Business as Usual: IAM Robotics

Transcription: 

So good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to business as usual. I'm always happy to be here. I know it's a rainy day in Pittsburgh. But it's a beautiful day. And we get a chance to talk to amazing people who are building the future of Pittsburgh, and today is no exception. So a couple of things before we get started, and I introduce our guests, I just want to remind everyone that we have a chat, and you will be on mute. So the chat will be, we ask you not to sell your wares. This, this is all about AI and robotics today. That's it. We're not here to sell anything. We're here just to focus on them. And I also want to give a big shout out to Huntington bank for their continued support of our work, and the innovations that we take at the tech council to try to make sure that we're relevant. And we're adding value to make sure that Southwestern Pennsylvania is an amazing place for people to build their business and to attract talent. So today, and Jonathan Kirsten is here with us. He's vice president of all things media and marketing, and he will keep his eye on the chat and jump in as as, as essential. So what I'm going to jump in right now and say welcome, Tom galluzzo, CEO of AI and robotics, you have quite a background, and you are really doing some pretty fabulous work right here in our in our backyard. So, Tom, welcome. And how about, we just start like a little bit about Tom, because you really do have, you know, a fabulous background and I think people need to understand a little bit about that as we set the stage for the rest of the conversation.

I appreciate that. No, sure. Happy happy to talk about it. Just a little bit about where I come from. Originally. I'm from Buffalo, New York. My parents still live there. I went to school at for college for aerospace engineering school down in Daytona Beach called Embry riddle Aeronautical University. Right. So originally, I wanted to be a rocket scientist, I guess you could say. But I did some internships at Boeing and so forth. And the projects were so huge. They didn't really excite me because you got to work on just a small piece. And then when I was in college, I kind of fell in love with building robots as part of a club team. And we got to do some really cool competitions, where we built robots to go through obstacle courses and things like that. And I just fell in love with the challenge that the the complexity, the engineering, and so I went to grad school for robotics, and went to University of Florida. Then after Florida, I worked at Harris Corporation. And then I got a job I met some folks up at Carnegie Mellon at the National robotics, Engineering Center, and Rec. And so I applied for a job up in Racket and was fortunate enough to get offered a position and work there as a robotics engineer for a number of years before founding AI in robotics. So got to work with the best learn from the best in Pittsburgh. And it's been great.

And say you had a chance to work on the DARPA Grand Challenge, right?

Yes, I did. So when I was in grad school, that was 2000. I was there between 2002 and 2006. And that was the DARPA Grand Challenge was in 2004, and 2005. And so we I was on the University of Florida team. And was excruciating Lee, difficult. As a small team, I think our budget was less than $100,000 to build, you know, one of the world's most advanced robots, and we were competing against CMU at the time, which probably had maybe a million dollars in funding, I don't know something crazy, and I had no cars. And it was it was, it was super hard. But a lot of fun. And I think DARPA in that two year period, they they pushed a whole generation of people to a whole new level when it comes to building robots and autonomous vehicles. And that's why we have the driverless car industry today. So and we know what that's done for Pittsburgh and the region.

Right, and the space peasy is really interesting, too. I mean, if you look at what is considered some of the most undervalued and underappreciated areas of innovation, space, space technology, is ranks. They're like number one or two.

It Yeah, I think that's, that's well put, I think. I was surprised by how much innovation there has been in space in the past. 20 years, I got out of aerospace because I thought we weren't gonna see, you know, a lot in my lifetime. But it's, it's really taken off. And you know, a good example of that is Astrobotic, and those guys are just killing it right now. I'm super happy for them. Because you know, they had a really long journey. And, you know, to see them with it achieved the six level of success that they have now is just what everyone wants to see.

Yeah, I think that's very well put, that's very well put. But, you know, I'm your space, though, in terms of what you're working on. Let's let's sort of now talk about AI and robotics, the problem that you're trying to solve, why it was formed? And what what problems that you think that your side?

Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of background. So when I was at Carnegie Mellon, I was working on a project, another DARPA project for building autonomous robotic manipulation systems. So these are basically the practical was called arm. So autonomous robot manipulation software. So basically, what does that mean? It means getting robots that have arms and hands to look around and do things by themselves. So pick up objects and move them around completely by themselves. And we we got really confident in our ability to get a robot to just see a single object, grab it and move it. And so we started looking for where's where's the killer app and industry? Where are the low hanging fruit applications and so we we found, you know, warehouse picking was becoming a greater and greater challenge for folks to staff in the e commerce world. So when you order something online, there's like a 90% chance or a 99% chance of someone is, is walking somewhere or, you know, picking up physically picking up the object that you ordered, and putting it in, you know, a container for before it goes to the shipping and packing area. So we started looking at, you know, how could we have robots provide that function? How can you have robots drive around a warehouse and find objects and pick them up and, and move them around. And so we got, it took a while, we built a prototype. We got some funding from innovation works in town, that was really, really helpful for the guys like, rich Lou knack. You know, Frank Daimler, just super, super important piece of the puzzle for us, Chuck brands. And so that was that was really, and after we got built our prototype, we were able to, you know, kind of push our first product into the market with our first customer, drug. And we, we had the robots picking products overnight in a warehouse there. And I think we were the first company in the world actually get a robot to drive around the warehouse and find objects and pick them up and move them around.

It was super, super challenging.

Outside investment, though, I mean, it's just you've also had additional investment from outside the region, right?

We have so I I raised an our seed, we got seed funding along the way, where we we raised about $3 million. And I had to kind of claw my way to, you know, $50,000 check here. $100,000. There. And we at some point in time, we started getting some some folks from Silicon Valley's we have like a half a million dollars from the valley from a company called fusion fund, and they're still very active in Pittsburgh because they are investment. Right, they're still looking. And then then we started taking robots to trade shows and we met our current investors, Casey Kay. And so they invested they want to really amp up the company and so they invested over $20 million so far into AI and robotics. And so we have a new new products coming online and we have a new headquarters in Lawrenceville, we're we've kind of come full circle because we're right behind and rec now are literally right next door to Carnegie robotics and, and Rec and in our squares and all these these good companies down here.

That's great. So what about now in terms of your product and customers? Can you talk about any of that? Like who are your customers are?

Sure, sure. Yeah. So we're we have a big contract that I can talk about publicly right now, which is a contract with a company called as Watson and they are basically the CVS Walgreens style retailer in Europe in Asia. So the biggest thing player in Europe and Asia for that kind of corner drugstore market is as Watson. And so they they're deploying a dozen of our robots into a brand new distribution center that they have in the Netherlands, where the robots are going to be picking 50% of the products that this company fulfills online. So, yeah, so they've, they've carved out a huge chunk of their operation and handed that over to our robots to find all the items. And

Wow, that's great. That's really exciting. appreciate you sharing that with us. And I want to ask you, you know, I want to just get a little personal and talk about like, your background in terms of engineering in terms of building, and now you're an entrepreneur. Right now you're doing like a ton of different things, right? You're, you're running the company, you're out there, you know, as you describe, pitching. And that's a thankless process in terms of raising capital. It does nothing for yourself confidence in yourself.

Amen. Yeah. It's tough when you're when you're when you're in, you know, college and academia and school, you know, and you do good, get good grades, and you're used to getting 90% and 95%. S, and hey, you go 5% success rate to a 95%. Right, with everything you do. And you know, when you're raising financing. And it's a total just mind shift and how you have to approach it.

I know, but how have you been doing with that? how, you know, so for other people who are listening, that are entrepreneurs, and have ideas or running companies, it you know, it is lonely? And not cheap. So how are you? How are you adapting? What are some secrets that you have? That maybe

the first, the first thing, I think that's important to realize was, that was a mental shift for me was founding the company, and just taking the leap. So I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur and found something and do something big. And it's so common in life, you know, with any big life decision. buying your first home, getting married, having kids starting a business, really big things. Most people get into a mode of, Oh, I'm not ready yet. I'm not comfortable yet.

And I have this philosophy that

life doesn't wait for you to be ready, you're gonna be a year older, every year for the rest of life, no matter what, it's never going to slow down. Things are never going to be perfect. The conditions are never going to be 100% favorable results gonna be awesome odds of failure or loss or something. And you have that with any big decision. So if you're in a capability where you can find a way any way to get to that next step, or to take that leap, you should do it because life will not wait for you to be ready.

So how did you how did you mentally adjust to going from being the top tier performer and student to being rejected? Again, and I don't mean rejected, you know, in terms of negative it's just a matter of, you know, the constant pneus.

Stubborn, stubbornness, stubbornness? Sure.

So you're just headed? That's great. Yeah.

Just just sheer willpower. And and you just have to keep going. And the phrase that comes to mind is if you ever seen Finding Nemo, and don't Finding Dory, and Dory just says, just keep that meant. I walk around the office, and I just I just keep swimming. Yeah.

So what so as you're swimming, you get focused on what you get focused on. And then there's COVID.

Yeah, how did that exception?

So COVID has been interesting. It was building up, right as we were getting ready for our big trade show for the year in 2020, with a trade show called modex in Atlanta, and we go every year, and every year, we put on a big show, we'd have robots do all these amazing things and demo what they're capable. And it took thousands of man hours of work to put together our demo for modex this past year. And you know, the weekend, we needed to make a decision and we waited right up to the last moment. And we had the booth set up in Atlanta and everything and we were restricting how many people could go down and then COVID hit and all of the regulations you know came out and advisory, things came out and everyone went into quarantine. And we had to make this really tough decision that we had the whole booth set up at the show, and we weren't going to send anyone. It was really, really hard, stressful weekend, you know, because I was on the phone constantly with my team. I had people in Atlanta, and I was talking with our investors, and you know, hey, you know, what should we do? And what should you know? And so it was a it was a tough call again, and the show was not canceled. So some people stayed and kept going, Oh, wow. Um, and it was like, we heard it was like a ghost town afterwards. So we're kind of glad that we probably wouldn't have got much out of it.

So just before we go to the keep going, I was gonna ask them something before we went to the questions. Were things man made? Where are your products made?

Yeah, um, basically, they're, they're assembled in Pittsburgh. Here in our offices, we have a small manufacturing shop, and we do final assembly, but the parts are made all over the world and the country, most of our fabricated parts come from vendors around the country. So well, machine shops and cast injection mold. That kind of stuff comes from a variety of folks and vendors. We have really strong supply chain people that manage all that and figure out how to do it all here at the right time.

Okay. Well, um, I just want you to know, yesterday we had on Ira moscowitz, from the arm Institute in Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. And I, I actually, along with Jonathan kersting, we are going to become robotics technicians, Jr. We will be getting you information about our skill set pretty soon. They need you need our skill set. And we want that as a backup plan.

Yeah, it's a it's a great career path. It's absolutely going to be a thing. And everyone should be educated on how to build and run robots.

Yeah. Yeah, we're not kidding. So that's

great training programs going on with our on some phenomenal work with the folks at CMU and then right that they've been doing training for years and really talented people, putting those programs together. And I think it's super, super helpful, I think, right, right.

So Jonathan, told me, there's some good questions out there. So let's see if we could Tom, we're gonna let Jonathan now some of the questions. Okay.

Tom, great to see you, man. Thanks for thanks for being here today. Without a doubt, anything from the crowd, as always, so but I know first off is I am part of the arm community. And if so, yeah. So how are you getting benefit from that?

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question. We just won our first project with arm in conjunction with CMU and Johnson and Johnson. So that's that's arm has published that I think on our website, we're taking we're working with j&j to advance our Swift's piece picking robots to the next level where they're going to be working, you know, on a tough problem that Johnson and Johnson has to be able to pick products out of cardboard boxes, and so forth. And cm us can be working with us to develop some of the vision and the perception software, the AI, if you will, that's going to go into machine. So we're working with Professor how we chose it there and his group. Wow. Yeah. He's been an advisor for a long time, good friend. worked with him for years. So I'm excited to be working with Howie on a project now for a big company. And yeah, so arm has been wonderful. And again, Chuck Brandt at arm now. So he's backed up.

Great. He was from what was it called? Jonathan, the organization.

Chuck Brandt was the laboratory

collaborative.

Hmm, excellent. Jonathan. Any other questions or

a couple more Scott details another one here for you. He wants to know, what is the demand for importance of talent with degrees other than robotics or engineering within the robotics industry?

in Pittsburgh, it's very important. We need a lot of functionalities and commercialization sales and marketing, deployment, training. It there's 1000 things a robotics company is a complete holistic engineering and systems company. So it's it's not just building technology. It's deploying technology. It's working with customers, industrial engineering. Industrial Engineering is probably one of the most important functions you can have in a robotics company because our robots need to save people money and that's what engine industrial engineers are, are focused on. Doing and figuring figuring out how to do that. But marketing is huge. Sales is huge for us. And really having strong relationship building skills is very important. So yeah, there's 1000 things you can do for robotics companies. Are you

hiring right now?

Generally, yes, yeah, we have still positions open in, in technology and software programming, but we're also hiring a product manager, or hiring an operations director to just help scale the company in terms of supply chain manufacturing facilities, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

So that's great. Yeah, we posted the link. So everyone can see that, when you let's just we'll back up a little bit. Um, you know, there's a lot of, you know, you talk about picking, right and picking. You know, there's a lot of industries. So there's market sectors, are you seeing any key industries that you think that you're finding like a niche in? Or do you think that you're sort of across them? So, you know, is it like health care and beauty and pharma, etc? Do you think that there's a niche? Or are you just sort of taking this as a panoramic view and just doing what you can across all sectors?

Yeah, are picking robots are strongest in health, the health and beauty market, so your over the counter medicines, and I know, just health a health goods and beauty aids and shampoos and things like that. Generally speaking, those products have the right kind of size and shape for the robots recognized to pick up. But but we're, we've, we're launching a new product, where we're taking the mobile portion of our robot and working with some pretty big partners to just shuttle products around the facility, in boxes and totes and things like that. So our robots are going to be just working on everything in that sense. And we're actually seeing applications in manufacturing, where robots can load parts into machines and take parts out of machines and be part of the factoring process in general.

So are you do you think, are you able to tell any markets that they're slow downs like desert? Or could you be like, you know, a bellwether in terms of seeing any slowdowns or not?

No, I think the the the interest level has gone up in terms of strategic interest in robots. There has I think there's been a little bit of slowdown in just terms of capital allocation for this year. But I think as soon as, as soon as the uncertainty kind of subsides, and we, you know, hopefully COVID starts to subside. And hopefully, these these vaccines start to work. And I think we're gonna see some real investments that could people could be more robust and resilient for the next pandemic.

So I'm gonna pass it to Jonathan, but I want I saw the patty road, give a shout out for Thanks for your support. And girls of steel. So that's awesome. And work in HR has a good question, Jonathan. Yeah, all questions. But

yeah, marks is fantastic. I'm really curious to see how you respond to this. Tom. So Mark says he has a disabled, cognitively disabled 40 year old son, who has warehouse skills. Um, he says, as robots become more common, how do you recommend that he and his management adapt his skills to adapt and become more productive in this job market?

a wonderful question. I think, in general, the robots are going to be doing more of the physical work, or people are going to be doing more of the more of the tasks that only people are good at. And so there's a lot of work on just commanding and controlling robots. So you know, sending robots off to do tasks and helping robots that need assistance. So there's a couple of really interesting things that that could be good for folks in that position. I think the the future is bringing a world where robots are controlled remotely, in special situations where they get stuck or confused. And so we're building all these help me out features into our robots, where they send requests to people for help and assistance. And so that world is going to be almost video game, like where people are going to be using apps, to be able to guide and control robots, you can think of the captures that you see, when you when you go to websites, and it says, you know, select three pictures that have stop signs in it, for instance, that's effectively the kind of thing that humans are good at, that you're training robots to do by giving them some information. So I think we're folks in that position are going to benefit from skills of using computers and and understanding you know, games and how to interact in those cycles and those those control loops to be able to remotely guide and assist autonomous systems or semi autonomous robots that need help.

So just for him, that may be his son get trained the same way, Jonathan and I are going to be trained in terms of being robotic technician. Wouldn't that be an?

Absolutely I mean, there's a robotic technician is a broad, right. Are you building robots? Or are you using robots? And there are different categories of things. And I was talking more about the using robots, but there's, there's tons of skills you could do in terms of building machines and wiring things and putting them together and that kind of stuff. But using robots, I think is going to be where all of the new jobs get created.

Okay, great. So you mentioned something about that. You're, you're back in Lawrenceville right now. So you've moved from Houston used to have another space. What was it in the wiggly? And so quickly?

Yeah, we were into it.

Okay, so now people are in the office. They're all working. And now you're located back in Lawrenceville.

dress, and people are working.

So what advice would you give? Because I know we're running out of time and people have questions. But I really want to hear from you in terms of what advice you would give to economic development leaders in this new world. There's a new world about helping companies like yourself, what what should we be doing, that we're not doing? And then the second part to that question is, what do you want? What would you like to ask of the tech community in terms of ways that we can better support you and your team? So two thoughts?

Wow. Um, there's a lot to talk about there. So in terms of economic development, I think our economic development programs are still too slim. in Pittsburgh for startups, and I think we need to be okay. I'm on slagging me off is are okay, yeah, he has a 1230 Okay, someone's got a meeting in this room, I stole their room.

Anyways, to veteran

so

but no, I, we, the the regional zones and so forth, where you can get funding for for opening a bit too slim. I mean, it needs to be all of Pittsburgh gonna roll on. And I think the tax incentives need to be there and so forth. And then in terms of the tech community, I think we need to be we need to be bringing in more I know, it's everyone in sort this 1000 times we need to be bringing in more investors. And we might be, you know, having more that that Pittsburgh money reinvested into the community

in a variety of different ways.

Right. That's what we're working on, for sure. So I know, is there any final comments that you want to make to us? And I know you're getting kicked out of your room? I thought you were the boss there. Yeah. You know,

I don't even know what they're talking about. To be honest. I got

I'm looking at my schedule. And like there's nothing on here. So fog off.

So we just got a window into Tom's leadership style, everyone.

Yeah.

This is it. This is not me at my normal state right now.

ordinary circumstances.

Okay, so we talked about more money needed in the community? What about any of your downstream partners? Or upstream? Should we be looking at ways to attract them to Pittsburgh?

Customers are like the number one thing on any startups mind is how do I get customers, I get overwhelmed by too many suppliers. And 1001 folks that want to help me recruit people, and I can only I can only take on I think we only have two recruiter partners. I mean, I can't manage to them, you know, doesn't make sense. But, you know, anything that we can do to kind of tout up the Pittsburgh technology for, you know, customers and things that are available here for people to come see and hosting groups, I think hosting larger groups of corporations to come through and do what we do. That would be that would be big. I mean, if you've ever seen the plug and play Tech Center in Silicon Valley, yeah. They do it better than anyone in the world that I could really benefit from something like

that. Yeah, that's a great idea. So I think Jonathan, that's all we have time for, right? Yeah, we

got to wrap this thing up. He's gonna get up and send

no idea I'm dying to find out what's

out of his room. But if you want to know more about I am robotics, we've sent you the links. There's lots of things that people want to talk to you about. Thank you for being such a great citizen in the community. And being being you know, just a part of the next generation of Pittsburgh, and thank you for all your guidance and advice today I've taken notes and I think we have some things that we can follow up on. So I am robotics, I think is a finalist detect 50. Jonathan, is that correct? Oh, you're 100%? Correct.

Can I find out the final results on the

blog that they reminded me I needed to plug that tech 15 coming up, I think on November 12. So want to thank everyone for being here. Who do we have that wraps up tomorrow

is cyber security at its finest. We have Michael Chrisman from the he's the Special Agent of Pittsburgh FBI office. So

that's good. Considering all that's happened since COVID. And all the breaches and all. That will be great. So everyone, thank you to Tom galluzzo, the CEO and founder of IBM robotics, and stay connected. I'm sure you can find ways to get connected to IBM as it makes sense. You heard from him. He can't be plowed by unnecessary kind of attempts, but he can be he is looking for customers. So I think that's pretty important. Right? Do I say that? Right?

I'll give me Okay,

customers first. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we'll see you here tomorrow.

Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai