Executive Interview with Tom Galluzzo, Founder & CEO of IAM Robotics

Tom Galluzzo, Founder & CEO of IAM Robotics, joins us to explain how vital robotics is in supply chain– especially as ecommerce continues increasing.

Danny:

Alright, so let’s jump into today’s Executive Series interview. I have Mr. Tom Galluzzo, who is the founder and CEO of IAM Robotics. Tom, thank you so much for joining me today.

Tom:

Thanks Danny really appreciate it.

Danny:

So I’m excited to jump in and into this episode and learn more about you and about IAM Robotics. So for those who aren’t familiar with IAM Robotics. What do you guys do? I have a venture I have a guess but–

Tom:

Yeah, so we do autonomous robots for warehousing. And our robots are designed. We have the only robots that are what we call autonomous mobile manipulation robots. The robots are able to drive around the warehouse, and they can actually find and grasp things. So they travel around the warehouse just like a person would when you’re walking around trying to find items to pick when people order things for ecommerce and so forth. The robot actually goes to the individual location, grabs an item, picks it off the shelf. And that’s amazing basically IAM Robotics and that’s so.

Danny:

Awesome. So we’re going to jump into all the… there’s a huge growth obviously right now, huge talk about automation, digital transformation, all that good stuff. And we’ll get into that here a little bit but before we jump into that I want to learn a little bit more about Tom. I want to learn more about you and your backgrounds. How you got in this industry. Take me back take me take me way back.

Tom:

Way back.

Danny:

How did you–

Tom:

Way back.

Danny:

How did you get into this?

Tom:

So I started out my career as an aerospace engineer. I went to school at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Danny:

Oh, nice.

Tom:

I thought I wanted to go planes and rockets and stuff like that. I did my first internship at Boeing. And that was a great experience, but I got to realize that these aerospace projects are really huge. And when I was at school I got a chance to work on some club robotic stuff and we thought we were going to do this drones. We called them UAB back in the day. But we were too afraid of flying and crashing a drone. So we got into these robots that would actually just drive around the ground, basically like miniature, driverless cars. And I just fell in love with the challenge and difficulty of the problem and how much you had to use robotics, AI, computer vision, all that stuff.

So that set my career on a course for robotics. And I went to Grad School in robotics where I got to really work on some amazing, really amazing stuff. Back in 2004 and 2005 there was this really huge competition in robotics called the DARPA Grand Challenge. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it but it’s basically it was the first big step into driverless cars. And so my school was one of the schools participating. I was at University of Florida at the time and we actually decided to enter the DARPA Grand Challenge. So it was a really big milestone event in robotics in general. And that was very exciting. And then I ultimately went to Carnegie Mellon University after school to work on more projects for DARPA and then just fell in love with really hard challenging product problems in robotics.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So you are from- good story, but what I heard is that you basically you’re a rocket scientist. Is that is that what I heard?

Tom:

I really wanted to do rocket science. Yes it was everyone when we were graduating at the time everyone bought these t-shirts that said, “Well yes, actually I am a rocket scientist,” so–

Danny:

That’s awesome. See, that, I would almost want to… I don’t have the brain for that at all. I would fail- but just for that, that’s just a great story, a great thing that you could totally use, so… But all jokes, all kidding aside. Tell me, walk me through a little bit of the… you founding IAM Robotics. What was sort of the impetus for that?

Tom:

Yeah it’s a good question. So at the time this is going back around 2010 I was on a project at Carnegie Mellon working on a project for DARPA as I mentioned. This project was another kind of competition but it was called ARMS. And it stood for autonomous robotic manipulation software. So what we were doing at the time was DARPA. I’m not sure if you’re familiar but is kind of like the R&D group of the Department of Defense.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

And they built five identical humanoid robots and they gave them to various teams across the country. And they said here’s the hardware. We want you guys to build the software that basically brings these robots to life. So they took arms and hands and they bolted them all together. But the robots didn’t do anything without the software.

Danny:

Right.

Tom:

So our job at Carnegie Mellon was how do you build a robot software that enables a robot to look around on a table, find items, pick them up, move them around completely by itself. And we got pretty good at that. We found that we could actually get robots to see things, grab things, plan how to move them around, pick them up and place them. And so I’m just naturally entrepreneurial. And I started thinking about where in industry are people just effectively being used as just object movers go to a spot, I find an object, I pick it up and I move it. And that led us really quickly to ecommerce and piece picking. And so we started talking with some business owners and they love the idea of robots driving around their warehouses, finding items on shelves, kind of been an industry dream for the past four years, to take AGV robots and put an arm on top and have the robot actually do the picking. So that’s the challenge that we went after. And it’s been incredibly fun and difficult and exciting. And we’ve become now the first company in history to actually deploy mobile manipulation robots that can drive around and find things and grasp them by themselves.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So alright, obviously an entrepreneurial spirit is there in order to do this. Not just anybody goes and starts a company and whatnot. Did you have that background before? I mean- by background, I mean: were you predisposed to that through growing up? Or was that a foreign thing to you or something that you were very familiar with?

Tom:

Entrepreneurship?

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

Yeah I did. I’ve always had that kind of drive for whatever reason to go off and do my own thing. When I was 10 years old I started a business doing magic shows for kids birthday parties. And my mom would help hand out flyers and stuff and get me gigs to go do magic and actually bought my first Nintendo from the from the money that I–

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Tom:

Yeah it was basically my motivation. I wanted to get a Nintendo so I had to start a company. But yeah, and then my dad, he actually studies as a pharmacist and he started his own pharmacy when he was 50 years old. And so he kind of had that spirit. And it inspired me to branch out and do my own things as well.

Danny:

That’s awesome. And the reason why I asked that is because I think that it’s… it’s interesting when we talk to a lot of different founders about what the story is and it’s funny of some, we’re predisposed and had that and others didn’t I know that in my case, because I guess I would consider myself an entrepreneur- because I am. Yeah, I didn’t have that career. It’s funny kind of funny where you mentioned as a kid that you did magic. I just didn’t realize this till later that I had that, I had that entrepreneurial spirit. And I actually did kind of make some money but probably not as gracefully as you did as a magician. I realized later that I became a broker or maybe a distributor. And what I would do is… This is horrible, this is so bad. I would… ice cream, I had the job of collecting the money for the ice cream for lunch when I was probably in third grade.

Tom:

Yeah.

Danny:

And so I figured out, I knew that every day there was an average about seven kids that would get ice cream. So I just basically printed off a new- or figured out a new ice cream chart or whatever and just added like 25 cents or whatever it was to each price. And then I knew that anyway it was as long as I collected enough, I can get some ice cream out of that and nobody would ever be none the wiser. Fast forward, I ended up getting my degree in accounting. Now I understand why, so- but I don’t practice it because I realized that was probably a little fraudulent. So anyways, that was too much about me. So, but no, I think it’s– it’s super interesting. So, alright… walk me through the moment I think every entrepreneur has the… they have an idea. And not just one- you have tons. But specifically IAM robotics you had this thing. And it wasn’t just a fly by night decision that you made to say hey I’m going to go start this company. It’s something that you probably thought of and kind of maybe stewed and it took some time to kind of develop. Walk me through that moment in your mind when you said I’m going to do this.

Tom:

Yeah there was probably multiple moments where I said I’m going to do the same because as this evolved the definition of what this is.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

When we started out, we were having… I was on that DARPA project. We were having a lot of difficulties with the robot arm that we were using at the time and we thought, there’s got to be– we’ve got to be able to make a better robot arm than this. And so we started looking at potentially doing that and we were excited about that opportunity. And we thought maybe the challenge isn’t so much building the arm but it’s what you can do with the hardware. And so my first job actually in high school was a stock clerk so I worked at a grocery store basically stocking shelves. And I thought, well, given the success of how that we have now with these robots and how we’re able to get them to pick up things and move them around…

So one of the challenges in grocery stores is what they call shelf-facing. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with what this process is but at the end of the night basically, as people pick things off the shelf stock clerks go through and they actually replenish the shelf. They bring everything to the front of the shelf, just make it look good, right? And it’s all, it’s a hard job and it’s a boring job and you can create a whole night’s work for someone just going down an aisle and just, disturbing things. So it’s really kind of an interesting time and I thought, well, we can get a robot just to go up and down a shelf and just pull things to the front, make the shelf look nice. And then we started thinking, is that really where the big opportunity is and right around that time is when Kiva systems was acquired by Amazon for almost a billion dollars. Or three quarters of a billion dollar wow. Maybe there’s opportunities in ecommerce. And so we started talking with some ecommerce and distribution center folks. And they said, “Yeah.” Picking is- piece picking, when you buy something online, is when someone has to go into a warehouse and grab it off the shelf. It’s largely manual, I think 80% manual.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

And so there’s a huge need for that. And that’s really when I was at CMU. I said, “Okay, well, that’s the big problem we’re going to go after. We definitely can do it.” And I made that decision to kind of leave, quit my job and invest money in IAM robotics.

Danny:

Okay so I’m going to drill into that a little bit more: you made that decision, “I’ll quit my job and go in there.” What… what was that? There’s a moment in your mind: you say, “Alright, I’m going to do this.” Not just like, “Yeah I think I should or whatever.” It’s like, “No I’m going to do it. And I’ll plant my flag. And by doing that I’m quitting my job. And I’m going to drive away with my things. And I’m going to drive off into the horizon saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m driving into.’ ” What was that for you?

Tom:

It’s a good question. It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember. I know that one of the things that we were really surprised by was we started looking at patents in the space. We thought this has got to be something that someone out there there was nothing. There was… the patent space was wide open. No one had patented robots driving around a distribution center picking up something off the shelf. And I just couldn’t believe that, and I thought, we have to do this. We have to. We have a design, we have an idea. And so I wrote the provisional patent and I handed it to our lawyer. And it was like this 10 page patent. They’re like, “You didn’t write this, a lawyer wrote this.” I’m like, “No, I just kind of copied the style based on all the other patents out there and just kind of used the same language.” And they were like, “Wow.” So yeah, we filed that. And we actually did patent robots either picking something off of the shelf or putting something on a shelf. And the design of how you get a robot to do that and the methodology and so forth. So that was a really big inspiration. I thought, “We’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot and go do that now, because someone’s going to claim that quickly.”

Danny:

Yeah, that’s awesome. So jumping forward a little bit that’s obviously you did that you made that decision. You’re going there and you mentioned and I’m blanking on how long ago? When did you decide to do that?

Tom:

So I left CMU in 2013.

Danny:

Okay.

Tom:

And we actually moved the company originally to do that robot arm thing in 2012. And then it really pivoted into the piece picking thing in 2013, 2014.

Danny:

Okay so we’re going to look at six, seven years.

Tom:

Yeah.

Danny:

Yeah. Into this right now. Yeah, so what is… looking back on all this, was there- and I know we kind of talked about the moments and whatnot a little bit there- was there anybody in particular, or it could be an event that really struck you, that really influenced you? Maybe, I don’t know if there’s a mentor or a coach or a teacher or a friend or a parent or or some event or something that really helped to define who you are today, and the career that you’re in, in this space? Is there something that jumps out?

Tom:

Yeah. I think I’ve been very lucky to have a ton of great teachers in my life. And all of those teachers really inspired me to do great things. And I could think of specific math teachers and I went to grad school. My professor at University of Florida Dr. Carl Crane was very inspiring. I think the biggest one was really my dad. Going off and at a later stage in his career deciding to start his own business, that was really inspiring me. And so that that particular event was where I thought, “Yeah, I mean if you want to go do something like this, you should just go do it at all costs, right?” I think there’s too much of a fear of kind of taking that leap. And seeing others in my family do it was a huge inspiration. So I think that that’s probably the biggest thing for me. And then I’m just continually inspired by other large, visionary CEOs out there. There’s so many. And the one that really for me is like the quintessential visionary founder or CEO is actually Walt Disney. So I watch I’m a huge Disney fan and everything they do and to me he was the one guy that could just really make the impossible or just take this ultimate creative vision and make it reality. So that’s the most inspiring for me.

Danny:

So really from his Imagineering capabilities to be able to–

Tom:

Oh, Imagineering is super inspiring right? Yeah absolutely. I think it’s almost, it’s harder to become an Imagineer- Disney imagineer- than just to become a NASA astronaut or something like that. Or it was at one point, but it’s one of the coveted I think jobs in engineering.

Danny:

I think, yeah, I think it’s super interesting. Actually there’s kind of on that level a little bit at least with Walt Disney’s philosophy. There’s a great book on customer experience and success. So it pulls in some of the imaginary elements called be our guests. I don’t know if you’ve read it or heard of it but it’s on my list of things to do. So a list of books to read. which keeps getting bigger and bigger. But I just think it’s… yeah I think that’s awesome about his philosophy, what… what he was able to do. Yeah, just the vision and how not just from a, “I’m going to imagine something and engineer it,” but then also just what they’ve been able to do from just the whole customer, that whole experience like the whole thing- he really was able to capture the whole ecosystem, not just the product. It’s also developing a product in an engaging way that is actually a need for a customer. Which I think a lot of times from a product development standpoint we can get really, you can get really lost in the weeds, like, “Oh this is super cool.” We can do all these just because you can doesn’t mean you should isn’t addressable market so–

Tom:

You’re right, yeah, no absolutely. Yeah and I think that there’s something really special about folks that can kind of reinvent old markets like that. If you think about- I was just watching recently: before Walt Disney, theme parks were really just carnivals and were thought of as these kind of, not like this really rich immersive experience they were thought of more like a… a place where you go and get… get money swindled away from you or something like that. And people would ask him, “Well why do you want to make a theme park or ground? It’s like, “Well my park’s not going to be like that. It’s going to be this whole different world that you go into.” And getting people to make that leap is just huge, and it’s just unbelievable how some people could do that.

Danny:

Yeah So, I think that… kind of transitioning and pivoting here a little bit… As we talked about getting into industry challenges and kind of where we are obviously though, the whole Coronavirus thing is ushering in a whole new… a whole huge paradigm shift. And it’s almost like, it’s either… you have two speeds: it’s either exponential, or it’s dead. One of the two. But it’s changes are very slow. Maybe not dead, but very slow for a multitude of reasons. It’s I believe this is an opportunity that you’re going to see a lot of reinvention. A lot of Imagineering, a lot of reinventing something that was old, largely out of necessity. But I think there’s also… it’s kind of we’re hitting a little bit of a reset button. Do you share that idea?

Tom:

Of Coronavirus really changing the world and getting people to rethink things?

Danny:

Yeah in terms of… I’m thinking like industry or verticals or just even solutions inside… it’s being pushed to take an old industry or an old methodology and a way to do it. And now it’s flipped upside down on its head, saying, “Let’s do it differently.”

Tom:

Totally. I think there’s several aspects to this that make it a thing that’s going to compound or accelerate the rate of innovation and automation and so forth. I think you’ve got to kind of look at it from the supply side pressures demand side pressures right so from the supply side you have these retailers and so forth that they are facing this crisis and ecommerce workers and so forth became essential because people needed their goods delivered to them.

Danny:

Right.

Tom:

They’re buying things online. Amazon actually hit kind of max capacity so that we would not… they wouldn’t fulfill orders for anything that weren’t critical need items and so forth. Because they had that limited bandwidth. And I think what that says to me is, on the supply side people realized the importance of ecommerce buy online, pick up in-store, you really need to make sure that the supply chain is more robust to these types of pandemics or big catastrophic events. That might happen because it’s so essential for the economy. They were already looking very seriously at automation because lack of availability of labor and all kinds of different pressures, market pressures and so forth. But now it’s like, “Oh we have to go automate this stuff. Because if we don’t have this next time around, we’re not going to be prepared.”

Danny:

Right.

Tom:

And then on the demand side I think you have a whole lot of people that have been effectively forced into buying groceries online or items online that they never would have done before. And so now that they’ve kind of had a taste of what it’s like to get those goods online, they’re not going to… a large percentage of them are going to keep doing that.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

And that’s met the demand accelerator spike in a way that hadn’t before. So I think it’s definitely something.

Danny:

Yeah, I think it’s super interesting. We’re going to see in kind of a weird way maybe. I’m obviously… what happened with the virus is pretty crazy and pretty traumatic, so to speak, to say it lightly.

Tom:

Yeah.

Danny:

But the thing that I actually… the silver lining that honestly gives me a little bit of excitement is, there’s companies right now that are innovating that are making things happen that otherwise wouldn’t have happened because of this. And I right now things are pretty cruddy for multiple from health to not just the Academy but people’s mental health, people’s physical health, certainly in the economy job all that stuff, right. But it’s kind of interesting, from the 2008 recession type perspective. There was all kinds of innovation that happened as a result of that. Maybe WeWork is a really bad example, but that–

Tom:

They get mixed up.

Danny:

But yeah gig economy certainly was a huge and I think- well for sure one of those areas, the gig economy is being even more accelerated now because of that, so I just think that we’re going to see a lot more innovation and I’m pretty interested to see what that’s going to look like. What is somebody working on in their basement or that piece of technology they’ve been working on for the last six months of the last year that nobody knew about or was kind of whatever boom and then this whole other industry part pop up like you were mentioning. I already think in retail, for example, I mean, you were talking about some of the stuff there. There was already a whole movement towards and a shift toward there these are micro distribution and having a mixture of I may be going into the grocery store there’s going to be a robot next week, because the robots picking an order that’s going out for somebody that for curbside or whatever which I was already happening, but it’s so I don’t know it’s interesting. It’s exciting to me that is–

Tom:

It’s very exciting. And I totally agree and these kinds of things act as a catalyst for accelerating those changes. It’s interesting because we… you’re touching on a number of things that have to kind of tap into the macro scale changes of what’s really happening around this whole shift. With retail in particular it’s really interesting. I think JC Penney announced just recently that they’re going to be closing stores and so forth. So massive retailers really changed… the landscape is changing so fast. And one of the things that we’ve realized as we’ve started to explore, “Well what is exactly the macro trend that’s happening, and how do you quantify it?” It’s really interesting because if you think about people shopping in the United States every year, for instance, people do– customers do 40 billion hours a year of shopping. And that’s effectively going to the grocery store mostly going to the grocery stores and grocery shopping once a week a couple hours. And if you add all that up all that labor that it takes that the customers are basically doing for free their own last mile fulfillment.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

If you will by doing their own shopping. 40 billion hours is the equivalent of like 20 million full time jobs. And so what happens if you were to move all of our buying goods online that 40 billion hours? So that’s 20 million full time jobs. It just cannot be replaced.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

There isn’t enough unemployment in the country to be able to and the vast number of people that are looking for a job. They’re not interested in going to do this kind of shopping and ecommerce work.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

So what that means is that as things continue to move online, you have to automate it because there just isn’t enough people in the workforce.

Danny:

The workforce, yeah. That’s an interesting perspective and that makes a lot of sense. I mean obviously you’ve seen a big spike. And all the Uber Eats, the Instacart, you know. All that and you’re seeing that shift: shift of dollars, shift of jobs. Yeah, it’s, you’re 100% right, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.

Tom:

Yeah absolutely. And so yeah those pressures are only going to be accelerated to hell by Coronavirus.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

And we think that that is… that’s an opportunity for making our supply chains more robust and taking people out of harm’s way. In a lot of ways. It’s unfair to folks that work in supply chain that they have to go and put themselves at risk. And warehouses are effectively… could be dangerous places for spreading disease because you have hundreds of people walking around a distribution center. If one of them is sick it’s very easy to spread that to other neighboring employees.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

So why should they be the ones that have to bear this additional risk? So the rest of us can stay at home and get our goods delivered to us.

Danny:

Yeah exactly. That’s one small example of some of the change, so I’m curious. With your company, your organization, and just for the audience, everyone who’s listening or watching, this is unscripted, I didn’t send you this question. So I’m asking you an unscripted question. I’m just curious on this. We’re talking about changes and everything with this. What changes are you going to be implementing? Or do you think you might be implementing in your organization as a result of this long term?

Tom:

Are there any? Maybe there aren’t any but no long term I think we’re more serious now about partnerships. And so we realized that our robots are part of a larger ecosystem. And we realized that for a long time, but now this is the right time to implement a lot of these partnerships with folks that are working on additional adjacent things that make a lot of sense to some merging with our solutions. I was just on the phone for example with an augmented reality company today. And they’re using augmented reality for guiding the picking process in the warehouse. We think that’s a really good thing that can be interlaced if you will with autonomous robots because the same kind of technologies that are used to guide augmented reality in a warehouse things like QR codes and barcodes and stuff like that same kinds of things that we use for robots to guide those picking process. So for us it’s about being able to work with additional companies like that to bring bigger broader solutions to market and to our customer base and to compound the return on investment for prospective customers.

Danny:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So one of my last, kind of a couple questions here. Industry challenges: obviously, there’s a lot and we just talked about a lot of them. We talked about innovation and different things going on as we begin to emerge. And things start getting back to what they call, I don’t know, ‘the new normal’ or whatever we’re going to get back to, or we’re going to go to, is… We were chatting before that things are starting to open up a little bit. And we’ll release this video here in a few weeks, I’m sure things are going to change a little bit now. But what are some of the… some of the challenges that you foresee as we start kind of rolling back or getting back and then in the short term and then maybe even in the long term?

Tom:

Yeah I think in the short term it’s going to be… there’s going to be a lot of challenges around integration putting all kinds of different technologies and part pieces of the– solve the big problem. So how do you integrate all that stuff together?

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

And I know that there’s companies emerging that are building kind of middleware platforms to allow multiple industrial components plugged in to ecosystems and warehouses and factories and so forth. I think that that’s a near term challenge. A long term challenge, I think that there’s going to be a continued shift of, as I mentioned, as you move more of those consumer purchases online, how do you get closer to consumers and so forth? I think there’s a big opportunity opening up with brick and mortar retailers, closing stores, that’s a lot of real estate.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

Available.

Danny:

Yeah.

Tom:

Somebody’s going to do something very interesting with it I think. And so I think that that’s an exciting long-term opportunity or challenge or change or getting something out of that infrastructure that’s been built and not just letting it go by the wayside.

Danny:

Yeah, no, I agree. There’s a big story on… with all the malls and whatnot. That was a big issue before obviously now it’s but yeah I agree somebody is going to do something very interesting like that. And so we kind of sit and wait. Maybe you have the idea? I don’t know, but but–

Tom:

We’ll see.

Danny:

Yeah, we’ll see. Well Tom, listen, I really appreciate the time, just kind of chatting getting to know you a little bit more, kind of weaving the conversations around COVID, learning more about IAM robotics. Obviously I see there’s a lot of need for your solutions that you guys have, especially as we’re coming out of this thing. So for those who would like to learn more about you, what’s the best way to learn more?

Tom:

Yeah, absolutely. We’re at the big trade shows just like you guys are– MODEX and ProMat every year, would love to meet people in person there. You can always learn more by going to our website: www.iamrobotics.com, and we’re always… you can fill out forms and email us directly there.

Danny:

Alright, excellent. Tom, thank you so much for the time.

Tom:

Yeah thanks, Danny, I really appreciate it. Great conversation.

Danny:

Likewise. Alright, so another great episode of IndustrialSage. This is our Executive Series with Tom Galluzzo who’s the founder and CEO of IAM robotics. Great conversation, the topic of the day again being a lot of shift in what we’re… what we think, what we think might happen, what we’re seeing happen relative to COVID and just the industry in general.

So that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for watching. If you’re listening on any of the podcasts stations, hey, leave a review, we’d love it. If you’re not on our email list. Go to industrialsage.com and subscribe. There’s multiple opportunities for you to be able to do that. And because why do you want to do that? Because you’re missing out on a lot of other content like our manufacturing news. We have other series, like the… we have other expert series that are coming out- Obviously this Executive Series- we have other executive series that will be coming out in specific verticals. So, a lot going on there, you don’t want to miss out. Go subscribe today, and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got for you. See you next week.

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