Speaker 0 00:00:00 The robot markets may stagnates. If the interoperability issue is not addressed,
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Hello everyone. And welcome to the robot industry podcast. We're glad you're here and thank you for subscribing. My name is Jim Beretta. I'm your host, and it's my pleasure to have eldest Vanderburg. He is the founder and CEO of Mila robotics here with me today. We're broadcasting from London, Ontario, Canada, and Copenhagen Denmark, all this. Could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself
Speaker 0 00:00:32 And figuring out much gym? Um, but as you said, my name is Alice Swanberg. My background is automotive engineering, but I came into the drone slash robot space in 2017 and I founded Miley in 2019, uh, to get into the, uh, last mile. And now inter logistics of the mobile robots.
Speaker 1 00:00:53 We'll give our audience kind of a little bit of a, kind of, from your view, a little bit about what's happening with, uh, autonomous robots inside of buildings. Cause I assume that's your focus.
Speaker 0 00:01:03 That's correct. Uh, we focus mainly on the warehouse, so free PL uh, where, uh, fulfillment centers, distribution centers, uh, where there's a lot of robots, um, doing different tasks, such as material handling, uh, handling for gifting, uh, inventory scanning. Um, what's happening right now is really interestingly. Uh, the adoption of robotics has increased significantly, especially last year where, uh, the demands for goods being shipped increased and the unfortunately people can, well, a lot of human workers couldn't work in the facilities because of social distancing and as stuff. So the supply, uh, decreased and to cover up that drop in supply or, or human labor, uh, robotics was a perfect answer to that. And now it's on the increased and we're seeing a, um, a huge rise of not just robots for material handling, but different applications. And there's not one manufacturer that can, that is providing one or all robots for all the applications. Uh, so you're seeing a lot of mixed fleets and, um, eh, diverse or heterogeneous cleats.
Speaker 1 00:02:23 And so what made your co when you were thinking about getting into kind of the robot market and, and solving some of the big problems, what were some of your motivations?
Speaker 0 00:02:33 It was the challenge. Um, I would say so our original concept was actually to be a third party, um, courier companies for if you take, say star ship, but we would, um, we would source the robot for the right application, for example, this type of robot for the grocery and this a robot for a takeaway. But we, we had a little difficulty trying to launch it in Denmark because we were a couple of years before the regulations caught up to allowing us to enable this. Um, so we were trying to find a use case and it was, and also, uh, try to find a way to get a permit with a use case, but it was a catch 22 kept going around in circles. Uh, but then what happened was that too, my, uh, team attended a conference and, uh, would answer the robotics center in Denmark, uh, for mobile robots and healthcare.
Speaker 0 00:03:29 And then the, the topic of interoperability between, uh, two robots or two robot brands for a project in hostel really came up and they explained the difficulties of how it was to connect the two, uh, how the project eventually turns it pretty much into the summary of saying there needs to be a universal fleet manager to connect these robots. And we looked at that and we brainstormed a little looked at markets and we visualized how this is a big issue, just from two robots, one from each brand, how's it going to work in huge deployments, say warehouses or manufacturing facilities. And we realized the, uh, the scope of that problem and how it's going to be growing on this. No one is tackling that. And that was what really got us excited of being a little bit of a early mover, but also, uh, being a being once or tackling this problem. Um, I can like look at it as bit of the, uh, JFK we choose to go with the moon. Not because it's easy because it's hard.
Speaker 1 00:04:36 Yeah, yeah. You're right. The interoperability is one of the big challenges when you're putting in autonomous fork trucks, autonomous robots, uh, autonomous, uh, uh, all kinds of autonomy in, in the factory. And so where do you see you fitting in? Do you see you getting involved early or a little bit later, or how do you kind of, uh, uh, see yourself fitting?
Speaker 0 00:05:00 Uh, that's a good question without going into marketing, um, sales kind of pitching, I, I think there's several angles that we can be looking at. Um, one would be if we work with the robot vendors, uh, directly, and we try and provide a platform that, or coding or a system that connects the robots without having to interfere with their current deployments, because obviously you will be quite scared if we say where univer, where a universal fleet management system, but they already have deployed their own fleet management system. That kind of does seem like a competition, but we want to see ourselves as more as a complimentary or supplementary solution that can help their end users utilize robots more effectively. And collectively, as I think there's a, there's an angle that we could see ourselves in being a partner to robot vendors with each other as deployments, um, to help them still be able to deploy robots and sell robots without having to fear that they might be replaced.
Speaker 0 00:06:10 Uh, the other angle is if we would look at solves as a foundation solution or an umbrella solution where we would be that one connector to the, say the warehouse management system, and then we distribute the tasks to the individual AGV feed managers or robots or AMR fleet managers. And then also pick up the location of each of those to be able to inform each other, all your meeting on the blind intersection, you have higher priority. So you go ahead first as there's different angles, uh, the difficult, not showing a graph or a higher hierarchy charts, but it's, um, it's, those two are the main routes that we're looking into. These are, these
Speaker 1 00:06:58 Are kind of the issues, right, where, uh, that, that arise when you're going to diversify your fleet, you come in, maybe what's one small area of your, of your factory or your distribution center and you put in autonomy. And then all of a sudden, someone else comes in and says, Hey, listen, we really have to do this as well. So then it's like, Hey, this is going to be well, what are some of those problems that arise?
Speaker 0 00:07:18 I think one of the common ones that we were experiencing when speaking with the end users, um, is that they've purposely separated environments. Um, so they'd separated these robots for only picking, uh, they separated these robots for only, uh, togging say, in the packing center. Um, so this is very few environments where they're crossing into each other. Um, and even in some environments, they won't even let human operated vehicles in just because they might interfere with a, uh, shelf picking robot. Um, so I mean, that's one of the problems that has occurred is, okay, this is the easiest fix right now. We'll just separate it, but isolates them. Uh, but in reality, you don't want to start isolating because then you're kind of creating barriers and essentially in a way you're going to need a bigger facility to, uh, to have to isolate while in reality, you should be able to have a smaller facility and make it much more streamlined and efficient the way that you transport goods or do your operations.
Speaker 1 00:08:27 Yeah. And you could see that, how that would happen, right? The, you kind of lose your flexibility and automation, all of a sudden when you're using, what are you letting the control systems control your business, right.
Speaker 0 00:08:37 Yeah. I think one really good example is, um, for example, ultra store where, uh, the, the grids are stacked where it's not only just the shell thing, but also the, uh, the picking is all in one grid. Um, so where before you might have to have thousands, you just square a facility. Now you pretty much bring it down to a hundred thousand or like a 10th, like tiny. Um, but I think we could be able to do that with current spilt facilities, with time to onboard a new equipment, just utilize, uh AMRs or ATVs do the same, just make them more efficient and more connected.
Speaker 1 00:09:15 And that's kind of your advantage. Your thought is, Hey, we're going to be the control system for the autonomous fleets. Doesn't really matter to us. We're UBIC like, it doesn't matter what brand it is. We'll just plug it into our system when you bring in a new robot or a new robot style or brand.
Speaker 0 00:09:31 Yeah. We want to see it that way. Um, I gotta use the pitch of saying when you buy a new, say Bluetooth wireless headsets, uh, you want to just be as easy to connect us one to free. You don't want to buy new systems when you a hardware just to connect that system, um, or a new software. Um, so we, we want to be on a various basic level to say we are completely agnostic. Um, we don't really care what the robot is transporting, um, or what the robot application does. We, we generally just care. Does it move? Is it on tracks or is on wheels? Um, and do you need it to be orchestrated?
Speaker 1 00:10:13 So the advantages of a universal fleet management system, from my perspective, being a, um, uh, like a distribution center or a factory, uh, one thing is I probably can save space. Uh, I will save likely organizations and costs. What are some of the other advantages of a universal fleet management system?
Speaker 0 00:10:34 I would say a platform, a unit formality. I'm not pretty sure what the name is actually who, um, but say, if you have three different types of robots, AMRs deployed in the same space, they are different applications. When you're going to have an overview of your entire fleet, you're gonna have to jump back and forth between those fleet management systems, which are exclusive to that brand. Um, well, in reality, it should be the way you should go is that you use one platform that gives you a full overview of your, um, um, of your fleet, such as a localization. Uh, the map, the task, uh, said, uh, to tasks, the analytics, uh, the errors, as well as say, incidents, if a robot encounters an error, you want it to be flagged up from one. So, you know, okay. That's where it is rather than having to switch back and forth, uh, old tab between different, um, applications.
Speaker 0 00:11:32 Um, so it's overview has been very interesting point with users that we've been talking to, that they can see some visibility of their fleets, um, has been one of advantages that they see, but also the connecting them together as such as for a traffic control. That's now you have one system that's actually monitoring and notifying each robots of their locations. And you can even go further by if you are able to pick up a localization of a human operator, truck or forklift, uh, in the yard or within the facility that even the robots can be made aware of those vehicles. So you bring everything more closer together by using a universal feed manager shirt rather than staying with the individual systems.
Speaker 1 00:12:21 And what about data? Is data kind of one of those motivators for, uh, or an advantage to having a universal fleet management system?
Speaker 0 00:12:30 I would say yes, data has, um, a lot of value. Um, we see very, uh, how to say it. Um, we see a lot of interests on the data from the warehouse managers perspective. Uh, so we see how many operations, how many operations has been done. What's the state of the robots. Um, what's the, what's the number of minutes or hours collectively, uh, has the robot been on idol, both on a task and off a task, for example, a very basic data analytics, um, but on a business-minded. And we haven't had a lot of interest of technical data, which does surprise me as an engineer. Uh, but it's, yeah, as I say, that's what the customer wants is what the customer wants. Um, but it's also feeds into a lot of the conversations that we had, that the date of the mentioned analytics, the operations, how it can be fed into another system that has the overall, uh, data secrecy and a full overview of the efficiency and performance of the facility, not just breaking down by verticals, but as an overall, um, we haven't done much work into this yet, but we find it quite exciting to look into.
Speaker 1 00:13:50 Yeah, I suspect you will be, because I think that one of the challenges is, uh, is collecting maintenance out of this or whatever data out of this system versus that system. And so it is really nice to, I think, have those types of overlays. What, what do you kind of see as the future in the autonomous of fleet communication systems?
Speaker 0 00:14:12 I would say a lot of cooperation between companies. Um, I think the days of one service provider, uh, provides all is going away. Obviously I would say this as a startup, but the, um, the reality is that we're becoming such a interconnected industry, uh, the industry 4.0 kind of approach, if you will, um, that we will be working with collaborations with vendors who have other system providers, um, that there'll be a lot more partnerships and cross, uh, deployments or even, uh, joins deployments. Um, we received a lot of this now that people, a lot of companies that we're talking to, they really want to get in bolts because we can fill this one gap that they don't really want to start working on because then they're becoming a company that doesn't really do the main products, but becomes an overall software company so they can focus exclusively.
Speaker 0 00:15:14 Um, and this the same for us, like how do we, uh, how do we create a better integration to these systems? How do we create a better, um, uh, control by utilizing these robots so we can park them for them? So I, I would believe that the automation or robotics world will be a lot of collaborations. Um, I also see that there will be a lot of new developments with crazy ideas coming out. Um, I would probably gamble a lot of AI is decision-making is going to be one of the new hot topics, uh, maybe next year, because now we can start doing machine learning. Um, oh, we can do this operations, but the AI, how to make it even more efficient, I was made more intelligent.
Speaker 1 00:16:05 Yeah, I I'm with you on that. I think it's going to be a very exciting time for autonomy and for, uh, uh, for our, our factories and distribution centers, as they get pressure to do more with less and do more with less space too.
Speaker 0 00:16:17 Hmm. Um, I was make, those might be some other developments in, uh, communications and connectivity, uh, cause latency obviously is a huge factor of deployments. What happens in the robots go down or what happens if you have disconnects? Um, so I think that might be some cool advancements there rather than depending on simple, uh, wifi or 5g, uh, might be so far,
Speaker 1 00:16:44 I forgot to ask you this, but where do you get involved? Do you get involved with, uh, uh, with hardware integrators, with robot companies with end end customers like fi final users? How do you, how do you kind of see yourself getting involved?
Speaker 0 00:16:59 Uh, we're a little bit, like I'm guessing an octopus, we're a connected to all of them. Um, I was trying to remember the name of the, that group from James Bond and was a specter,
Speaker 2 00:17:11 Uh, uh,
Speaker 0 00:17:14 Whereas this a thing is in every pie. Um, yeah, we, we quite a lot have conversations with the vendors and other systems developers. Uh, we have a lot of interactions with other startups, um, both from rope manufacturer position to a, um, warehouse automation, um, system. Um, so we, we talk a lot with them because it kind of goes back to my previous points of collaborations. You could provide one system, but essentially the customer doesn't really want to pay 15 invoices for one, when it can be deployed as a, uh, a collect or as a one package. Um, so I think, yeah, what we are, we talk a lot with the startups, uh, developers, and we also talk to the end users who have deployments. Um, but they don't feel it's enough. Um, there's not much I can actually go into it without revealing too much, but it's, um, it's a lot of learnings of you've used robots, maybe two or three years. Um, it's been working, but you have now realized it could be better. And that's where we have come in and learn what they are really wanting and what we think from a fresh mindset, startup minds, a young mind, uh, what can be solved, how can we make it much better for you?
Speaker 1 00:18:40 Yeah. I think there's some huge advantages to being a startup in this, in this, uh, uh, industry right now, because you get to listen and you get to hear and you get to kind of create, um, like solutions that solve a lot of problems. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you wanted to cover today?
Speaker 0 00:18:58 Um, I don't think so. Not off the top of my head. Um, I think we covered mostly cool topics, main topics. Um,
Speaker 2 00:19:06 How do I get ahold of you?
Speaker 0 00:19:09 Oh, they can either contact us by, uh,
[email protected], um, or visit our websites, Miley robots.com as well, um, or for LinkedIn and to search at Miley robots. Um, yeah, we just let us know, um, either through direct email or for a web format, we will get in contact with you, uh, as soon as we can and, you know, find out your needs or your interests, what you're looking for.
Speaker 1 00:19:40 Well, thank you, Aldis and Mila is spelled M E I L I, our sponsor for this episode is Earhart automation systems, Earhart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing, and project management, delivering world-class custom automation on time and on budget contact. One of their sales engineers to see what Earhart can build for you. And Earhart is spelled E H R H a R D T. I'd like to thank and acknowledge our partner. <inaudible> they're the association for advancing automation. They are the leading trade association in the world for robotics, vision and imaging motion control and motors, and the artificial intelligence technologies visit automate.org toward more. I'd also like to thank our partner painted robot painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO and digital social marketing and can set up and connect CRM and other ERP tools to unify marketing sales and operations, and
[email protected]. And if you'd like to get in touch with us at the robot industry podcast, you could find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening and be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer attraction, industrial marketing, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, Chris Coleman for audio, my partner, Janet, and our partners, a three painted robot and our sponsor Earhart automations <inaudible>.
