Techyla

A robot is in your car

Citroên recently launched a new demonstration car, called "C3 CITY PARK". City park introduces a new feature: assisted parking. As listed by Julian Marsh it can:
- Locate a space for reverse parking
- Aid for parking in a semi automatic way.

Similar system were introduced by asian manufacturers in past few years, such as Honda or Mitsubishi. These systems were based on cameras, sensors and intelligence allowing the car to park itself, without any human assistance. But these systems were expensive and scared the drivers because they fully took the control of te car. Citroên has developed a smart system as this uses an existing technology (most of their mid-range cars use sensors similar as the city park one's), with a simple interface and leaves final decision of moving to the driver.

Having a well respected European car manufacturer (VW also released such system) moving in this area is a good news and could initiate potential moves in the robotic area in the future. Let's look at the situation worldwide:

- Asian car manufacturers (particularly Japanese) invest since years in developing humanoids: Honda's ASIMO is the best example. Some say that they want to replace their workforce by humanoids and prevent the lack of young workers in the future. Why not.

- US car manufacturers do not invest as much, but tried to market Assistance proucts in the past in their cars. Think about GM's OnStar system.

- US Army (DARPA) is keen on developing autonomous systems for the battlefield - yearly DARPA's Grand Challenge is an occation to watch the fantastic progress in that field.

- There are myriads of initiatives in Intelligent Trasportation Systems, particularly in Europe and US to better control trafic and reduce pollution / accidents.

- At same time, electronics remplaces mechanical parts in our cars. As noted by Mercer Management Consulting, "electronics will represent 35 percent of the value of a car in 2010, compared with 27 percent now".

These facts drive me to the following point of view: car manufacturers would be undoublty well positioned to handle the production of robots in the future (particularly humanoids), where large scale integration will be a key capability for those who will dominate the market.

Indeed, car manufacturers have capabilities in:
- integrating new technologies in their cars
- managing myriads of suppliers, although consolidation happened shaply in past years
- producing big series
- guaranting safety

... but they will have to introduce more software intelligence in their products and for this reason acquire new talents to keep on differenciate themselves.

URL's of interests:
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/12/BUG3KEKQ1T1.DTL&type=printable
- www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

iRobot secures 12MUSD contract for its military service robots

As I mentioned in a previous post, iRobot is a promising player in the robotic industry as it already plans to IPO and places its munitions both on residential and governmental market.

They recently secured a 12MUSD contract with US Army to deliver a light weight robot (on field remote controlled) to remove and destroy explosive device. For 103 robots to be delivered, it's more or less 100KUSD per robot.

They also have an opportunity for up to 1,200 robots to be delivered before 2012, which could generate farely 120MUSD.

This type of contract is fundamental for a company like iRobot as it guaranties sustainable revenues during years. That will help them investing in new platforms and differenciate themselves on the residential area, where cheaper robots are currently on track.

Credits: www.irobot.com

Cheap robots: a rabbit called Nabaztag

Nabaztag is a tiny rabbit that announces new messages, gives you the weather and control how your stocks are behaving.

The cool thing for us is that:

- it's a nice object
- it's not expensive (92€)
- it can be customized

Nabaztag has been released by the people who also created the emotional lamp (more expensive, 790€) - whose color might change according to information received from the Internet. The big change is that it becomes cheap.

Apart from the object, what's also smart is the service. These guys also provide customization features, billed as a subscription. Their value is not only to provide a gadget - it's also to reformat information stored on the Internet or on mail servers and transmit it via Internet / Wifi to the rabbit. Remind you a business model ? Yes, tone rings are exactly the same for mobile operators. Except that operators have to pay for the access unlike Violet.

Sustainability of these is not guarantied. There are already big players on the area - think about Google. But for a market like France (language and cultural specificity), this might be enough to run a boutique and be bought by France Telecom.

Want to buy this ? Click here

Cheap pet robots: new comers in the Aibo universe ?

Many of you might know the famous Aibo from Sony. It's an artificial (and lovely) dog that our japanese fellows worship and that's also been used by many scientists to develop new kind of artificial intelligence and emulate animal behaviour. It's able to get your emails, play your songs and interact with other Sony's devices.

But getting this lovely pet costs roughly 1200 USD: still wishing to get this for your kids ?

I participated couple of weeks ago in a web based symposium (see my post)

Advanced Pet Products recently released this new toy that will allow you to play with your (how much worse vs. Aibo?) cat. It's only 20USD worth and use lasted AI technologies, embodied in a cheap electronic device that looks like a mouse. Here is the scientific trick behind this gadget:

"The Cat Attack uses the latest research in chaos theory and complex systems to emulate the movements and personality of a cat's favorite prey. This "virtual mouse" technology utilizes algorithms based on a six-dimensional coupled nzmap system modeled on the neural network of a real mouse. "

Whatever Sony is looking for with Aibo, I am convinced that if Aibo is targeting trend setters, early adopters, there is a huge market for toy makers - and that if robotic will explose in next 5 years, it won't be through products that cost more than 50USD.

In any case, Aibo is a wonderful platform for product developers and will help Sony gaining knowledge on customer needs and desires.

Robotics leaves labs for stock markets

IRobot has being valued at up to 115MUSD - many might say that this might be huge compared to the expected benefits. They might be right:

• iRobot is small compared to its Asian competitors: Toyota, Honda, Sony, Mitsubishi are working on robotics since many years and aquired sinigificant know how in this field
• Market opportunity has not been validated / checked up to now - iRobot is positioned mainly in the US and Americans are said to be psychologically reluctant to robots (Terminator syndroma)
• Management is to my knowledge not famous for past achievements neither in the consumer electronics industry (they start with hoovers) not military equipments
• Moreover, they were negative up to now

However, it's worth watching what will follow in next weeks - indeed, iRobot is the first medium sized player to get IPOd in the Robotics industry. This could have significant effects:

• They will now have a sharp focus on profit generation and will have to give the change to their shareholders
• Capitals from IPO will be invested in R&D and will maybe allow for initiatives leading to enhanced customer knowledge
• Following numerous articles on their products worldwide (even in France), they will gain in credibility and will maybe be able to build partnerships with installed players

And from risk perspective (if you decide to be one of the shareholders), iRobot approach to attack 2 markets at same time is quite smart - hoovers are potentially a killer application for robots in the short term for US (see UN study), as elderly assistance is often raised for Asia + military applications should show their efficiency on the ground, even if UAV (drones) have been more successfull up to now.

As in the software industry, iRobot is positioned on a business model where huge fixed costs are generated. However, if it succeeds in making the market grow and competing with the big Ones, it could generate comfortable results (gross margin was already 24% in 2004) in the long term.

Conclusion: many incertainties but one event that could start the booming of the robotics industry

http://www.ipohome.com/marketwatch/iponews2.asp?article=4600

eSymposium on robotics

Couple of weeks, ago, I had my first symposium on line ever. This was organized by eSymposium and gathered mainly Academics but also some people from VCs and financial community.

Industrial robots

Robots have long been used to manufacture cars - for the moment, one robot might be dedicated to specific tasks and much is expected on modularity e.g. the ability to reprogram and reconfigure a robot for new tasks. This would allow companies to better leverage their investments and adapt quickly their workforce.

Much has been said on future "service robots" that will capitalize on human intervention, helping learning how to behave, manufature, etc. Today, more than 80%of all robots are used for cars, but many of them might be used for other sectors in the future.

Honda, Toyota, etc. all spend much on robots R&D - emphasis is given on humanoids. One ambition is to replace workforce for all tasks. Today, robots are used only for painting cars and handling non precise tasks.

Residential robots

Much emphasis on vacuum cleaner robots. But many researchers invest time and energy on location and navigation. This require huge efforts and some might ask "is this worth ?"...

A guy from Sony / AIbo was also there - he emphasized much on the ludic side of their pet. Sony does not target a more limited robot (navigation is a big chunk of the pet's cost) and thinks that economies of scale should help marketing Aibo to a broader audience in the short term.

Artificial intelligence

Many question remain on how to integrate all information in one box - it seems that NASA has launched a program on that (human robot interaction), but participants emphasized the need for "ambiant intelligence" in the short term. Current models do not have the necessary processing power to compute all information and should rely on the environment in the short term to appear as intelligent as possible.

However, everything is still at the prototype stage and one might be amazed by the limitation of current robots. Worth mentioning that most of the robots shown today are controlled by external servers and are rarely completely independant from human...

Some think that studying human / animal interactions should help build up a language for programming human / robots interfaces. Interesting...

Worth / to keep in mind: Philips Research releases a platform called iCat that intends helping researchers understand and enhance human / robots interfaces. Nothing new, except that this is cheaper, nice, simple - but all the big guys make their platform "free" to researchers. Nothing is free in our brave new world: they all would like to have their platform adopted as a standard !