Bossa Nova Robotics Introduces Two New Products

I know nothing about robotic toys. Nevertheless I was invited to a presentation two days ago at Carnegie Mellon's Robotic Institute where Bossa Nova Robotics, a CMU spin-off, presented their new Prime-8 and Penbo toys. The toys took many years and product iterations to complete because Bossa Nova's surveys indicated a $99 or lower price point and transforming the intricate technology (hardware and software) to match that price was the primary reason for the delay. Both toys are mobile, interactive, vocal, and have a repertoire of games and remote control options. Penbo, a fuzzy penguin-like robot, sings, dances, cuddles and communicates with her baby, which she carries in a front compartment. Prime-8 is more vigorous with loud sounds age-appropriate to his 8-12 year old comrades (he even farts!).

What attracted me to the Bossa Nova launch was the science and the process -- but what sells toys is entirely different. The science in this case was CMU and DARPA's RHex, a six legged robot capable of multi-terrain exploration and patterned after the locomotion of the cockroach where the legs adapt to various terrains faster than the neural system.

Bossa Nova Concepts has taken CMU's multi-million dollar HRex research and developed it into a bi-pedal product (instead of the original six legs) and reduced costs to a toy's pricing ($99 retail). They raised funds from Innovation Works, Wellspring Worldwide, Eckhart Seamons and The Technology Collaborative and took four years of intensive research to come to market with their first products. Describing the technology and process were Bossa Nova's CEO Martin Hitch and co-founder Sarjoun Skaff. Bossa Nova provided the engineering and design and Jetta Manufacturing, a Chinese rep based in Hong Kong, is providing the product and packaging.

But that's where science and value engineering leave the scene and kid psychology, focus groups, and marketing enter. The toy industry is changing dramatically with video games leading the way and expanding expectations. Although robotic toys are holding their own, they too have to continuously find "cool" from the research labs and entrepreneurs that take technology and transition it to the streets and into households, literally letting people experience robotic technology at an affordable price.

Bossa Nova attempted to build a single toy utilizing their new bi-pedal locomotion technology only to find that boys and girls had different expectations and needs. Younger girls (4-6) wanted a touchy-feely interactive device that was cuddly and appealing; slightly older boys (8-12) wanted their toys to be interactive, action-oriented and physical. Girls didn't care about remote control or autonomous operation; boys did. Thus Bossa Nova had to come up with two different products and two unique marketing schemes with the sole common denominator of the bi-pedal locomotion system.

I researched the net for similar or competing robotic toys and found the Robini-i to be somewhat similar in audience and capabilities to the $99 Prime-8. The Robini-i is already selling in the international market for $249 and the South African company Robonica will have products in US stores this September; Prime-8 will be available July 25th from QVC and shortly thereafter online from Amazon. Femisapien, a WowWee product, $59-$99, has worldwide market penetration and appears comparable but not as fuzzy and cute as Penbo which will sell for $69 and be available from QVC mid-August and online from Amazon about the same time.

We were encouraged to have a hands-on experience with Prime-8 and Penbo during the presentation. A man and his son (who appeared to be about 7 years old) walked through and stopped to watch us play. The boy watched and smiled. Somebody offered him the remote controller for one of the Prime-8s and he began to explore and play. He smiled and experimented and periodically looked back at his father with a happy look and then continued playing. At some point, without apparent signals from his father, after about 15 minutes of play, he handed the controller back to an adult, grabbed his father's hand and they walked away. From my minimal experience with toys and kids, he passed the 2-minute test with flying colors!

Preceding the product demo was an intro to CMU's Robotics Institute by Director Matt Mason and a tour of one of CMU's three research labs which house over 500 researchers. In the one we were at on the main campus (the lab was recovering from recent flood damage), were CMU and Astrobiotic's entry into Google's $20 million Lunar X Challenge, a robotic apple and orange picker, and various other works in progress. CMU's Robotics Institute is a spin-off from CMU's Computer Sciences Department which, coincidentally and adjacent to the Robotics Institute, was completing construction of a sparkling new complex to be named the Bill Gates Computer Science Center.

From a business point of view, entering the toy industry is a tough proposition; not for the weak at heart. I've read that the robotic toy segment of the toy industry is anticipated to grow to over $11 billion by 2015 with the majority of sales driven by children's robots. Further, robot toys are what most kids wish for (especially boys). Nevertheless, it's a tough task to get shelf space particularly in a down and price-driven market. Johan Poolman, President of competing robotic toy start-up Robonica says: "Technology has played one of the biggest roles in altering the play patterns of children – technology products that don’t address the modern infatuation with anything PC and online will be unlikely to have the staying power to break through the short term fad barrier." Harder still is the process of transforming expensive robotic technology into colorful, interactive and low-cost devices that children want to play with. Bossa Nova Robotics seems poised to meet those challenges with their two new products and their ambitious plans for the future.

Dow turns positive for '09; NASDAQ up 18%; US Robo-Stox™ trail

Robo-Stox™, a compilation of worldwide publically traded stocks in the robotics industry and presented on The Robot Report, clearly show that America is losing the race in robotics except in two areas: medical/surgical and defense/security.

Robotics stocks in Korea, Japan and Europe are outperforming American stocks and the NASDAQ.

Why?

PPIP’s. Public, Private Investment Partnerships focused on robotic growth where it will do the most good.

Korea is two years into an aggressive plan to invest $1 billion in order to be #1 in the worldwide robotics industry by 2018 and they’re spending $100 million each year in that pursuit.

Japan has many PPIPs focused on enabling the elderly to remain independent as long as possible thereby reducing healthcare cost and providing a better life for its citizens with robotics.

Europe has many PPIPs. One, which just concluded, focused on the robotic needs of small and medium-sized manufacturers. Yet when American educators from the major US tech universities presented their roadmap for our robotics industry before Congress last month, their suggestions for manufacturing had already been researched and reflected in the EU’s SME Robot Initiative. We are that far behind!

Worse, to date there’s been just one story about the presentation before Congress, and not a single published quote on the subject from any of the members of the Robotics Caucus. It's an interesting and illuminating read and I invite you download the PDF file and read it.

America desperately needs public/private partnerships to foster it's robotics industry or this budding business will go the way of the original American robot manufacturer: from Detroit to Japan.

Details and links for all the information above can be found in The Robot Report, a free website dedicated to tracking the business of robotics. The founder of a leading robotics company said about The Robot Report: “...your site has been a mainstay of my presentations. It shows next-generation robotics as ‘a real business and not just a big playground.’”

Conversation with Chris

I had an informative conversation with a recent LinkedIn acquaintance that I'd like to share. It began in answer to his question:

Just curious, your profile says, "Because I believe that robotics is the next big thing..." What do you envision, in terms of "next big thing"?

I responded:

Robotics, in all its interdisciplinary forms, will be everywhere very soon. In our homes, cars and appliances. At the hospital and in the workplace. Protecting us from afar. It's happening fast but not like in the movies. In America and Europe, it'll be in advanced embedded interactive systems like adaptive cruise control that now handles lane boundaries and will soon handle trucks and busses unmanned in controlled lanes; or in Kiva style warehouses (no fixed shelving; few pick & pack people; heavy computer control); or in smaller and smaller interactive medical devices.

In Japan and Korea, more humanoid-looking robots will be used for personal and factory assistants and we'll all be using exoskeletons of one type or another such as the ones being used for Japan's seniors to help them garden or Honda's factory workers who squat, climb and lift.

It's truly amazing and just beginning to get into stride. Worldwide defense spending is paying for the R&D and smart guys like Rodney Brooks are commercializing that R&D.

My interest is in finding either (or both) a basket of stocks of robotic companies that will rise in price or helping fund a select few companies in need of management, marketing and money to grow.

What do you think?

And then came this wide-ranging informative response that I found particularly illuminating:

When I was younger, I had the good fortune to witness/participate in this same dynamic in the computer industry, WANG Laboratories, Atex, Computervision (located in the same building that iRobot is in, Bedford now) and Sun Microsystems. 

While I didn't realize what I was part of and witnessing at the time; it was a technological Darwinism that was unfolding with incremental technical breakthroughs that were being applied, somewhat haphazardly, achieving momentary commercial success and were quickly "leapfrogged" by a new company down the street, often with the same players. Although none of those companies and many others like them are around today, the relatively mature and stable PC we're both using has individual components (soft and hard), developed by those players and their technological derivatives; owing to materials and other advances. 

Now I'm older, I realize what I was seeing then but adding a bit of experience and now seeing that in the case of robotics and many other advances; that relatively short period of success that the individual computer players enjoyed will be even shorter for this field. This leapfrog speed is and will be much faster. But, I'm reminded that to this day there are significant numbers of DEC and WANG servers still running vast arrays of applications, many for the government and others for many of the large institutions. The installed user base as it were. 

So, what might this mean for robotics? If we look at the practical application of robotics, it will be interdisciplinary as you say and much of it is taking place in all the salient ways you mentioned.  While all of those are viable and happening, it's the medical applications that most come to mind as immediate and timely candidates. Rodney Brooks is a great salesman but while his automated floor sweeping and gutter cleaning toys capture the public imagination, its his investment in things like MAKO Surgical that really demonstrate the potential for robotics (hardware-wise). 

Take any high skilled operation in medicine, dentistry, exams, etc. study it carefully and you'll find that the operation can be mechanically fixtured and simplified via robotics which will do what they are truly best suited for, namely precision and repeatability. So envision going into a dentist for a root canal and instead of having an overpaid technician pounding in your mouth, using the same primitive tools that I use to file down a piece of aluminum; instead you sit and bite down on a universal, sterilized fixture that is ergonomically designed, and an "operator" is sitting in front of you, precisely directing the root canal "robot" via joystick/camera and or pre-canned software routines to effect all the physical force and position functions. Maybe it's mobile and can go to the patient in some remote areas, "affordable root canals for all." Perhaps this highly paid operator is making $ 60/hour so a root canal costs $600 rather than $ 2000. Further, it's repeatable every time. So the quality, repeatability, low cost, accessibility, etc. all combine as customer needs are met. Other examples exist and they will be found wherever we have a highly skilled operator operating high value equipment or carrying a highly specialized body of knowledge in his head. These are the applications that one might fund, (this paragraph long business plan, may or may not be the best example of it) but a good paradigm is to think of a skilled machinist versus a CNC milling machine. We've got very few skilled machinists today but we machine parts faster, cheaper and with much higher quality and repeatability. 

So envision an installed user base of this machine across the country, in some percentage of dental clinics and pretty soon we can quantify the commercial value. That’s not to negate the commercial potential of mundane consumer applications mind you. 

I think you're on the right track about the trend, as long as you focus on the substance and not the Hollywood hype, (terminator looking robots or the Kabuki Dancing dolls the Japanese trot out every year or so). The applications are happening all around us and from my perspective, one of the reasons were not moving faster is because some of the guys driving these things are coming out of University laboratories and feel it's important that they re-invent every nut and bolt, lacking practical experience in integration; rather than focusing on that one unique thing that they have developed, (perhaps a faster algorithm, a smaller/cheaper feedback device, wireless power transmission, etc. etc.). 

If you visit Heartland Robotics website and go into the manufacturers’ survey link; you’ll see by the questions on that potential end user survey that the graduate student who put that question list together has never been within a mile of a factory, let alone understand what the factory floor may or may not need from a transformational concept like universal robotics. We sort of have solutions looking for problems in that regard. 

To be fair to the academics and apologizing for my industrial bias here, there is some significant IP that will/is being developed as fresh eyes accidentally reinvent the “bolt”, material advances, etc. but it is taking the applications much longer to be developed. There's quite a bit of empowering technology already abundantly and cheaply available but it's not being applied, I think. That's not to say this isn't exciting stuff both technically and commercially, but much of it is still at the parlor trick stage as they agonize over things that have long ago been solved in industry. 

Sorry for the long reply but this is an area I'm interested and have a bit of experience in and maybe I can help you and your group identify/evaluate some of these opportunities from a technology perspective or add value in other ways. 

I'm not sure that I can help with the stock picks approach as I've long ago stopped riding up and down elevators in the Hancock Building listening to shills and I'm confident your grapevine is better than mine but if you're evaluating funding requests, perhaps I can add my two cents worth on the technology/assessment vs. what’s already available or maybe even evaluate the viability of what's proposed from a technical/architectural perspective. 

What do you think?