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IAM Robotics puts a unique spin on warehouse automation

Before robots get to do the fun stuff, they’re going to be tasked with all of the things humans don’t want to do. It’s a driving tenet of automation — developing robotics and AI designed to replace dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. It’s no surprise, then, that warehouses and fulfillment centers have been major drivers…

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Before robots get to do the fun stuff, they’re going to be tasked with all of the things humans don’t want to do. It’s a driving tenet of automation — developing robotics and AI designed to replace dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. It’s no surprise, then, that warehouses and fulfillment centers have been major drivers in the field.

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10 Comments

10 Comments

  1. BigMoney ETV

    April 12, 2019 at 8:56 pm

    Hey you did awesome on your video

  2. Tony Ray

    April 12, 2019 at 9:27 pm

    You can’t have a nation of people who do nothing but consume who do not work or produce anything. That’s called a parasite. There will be no need for your robots to stock any shelves or do anything at all if nobody is doing anything to earn money. If you just put them on universal basic income then it only proves that it’s all rigged anyway because you’re making money out of nothing. The robot doesn’t have a family and doesn’t need to sustain itself. People do. Stop making the world so easy because you’re making it weak. When it becomes too weak it becomes susceptible. This easy path is causing dependency and making people weak. You’re creating controlling mechanisms that is destroying the human race. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Before long people won’t even have their own thought and will blindly accept whatever the AI tells them to. They won’t even know how to wipe their own ass because some robot will be doing it for them. At some point they will be like infants. What will you do with a bunch of infants who do nothing but consume at that point? Plug them in? Oh wait isn’t that what you’re doing now? You are not supposed to make the Matrix a documentary

    • jeffrey dahmere

      April 13, 2019 at 5:15 am

      +tokyo adventure the question is if people can learn to do that , most people can’t , and there is an other question , is this solution not like trying to kill a fly with an atomic bomb , those robots and technological resources could be use for task that humans can’t do and being more useful for society

    • tokyo adventure

      April 13, 2019 at 5:35 am

      +jeffrey dahmere true, but when industrial progress happened, some people could not adapt it, but some did… just like evolution… you need to evolve… Dinosaurs extincted, because they could not evolve (learn to live in a new environment)…

      People need to evolve to live in a changimg environment…

      Yes, robots could do what the people could not…

    • ForceOfWizardry

      April 21, 2019 at 12:43 am

      +tokyo adventure your argument is pretty shit. The problem is manual labor is the backbone of human society. Retail, fast food, waiter, cashier, manual labor, manufacturing jobs, truck driving etc. If these jobs are all taken away by robots/automation what are majority of people going to do? We can have five million jobs in manual labor/retail without saturation but can we have five million programmers/designers without saturation? Manual labor is where ALL the jobs are at. High skilled jobs will become saturated to shit of its the only jobs available in the future! Facebook employs 2K engineers, google 40K engineers while Walmart/McDonalds combined employs 4 million people!

    • tokyo adventure

      April 21, 2019 at 2:38 am

      +ForceOfWizardry When the industrial progress happened, old jobs disappeared and replaced by new jobs… people need to learb skills and technology… it created new jobs… it’s the same… when robots come, people will need to learn new skills and how to use these robots… for example, robot pilots, robot users, robot designers, robot producers, etc. You can even produce your own robots and let people rent them… it’s how the things in this world… when the printing invented, the people who wrote books disappered, replaced by people who were writers and use printing to make books… so, my argument is not shitty, this is a fact…

  3. ARTiFACT

    April 13, 2019 at 10:14 am

    ВАУУ…. да к нахер он нужен, если чувак потом играет роль этого же куска говна? кусок метали покрытый пластиком который перекладывает всякую херню с одного места в другое уже лет 10 существует на японских заводах, сколько можно этим “удивлять”?

  4. Lee Amra

    April 13, 2019 at 8:00 pm

    ok so what is new here???!!! this idea and technology has been around for decades!

    • Freddy Jones

      April 14, 2019 at 7:44 pm

      The internet,cell phones and computers have been too…However over time things become more refind.This robot can do warehouse work better than previous robots,which is the point

    • Lee Amra

      April 14, 2019 at 11:52 pm

      +Freddy Jones : you did not have to say that .. kind of obvious! but I can see that this robot requires perfectly calibrated environment … if this is correct, then it wouldn’t be very useful.

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Science & Technology

This Robot Hit a 99.6% Success Rate

This robot achieved a 99.6% success rate over an eight-hour test. But when a single failure can stop an entire production line, how reliable do robots actually need to be? Mbodi co-founder Xavier Chi explains why reliability is one of robotics’ biggest real-world challenges on Build Mode. Watch the full episode:

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This robot achieved a 99.6% success rate over an eight-hour test. But when a single failure can stop an entire production line, how reliable do robots actually need to be?

Mbodi co-founder Xavier Chi explains why reliability is one of robotics’ biggest real-world challenges on Build Mode.

Watch the full episode:

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Science & Technology

Robotics Won’t Have a “ChatGPT Moment”

Mbodi co-founder Xavier Chi says there’s a fundamental difference between the two technologies: robotics doesn’t have an internet of data to learn from. Instead, he expects the robotics revolution to happen one real-world deployment at a time. Watch the full episode:

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Mbodi co-founder Xavier Chi says there’s a fundamental difference between the two technologies: robotics doesn’t have an internet of data to learn from.
Instead, he expects the robotics revolution to happen one real-world deployment at a time.

Watch the full episode:

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Science & Technology

How Mbodi Is Solving Robotics’ Scaling Problem with Xavier Chi

Robotics is having an AI boom, but don’t expect it to have a ChatGPT moment. In this episode of Build Mode () , host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Xavier Chi, co-founder of Mbodi, a startup building AI software that lets people teach industrial robots new skills using natural language. Xavier first joined Isabelle on…

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Robotics is having an AI boom, but don’t expect it to have a ChatGPT moment.

In this episode of Build Mode () , host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Xavier Chi, co-founder of Mbodi, a startup building AI software that lets people teach industrial robots new skills using natural language.

Xavier first joined Isabelle on the Startup Battlefield stage, where Mbodi () became a crowd favorite with a live robot demo () . Now, he’s back to talk about what happened after Battlefield and why he believes this generation of AI could finally help robotics companies overcome some of the problems that have historically made them so difficult to scale.

Xavier breaks down why traditional industrial automation still requires so much programming and customization, how Mbodi is working with ABB Robotics to bring its software into factories and warehouses, and why deploying robotics in the physical world creates a very different set of challenges from building traditional software. He also explains why robotics startups have struggled to build scalable software businesses and how generative AI could begin to change that.

They also get into what VCs are looking for in robotics startups, how founders can de-risk an investment before fundraising, whether the excitement around humanoid robots is justified, and why Xavier believes robotics won’t experience a single ChatGPT-like breakthrough. Plus, he explains why reliability is so critical on the factory floor — and how Mbodi recently achieved a 99.6% success rate during an eight-hour test.

They get into:

Why industrial automation is still surprisingly manual

How Mbodi lets people teach robots using natural language

Why labor shortages are driving demand for automation

How winning an ABB Robotics competition led to a major partnership

What Mbodi gained from Startup Battlefield

Why robotics software companies have historically struggled to scale

How generative AI could reduce the need for custom robotics integrations

What VCs want to see before investing in a robotics startup

Why robots don’t necessarily need to look human

Why software could capture more of the value in robotics as hardware gets cheaper

Why robotics won’t have a ChatGPT moment

Why reliability is so important when robots enter production

How Mbodi achieved a 99.6% success rate in an eight-hour test

Chapters:

00:00 — Mbodi’s unforgettable Startup Battlefield demo01:32 — Why industrial automation is still so difficult03:55 — What companies are actually using robots for06:33 — How Mbodi landed its partnership with ABB Robotics08:30 — Are startup competitions worth a founder’s time?10:00 — Why Xavier wanted to compete in Startup Battlefield11:18 — The hardest question Mbodi faced at Battlefield13:04 — Why robotics software has struggled to scale16:35 — Raising venture capital for a robotics startup18:02 — Convincing VCs you’re the right team19:12 — Do robots really need to look human?21:42 — What needs to improve across the robotics stack25:08 — What VCs want from robotics startups28:00 — How to de-risk a robotics investment30:06 — What’s next for Mbodi31:30 — When will robots enter our homes?35:35 — Why robots can’t afford to fail36:01 — Mbodi’s 99.6% reliability test

Subscribe to Build Mode on Apple Podcasts () , Spotify () , or wherever you like to listen () . And watch the full videos on YouTube () . New episodes of Build Mode () drop every Thursday.

Hosted by Isabelle Johannesen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.

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