GetRobo Blog English

Restoration Robotics - Robots for Hair Transplantation

 Another tedious and cumbersome job is being taken over by a robot - hair transplantation. Restoration Robotics, a venture backed company in Mountain View, CA,  has developed a robot that can harvest hair follicle units (FUE) from a person's head in a minimally invasive way. The company received FDA clearance and is planning to start selling the robot this summer. The robot solves many of the difficulties that the restoration procedure has had and it may well expand the market for hair transplantation.

 Here is a transcript of the conversation with Mohan Bodduluri, Vice President R&D and one of the founders of Restoration Robotics. It's important to note that the company has an all-star board of directors  and investors - the Who's Who in the field of medical robotics - and that they are also working on a future product that will take care of the hair implant process as well. (This interview was originally conducted for a robotics column on the Wall Street Journal Japan.)

 

Q. How did the company come about? 

A. The idea of using a robot in hair transplantation was originally that of Dr. Phil Gildenberg who is a neurosurgeon from Houston. One day he was having dinner with his young dermatologist nephew who discussed with him how hair transplantation in those days - and even today - was a tedious and difficult procedure. So Dr. Gildenberg says to himself, hey, I’ve stuck a lot of probes into people’s brains using robotics and image guidance, why can’t I put a few follicles in someone’s head? So he wrote a patent application, submitted it to the patent office and then brought the idea to Accuray which was started by a fellow neurosurgeon.

  I happened to be at Accuray at the time as Vice President of R&D, and so he and I met. We thought it was a great idea but Accuray was focused on making its first product CyberKnife successful and starting a brand new product in a totally different field did not make sense. Eventually Accuray became more successful and bigger and then I decided to move on and to start this company. (Photo: Dr. Bodduluri with a prototype robot.)

 Accuray did not invest in our company but because the idea got kicked around there first, we wanted to make sure that there were no issues later. So we made a clear agreement with Accuray and as part of the agreement they became a minor stakeholder in the company.Q. Who are the other 3 co-founders besides yourself? 

A. There’s Dr. Gildenberg who invented the idea. And Don Caddes who was my boss at Accuray at the time, who also served as CEO at Accuray for a while. Before Don and I started looking for money, we were introduced to Dr. Fred Moll who is a serial entrepreneur and medical robotics legend. He is the founder of Intuitive Surgical and other successful medical device companies. He liked the idea and once he said that he will help us raise money, it became very clear that this was going to happen. At that point, Don and I left Accuray and founded the company.

Q. What is the technology behind all this? 

Robots for Nuclear Emergency "Possible" says Joseph Engelberger, Father of Robotics Industry

  A month has passed since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami that devastated communities and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. There were hopes among the Japanese public that robots be put into immediate use to solve the problem at the nuclear power plant. This was followed by the public's disappointment, which has shaken the robotics community in Japan on one level or another. 

  Joseph Engelberger, widely considered as the father of industrial robotics, is highly respected in Japan as a key figure in inspiring the country to implement robots into manufacuturing and enabling its industries to become productive and globally competitive.

 GetRobo was given the honor to talk to Mr. Engelberger to learn about his thoughts on what is happening in Japan right now. This article is written with great hope that his words will once again invigorate the Japanese people so that we can recover from this calamity. (The following is a transcript of a phone interview originally conducted for a robotics column on the Wall Street Journal Japan. The transcript has been shortened and edited for accuracy.) 

Q. I read that you used to develop and manufacture controls for nuclear power plants. What are your thoughts on what’s happening at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant? And how could robots be utilized in this kind of environment?

A. It’s terrible. In this kind of emergency, I think it’ll be very hard to get some kind of attention and money devoted to a robot. The fact that people having to be evacuated from radiation and that there’s going to be food shortages and water shortages  - all kinds of dramatic things are happening that people are going to have to address immediately.

Q. The general public in Japan is disappointed that robots are not being useful to improve the situation at the nuclear power plant.

A. They can’t be, because they were designed for other things. In Japan you have a terrible earthquake and then you have a very costly effort to get people in there (the nuclear power plant) and try to solve the problem. But you didn’t know what the problem was going to be. You couldn’t develop the robot exactly right because the jobs are now occurring since the earthquake.

Q. Once we know what job is needed, is it possible for people to get together and rapidly develop a robot that can perform that task?

A. I would say on the basis of Japan’s experience, it is possible. You can write a specification for that robot deciding on how to react to any one of the elements and develop a robot based upon it. I would love to be the one in charge in putting the team together. But since people think I’m too old, there would be someone else.

Q. What is a good business model for disaster relief robots? When you don’t know when the disaster is coming, there is no market to support the development.

A. I think if you build a robot that is useful in a house and just say it’s radiation insensitive, it can do your household chores in normal situations and it would be useful in a nuclear emergency. So you develop a household one and then you make a few changes in that just to make it useful in an emergency. The technology is available today. It just takes smart engineering to design it into one package that could be priced right. Of course for the nuclear emergency the pricing could be a lot higher than it is just for household robots.

So I would say that today the challenge is to make a robot that can be a household robot. I have been successful in making robots for the factories but I haven’t been successful in getting started in a true household robot which has to have a lot of functions.

Q. You’ve been a proponent for multi-functional robots for the home.  

A. In fact I wanted to start another company called RoboCare so you would have a robot in the house that would cook, clean, answer the telephone and put things away so that it knows where everything is, but we never got around to it. The technology is there but it’s not there for 50,000 dollars. It’s there for 3 million dollars of development money and I’ve been unable to raise that money largely because I’m too old.

Q. I read your book “ROBOTICS IN SERVICE (1989).” You write in this book that “robots are ready to shed that limiting adjective “industrial” and after listing various robot applications, you mention that it is “quite conceivable that one or more of the applications described will generate larger sales volume than all industrial applications.” Many people have been trying to generate this new market but so far it has not happened. What has prevented this from becoming a reality? 

A. That’s right, it hasn’t happened. One thing is that it’s hard to get the startup money. And it’s because no one has it. It’s hard to be first. I was successful. I won the Japan Prize, you know. I’ve been honored every place I go. Honors are fine but I haven’t been able to get anybody to come up with what I thought was necessary to develop the first one which was 3 million dollars.

Q. This is a chicken and egg problem. People will not invest if there is no precedent. How are we going to get out of this dilemma?

A. I was designing aerospace components for a big manufacturer in Connecticut. And then I had the idea about the robot. I used R&D money from the business I was running to develop the first one. Then when I had the first one I was able to get on television shows and go everywhere with it.

So any major company could do it without spending a lot of money. There also could be a rich individual who wants to look at this. For example Bill Gates has enough money to play this game just for fun. Or Warren Buffett.

Q. Some military robots have been sent to the afflicted area in Japan. What are your current thoughts on military use of robots?

A. You should recognize that today there’s a very murky line between robots and teleoperators. So what you can do is you build a robot physically two armed, mobile, and with vision and sound detection and then it would be useful in a nuclear emergency, as long as you also take the trouble to make it radiation insensitive.

Many times military robots are teleoperators - like surgical robots. What happens is that human beings are in the loop. It’s not a robot, it’s a teleoperated machine.

(Many thanks to Eimei Onaga, CEO of Innovation Matrix, who used to work under Mr. Engelberger at Unimation, Inc.,  for making this interview possible. Also I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Gay Engelberger for providing her father's photograph.) 

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).

 

 

 

Here comes Xachi - an iPhone controlled robotic toy

 GetRobo believes that the combination of smartphones and robots is going to be one of the biggest trends in 2011. (In Japan, some people call it the "Sumaho-robo" - short for "smart phone robots.") There's already the quadrotor helicopter AR.Drone on the market, and a robotic ball Sphero that was announced at this year's CES.

 Another product slated to come out later this year is Xachi (pronounced Zachi) Pet  which is being developed by Taptic Toys . This first product by the company targets the kids/tween market but the technology has a lot of potential for various types of products in the future.

 GetRobo interviewed Taptic Toys President David Cann (D) and Greg Munson (G) who's in charge of business development to learn about Xachi and their company. Also, although we did not talk about it in the interview below, they've just come out with a game for your iOS device called Xachi Command, which is a great marketing strategy that will lead to the launch of the furrier friend. 

 
     (Photo: Xachi Pets)
 
Q. Please tell us about your company, Taptic Toys. 
 
D) We started in 2009 after Apple announced that people could create third party hardware for the iPhone and iPod touch. Our other co-founder Romina (Espinosa) thought it would be great to have a toy that can connect to the iPhone. A Furby-type toy, but something that people could interact with. Every kid wants to have an iPhone or iPod touch for Christmas. So we thought if we could integrate and connect the cool games and abilities of the phone with the actual physical toy, we could have a unique product that kids would love.  
  So I brought in my other friends Marc (DeVidts) and Greg. Marc is a great hardware designer and I do software so we formed a company together and we’ve been working on it. We made a prototype in 6 months and went to the Toy Fair in New York in Feb. 2010. We’re now in the manufacturing stage.
 
Q. When is your product coming out?
 
D) Sometime in the first half of this year. 
 
Q. How does it work and what’s it going to do?
 

Neato to upgrade software via USB for vacuuming robot

  Last summer, Neato Robotics came out with it's robotic vacuum cleaner XV-11, which is equipped with a low-cost laser rangefinder that enables the robot to map the room and go around cleaning without hitting the furniture. As the company ramps up manufacturing and addresses the initial quality issues, it is also preparing to release software upgrades utilizing the robot's USB port. GetRobo visited the company and talked with CEO Max Safai to learn about the latest.  (This interview was conducted originally for a column on the Wall Street Journal Japan. The following is an edited transcription of the conversation.) 

 

(Photo: Neato Robotics CEO Max Safai) 

Q. What is the initial feedback you are getting from your customers?

A. Overall, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m very happy about that. Our product is a first of its kind. The customers cannot believe the fact that it’s a smart robot. It doesn’t just bounce around and they are very surprised by the cleaning power it has.

 If you look at the demographics of people who are really happy with the product right now, pet owners is the major section. They can’t believe how much hair it picks up and therefore love our product. They are also very impressed that hair does not wrap itself around our brush. All the other vacuuming robots - and also the upright vacuum cleaner - they need a lot of maintenance. People love that our robot requires little maintenance. 

Q. I’ve read the reviews on Amazon.com and you seem to have many very happy customers but also a few very unhappy ones. How are you addressing the feedback from the unhappy customers?

A. The only difference between a happy customer and an unhappy one is that the unhappy customer got a product that was not manufactured to our quality standards.

 To introduce our new product, we had to design all the manufacturing fixtures to produce the product. When one is making a product that is rather unique, you go to the manufacturing floor and they don’t know how to build it. How do you assemble it, test it and make sure of the quality? We have designed a lot of the test fixtures and assembly fixtures and actually wrote a lot of the test software. And we had to go to China and train the factory on how to use them. So they’re learning. It’s not that the product is not ready to be produced, but that the manufacturing floor has a learning curve to digest as well. So we are addressing it.

 And of course, what contributes to the disappointment (of the customers) is that these are early customers and they are all very enthusiastic about the product and they have high expectations. They placed their order and sometimes they waited up to 4-8 weeks to get it. Finally the robot comes, and it doesn’t work. It’s a normal human reaction to become upset.

 But if they call the company, we basically replace the robot - no questions asked. We ask them to send the robot back and then we send them a replacement. I’ve asked everybody here (at Neato) to test the replacements before they send them out so that we are 100% sure of the quality of the second product that the unhappy customer is getting. 

Q. Can you share any sales numbers? 

A. No, but thanks for asking. 

Q. The Roomba is selling well in Japan. Any plans for Neato to enter the Japanese market?