Collaborative Robotics

The topic on Infinite ML pod today is Collaborative Robots. We have Brad Porter on the show to talk about it. He's the founder and CEO of Collaborative Robotics where they are building robots that will seamlessly blend into our surroundings. They've raised over $140M in funding from Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, and others. He was previously the CTO of Scale AI. Prior to that, he was the VP of Robotics at Amazon. We cover a range of topics including: - Building Blocks in Robotics - Architecture of a Cobot - Safety in Industrial Settings - Sensors in Cobots - Power Consumption and Optimization - Zonal Compute Architecture - AI Models for Task Planning - Reasoning and Human Interaction - Simulation to Real-World Deployment - Multi-Robot Coordination - Technological Breakthroughs in Robotics

I’m excited to share that I’ve joined Collaborative Robotics as the Head of Software & Autonomy. The mission to bring human-capable robotic intelligence to a novel platform is extremely compelling, but what drew me to Cobot was the caliber of the team. Everyone at Cobot is a deeply experienced and collaborative roboticist focused on delivering value to customers. This role is a unique opportunity for me to combine my passion for robotic autonomy and building high performing teams. I did my PhD in high-level controls of robotics manipulation because I was fascinated with the potential for robots to expand human capability. I’m excited to build on my experience leading software teams including the Prime Air drone ground stations, autonomous mobility for Amazon’s Astro robot, and DevOps for consumer devices. We’re growing fast as we continue to ship more robots into the field.  We’re hiring in our Santa Clara and Seattle offices as well as remotely. If you’re interested in joining us please reach out. Open roles are here: https://www.co.bot/team

Excited to be in Seattle for CVPR! Especially fun to have an office to work from! Tagging Peter Martinez. #cobot #cvpr #cvpr2024 #seattle

Super excited to share we’ve opened a Seattle office focused on advancing the state of the art in Foundation Models for Robotics. Thrilled to have Michael Vogelsong on board to lead our work and partnerships in this space. Anyone who’s had the good fortune to work with Michael recognizes he’s consistently been ahead of the curve in applying vector search, human preference reinforcement learning, transformer architecture to problems ranging from Amazon’s shopping experience, to manipulation for robots, to improving cancer treatment protocols to visual LLMs. Equally excited to be working again with Siddhartha Srinivasa and his lab at UW. Sidd is one of the world’s foremost researchers in robotics, consistently producing world-class research that blends fundamental insights into problems like data efficiency with real-world problems like novel manipulation architectures. Robotics is the killer app for AI. Our mission is to be the first to deploy robotic intelligence at scale working in collaboration with humans in every sector from logistics to manufacturing to hospitals, airports and stadiums. Today’s announcement combined with our production deployments puts us well down the path toward that vision.

Update from #SiliconValley‼ I am humbled to join Brad Porter, Steph Tryphonas and Jane Mooney as Vice President of Business and Strategic Sales at Collaborative Robotics. 🤖 Collaborative Robotics (known as Cobot) is a leader in the development of practical collaborative robots, and I am highly enthused to be on THIS team at such a pivotal stage.  We just raised $100 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst, Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures, Lux Capital; plus existing investors like Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Mayo Clinic, Neo, 1984 Ventures, MVP Ventures, and Calibrate Ventures also participated. I look forward to accelerating our growth, forging global strategic partnerships and driving a world-class revenue operation. When considering new opportunities, the most important criteria were the caliber of the leadership team and the opportunity to address unsolved life inefficiencies with robotics and AI.  Under the visionary leadership of CEO Brad Porter (former Amazon VP of Robotics and CTO of Scale AI) and our team of experts with pedigree from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Waymo, etc., it was clear to me that Cobot is the rocket I want to ride.  🚀 I also placed great value in the opportunity to work with Cobot advisor Teresa Carlson, a tech leader with a distinguished career at Amazon, Microsoft, and now at General Catalyst. Her guidance and experience in the public sector will be invaluable as we scale and transform robotics worldwide. Additionally, being able to work at a firm backed by Forbes' 2024 Midas #1 investor (Alfred Lin) gives me great confidence that we are poised for growth. A bit about the product: Our cobots are designed to work alongside humans, improving productivity and reducing operational costs across sectors, including manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail/e-commerce, and more. I believe we are poised to revolutionize robotics and material movement. With a focus on trustworthiness, adaptability, and real-world usefulness, Cobot is committed to driving positive change for a better world and which is why I entered the field of collaborative robotics in 2015.  I am certain we will be successful in this mission as Brad, Jane and Jon Battles can claim responsibility/accountability for 40% of the total robotic units deployed in industry over the past 5 years (with a 90% implementation success rate).  Thank you to Sarah Rathbun, Corinne (Moran) Bechtle, Leah V., Tiffany Mendoza and Jack Erdozain and the entire Cobot team for a first-class recruitment and onboarding experience. If you're looking for advanced robotic solutions or want to just chat about the industry, please reach out. Let's explore how we can collaborate and drive innovation together. Now, let's get after it! #CollaborativeRobotics #Innovation #IndustrialAutomation #SalesLeadership #AI

Generalized bimanual manipulation will be a big unlock for robotics. We have a great team of interns this summer exploring the boundaries of generalization and self-learning alongside our AI team. Week 1, Bruce Wang has his Aloha rig up and running. Welcome Bruce, Micah R., Chris Wei Xun Lai, Visweswaran Baskaran!

Excited to share we went live in production with our cobot last week! We’re moving industrial carts in a transload facility outside of Seattle. Last week we moved more than 25,000lbs of goods and over 20km of travel safely in and around humans. Excited for the partnership with you and your team Erez A.! Nothing quite as fun as being up and running!

Today is Cobot’s two year anniversary!  Two years in and there’s so much to say, so many people to thank and so much to be thankful for.  Our employees, our customers, our investors, our families… to all of these groups, please know we work every day to deliver on what we say we will do.  Integrity is really all we have and all that matters. One of our cultural credos is “Embrace the Odyssey: The startup journey is an odyssey filled with challenges, victories, and unexpected surprises. We foster an environment that encourages curiosity, resilience, and growth.”  This has proven true over and over and over again these past two years. We embrace it all! We’ve set out to change the world through robotics, bringing truly trustworthy collaborative robots into the world around us.  We can see the path to this vision now.  The combination of pragmatic but highly capable hardware and increasingly capable AI will unlock an explosion of robots similar to what we see in Star Wars.  We need those robots of the future to be as loyal and trustworthy as C3PO and as clever as R2D2 and a tad bit more useful than both of them. Two years is really only the very beginning of an enterprise with a huge ambition. We aim to be the world’s most trusted robotics partner.  We’re excited to have earned that trust from our current customers.  We want to be your trusted robotics partner too. Please reach out.  We’re excited to share our perspective on how the world will change and how to embrace that change in your organizations.    (Oh and we're hiring!)

Bison's founding partner, Ben Hemani, discussed the future of robotics, new portfolio company Collaborative Robotics, and funding A.I. startups with Fox Business Network. Catch the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gsebjTEy

Had a great time chatting with Nathan Beckord, CEO of FounderSuite and host of the “How I Raised It” podcast discussing the fundraising climate and how we approached raising >$140M in the past 22 months. Fundraising credit often accrues to the founder and that makes some sense as the founder is out front when pitching. But beyond maybe the seed round, every founder is pitching the company that the team is building and the progress we have made together. Thanks to the Collaborative Robotics team for their dedication to the mission of bringing a new class of trustworthy, adaptable and useful cobots to the market. Special shoutout to Steph Tryphonas, who has been my right-hand business partner in all of our fundraising. As well as Emil Michael, the most brilliant fundraiser and fundraising advisor in the startup ecosystem. Nathan, Steph and Emil are all worth following! #fundraising #podcast #cobot https://lnkd.in/gQesGHRi