nowadays, like the USA, Europe, or Japan. This mindset does not mean that there is less fail in experimentations and early adoptions. The process of innovation and startups is the same everywhere and requires a lot of trials and errors before it gives satisfying results. For that reason it can’t be otherwise than a collective process where stakeholders of the same ecosystem share the risks and the benefits together. Being a small national people in terms of demography, and having the consciousness of sharing a common destiny, helps in creating cohesion among the population, and so being naturally committed to its national success,” the researcher professes.

I pressed Carbonnell on his opinion regarding the impact of the pandemic on his findings. “What I can say from a comparison in between before and after pandemic ways of work, is that I look like less of an alien since there are more digital nomads now, and more people are available to meet and work online. I would say that the pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation but I have no idea if this will be temporary or last for longer, quipped the social scientist. He added, “All kinds of automation are great, BUT a city is about satisfying the quality of life of its residents before everything. Integrated dashboards with AI and robots, and tech-supported decision makings are a life-long technical dream of all generations of urban professionals, engineers, architects, but most of the people would agree that there would not be worse governance than the one of scientist government. For the simple reason that humans are sensitive entities more than rational ones, highly unpredictable and so far never completely understood by any science.” When commenting on devices like Amazon’s Astro robot, Carbonell reminded me of one of my favorite authors, “Somehow this is just an extension of the famous laws of robotics published by Asimov in 1950: robots must be programmed to support human life, and not the contrary.”

Subscribe to DDIntel Here.

Join our network here: https://datadriveninvestor.com/collaborate

The Impact of AI-Enabled Smart Cities was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As Mark Ein, Chairman of Kastle Systems, explains, “New York, when you look across major markets across the United States, has been amongst the very slowest to return to the office, which I think we can explain by how hard the pandemic hit New York at the beginning.” The national office occupancy is 27% of pre-pandemic levels, with cities like Dallas at almost 50% capacity. The situation is even bleaker in the hospitality sector with reported NYC hotel room revenue down by more than 89% for the year.

As more than 70% of New Yorkers are vaccinated, experts are wondering how to jumpstart Manhattan’s business economy, which is primarily found today on Zoom. In the words of Morgan Stanley’s CEO James Gorman, “If you can go to a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office. And we want you in the office.” He further chided his employees, “If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this ‘I’m in Colorado…and getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City.’ Sorry. That doesn’t work.”

Most experts believe that after Labor Day, the Big Apple will see a surge in foot traffic barring a resurgence of the virus. The big issue in speaking with landlords and service providers is imparting tenants with the confidence to return to normal. While building owners have started to install new camera and sensor technologies in their lobbies to detect masks and other threats, they have been slow to utilize the data to communicate to their employees and occupants what is actually happening on the ground. In fact, every new device comes with its own set of protocols, software, and integration hiccups. Matias Klein, CEO of Kognition.ai, hopes to change the Smart Building paradigm with his new AI-monitoring platform, Total Property Intelligence System (TPIS).

“Kognition’s TPIS is essentially the glue that makes everything work seamlessly regardless of the variety and number of cameras, sensors, and existing building equipment,” described Klein. He continued, “Our philosophy is that technology is only as good as its ability to be used in the field by non-techies, from the front-desk to the maintenance staff. This is why we built the platform from the ground up making it as open and interoperable as possible with an easy-to-use dashboard.”

Klein’s latest installation, The Link in Florida, further validates Kognition’s use case. As Raghu Misra, the property owner of the 22,000 square-foot coworking and incubator space declares, “We are pleased to have Matias and his team create a safer, smarter and more secure campus. He’s creating a next-generation smart building, where everything is state-of-the-art… He wants people to come to the link and feel safe, feel secure and more secure, more safe than they would be anywhere else.” The company’s software is also deployed across the country at Qualcomm’s corporate campus, JP Morgan’s InstaMed’s offices, Premier Pharmacy, Embarc Collective, and many more high-value sites.

In speaking with Klein, he shared with me his motivation for starting Kognition, “I’m a father of two small girls, and when I set out after selling my last startup I wanted to build something for them. At the time the Parkland School shooting attack shook me to the core, I knew then that there had to be a way to leverage technology to prevent tragedies before they happen.” He reflected on the path that brought him to TPIS, “I set out to speak with school principals, building managers, and facility operators to better understand what systems they had in place. What I found, surprisingly, was that there were plenty of cameras installed, but each one operated independently and no one actually viewed the footage in real-time to shunt potential disasters. Most of the video was achieved and only accessed after the fact when it was too late. It made sense, because no human can watch the millions of hours of video that is captured each day. Now with our AI platform physical spaces are empowered with action alerts to the people on the ground.”

The novelty of Kogntion’s technology has been further validated by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that recently awarded the company three ground-breaking patents for TPIS. In reading through the filing it is clear how the TPIS differentiates itself from other software offerings on the market. To date, facility managers have been frustrated with most products on the market that require one to rip-and-replace their existing equipment in their buildings with smart ones that are embedded with AI software. However, Kognition’s architecture is completely interoperable with any best of breed technologies from existing cameras to facial recognition servers to security drones to terrestrial robots. Furthermore, its system is so easy-to-use that it is the first “no code AI” for the built environment. As the patent filing states, “The system includes security operations centers that are connected to one or more sensors and vehicles for collecting and transmitting surveillance data to a database hosted on cloud services.” In breaking down the patents further, the abstracts detailed the automation and ease of TPIS, “The collected surveillance data is analyzed in order to automatically deploy security measures and/or recommend courses of action using a rules engine that can be configured to client-specific or user-specific security needs…Sensor fusion data and other surveillance data can be also transmitted to vetted monitoring service providers on a subscription basis to provide physical security services to the area within the property perimeter.” This means that Kognition’s enterprise software is fully customizable to each property’s requirements at the same time it can be widely deployed across a portfolio of buildings to provide dynamic situational awareness to prevent the spread of diseases, active shooters, hacking, espionage, theft, and other high-value dangers. Packaged together, Kognition’s intellectual property is a game changer for the real-estate industry, as its pervasive platform is priced significantly less than the hourly wages of on-site personnel, and substantially more dependable.

Last month, New York’s MetaProp Accelerator announced the expansion of a $100 million fund to capitalize on the growing market for products and services in the cyber-physical environment. According to Fortune Business Insights today’s Smart Building equipment, software, and services market exceeds $40 billion annually, which is projected to grow to over $100 billion in the next five years. Already, Kognition’s capital partners include such prestigious early-stage investors as DreamIt Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Ben Franklin Technologies. In the words of Andrew Ackerman, managing director of DreamIt, “Matias Klein is exactly the type of founder we back with well reasoned but loosely held opinions, just the right balance between confidence and openness to feedback. Kognition was a “crossover” startup for us, fitting in with both our Urbantech and Securetech programs and has been making huge strides since we first started working together. As we emerge from the pandemic, we believe that the entire sector is poised for rapid growth with companies like Kognition being mission critical to reopening the economy.”

As New York awaits to find out who will be its next mayor, a frustrated NY Post real estate columnist, Steve Cuozzo, decried the lack of urgency of the city’s political leaders to focus on office traffic. “Our leaders must show stay-at-homers, some of whom have rarely ventured into town since March 2020, how much has changed. Don’t just say “We’re back” — show them actual theaters, restaurants and stores that are alive again. Only when office workers rediscover the sheer thrill of the city will the Big Apple truly be back,” quipped Cuozzo. Now with technologies like Kognition, Manhattan’s office skyline will be illuminated by office lights that buzz late into the night again. The city that never sleeps is open for business.

—

Editors Note: The author is an advisor for Kognition.ai

Kognition: Reopening America With Intelligence In The Built Environment was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The robotics industry is at an inflection point where the baton is being passed from the scientists to the practitioners. In historical terms, we are witnessing the Edisons of the world harness the innovations of the likes of Faraday to create life changing businesses and wealth. Automation has moved from smart manufacturing and logistics to fry cooking and salad tossing. This in turn has led to a frenzy of mechatronic news with Chowbotics being acquired by DoorDash and Miso Robotics’ Flippy replacing chefs at White Castle. As White Castle’s CEO Lisa Ingram explains, “We believe technology like Flippy ROAR can improve customer service and kitchen operation. This pilot is putting us on that path — and we couldn’t be more pleased to continue our work with Miso Robotics and pave the way for greater adoption of cutting-edge technology in the fast-food industry.”

As more fast food chains seek to mechanize their kitchens, startups are racing to replace labor with machines. The timing could not be better with more than 42% of small businesses reporting a job applicant shortage, according to a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business. In the words of one McDonald’s franchisee, “stimulus and unemployment are killing the workforce,” who said labor shortages stopped him from reopening his dining room. This labor void is only exacerbating the inevitable push towards automation.

To better understand the retail opportunities for roboticists, last week I interviewed the founder of the latest entry in the automated food-prep space, Adam Lloyd Cohen of Now Cuisine. Unlike other upstarts that are focusing on augmenting equipment and workflow, Cohen’s business offers franchisees innovative robot-enabled kiosks. As he explains, “Increasingly in the last few years, and with a great acceleration during the pandemic, restaurant dining has been shifting from dining rooms to off-premises (e.g., takeout or drive-through) dining. More recently, third party delivery appeared on the scene and grew rapidly as a new off-premises solution, though one with a steep price.” The founder elaborated his solution is far more economical for operators than teaming up with DoorDash or UberEats in confronting today’s headaches: “Moreover, restaurants have even more problems than delivery. Labor remains in short supply, with very high turnover, and is getting more costly all the time.” When I asked him about other entries, he sharply pointed that his approach is completely novel, “A number of startups have emerged in recent years to apply robotics in the context of a traditional restaurant, hoping to address the labor shortage and improve consistency. Such approaches can help restaurants somewhat, but don’t do much for the consumer, or significantly help the restaurants address increasing demand for off-premises dining, labor issues, and the need for more good locations.” This is Cohen’s mantra, leveraging mechanics and artificial intelligence to serve up meals closer to where consumers work, live, and play.

At first blush Now Cuisine’s Takeout Station looks like a traditional vending machine, but its guts tell a different story. In my conversation with Cohen, he deconstructed his invention, “The next-generation Takeout Station will comprise an ingredient storage system; a multi-axis robotic manipulator; an automated ingredient dispenser; a heating subsystem; a bowl handling and presentation system; control, communication, transaction and display electronics; user interface; and of course, an enclosure and embedded control/UI software.” He currently has one beta machine that makes hot and cold food, basically anything one eats in a bowl from salad to pasta. “The manipulator in one version can transport ingredients from the storage to the heating subsystem, allowing those ingredients which need heating to be quickly brought to serving temperature. The manipulator also can transport ingredients to the dispenser, which serves to dispense them into a bowl (or plate) with minimal food waste and tight portion control. The bowl system loads a new, clean bowl, moves it into position near the dispenser, and once all ingredients have been dispensed, presents the finished meal to the customer,” expounds the inventor. He then proudly boasted on the most important features — customer personalization. “A high degree of customization can be provided, since most ingredients are stored separately, allowing many thousands of permutations. A single machine can be stocked with ingredients for multiple recipes, or multiple variations of a given recipe, depending on how storage is allocated to ingredients,” declares Cohen. To validate the demand for such a device, he pointed to recent data from a local pilot installation, “During our public beta we had limited storage capability, so on different days we served either an Indian-inspired or an Italian-inspired grain bowl comprising quinoa pilaf, a choice of chicken or a vegetarian option (e.g., cauliflower with chickpeas), sautéed baby portobello mushrooms, a crunchy nut topping, and a dressing. Customers could select meat or vegetarian and omit any ingredient they didn’t want in their meal. Portion control was excellent, by design.”

While there have been recent headlines of success stories for bots in the smart kitchen, the robot graveyard is filled with high-profile failures. Cohen passionately illustrated the differences between his startup and some of the past industry flops: “Though I’m not intimately familiar with either company’s history, Zume (now in the compostable takeout packaging business) may have failed in its original business for several reasons: a) unappealing (and likely poor) economics in the use of costly robotics to partially eliminate labor in pizza making (probably offset by the costly engineering talent they hired); b) apparently poor ability to execute on the idea of cooking pizza as it’s being delivered; c) excess capital, which may have led to poor business decisions. Meanwhile, my impression of Café X is that it also suffered from lack of a strong use case for costly robotics, especially given their machines I believe always required a human to be present, and that the value to the customer was more in the way of providing entertainment (which doesn’t easily result in repeat business) than in making a particularly good and/or inexpensive cup of coffee.” He stressed that unlike these technology-first iterations, Now Cuisine is restaurant centric. “We’re helping to solve huge problems for restaurants, especially by giving them a cost-effective alternative to third-party delivery, and one that allows them to reach customers that delivery can’t (those too far away, those who wish to eat when the restaurant is closed (example: a college student in a dorm up late before an exam),” professes the founder.

In addition to robots improving operating margins and adding new revenue opportunities, in light of the pandemic and e-coli bacteria scares, machines are a panacea to guarantee food safety for consumers. “Consumers have become more conscious regarding safety. The idea of eating from a machine with less human contact has become more acceptable, and in many cases, appealing. We’ve taken food safety and food sensitivities and preferences very seriously: Consumers will be able to have total confidence they won’t become ill, have an allergic reaction, or eat something they don’t want to eat, when using our machines,” describes Cohen.

In looking out 5–10 years, Cohen is very focused on his own approach, ignoring the buzz of other solutions. “While ghost kitchens certainly reduce real estate costs and can save on labor, brands using them remain dependent on delivery, as ghost kitchens typically don’t bring food closer to the consumer,” quips Cohen. He further demurred aerial deliveries, “As for drones, I don’t think we’ll see a future when thousands of drones fly lunch to office and apartment buildings, darkening the skies and creating a horrible noise: People aren’t going to want that, to say nothing of the risks.” As ffVC is a seed investor in Manna, which recently secured $25 million in Series A financing, I know firsthand the opposite is true about drones. In the words of Manna’s founder Bobby Healy, “The Covid-19 pandemic forced consumers across the world to re-assess how they source their goods and opened our eyes to the fragility of our supply chains. There is a huge appetite for a greener, quieter, safer and faster delivery service. We are already working with our partners to deliver grocery products, takeaways and pharmaceutical supplies, and as we continue to scale our fleet of drones we will also begin supporting critical medical deliveries.” Healy reminds us that just like a set table there are many utensils available, each with its own use and skill.

Robotic Startup Now Cuisine Takes On Ghost Kitchens And Drone Deliveries was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The World Bank estimates that 3.5 million tons of solid waste is produced by humans everyday, with America accounting for more than 250 million tons a year or over 4 pounds of trash per citizen. This figure does not include the 34 billion gallons of human organic materials that is processed in water treatment centers across the country each year. To the fictional Dr. Emmett Brown, this garbage is akin to “black gold” — ecologically powering cities, cars, and machines. In reality, the movie, “Back to The Future II” was inspired by the biomass gasification movement of 20th century in powering cars with wood during World War II when petroleum was scarce. The technology has advanced so much that a few years ago the GENeco water treatment plant in the United Kingdom built a biomethane gas bus that relied solely on sewage. In reflecting on the importance of the technology, Collin Field of Bath Bus Company declared, “We will never, ever, ever, while we are on this planet, run out of human waste.”

Less than twenty miles away from the GENco plant, Professor Loannis Leropoulos of the University of Bristol’s Robotics Laboratory is working on the next generation of bio-engineered fuel cells. Last week, Dr. Leropoulos demonstrated his revolutionary Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) for me. As witnessed, he is not just inspired by nature, but harnessing its beauty to power the next generation of robots. The MFCs mimic an animal’s stomach with microbes breaking down food to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The Bristol lab began building MFCs to power its suite of EcoBots. “I started this journey about twenty years ago with the main purpose of building sustainable autonomous robots for remote area access,” reflects Leropoulos. He was inspired by Dr. Stuart Wilkinson’s Gastrobot in the early 2000s that first promoted the idea of “an intelligent machine that digests real food for energy.” At the time the media hyped Wilkinson’s invention as a flesh-eating robot, when in reality it digested sugar cubes, turning the carbohydrates into electrical energy. Unfortunately, the Gastrobot’s clumsy oversized form factor suffered from long charging times with an 18-hour “carbo-loading” process for every 15 minutes of power.

Springboarding off of Wilkinson’s concept, Leropoulos’ team started with the idea of using MFC to power machines by putting the microbes directly inside the unit to more efficiently produce energy from any sugar-based substance, even waste (e.g., urine, feces, and trash). The Professor described the elegance of his technology that creates a “uniform colonization” of microbes multiplying every 8 minutes with parent lifecycles succeeded by daughter cells in a continuous pattern of ‘feed-growth-energy’. He compares it to the human microflora process of breaking down fresh food in the digestive system that results in healthy bathroom visits, “the same is with Microbial Fuel Cells as long as we continue feeding them, the MFCs will continue to generate electricity.” The Bristol professor boasts that batteries are better performing than anything on the market as biological lifeforms have no denigration since “the progeny keep refreshing the community or electrodes so we have stable levels of power.” By contrast, the most popular non-fossil fuel available, lithium, degrades over time and leads to destructive mining practices in scarring the Earth in search of declining ore resources with the explosion of mobile phones, portable devices, and electric vehicles.

While MFCs are still in their infancy, Leropoulos shared with me his plan for commercializing the invention. His lab recently announced the success of its MFCs prototypes in powering mobile phones, smart watches, and other devices (including the EcoBots). In addition, Leropoulos has pushed his team to miniaturize the size of his batteries from its 6" prototype to smaller than a AA, while at the same time rivaling the performance of alkaline. Backed by the Gates foundation, he has also reduced the production costs from $18 to $1 a unit, this is before achieving the economies of scale with mass production. Today, his business plan has expanded beyond just autonomous robots to power smart homes, by connecting multiple MFCs to a house’s sanitation and waste systems. “Our research is all about optimizing miniaturization and stacking them with minimum losses so we can end up with a car battery-like shape and size that gives us the amount of power we require,” explains the professor. When I questioned Leropoulos about using MFCs in the future of autonomous fleets, and even to offset the high energy demands of something like bitcoin mining, he remarked, “It would be naive of me to say a straight yes, but this is of course the work we are doing. I strongly believe with the development of new materials that will help with the energy density. We are at a stage where we have done some groundbreaking research using 3D printed electric materials as a low cost scalable technology. There is a lot to say about the functionalization of the electrodes that enables colonization from the microbes in making sure all the progeny cells colonize and the ceramic separators that allows for target ion transfer that makes the whole operation smarter and more efficient.” In thinking more about his work, he declared, “We have yet to see the full potential of Microbial Fuel Cells. I do think one day we will have a ‘Back to the Future’ scenario, feeding your food scraps to your car,”

Pressing Leropoulos on how he envisions robot-charging stations working in a factory or home in the near future, he illustrated it best, “with a Roomba example its actually picking of food scraps in the kitchen that would be a very nutritious source of fuel for the Microbial Fuel Cell, but that’s a few steps down the line.” He continued, “a straightforward application for something like a Roomba is to leave the charging station where it is and connect it to the toilet or kitchen sink. The fuel cycle would be continuous as the robot would not be drawing energy from the house, but the wastewater.” Processing the impact of his vision, it took me back to the early days of the global pandemic shutdown with animals returning to ancient grazing areas and pollution clouds clearing over heavily populated areas with many seeing for the first time distant mountains and blue skies. Innovations like MFCs are part of a new wave of mechatronic environmentally-focused solutions. Before parting, I asked Leropoulos how hopeful is he about the environment, “I do feel optimistic, I have more faith in the the younger generation that they will do things better. The shock we sustained as a society [this past year] is a lesson in seeing the true color of our natural world, if we learn from this then I think the future is a good one.”

Robot Stomachs: Powering Machines With Garbage And Pee was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As all of us are spending more time confined in our domiciles, robo-maids could not be a more timely concept. Last month, Sebastian Seung, President of Samsung Research, unveiled at (virtual) CES 2021, Handy — the autonomous butler. Seung described his innovation as “an extension of you in the kitchen, living room, and anywhere else you may need an extra hand in your home.” The highly-produced video was complete with examples of dish-loading, wine-pouring, and toy-picker-upping. What wasn’t shown were the numerous bloopers and behind-the-screen outtakes of the exhaustive programing hours to set up the demos.

In pulling back the curtain on deep tech in the home, I Zoomed Peter Burton, founder of General Manual Robotics (GMR). Dr. Burton, a math professor at the University of Texas, is currently in the early days of building his own robotic housekeeping platform. He shared with me his opinion of Samsung’s display, “I am extremely skeptical about the quality of the artificial intelligence behind the housekeeping robot in Samsung’s CES video. They show it performing an extremely wide variety of tasks, from pouring wine to loading the dishwasher to doing laundry. Developing an AI robust enough to go into an unknown consumer home and learn from them how they want to pick up toys is already a hard problem.” The professor is fully aware of the challenges of mechanically cleaning a room. As an entrepreneur and roboticist in his own right, he further commented, “I think it is likely that the robot in the Samsung video is using specifically coded computer vision and manipulation instructions to perform its tasks and would not be able to learn to do these tasks in an unseen home without further human intervention. “

Unlike Samsung, which aims to build a Swiss Army Knife type of robot functionality, Burton is singularly focused on building a “mechanical solution to pick up toys,” affectionately called TouchBot. He outlined to me how his approach differs from Samsung and others on the market: “We’re confident that our provisional patent application offers the most efficient way for a small robot enabled with perception, mobility and manipulation to learn from a consumer home environment well to satisfy them and alternative approaches have a large risk of drowning out any feasible amount of training data in the large size of the problem space.” The professor further delineated his methodology, “The essence of neural network architecture is to build a mathematical formalism that takes advantage of structure in the underlying data imposed by its human purpose. In our case, this means innovating in both convolutional and recurrent neural network design to incorporate the 3D geometry of the home environment and the distributing of user commands and tasks in time.”

Using a cognitive deep learning network, Dr. Burton aims to make the customer experience as seamless as working an Alexa device. “Our approach to the user experience is that we never want them to interact with the robot like a piece of technology that they have to figure out — the process of controlling it will consist of easy voice commands and simple gestures,” boasts the TouchBot’s creator. The novel conversational nature of TouchBot’s command structure is the key to its deep learning system. The founder walked me through the current examples:

Dr. Burton plans to expand the library of tasks to eventually include: “sorting clothes and putting them in the laundry; picking up small packages at the door; retrieving medication bottles and snacks; and playing simple tossing games with children or dogs.” His mission is to solve real human problems at a reasonable price. “We think of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ uses of robotics in terms of the physical complexity of the hardware necessary to complete the task. For us, a good use of home robotics is one that involves simpler and cheaper hardware because as scientists we believe in solving easier problems first and there are numerous applications of simple and cheap hardware going unsolved in the consumer home due to a lack of quality AI,” exclaims the mathematician. The scientist points to Roomba as a model for “good” robot use cases. “Roomba solves a clear physical problem: vacuuming. Other mobile home robots like Jibo and Anki Vector have essentially been smart speakers on wheels and the only added customer benefit over static smart speakers seems to be a sense of novelty. We believe our robot can follow Roomba’s path rather than the numerous failures because it solves a clear physical problem that is not possible without a manipulator,” suggests Burton.

The technical challenges are not the only obstacles to automating housekeeping, cost is still the biggest barrier for most American families. While Touchbot is in the early days of prototyping, Burton hopes to begin marketing his device next year at a price point under a thousand dollars. According to Care.com that is the equivalent to 61 hours of housekeeping services to pick up a few toys. In 2019, only 10% of US families were reported to use a professional cleaning service. Pre-Pandemic, Home Cleaning Centers of America estimated that housekeeping services would topple $20 billion in the coming decade with the rising number of two-career households. However, Covid-19 has significantly impacted the industry with more people working from home and rising unemployment, making these services currently an inaccessible luxury.

I pressed the startup executive on the impact he thinks coronavirus will have on his invention. He professed that Covid has brought to light the value of homemaking. “Domestic labor is still fundamentally undervalued by standard marketing analysis because it exists largely outside the formal economy. However, the lesson of traditional home appliances indicates that once a mechanical solution to a domestic labor problem is on the market, it quickly becomes seen as part of the essential standard of living for middle-class Americans,” declared Burton. He continued to optimistically opine, “While I hope the pandemic will be over by the time our product is on the market, it once again emphasizes the ‘butterfly effect’ aspect of mass adoption whereby having the right timing is absolutely crucial. I think that being first to market in a space that is so empty of existing solutions will have this impact for us.”

Are Robo-Butlers Really Handy? was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the past few months the SPAC craze has spilled over to the robot and remote sensing industries. Just last week, SoftBank announced it is raising $525 million in a blind pool SPAC for investments in artificial intelligence. In the filing with the SEC, Softbank states, “For the past 40 years, SoftBank has invested ahead of major technology shifts. Now, we believe the AI revolution has arrived.” In 2017, SoftBank’s Chief Executive, Masayoshi Son (nicknamed Masa) predicted that by 2047, robots will outnumber humans on the planet with 10 billion small humanoids (like its own Pepper robot) rolling the streets. An outspoken believer in Singularity, Masa has not been shy about investing in the robotics sector with ownership stakes in Whiz, Pepper, Bear and Brain Corp. The company sold its interests in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai for a billion dollars earlier this month. When launching his own venture capital fund in 2018, Masa declared, “I am devoting 97% of my time and brain on AI.” This past month, Masa’s $100 billion Vision Fund had a huge portfolio win with the IPO of DoorDash, erasing earlier losses of failed investments in WeWork and OneWeb. In that spirit, it is not surprising that the SPAC filing exclaims: “COVID-19 has pulled this future forward by dramatically accelerating the adoption of digital services. During this time, we intersected with many compelling companies that wanted our support at IPO and beyond, but we lacked the vehicle to partner with them. This trend has only increased over the past year as more companies have decided to list publicly.”

SoftBank’s optimism is further validated by the success of SPACs in acquiring hardware sensor companies. Earlier this month, Ouster became the fifth LiDAR startup to go public through a SPAC this year. Already trading on the markets is Velodyne, Luminar, Innoviz, and Aeva. Each of these companies raised hundreds of millions of dollars at valuations exceeding a billion dollars. Some have fared well in the public markets, such as Luminar doubling its valuation in a few weeks. Others, like Velodyne, have had more difficulty. Velodyne’s shares fell by half since its listing in September (it is currently trading modestly above its initial price). As hardware is tough, staying private comes at the cost of founder dilution and overvaluation. SPACs offer startups and their investors quicker access to capital and greater liquidity, enabling investors to reinvest their returns in the autonomous sector and ultimately driving innovation in advance of greater adoption.

Recently, I caught up with Andrew Flett, General Partner of Mobility Impact Partners, who raised $115 million for a new SPAC — Motion Acquisition Corp. (ticker symbol MOTNU). Flett’s investment vehicle is still on the hunt for an acquisition of “target businesses in connected vehicle industries globally, which include companies providing transportation software and cloud solutions for fleet management, freight and logistics, and mobile asset management applications.” When speaking with Flett, he described his inaugural experience in the space as follows, “This is the first SPAC I have been directly involved with but the mechanism has evolved and matured over the last couple of decades. They are popular now as a function of the same yield scarcity and immense liquidity that has been driving public equity speculation. There will be both highly speculative companies and companies with solid fundamentals in any wave of interest. This wave is no different.” He astutely points to previous SPAC upticks (since the 1980s) led by dubious underwriters that used the mechanism as a way to make a quick buck through “pump-and-dump” schemes. These market manipulators, many still serving jail time, quickly promoted stocks on the exchanges to only rapidly sell their own interests in the companies before other investors were legally able to trade the shares, ultimately devastating the startup’s and its shareholders’ values. This is compounded by the increased expenses and transparency of publicly traded listings, leaving startup founders ill prepared for their new role on the NASDAQ or NYSE.

Unlike the past, many of the newly formed SPACs have been managed by brand name investors such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Bill Ackman (Pershing Square) and Peter Thiel (Bridgetown). The performance of the newly listed SPAC 2020 crop has been very impressive, outpacing the S&P, with Draft Kings and Nikola leading the charge with triple digit returns. In nudging Flett for his opinion of these managers, he cautions, “Smart guys. Is it just a branding exercise or will they be involved in the asset evaluation and ultimate de-SPACed company? In the end, the asset needs to stand on its own and regardless of how it gets there (IPO, Direct Listing, SPAC), once public it is a pure apples to apples performance comparison dependent on strategy, management, and execution. If the public company does not benefit from their wisdom, it does not matter what brand is attached at the front end.”

Flett advises founders not to be too easily seduced by public capital, rather “focus on your company. If your company cannot absorb the responsibilities and overhead of being a public company, it is not the right option for you.” Gauging his view of Softbank’s latest announcement, “Like most Private Equity or institutional investors, it is simply a cash grab and an alternative vehicle to demonstrate their investing acumen. I prefer seeing Softbank doing reasonably sized SPACs than raising another misguided Vision Fund,” Flett optimistically opines. However, at the end of the day, the SPAC pioneer reminds us that the market is cyclical and the window of opportunity will eventually close, “As some of the speculative bets burn investors and yield alternatives appear, the SPAC market will slow.”

To PR Or Not To PR? 5 Key Questions For Startups | Data Driven Investor

Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

The Year Of The SPAC And What It Means For Hardware was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the more positive news stories this year was the cooperation agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Israel. In a matter of hours following the announcement, the countries began working towards opening up their economies. The excitement was felt across the Middle East, in words of Jon Medved of OurCrowd, “Once the Sand Curtain starts coming down, there’s no stopping it.” Weeks following the statement, Medved’s firm secured a $100 million deal with the Al Naboodah merchant family of Dubai to invest in technology.

One of the biggest industries in the UAE is construction. According to most reports, almost a quarter of the world’s cranes are currently deployed on job sites scattered throughout Dubai. The desert metropolis is home to the world’s tallest buildings, including the Burj Khalifa impressively towering at 160 stories. The majority of construction workers in the Middle Eastern capital are immigrant workers lured from their home countries by large cash payouts. The building industry globally has suffered from a labor shortage for years, pre-pandemic reports estimated that close to a half million construction jobs in the United States remained unfilled. To compound matters, job sites are dangerous, in Dubai alone close to a 1,000 people have died this past decade building its 148 skyscrapers. These factors make real estate development ripe for disruption, with the most promising innovations focused on augmenting skilled labor with machines.

Burj Khalifa: The tallest building in the world

Last week, I discussed the opportunities for Israeli roboticists with Noam Rotem, Chief Executive of Syracuse, an autonomous crane technology startup. Rotem summed up the opportunity for Israeli entrepreneurs in light of the new accords, “I think the big advantage of the UAE is not just the total number (of cranes), but the density and their general willingness to adopt innovative tech.” He shared with me how Tel Aviv is similar to Dubai with its streets littered with cranes, “Israel is very small with the majority of its population concentrated in essentially one large urban metropolis. This makes construction sites common, and the skyline cluttered with tower cranes erecting high-rise buildings.” He continued, “Observing tower cranes, I could see that they were being operated very inefficiently — crane movement was hindered by human limitation to plot complex trajectories.” This is what led him to completely rethink how the equipment operates, essentially building an “autonomous system capable of generating the optimal load trajectory, dramatically reducing load transport time, and improving crane efficiency.”

Rotem enthusiastically explained how “Syracuse converts existing tower cranes into giant industrial robots.” To accomplish this task, Syracuse installs its hardware system directly on the crane, “to continually monitor the position of the crane, the position and dimensions of the load, and all obstacles in the construction site.” Then, the signal person on the ground uses a handled device or on a 3D model to move the machine to the precise spot. “Our system enables Level 3 autonomy, keeping the human operator as a ‘supervisor; and the standard controls available for edge cases. In the future, Syracuse will operate the crane fully autonomously,” quips the inventor. His technology has been gaining traction, “During the last few months, we have been operating a commercial Potain Tower Crane autonomously in a logistical center, alongside human-operated tower cranes. The crane was provided by our investor Skyline, the largest crane rental company in Israel, with over 200 tower cranes,” boasts Rotem. He further outlined expansion opportunities for his product, “Syracuse is initially focused on tower cranes and the construction industry, however, the core technology is suitable for autonomous operation of all types of cranes, and will be deployed in the future to mobile cranes, ship-to-shore container cranes, and industrial gantry cranes.” Currently, the team is focused on expanding its commercial deployment schedules throughout Israel. “By the end of 2021, we will launch our first commercial system, providing human-operated tower cranes with Advanced Collision-awareness capabilities to improve safety by alerting the operator of pending obstacles, stopping or diverting the crane if required. Further upgrades during 2021 will allow us to introduce a fully autonomous level 3 solution by the end of 2022,” states the founder.

Ethical Robots Are a Naive Illusion for Programmers? | DataDrivenInvestor

Connecting cranes to the cloud is becoming big business. Just last week, another Israeli startup, Versatile, secured $20 million in Series A financing from Insight Ventures. The company uses computer vision to provide a birds eye view of the job site and crane operations, increasing safety and efficiency. As Meirav Oren, Versatile CEO, describes, “You can only improve what you can measure, and at Versatile we are just scratching the surface of what we can do to create value for our users and use data to turn job sites into controlled manufacturing with fast feedback loops.” She emphasized that the new capital will be invested in increasing its adoption and suite of AI user interfaces.

In validating the wider PropTech opportunity, I reached out to Israeli entrepreneur Guy German. Unlike Rotem, which is focused on vertical job sites, German’s startup, Okibo, is automating interior construction. I nudged him for his thoughts on the new Accords, he excitedly replies, “UAE investors understand the value of robotics and automation and gain experience.” He further stressed the close proximity is a real asset for the relationship, “Usually, Israeli startups tend to offer their developments to European and US markets. Now there is a new market, 3 hours away from Israel with massive demand for construction tech solutions. In addition, the royal families hold real estate assets that can serve as base for pilots, test cases and future clients.” German who built his robot to fabricate swimming pools, is now posed to takeover the interior space with a mobile device capable of taping, plastering, and painting at a touch of a button. “Around 50% of the current manual work performed on construction sites can be automated (regardless of prefabrication solutions). Automation increases efficiency, safety, quality of work, visibility, availability of work force, consistency and schedule predictability. The industrialization of the construction industry is inevitable,” suggests Okibo’s Chief Executive. He further outlined the ease of his solution, “Our robot is fully autonomous (scanning/modeling/path planning/execution) — it does not require a lot of training or understanding in robotics or plastering/painting. The operator (which can be anyone in the site) is basically required to fill in materials, make sure that batteries are charged, take obstacles out of the way of the robot and clean the airless spray machine at the end of the day. Although it is possible to change the robot’s plan and control it as a ‘semi-autonomous power tool’ in most cases it is not required.” German’s innovation is already making great strides, “We are currently working with our robots as a full turnkey subcontractor. The robot is performing drywall finish tasks fully autonomously and as far as we know we are the only company in the world (there are several other groups working on this task) that has demonstrated a robot that can paint a full room (4 walls) fully autonomously, continuously, no human intervention, no prior programing and no prior data provided to the robot about the job.” He predicts that in less than 24 months, Okibo “will have a product in market that will change the way drywall finish is performed for good.”

I pushed the entrepreneurs with their thoughts on how the construction industry will be impacted long-term by the pandemic. Rotem stated, “Covid-19, much like the 2008 slowdown, is expected to see many older more experienced workers retire and the younger workers transfer to other industries. That and the fact that most people don’t want to spend 12 hours and more in a small cab 500 feet above the ground means the construction industry is looking for solutions for crane operator shortages.” However, he admitted that the “industry isn’t ready yet to replace the human operator with a fully self-operating system, however companies are looking for new technologies to increase automation and efficiency and take the active operating duties from the human operator, eventually evolving into full autonomy.” German was more optimistic, “The increasing shortage of professional labor in the construction industry is the main driver of introducing smart automation… It is important to mention that we do not believe that automation in the construction industry will displace even a single person out of his or her job. It will help fill part of the labor shortage and improve team’s efficiency, productivity and quality of work. This will help get more projects to meet their schedule and increase the overall market capacity. In fact, we expect that this revolution will create more jobs to this industry and help connect the younger generation to the field.”

Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

The Abraham Accords And Israeli Construction Robots was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last month I met with Dr. Jamey Jacob of Oklahoma State University’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute as part of my participation in AUVSI’s (virtual) Xponential conference. As the chair of OSU’s Aerospace Department, Professor Jacob literally sits in the heartland of America’s innovation ecosystem. Unlike the densely-populated coasts, the Sooner State offers robotocists wide-open areas to safely launch and test their inventions. Some of the leading organizations and companies embracing these resources are Skydweller Aero, NASA, Boeing, Baker Hughes, and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions. According to Dr. Jacob, OSU’s leadership in mechatronics was an outgrowth of the “the explosion of drone technology in the early two thousands” by the military and three letter government agencies. Oklahoma also has a long history in the aviation industry as Interstate 35 (I-35) is home to Boeing in Wichita, OK; Lockheed Martin in Dallas, TX; American Airlines’ prime Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Tulsa, OK; and the Department of Defense’s MRO base in Oklahoma City, OK. “You already had a large manned aircraft infrastructure supported in the State,” says Dr. Jacob. The scientist further explained that today’s requirements go well beyond quadcopters and UAVs, but manufacturing advanced avionics for companies like Uber and Bell for urban air transport.

The vastness of the State’s geography combined with its superior engineering talent is attracting venture capital dollars from around the globe. Israeli-based entrepreneur Jonathan ‘Yoni’ Frenkel is working with Atento Capital of Tulsa to lure Israeli founders to open their American offices in the Southwestern city. Frenkel describes his personal journey to Atento, “COVID challenged me to consider the trade-off of what’s important, not just regarding my professional work, but also health, relationships, and the impact I am making.” He continued, “Once I visited Tulsa, I understood the range of activities; of particular interest was how local Native American tribes like the Osage Nation have used their land to create drone testing corridors. What really impressed me however was the authentic desire of the Tulsa community to help startups succeed… maybe I am a jaded New Yorker but the sincerity impacted me in a positive way.” Lifelong Oklahoman Nathaniel Harding of Cortado Ventures concurs, “It’s no surprise that our state is seeing innovation happen across drones, aviation and robotics. Our unique edge is developing technologies that solve real challenges being faced by industry. We’re used to building things, and our historic strength in avionics and aerospace gives Oklahoma an edge in shaping the future in these sectors.” Harding further stated that the new normal of remote work is accelerating interest by entrepreneurs in moving to the center of the country, “The secret is out that you can build a company for 1/5th the cost in the mid-continent, which is better for both investors and entrepreneurs. Now that we realize what can be done with a distributed workforce, it will be very hard to go back to the way it was.”

The entrepreneurial spirit is not limited to start ups or the cities, but across the entire State. Oklahoma is home to 39 Native American tribes, accounting for almost half of its physical area. Earlier this week, I spoke with James Grimsley, Executive Director, of the Choctaw Nation’s Advanced Technology Initiatives. The Choctaw is one of the largest indigenous people in the United States with a reservation encompassing 11,000 square miles. Its natural resources are a boon for unmanned systems. Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) selected the Choctaw Nation as one of ten national test sites for The Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP). For decades, the Choctaw has been successfully operating casinos and other commercial initiatives to drive revenues for quality of life improvements on the reservation. Grimsley believes that its participation in the UAS IPP will be “a catalyst for the high tech industry,” both inside the tribal nation and outside its borders. As a self- contained entity with its own infrastructure, retail network, and governance, the Choctaw offers innovators a living laboratory to conduct autonomous drone deliveries. For example, last month Bell Aircraft received Beyond Visual Line Of Site (BVLOS) approval for its Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) delivery missions to typically inaccessible areas of the Choctaw Nation. As the APT is a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) craft it is also the basis for future urban transportation alternatives (such as flying cars and air-taxis). These types of initiatives are not limited to delivery and urban air transport tests, as leading Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies are now flocking to the Choctaw Nation to conduct trials of unmanned vehicles for power-line inspections, emergency management, agriculture, live stock monitoring, and weather analytics. The impact of UAS IPP is felt beyond the business sector, as the Choctaw has implemented a robust educational STEM curriculum and job training network for its people. In contrast to the current political climate, Grimsley states that Choctaw’s leadership operate with “less partisanship and more unity in the interest of the tribe.” He further elaborated that decisions are made with the lens of a 100-year outlook versus the next election cycle. The Choctaw today has spread its wings globally with investments in public and private entities that are already paying dividends for the next generation.

The Choctaw story is not unique across the State, other tribes are following suit in joining the larger entrepreneurial ecosystem. Back in New York, my inbox is inundated with inspirational messages of ways to bolster diversity in the greater venture community. Quite possibly, Oklahoma provides a novel paradigm of broadening the opportunities for minorities across the country. The promise of flying cars, unmanned systems and robots are not only a catalyst for changing technology, but society. Just like the wide-open skies of the prairie, everyone has the potential of benefitting from these innovations.

Robotics- A Business Perspective | Data Driven Investor

Returning to Stillwater, Oklahoma I nudged Professor Jacob on his view of the State’s progress “Our bread and butter is doing the next great thing in aerospace, really focus on the autonomous capabilities.” He then humbly shared his personal journey, “When I originally started working on unmanned aircraft as an undergraduate student I was using drones for tornado chasing. Then as a faculty member I started to develop autonomous flying aircraft for Mars… that was back in 1999. Now there is an aircraft going to Mars,” exclaims Dr. Jacob. While it has taken over twenty years to achieve intergalactic UAVs, he is optimistic that Oklahoma is soaring on the right trajectory. He pointed to his latest joint project with NASA JPL, solar balloons to explore Venus. He illustrated how these celestial endeavors are tackling climate change on Earth. The scientist wrapped up our conversation by declaring, “I am most excited about UAVs for weather” that provide “micro forecasts” for manned aircraft, unmanned systems, and everyday people.

Editor’s Note: Don’t forget to VOTE!

Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

Oklahoma’s Burgeoning UAV Ecosystem was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.