Great to attend the inaugural RoboCode summit hosted by Schematic Ventures!! Thanks Aditya Raghupathy, Julian Counihan, Alex Freed, Ananya Vasagiri and SVB for hosting!
Huge thanks to the incredible speakers Chuka Okoye (CHASSY), Ruddick Lawrence (Rapid Robotics, Inc), Yadunund Vijay (Intrinsic), A.K. Schultz (SVT Robotics), Saman Farid (Formic), Roger Counihan (KPI Solutions) for the insightful discussions on state of robotics.
💡 Key Takeaways
1️⃣ Open Standards
The trend toward open standards in robotics is exciting—it simplifies interconnectivity and fosters innovation.
2️⃣ Solving the Whole Problem
Robotics must address 100% of the problem, not just 95% or even 99%.
This includes: financing, spare parts, maintenance, communication, and education. A key insight from practitioners: Silicon Valley has a reputation for falling short of solving the complete problem.
3️⃣ Enterprise-Ready Robotics
Scaling robotics requires robust support strategies, including enterprise-level maintenance and support models.
4️⃣ Opportunity for Software-Only Robotics Companies
Areas like site valuation, system validation, simulation, and robot programming are often handled in-house by robotics companies today. A strong third-party solution here could reduce deployment and maintenance costs.
5️⃣ Robotics Deployment Challenges
90% of warehouses still don’t have a single robot, despite the technology being available. Many robots are sitting idle in warehouses because they broke and couldn’t be maintained—maintenance is critical to success.
6️⃣ Cost Overruns in Deployment
Last-minute engineering change orders can derail projects, leading to robots being deployed at 50% over cost. A business model where performance aligns with payment could help mitigate this.
7️⃣ Direct Customer Contact
In the early stages, working directly with customers is crucial.
Intermediaries (companies three degrees removed) distort information and delay insights.
8️⃣ Engage IT Departments Early
IT teams can either be valuable allies or significant blockers.
Starting conversations early helps navigate compliance challenges like SOC2 questionnaires.
9️⃣ Emerging Trends
Major PLC manufacturers are considering integrating ROS into edge devices. Standard protocols are needed to handle the data flow efficiently as robotics deployments scale, especially for dense data like video streams and motion planning.
🔟 Instrumentation & Debugging
Better tools are needed to debug robots effectively. “Why did that happen?” should never be answered with, “The robot just does that sometimes.” Diagnostics are critical.
It was fantastic connecting with both old friends and new faces, including Choong S., Neil Vodoor, Austin Yu, Gary Chen, Drew K., Elias Saadeh, Christian Fritz, Armaan Saini and others.
Looking forward to the next one!!
