GetRobo Blog English

AnyLobby - A robot staffing service debuts

A year ago, Silicon Valley robotics company Anybots started selling their telepresence robot QB. Now they have started a service called "AnyLobby." 

AnyLobby is a staffing service, but instead of sending you a person, they will send you a robot - in this case QB. But it is not just a robot. It comes with a "robot personality" who will be driving the robot from elsewhere, in some cases hundreds of miles away. The robot personality will work as your receptionist or assistant, and a full time robot receptionist will be there for you 40 hours a week for $2,400 a month.

I got to meet Angela Ward, one of the robot personalities, at Anybots last week. She lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburban town outside of Charlotte, a few time zones away from where Anybots is. I talked to her through the screen/camera/microphone on QB.

"We can do a lot of things," Angela says. QB doesn't have arms, but thanks to digital technology, she doesn't have any trouble scanning the fax and printing documents. The only thing she can't do is provide her signature when a package arrives, but the companies she works for have set up protocols for that  - "Call Bob when there's a package. "

If it's a low traffic lobby, Angela can handle multiple locations at once. Before becoming a robot personality, she used to be a manager at a computer training company. Her background is "helpful but not necessary" in operating the robot. The technology is easy to use, she says. (You can test drive the QB here if you are interested, which is also something Anybots started recently.)

"We can bring different personalities and different expertise to the table through the same robot," says Trevor Blackwell, Founder of Anybots. Since the very beginning of Anybots he had wanted to create a service around his robots. Currently there are 3 companies that have signed up for AnyLobby and one is Elance (which is like the Ebay of services), according to Trevor.

Oftentimes robots are thought as something that can take away jobs, but Angela disagrees. "That is not the case here. It is creating jobs for small towns with high unemployment rates."

But isn't it taking away jobs from people that want to be receptionists in Silicon Valley? No, says Trevor. The main goal of AnyLobby is to provide "virtual employees" to companies that "otherwise would not have hired a receptionist," he says.

Angela has never met the Anybots team in person, but she "feels like she is a significant part of the team." Compared to showing up on a fixed screen, being a robot "makes a lot of difference in how you interact with each other."

(Trevor talking to Angela at Anybots)

[IREX 2011] Yaskawa's new service robot SmartPal 7 plus Kinect

 Industrial robot giant Yaskawa Electric also announced its new version of the service robot SmartPal. Can't find the press release of the new robot as of now, but it's slimmer and smarter than SmartPal 5. (SmartPal 6 never made its debut in public since it was strictly for research.)

 At IREX 2011, it was being controlled using Kinect. The scenario is to place the robot hundreds of kilometers away at your elderly mother's house and you can help her remotely via the robot.

 Photo below is SmartPal 7 being controlled remotely and picking up a toy from the floor.

 

 Here's what it looks like on the controller side.

[IREX 2011] Yaskawa MOTOMAN will decorate your smartphone

 Remember Yaskawa-kun, the bubbly singing robot that can make you an ice cream cone? Well, like any other worker that needs to continue to build up his resume to keep up with the economy, he has a new skill. He can decorate your smartphone with rhinestones!

 With the precision and tireless character of an industrial robot, which he is under his cute head, he will complete a decoration that may take a human hours, in a matter of minutes. Glue, paste, glue, paste, glue, paste........

 Ice cream man Yaskawa-kun was highly popular in Japan, but there was always the extra hurdle and precaution to put it to use at events because he was dealing with food. So now he doesn't have to worry about that. And look at his nice work!

Gentle grippers can handle flaky croissants - Or why Adept bought 2 companies

   Last year we sat down with John Dulchinos, CEO of Adept Technology, to learn about how his company's Quattro robots are revolutionizing the food handling industry. Since then, Adept has acquired 2 companies, InMoTx and MobileRobots, which are aimed to further it's attempt to cultivate new markets for industrial robots.

  We had the chance to talk with John again to get the latest on these strategic acquisitions. (This interview was originally conducted for a robotics column on the Wall Street Journal Japan. The transcript has been edited for clarity and length.)  Photo : John holding the InMoTx grippers.   

Q. Why did Adept acquire InMoTx?

A. Last time, we talked about Quattro. Since then, we've done very well and we’ve got some very exciting design wins in that product by major manufacturers to use it to package their products.

 But in the three years we’ve been selling it, the biggest constraint to the robot performance and applications has been the grippers, which is what touches the products. To date, it’s all custom work done by custom integration companies and the solutions aren’t very flexible. They’re not very reliable nor scalable. And it’s created a real limit in applications.

 Adept is focused in primary food handling, which is why we developed our USDA version of our Quattro last year. The challenge with primary food handling is that the product has huge variability. You try to pick up a chicken fillet, and there’s a lot of variability in the shape, the mass, the size and consistency. Moreover, you have to deal with them fast and hygienically. Right now, there are very few machine builders in the world that really understand that market and have the capability to build stuff that can handle products fast and flexible enough to deal with the variability and also meet the regulatory requirements of the industry. InMoTx brings all that technology to us.

Q. Tell us about InMoTx. 

A. InMoTx was founded in 2006 in Denmark and was a customer of ours. They have very innovative grippers and vision technology to identify and handle odd-shaped products and they built some standard cells around Quattro utilizing them. We sold them the robots and they built the solutions to customers, but InMoTx was a little company and they didn't have the resources to capture the real big opportunities.

 Video of InMoTx grippers handling chicken fillets:

 So by combining Adept's worldwide resources and the gripping technology and natural product domain expertise of InMoTx, we can build very neat solutions. And we can do it in a much more integrated fashion than the way traditional robot companies work. We can build very well-integrated software and hardware solutions that optimize the performances of these applications.

 The deal closed in early January and we already have orders together. The InMoTx name will go away, but we’re keeping the OctoMation product line, which will be our platform for natural products handling.  This is focused on handling unwrapped products such as meat, poultry, seafood, fruits, vegetables and dairy. Those are our primary targets. 

Q. Describe the InMoTx gripper (photos below).

 

 

 

Interview with Adept CEO John Dulchinos - Quattro robot widens appeal

Adept Technology, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer of industrial robots, is on a quest to move its robots outside of the factory floors into packaging lines, food handling processes and beyond. The company’s key product, the Quattro robot, is currently the fastest packaging robot on the market and is being designed to fit into various applications around the world.

GetRobo sat down with Adept CEO John Dulchinos to learn about the newer and fascinating ways that his clients are utilizing Quattro. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

(This week is National Robotics Week and Adept is having an open house on April 16to celebrate. It will open up its laboratory and GetRobo highly recommends a visit to see the Quattro and other robots in action. You can even control a Quattro yourself with a Wii remote!=video after the break)

  

 

(Photo: Adept CEO John Dulchinos with a model of Quattro) 

Q. What is special about the Quattro?

A. Quattro is the only parallel robot in the world that features a unique four-arm rotational platform. All the parallel robots from other industrial robot companies have a three-arm design. The advantage of having four arms is that it offers faster cycles and can carry heavier payloads. Moreover, the four-arm design is mechanically more efficient so it uses 25% less energy than the three-arm design.

 Since we brought the Quattro to the market in 2007, we’ve targeted at applications that are very high speed and have a large work envelope. These applications include food handling, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and even as far reaching as solar (cell manufacturing).

 And now, the Quattro has become one of the very few robots accepted by the USDA. As a matter of fact it’s the only high-speed parallel robot accepted by the USDA and it enables us to sell the robot to the meat and poultry market.

Q. How significant is it to be USDA accepted?

 

This market requires robots to be specially designed. The big difference is that in meat and poultry plants there is a high risk of bacteria growing. Every night, those plants have a wash-down process using chemicals and high-pressure hoses, so it is an impossible environment for a normal robot. The coating on the casting and the materials on the platform are different and they need ot be accepted by the USDA. The electronics have to be tightly sealed. These are tough requirements especially for a sophisticated piece of equipment like a robot. But Adept was able to meet that and we introduced the product last Oct. And we shipped our first set of robots this March quarter to customers in meat and poultry handling in the U.S. and France.

 It’s important to note that automating meat and poultry applications is very important because there is a lot of labor involved and the working conditions are not conducive to people. There are contamination risks when people are involved in packaging. So robots bring delicate product handling, the dexterity of touch labor with the efficiency and consistency of machines.

Q. How large is the market?