Vecna Robotics: Daniel Theobald

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Daniel Theobold, CEO of Vecna Robotics discusses how the industrial world has been increasing in automation for years– and how COVID-19 has accelerated that.

 

 

Danny:

Welcome to today’s IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. Today, I have the founder and CEO of Vecna Robotics, Daniel Theobald here. He’s also the president and co-founder of MassRobotics. Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Daniel:

My pleasure.

Danny:

All right, did I get everything right? We’ll just start with that, all good, perfect pronunciations.

Daniel:

Perfect.

Danny:

All right, cool.

Daniel:

Yeah, you nailed it.

Danny:

So for those who aren’t familiar with Vecna, Vecna Robotics and MassRobotics, could you just give me sort of high level, like, who you guys are, what you do?

Daniel:

Yeah, so Vecna Robotics is the global leader for automated bulk handling. Think, moving pallets around, or large, what are called, non-conveyable items: kayaks, tires, carpets, those kinds of things that we ship more and more today than we have in the past because of E-commerce. And MassRobotics is an industry association focused on trying to bring innovators, customers, and investors together in effective ways to move the industry forward. Also focusing a lot on practical interoperability standards, it’s got a great coworking space to the Boston area. The whole goal is to help move the robotics industry as a whole forward.

Danny:

Oh, that’s awesome, what’s obviously– it’s a huge space right now and obviously because of all the COVID situation, I think is propelling it a little bit more than… it already was high, and it was already moving. But I think even now it’s, you know, it’s being launched even forward that much faster. But before we get into all that, I want to get to know you a little bit, you know, and for our audience to get to know you a little bit more. So, take me back, like how, like, you know, how did you get into robotics? So was that like, did you go to, you know, did you get an undergrad in technology, hey, this is what I want to do. Like, tell me that story, how did you get into this?

Daniel:

Yeah, well that’s a, it’s a, been a long journey. I was very fortunate to grow up in Silicon Valley, in San Jose. And attended probably one of the first elementary schools in the world that had a computer lab. We had Commodore PET computers and Apple, believe it or not. And so I was just, yeah, it was very fortunate to have access to computers, in formative years. And you know, my father was very hands on, so I helped him with construction. I fixed cars, motorcycles, you know, built my own computers, built a number of robotics projects. And was very fortunate to get chosen as the top computer science student in all of California, and got to go to Lawrence Livermore National Lab and work on the Cray Computer, which was the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time, so that was a really exciting opportunity. Yeah, then when I went on to MIT and essentially built my own degree program around robotics because they didn’t have a robotics specific degree program. And you know, have just really focused on this idea of using automation, using robotics to empower humanity.

Danny:

That’s awesome, all right. So you know, obviously from a very young age, you were introduced to computers and technology. That’s pretty cool to be able to, you have gone to that elementary school and have access to that at that point. So how, you know, what was your, you know, coming out of college and stuff like, what was your first job?

Daniel:

Well, my first job actually was working for a… and I think about– I had a lot of first jobs during college, programming, mostly software engineering focused. I did work for a couple of different robotics in machine vision companies. But that experience actually was really formative to me because it helped me to understand that the world was not quite ready for what I would call modern mobile robotics systems yet. Even at that time there was a lot of hype, a lot of excitement around robotics. But you know, not just, not a whole lot of practical applications, right. The technology wasn’t cost effective yet. The industry wasn’t excited about polling trying to pull robots. And so it helped me to understand that timing was everything.

So I actually started working out mostly on the software side of things, and developed a number of major accounts with different healthcare systems, deploying patient check in technology. Basically think of everything you see in the travel industry right now. You can buy your tickets online, you can check in online, you can check in at a kiosk at the airport. We did all that, but we did it for the healthcare industry. But during that whole time, we were investing heavily in robotics R&D research. And the approach we took was to pursue government grants, because that was one of the best ways to get robotics, research money at the time. And over the years we pulled in over $30 million in government research grants. But unlike a lot of companies, we were very disciplined about making sure that those research grants supported our product roadmap that got us to where we wanted to be.

And we had a very strong thesis, that we weren’t going to try and scale up. We weren’t going to try and push robots into the industry until we felt like the time was right. And so we tried to be very disciplined about that, where, you know, a lot of organizations where we’re trying to, we’re spending a lot of investor money trying to push robots onto the industry that wasn’t ready for it yet. We were instead, you know, really focusing on solving some of the hardest problems in automation and robotics. And I’m building up a great team and you know, waiting for the time to be right to start to scale. So, this idea of separation between hardware and software for instance, is an idea that really enabled the computer industry, ultimately the cell phone industry to move forward. We’re not there yet with the robotics industry, but that’s where we need to get.

So the same idea, the ability to find and run apps from different suppliers, on hardware from different suppliers. The ability for a customer to buy robots from company A and have them plug and play with robots from company B. Share maps if appropriate, share charging infrastructure if appropriate. Share safety configurations. You know, you shouldn’t have to create traffic patterns and no-go zones and all of that, for every new type of robot you bring in the facility. And, things like a task allocation, a robot, you should be able to just bring a new robot to your facility, connect it to the network, register it with the warehouse management system, let’s say. And then it should be able to receive tasks from that warehouse management system, report back its location, report back on progress of tasks. So it’s the idea of just building all this common infrastructure, so that automation suppliers can focus on specific applications rather than reinventing the wheel every time.

Danny:

That makes sense, and I imagine from an onboarding standpoint and from an operating standpoint that it’s, you know, yeah. Instead of learning everyone’s wheel, a million times, don’t know what this one does differently in that way. Yeah, it’s just, it’s a more of a, in layman’s terms, plug and play.

Daniel:

Yeah, customers, exactly right. Customers don’t want to have to be roboticists. They want to be able to buy a product that solves their problem and it should be quick and easy. So, you know, I think we’ll eventually get to the point where you can buy a robot and you can turn it on and it’ll start working for you. Right now the industry has got a bit of work to do before we get there.

Danny:

Yeah I can imagine, but it sounds like an exciting time.

Daniel:

Yeah, no, I think this is the infancy of the true mobile robotics, intelligent robotics industry. So, I think a lot of what we do now, is going to have a big impact on the future. I mean, you think of, you know, a lot of the standards, the internet protocol, for example, was something that was designed decades ago in a research project at, at DARPA. And, you know, it has evolved, but it is the way we communicate on the internet, and I think a lot of what we do right now is going to have that same level of impact for the robotics industry for, for decades to come.

Danny:

Oh, absolutely, I agree a hundred percent. Actually, as you’re talking relative to the current situation with COVID and everything and the industry, you know, we’re coming out of MODEX, you know, pre-MODEX, post-MODEX, pre-COVID, post-COVID. You know, what are the big changes that you’re seeing in the industry relative to robotics? Like in the short term and then also in the long term because of the coronavirus.

Daniel:

Yeah, it has certainly shaken everything up. Clearly the enthusiasm for automation has only increased, we see this across the board. The message that you can be more resilient, more flexible, safer with appropriate use of automation I think is really resonating with people. There are– no questions– some slowdowns, for some customers. You know, a number of our customers have just moved full steam ahead and you know do this all as essential because they need it to get their work done. Others have had to focus more on coronavirus compliance with a lot of the new laws, you know. And just trying to stay on top of things and have us, you know temporarily pause some of their adoption efforts. But you know, I think it makes it clear to the world how important our supply chain is. You know, when people are in the grocery store fighting over toilet paper. You realize that you know, getting stuff where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, is fundamental to the operation of our society– civil operation of our society. So, you know, making sure that we’ve got a supply chain that can withstand these kinds of disruptions, I think is in everybody’s best interests.

So, yeah, the bottom line is that, when you use technology appropriately, you can take advantage of the best qualities of humans and robots, you know, humans and automation and really achieved not only, you know the best throughput, that you can get, but you can do it in a way that, is now more flexible than ever. It used to be that, you know, you would design a distribution facility or a warehouse, and it would operate largely unchanged from the way you designed it for 10 plus years. That world is gone now, that world no longer exists. Whether, you know, whether your distribution facility, a warehouse, a manufacturing facility, the only thing you can count on now is change, and change is happening more rapidly than ever. So you have to have automation technology that can roll with the punches.

You know, you can’t have a system that took two years to install and is so specific to a particular way of doing things that when things change you, you’ve lost that investment. You know, one example, FedEx had a number of our robots deployed in their facility. They thought that facility was going to continue to do the same thing for quite a while, but, you know, something happened and things changed and they needed to reallocate that facility to different tasks. Well, unlike traditional sort of fixed automation that would just have to be scrapped or left unused, they were able to put our robots on a truck and take them to a new facility, to get them back to work. So the investment they’re making in automation now, that flexibility, that ability to adapt and change, is really important.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel:

Because those dollars are precious, and if you spend them on something that you never see the return on invest, you know, you never have the time to see the return on investment, then you know, not a good investment.

Danny:

Yeah, that’s a little bit of a problem as you mentioned, you know, change and having that flexibility is sort of the name of the game. And that’s something, you know, the only thing that we consistently, you know, that the only thing that’s going to be consistent is change, right. We know that’s especially now and so the ability to be able to adapt to that, is critical, absolutely critical.

Daniel:

Yeah, that’s right, and so I think one of the things that people don’t necessarily appreciate is how amazing humans are. You know, Elon Musk famously tweeted about this, when he was talking about you know, their effort on lights out automation. You know, they wanted to essentially build a hundred percent automated factory. And you know, he tweeted, he said, I messed up. I tried to over automate, humans are underrated. And, I think this is the key to success is understanding that point. That doesn’t mean automation isn’t incredibly valuable and necessary, it is, but you have to find the right balance. And you know, lights out automation, in most cases a hundred percent lights out doesn’t make sense. It’s not going to achieve that flexibility, that robustness, to exceptions that you need in the real world. So the best scenario is when you can achieve superior results through orchestrating humans and robots most effectively to work together, why? Because humans are great at exception handling, something unexpected happens. Human beings are amazing problem solvers, they’re creative, they’re innovative.

You know, we often don’t give people enough credit, you think, oh, that’s just a worker. No, that worker has figured out how to keep this line running. You know, and it’s interesting, I’ve visited numerous facilities. And you know, generally first I’ll meet with the executives and you know, the executives will say, “Oh, well this is how our system runs, this is how we operate. You know, these are the paths through which the material flows.” And then you go to the floor of the facility and you start talking to the workers like, “Oh, I thought they said, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ ” They say, “Oh, no, no, no, we don’t do it that way. That’s not the way it actually happens, that doesn’t work. We actually do it this way.” So there tends to be this disconnect between what, you know, executives in these industrial companies think is happening on the floor and what’s actually happening on the floor. And yes, that’s a problem, but it also is an indication of how amazing human beings are, that they, you know, something’s going on and it’s not working, they just immediately adapt, they create local solutions to these problems. You don’t want to give that up, and you want to manage it effectively. But you don’t want to lose that, or you end up in a place like Elon Musk was, with having a failed project.

We believe that automation in some sense of, so last decade, this is really the decade for effective orchestration. And what we mean by that is you’ve got to use the best resource. You’ve got to have the right resource in the right place at the right time. And maybe that’s a piece of automation, maybe that’s a piece of manually operated equipment. Maybe that’s a human being, a supervisor who is great at dealing with certain types of problems. But it’s all about making sure that you are, using the most effective tool at the right time. So what our pivotal orchestration engine does, is it monitors where everybody, all the equipment, all the people, all the robots are in real time within a facility, it knows where they are. It knows what tasks they are working on. The workers and the robots, et cetera, are constantly reporting back to pivotal on their progress, on their tasks or completion of tasks.

And then pivotal is doing this very dynamic, real time, optimization of, okay, I know this needs to get done. What is the next best move I can make to ensure that this facility gets all of its work done, as quickly as possible, with the minimum number of resources necessary. And you know, a robot going down an aisle and a case is, has fallen off a pallet and is blocking the aisle. You know, the robot can try and deal with that, but maybe it can’t, you know, maybe it was a case of Coke and there’s Coke sprayed all over the place now. The orchestration engine is able to realize that there’s a problem and very quickly dispatch the right agent to solve that problem. And in this case, it’s probably a human being, not a robot, right. We’re not going to have a robot that’s got a mop, that can go in and wipe things down in a dynamic situation like that anytime soon. So it says, “Hey, we’ve got a problem,” I’m going to send a human being in to deal with this problem. And the benefit of this is that it allows humans to do what they’re good at. It makes their jobs more enjoyable because they’re not being treated like robots. They’re doing interesting work that’s really varied. We’re supercharging their productivity because they’re able to get a lot more work done with one person than they used to be. And it’s better for everybody.

One of the things that’s really interesting given the COVID situation is, we had the mandatory you know, at least strongly recommended social distancing, in these facilities. Well, how do you implement that effectively? Well, one of the great things about pivotal, you know, the idea of a real time orchestration is you can just give it constraints. You can say, okay, yep, you’ve got to get all the work done, but now I’m going to make it a little harder for you, pivot. I’m going to tell you that people can’t be within six feet of each other. Okay, now go out and solve that problem. And so, it’s kind of like a grandmaster chess player. It’s sitting up there, it’s looking at what needs to get done. It’s looking at the pieces it’s got on the board to get that work done. And it’s always forward simulating, trying to figure out which next move gets it the best chance of success.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. No, I– it’s interesting, I like your, your analogy about, you know, just being able to, and we’ll call it real time problem solve or adjust to make that flexibility. And in a really like simplified version it reminded me of that movie. There’s a Disney movie- I’ve got a few young kids and they love watching this movie, A Bug’s Life. And there’s this scene where they’re working and you know, they’re moving the grain from one place to another and there’s a branch that just falls like right in the middle of the path. And then they all start freaking out, oh, there is a branch, what do we do? What do we do? You know and they say, just go around. And, you know, it’s just kind of funny. It reminded me of that explanation. And to your point, you don’t have to have that adaptability.

Daniel:

Yeah, exactly, right, to the level where we’ve gone to certain customers who are really excited about buying robots and after doing some analysis, some simulation, it’s clear that they don’t need robots. They just need better orchestration of their existing resources. Right, that, and that’s really, I think the key point is automation is great, but automation is not going to be good at every job. There are some jobs that just have too much variability and humans are great at that. And if you can orchestrate the humans’ work effectively, you can really make the job more enjoyable too. So it’s a win win for everybody.

Danny:

Here’s some great points because obviously robotics and automation, you know, it gets a knock from the workforce development side and a lot of people are freaked out thinking, oh my gosh, this, you know, robots and you know, all this autonomy is going to come in and take over our jobs. I actually was on a webinar a couple of days ago and there was a staff that they came in and they were talking about how saying that robotics, I think in particular would only take up like maybe, actually solve like 10% of the problem. Whereas, you know, they’re not going to come in and have a huge dramatic effect to that point where it’s going to completely replace people. Is it going to replace some people? Sure, you know, and those people could probably be, you know, shifted into other areas, but it’s not this massive takeover.

Daniel:

Yeah, and you know, whenever people talk about robots replacing jobs, they’re thinking from a point of a zero sum game. It’s not a zero sum game. They’re thinking there’s this much work to do, and if robots start doing some percentage of this much work, then there’s that much less work for humans to do, and therefore humans are going to be without jobs. And it just doesn’t work that way. The robots are really, automation is really just supercharging human productivity so that our humans can get more done than ever before. Everything else is kind of outside of this equation. You know, how the economy is doing, demand for goods, international competition. Those are all the factors that determine how effective a particular business is. Businesses need to be able to compete, they need to be able to provide goods and services at a competitive price. That’s what automation allows them to do. And if they do it effectively, their business thrives. They grow, they employ more people, and those people are more productive than they ever were before.

I mean, back in the 1930s, 70% of the U.S population worked in agriculture, right. It took 70% of us to grow the food for us to survive. And you could say that automation, the tractor, replaced, made a bunch of people lose their jobs in agriculture. But that’s probably not, it’s probably not the appropriate analysis of that situation. The tractor made human workers far, far more productive, giving us the opportunity as the human race to do more than we ever could before. If 70% of our population was still working on growing our food and then, you know, what does that leave 30% for you know, banking and healthcare and these other things, would we have gotten to the moon? That’s a great question, you know, having resources to dream, to do art, to educate the world, these are all things made possible. Precisely because technology allows us to be more efficient as a species.

Danny:

Exactly, and it creates, it brings in competition. And maybe you’re competing for that job or, or you know, you think about, you know, two competing businesses, but well, you know, if you’re competing for resources, what does that do? That creates innovation. And we’re seeing that right now, we’re seeing that right now with the whole coronavirus thing is that, okay, we have a series of challenges, you know, one way is looking at these challenges and other ways, looking at other opportunities. And because of these constraints that we have, there is a lot more visibility and clarity in other areas you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see. And therefore new industries are born, new companies. So I think that’s yeah, I love that analogy.

Daniel:

Yeah, it allows us to move forward, you know, and really spend more time on the things that we value. And, you know, on the whole you know, there’s probably too much, Netflix going on these days and that kind of, you know, the fact that we have a choice in how we spend our time now is a gift given to us by technology.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely, so maybe

Daniel:

We’re not out in the fields.

Danny:

I’m sorry, go ahead.

Daniel:

I was just saying yeah, we’re not out in the fields, you know, 15 hours a day and, you know, sitting behind a wash tub of dirty clothes all day long. That used to be the plight of humanity.

Danny:

Exactly, I’ve just got to get food on the table and here is how we’re going to do that. So, in, to kind of wrap on that note, I’m curious, and I’ll ask this, what is your, you know, with the whole quarantine and everything, what has your daily routine been like? What are there new habits that you’ve picked up?

Daniel:

Yeah, well, I’m fortunate, I’m actually out here, at our family farm in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, you know, I get up on east coast time and have a full day of meetings on the phone and video conferencing and then come, you know, late afternoon I’m actually out working on the farm and planting and growing and, but yeah, it is interesting, you know, Vecna Robotics has been fortunate that we are able to continue to grow and thrive through this period. And we know that is uncommon, so we don’t take it for granted. We’re very grateful for that. But you know, we’ve continued to hire, through this crisis, and it’s interesting that I was reflecting the other day that we have, 10 to 15 new people on the team who I’ve never met, face to face. So, you know, this idea of working remotely has a lot of benefits, but you know, it does lack some of the social, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. You know it just lacks some of the fun interactions that we would normally have, I think in an office place. You know, getting to sit down with people, not getting to, you know, break bread with people, that kind of stuff. So we were definitely missing that.

Danny:

It’s certainly missed. It will be a joyful party when this is all over, able to come back together again on that. But, well Daniel, I really appreciate the time that you’ve spent with me in IndustrialSage today. And just, you know, kind of talking about the industry changes, COVID, what you guys are doing, and you know, hypothesizing on what might come about of this in the future.

Daniel:

Well, and we are also continuing to deploy technology right through this. So we have been able to deploy our robots to customers without setting foot in their facilities. So, certainly if your customers are looking to expand their workforce and introduce some automation. And we can do that, without, traveling.

Danny:

Absolutely, we go, you go check out vecnarobotics.com. Is that, correct?

Daniel:

Correct, yep.

Danny:

All right.

Daniel:

Thank you very much.

Danny:

Excellent, no problem. Well, thank you for joining me today and we’ll do it again sometime

Daniel:

Yeah, absolutely, I look forward to it.

Danny:

All right, okay, well thank you for watching or listening to this episode that we had with, Daniel Theobald from Vecna Robotics. Really interesting, huge, a lot of big story we’re hearing right now. Thanks to all the COVID stuff. We’re hearing about it before the automation and the robotics, but certainly now, that has been accelerated. So if you’d like to check out more about them, you can go visit their website vecnarobotics.com. And we have some interviews, stuff in them, from MODEX and ProMat you can certainly check that off the site as well. So that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for watching or listening and I will catch you next week with another episode of IndustrialSage.

 

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