GetRobo Blog English

Interview with Max Safai, Neato Robotics CEO

 GetRobo had the chance to visit Neato Robotics in Mountain View, CA, and got a first-hand look at the new robotic vacuum cleaner Neato XV-11. I wanted to try out their "crown jewel" - as CEO Max Safai puts it - which is their original inexpensive laser rangefinder that costs only $30.

 First of all, I wanted to see how the XV-11 can detect and avoid obstacles on the fly. 

 Very clever!

  It's also neat that the robot can identify a door and will not go out of the room until it has finished cleaning. Once it's done, it will go out of the door and move on to the next room. You can check out the other videos on the YouTube GetRobo Channel.

  There were some questions that I wanted to ask the company. The main one being whether they are willing to sell the laser rangefinder component separately. 

 The following is an edited excerpt from an interview with Neato CEO, Mr. Safai. The original article appeared on GetRobo Japanese on Feb. 6. 

 

 Q. How do you feel about competing with iRobot?

Pleo Creators Form New Venture

Many readers were sad to see Ugobe – maker of the Pleo dinosaur robot – go, but we have good news today. John Sosoka, former CTO of Ugobe, has started a new company. GetRobo got to talk with John on the phone about his new venture. Also he shared with us some very important experience and insights about why Ugobe failed and the future of the consumer robotics market.

 

(Photo:John with Pleo)

 

Q. What have you been working on lately?

 

A. I have co-founded 2 new companies with Tyler Wilson whom I worked with at my previous ventures including Ugobe. Tyler was the head of software development at Ugobe and the architect and driving force behind the Pleo Development Kit (PDK). By the way, the PDK has just been released as an alpha by Innvo Labs, a part of Jetta (that bought Ugobe’s intellectual property). Tyler and I are very happy that all the effort that we put into the PDK will now open up the creative possibilities for Pleo fans.

 

 So, one company we started is called Vita Robotica, which was formed when I got stopped being paid by Ugobe. While I was working without getting paid to try to deal with all the issues of Ugobe, I started working on a completely new implementation of a brain for robots that interact with humans. It’s something that I really had hoped to do at Ugobe, but never got to.

 

 I am fascinated in this life-in-robotics thing. And what I’m currently most interested in is in developing robots for special needs such as medical applications and companionship in institutions. For example, there are so many interesting things that have come up in the use of therapy dogs, and I think there are a lot of areas where medications don’t work well and where you can make use of robotics. Automated diagnostics at home is another area. Companion robots could help people keep track of their health everyday so that they can identify problems before they become real problems. There are not enough products that address those areas, and I think the market is pretty wide open.

 

 So Vita Robotica is a research company that builds the platform and tools that could be used to develop robots in this area.