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That's true. In fact, it seems like cosying up to DoD is the only way for a robotics company to really get anywhere or stay afloat in the long run. This shouldn

by atroyn 11y ago

That's true. In fact, it seems like cosying up to DoD is the only way for a robotics company to really get anywhere or stay afloat in the long run. This shouldn't be true, yet seems to be. Why?

adrianN 11y ago
Robots are expensive and the DoD has nearly infinite funds?
- atroyn 11y ago
  While it's true that DoD can allocate considerable funding, it seems strange that there is no other business model.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    The DoD abhors intelligence in robots. They need a machine that's just smart enough to do a specific job -- and no smarter. They're willing to pay for the smarts -- and may accept compromise for a solution that gets them most of the way there. That makes filling their orders easy compared to the consumer market, which wants mechanical butlers for cheap.
bsilvereagle 11y ago
From my (probably naive) point of view, robotics sits on top of three pillars, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. To even get off the ground, you need strong people in each of the three pillars. Additionally, you need a leader who is sufficiently knowledgeable across all three pillars. Purely from an HR/talent acquisition perspective, this is difficult logistically and financially. Uber raided NREC to accomplish this, essentially creating a second headquarters, and paid quite a bit to get the talent. Then, you need a prototyping facility for both the ME/EEs. To start from scratch, a very hefty investment has to be made before product development has even begun. Then you're bleeding money through the product development phase (hopefully with some pre-sales, but odds are pretty low of this). After product development, you hit manufacturing, which is extremely difficult. Bolt.io has some good reading on this. To get to a product driving around, you've spent millions over the course of a year or two. To amortize that cost in a reasonable fashion, you've got to produce thousands of units. Fanuc took over manufacturing early on and was able to accomplish this, but for a lot of companies, the sales volume just isn't going to be there. The DoD, with SBIRs and other long term contracts, helps fund a lot of the product development, often provides you with a paying customer, etc. The risk and amount of monetary bleeding drops significantly as soon as you partner with the DoD.
- Symmetry 11y ago
  I absolutely agree about CS and MechE but I my experience is that you can generally do just fine without anything cutting edge in terms of electrical engineering until you've grown a fair bit. Depending on what you're doing you might not need anything but off the shelf components like the hands we sell[1], the arms Universal Robotics sells, etc. Or if you're doing something more advanced it's probably using standard motors and ICs with a custom PCB. It's only when you're getting more advanced that you want more control of, e.g., the power system for production quality robots. [1] Shameless plug http://www.righthandrobotics.com/ http://www.righthandrobotics.com/
jlarocco 11y ago
> That's true. In fact, it seems like cosying up to DoD is the only way for a robotics company to really get anywhere or stay afloat in the long run. This shouldn't be true, yet seems to be. Why? I don't see the problem with it. It's not like YCombinator or other VCs are going to pay for years and years of research. The DoD can afford to throw money at robotics projects and fund the grunt work of getting the technology developed. Spending a billion dollars researching and developing a walking robot or whatever is a great use of money if it means keeping a bunch of humans out of dangerous situations. For everybody else it's a cool idea, but not useful enough that they'd pay for it. Better to let DoD pay for it, and wait until that technology makes it into other products.
Qworg 11y ago
The vast majority of robots are solutions looking for problems. The problems in the DoD are both pressing and obvious, making this problem show up less often.

by atroyn 11y ago

That's true. In fact, it seems like cosying up to DoD is the only way for a robotics company to really get anywhere or stay afloat in the long run. This shouldn't be true, yet seems to be. Why?

adrianN 11y ago

Robots are expensive and the DoD has nearly infinite funds?

atroyn 11y ago
While it's true that DoD can allocate considerable funding, it seems strange that there is no other business model.
- bitwize 11y ago
  The DoD abhors intelligence in robots. They need a machine that's just smart enough to do a specific job -- and no smarter. They're willing to pay for the smarts -- and may accept compromise for a solution that gets them most of the way there. That makes filling their orders easy compared to the consumer market, which wants mechanical butlers for cheap.

bsilvereagle 11y ago

From my (probably naive) point of view, robotics sits on top of three pillars, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. To even get off the ground, you need strong people in each of the three pillars. Additionally, you need a leader who is sufficiently knowledgeable across all three pillars. Purely from an HR/talent acquisition perspective, this is difficult logistically and financially. Uber raided NREC to accomplish this, essentially creating a second headquarters, and paid quite a bit to get the talent. Then, you need a prototyping facility for both the ME/EEs. To start from scratch, a very hefty investment has to be made before product development has even begun. Then you're bleeding money through the product development phase (hopefully with some pre-sales, but odds are pretty low of this). After product development, you hit manufacturing, which is extremely difficult. Bolt.io has some good reading on this. To get to a product driving around, you've spent millions over the course of a year or two. To amortize that cost in a reasonable fashion, you've got to produce thousands of units. Fanuc took over manufacturing early on and was able to accomplish this, but for a lot of companies, the sales volume just isn't going to be there. The DoD, with SBIRs and other long term contracts, helps fund a lot of the product development, often provides you with a paying customer, etc. The risk and amount of monetary bleeding drops significantly as soon as you partner with the DoD.

Symmetry 11y ago
I absolutely agree about CS and MechE but I my experience is that you can generally do just fine without anything cutting edge in terms of electrical engineering until you've grown a fair bit. Depending on what you're doing you might not need anything but off the shelf components like the hands we sell[1], the arms Universal Robotics sells, etc. Or if you're doing something more advanced it's probably using standard motors and ICs with a custom PCB. It's only when you're getting more advanced that you want more control of, e.g., the power system for production quality robots. [1] Shameless plug http://www.righthandrobotics.com/ http://www.righthandrobotics.com/

jlarocco 11y ago

> That's true. In fact, it seems like cosying up to DoD is the only way for a robotics company to really get anywhere or stay afloat in the long run. This shouldn't be true, yet seems to be. Why? I don't see the problem with it. It's not like YCombinator or other VCs are going to pay for years and years of research. The DoD can afford to throw money at robotics projects and fund the grunt work of getting the technology developed. Spending a billion dollars researching and developing a walking robot or whatever is a great use of money if it means keeping a bunch of humans out of dangerous situations. For everybody else it's a cool idea, but not useful enough that they'd pay for it. Better to let DoD pay for it, and wait until that technology makes it into other products.

Qworg 11y ago

The vast majority of robots are solutions looking for problems. The problems in the DoD are both pressing and obvious, making this problem show up less often.