Robotics is a field that seemingly hasn’t really delivered on its promises. Sure, plenty of robot arms and other robotic solutions in logistics and industrial spaces, but what about the rest… including, Consumer?! Navigation: Intro (01:34) B2B Robotics Consumer Robotics Looking Ahead Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro Welcome to Episode 64 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we will discuss robotics. Our new overlords are coming. Robotics is a field that seemingly hasn’t really delivered on its promise. Sure, plenty of robot arms and other robotic solutions are out there. But somehow it feels like we should be actually already controlled and dominated by our robotic overlords. Today, we will discuss B2B Robotics, their growth, adoption, industry use cases, the drivers of innovation in that space, players in that space, challenges. We will also talk about consumer robotics, talking about also robots that have gone mainstream, personal and social robots, emerging trends that are happening in the home, market dynamics. Then we’ll look ahead to the future of B2B, the future of consumer, and the societal and workforce impact, which obviously is going to be the last but not the least topic that we will address today. Let’s start with B2B. B2B Robotics. Bertrand Schmitt Yes, thank you, Nuno. It’s certainly a growing space. As you say, it might not feel like it, but at the end of the day, we already have quite a few millions robots in B2B. It’s estimated that the stock of your operational robots, industrial robots, is around 4.28 million units in 2023, which was a 10% increase year-on-year. If we look at China, and I think we talk about the fact that we are installing around 400,000 robots a year. China alone by itself has been installing 276,000 units in 2023. China is definitely a leader in that space and that might come as a surprise to some. That number, to put it into perspective, is five times higher than the second place, Japan. Nuno Goncalves Pedro I think China has recognized a long time ago that because of its population composition, that they’re going to have a lack of people to produce, to be in factories, et cetera, so they actually have been adopting robots now for many, many years. I think now, you were joking with me just before we recorded this, but now that we’re having trade tariffs and all that stuff, it might make sense to have a broad discussion around why robotics in an industrial environment are key. Bertrand Schmitt Definitely. I think that actually I was surprised to hear that, when we’re making this recording on April 15, I was surprised to hear in the Trump administration, quite a lot of very positive support regarding AI and robotics. It looks like part of the plan is already acknowledging this is not like the old-school jobs that we are going to bring back. It would be a different type of jobs. There will be way more robotics than before. Obviously, more robotics is possible thanks to the latest advanced in AI. There is some consensus that, yeah, it’s not just bring back the old jobs as they were, but it would be a new type of jobs. It would be a new type of industrial revolution and acknowledgment that robotics are here to make all of this not just more efficient, but even possible. Because it’s clear that if you take the US, for instance, there is actually not so much unemployment in the US. For an industrial revolution to happen, we need to bring our new friends, the robots. Nuno Goncalves Pedro If we go through the use cases where we see robots coming in, obviously manufacturing, automotive and electronics will probably come to people’s mind. A lot of robot arms are being used there. More than serve your classic solutions, et cetera. But it’s a lot of robot arms using on specific pieces on the line, a lot of pieces of robotics that we don’t recognize necessarily as robotics, but are actually roboticized systems used, in particular on automotive, again, in consumer electronics. Basically, it has to do with the fact that there’s a tremendous lack of… One, there’s going to be, at some point, the limitation on how fast you can produce, so that’s very obvious. Two, there’s actually even lack of people that can do some of these roles. Some of it is actually high precision work. In most of these environments, there are environments where humans need to coexist with the robots that are on the line, and that has led to the creation of this movement of cobots. Robots that are able to basically interact with the environment that they’re in, obviously be very careful around safety procedures that they don’t kill a human being that is around them. There’s been a lot of innovation around that using computer vision, using sensors, and using a variety of other elements around that. That cobot segment in particular is growing quite rapidly, estimated to be 14.7 billion market by 2031. But obviously, we all recognize manufacturing, there’s robots being used, so no shocks there. One of the largest markets by far. Bertrand Schmitt Definitely. Collaborative robots are a recent phenomenon made possible thanks to better activation of motors, electric motors possible thanks to new AI, vision AI. There is a lot of the latest technologies that makes this possible versus your big, bulky, robotic arms that used to be encaged. It’s not to kill anyone. Yeah, it’s a change from bigger to smaller. I mean, we can even say step by step, and we’ll talk more about it, but more humanlike in terms of how it looks. Here we have around 113,000 professional services’ robot for transportation and logistics sold in 2023 alone. That was a big increase of 35% year-on-year. I think we have all seen how Amazon is doing with some robots in their warehouse, logistics systems. What some might not have seen is as impressive in China. If you look at the efficiency of some of these warehouse in China, it can be very impressive. I don’t think they’re holding anything back actually in China. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, definitely not. There’s a lot of amazing things happening on the logistics side. Obviously, Amazon bought one of the early granddaddies, which was Kiva Systems, which was bought by Amazon, and now it’s Amazon Robotics. There’s a lot of stuff happening on the lines, autonomous mobile robots for the transport of materials, robot extruders, mobile picking robots, automated forklifts, and a bunch of other things. It’s also an environment where I know Amazon is obviously using a lot of co-robots, and there’s a lot of people around as well still. Very interesting environment. I’d say probably Amazon has been the company on the logistics side that innovated the most, the earliest, certainly in the US. I still remember the Ocado ads where they use robots. In the UK, there’s always been a lot of this debate whether that was actually very useful, very impactful in Ocado’s operations or not. Also, retailer there. But definitely, I think we would recognize probably Amazon has been one of the players that has innovated the most in this space for a couple of decades now. Bertrand Schmitt Yes, it’s definitely I mean, that has been key for them to grow, to expand their network. As you know, I mean, Amazon has a lot of people working in their warehouse, but they were still able to manage to grow so fast while not growing proportionally the number of people working there. It’s thanks to advance in robotics. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Indeed. One other area, obviously, of use has been in the healthcare and medical space, and particularly in high precision need environments. Surgical robots like Intuitive Surgical, their Da Vinci system, does provide the precision that you need for procedures that require minimally invasive play with high precision. Basically, things that you can’t really… The human hand actually might not be precise enough for it, even if you’re an amazing surgeon. Beyond that, medical robots have grown quite significantly. It’s grown to the thousands units, which might not seem a lot compared to the hundreds of thousands that Bertrand, you were just mentioning. But obviously this is a much more specialized space, less mainstream in some ways of robotics. A lot of these devices are incredibly expensive, and then we’ve seen a lot of innovation around that. There’s obviously the old-school players that are on the market, Johnson & Johnson’s of the world, Medtronic, that have also entered that arena, the surgical robot arena. Then there’s a bunch of other applications for robots that I would highlight. Hospitality or hospital delivery robots, so robots in hospitals that do deliveries. Rehabilitation exoskeletons, which is really, really cool. If you guys remember Aliens, the second exoskeleton that she has and stuff like that. Obviously this is for recovery for people that are rehabilitating. It supports them in their rehabilitation without having necessarily to have a human there all the time doing that. Then obviously diagnostic robots. A lot of players in this space, CMR surgical as well, Ethon, Exobionics, Cyberdine. There’s a bunch of things happening right now that are quite cool. Bertrand Schmitt Yeah. If you look at rehabilitation robots, the growth was pretty amazing at more t
