Latest / Automated with Brian Heater / Ali Kashani on Last Mile Delivery, Robotics at Scale, and the Future of Autonomous Delivery

Transcript

Ali Kashani on Last Mile Delivery, Robotics at Scale, and the Future of Autonomous Delivery · Automated with Brian Heater

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, it costs about$10 to move something from Chinatown to your door, but$2 to move it from China to your door.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: In the last mile, our productivity gain is 2x rather than 5,000x over the last couple hundred years.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's a really big difference.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: If our robots bring the cost of last mile from 10 bucks to a dollar, I am willing to bet everything I own on the fact that it's gonna create many, many more jobs that it's going to destroy.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And these are gonna be better jobs.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are back with another fantastic episode this week as we catch up with Serve Robotics CEO Ali Kishani.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I actually didn't do a lot of robotic delivery coverage on my last gig that ended up falling on our transportation editors.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't get a chance to speak with Ali until the company announced it was buying Diligent Robotics earlier this year.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was a great chat that we did for the automated newsletter.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we figured that we would go ahead and record a full podcast episode.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been enjoying the show, it would mean a lot to us if you would please like and subscribe.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Please check out that weekly newsletter over at automated.fm.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, please enjoy this conversation with Ali Kushani.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We talk a lot about what's coming up next in automation on the show, but if you really want to see the future in motion, you've got to be there in person.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Automate 2026 is where the world's leading innovators, builders, and dreamers come together to show what's possible.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Robots, AI, machine vision, motion control, you name it, all automation under one roof.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Register for free at automateshow.com to join us in Chicago June 22nd through the 25th.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you there.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So according to a 2018 Wired story, at the time it was written, you had never seen Star Wars.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is that still the case?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember who wrote, I'm sure you remember, but I completely understand that potentially being a point of pride because I do have those things.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Star Wars isn't one of them, but I do have those things in my life where it's like, yeah, I'm just putting my foot down for perhaps arbitrary reasons.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a good reason for not seeing Star Wars?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You just haven't seen it, so why do it now?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a point of pride.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's more like I'm surprised how surprised people are.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that becomes a conversation topic sometimes.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I recently, I think a couple of weeks ago, made a bet about some internal um milestone.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the team has made me promise that if we hit that milestone, I'm gonna watch it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that may happen finally.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, um, the reason why it comes up a lot in our respective lines of work is because it was very formative for a lot of people.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've had several people on the show come on and say that, like, you know, oh, that was the thing.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was so such and such age in 1977.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And my favorite was we had Helen Granair from iRobot and Turtle and other things.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, um she said, all the other girls in class had crushes on Luke Skywalker and Tan Solo, and I had a crush on R2D2.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: R2D2 is actually kind of, I think, you know, in a way, the reason why um Star Wars comes up at all in the Wired story is that there was um this is like early days.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is in a sense pre-serve, I guess post-matex days.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a big picture of R2D2, and what that ref that represented something specific to you.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I actually I was um working on one of the robots.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was actually like laying on the ground and I tried to fix a robot, and one of our um uh teammates took a picture of me, and uh he was in the kind of design side, he took my head and put it on that scene where I think Luke is discovering R2D2.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, I I don't know the full story, but um that that was framed and put on the wall, and you know, that's kind of how the Wired magazine author saw it and the the top the topic came up.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to say, I mean, I haven't seen it, but it's just a part of the DNA here, I think, at this point.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't grow up here.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I that was why I didn't have a lot of the pop culture, but its influence is is everywhere, and I I'm I don't think I'm immune to it either.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that's wonderful.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's one of the few cases where these stories have been represented about like a cute robot that everybody loves rather than you know the negative version of the story that unfortunately is very prevalent.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is this thing, I mean, it's obviously it's definitely a nerd thing, it might be to a certain extent American thing, and I do genuinely believe that like to a certain extent it is kind of a male thing that when you have a partner in your life who has never seen these movies that you like and that they're important to you, that you like to go through the ritual of showing them Star Wars.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like I've never done that for two reasons.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: One, because like, yeah, I mean, you know, just live your life, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we don't have to have all the same pop culture references, but two, I think there's a very real possibility that watching Star Wars for the first time in 2026, and after seeing decades and decades of movies that have been inspired by Star Wars, that you're probably going to be very disappointed by.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest, that's part of the reason why it hasn't happened.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I did I have watched some classics that kind of proved disappointing in retrospect, you know, after so much progress.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: But then occasionally you watch amazing things.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm actually, if I can kind of mention uh something a little bit sad, but uh Katherine O'Hara's passing just this week was really sad.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched a 25-year-old movie, I think, called like Best In Show, but this show is great.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: This dog, oh my god, that was amazing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's like here is a movie, 25 years old, that that I absolutely enjoyed.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it was just like watching how talented she is and and all that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, a lot of the times it is actually more of a lore and and the excitement of seeing something for the first time at that age and that era that that's really not able, not possible to replicate.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: But anyhow, I've made the promise, I'm gonna do it once we hit that milestone so uh I can report back.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say three words and then we'll completely move on from uh this, but waiting for government.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So and and you'll and just go figure out what that means after the conversation.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: But but early days, Postmates, X, and that was always really interesting.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, obviously like a certain point, Postmates food delivery services decides, okay, it's time to get into robotics.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was your that was effectively your entree both into the company and food delivery.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was working on an AI um startup in the food space that was quite relevant to Postmates.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um we got introduced because of that.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and then it turns out that um I had a robotics background and the founders were uh really considering um having their own program because they believed that they have some insights and unique kind of um approach.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, the more we talked, the more it all made sense.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I was actually familiar with some of the work being done in the space.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: My background was also you know related to DARPA challenge and self-driving cars.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I was following this space very closely.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't believe that self-driving cars were ready back in 2017, and I think that was you know, yeah.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think time has proven you extremely right.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and but I thought that there was a real chance to bring the the sidewalk kind of version of this, which is a smaller form factor, less kinetic energy by like three orders of magnitude.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so and we were able to launch that within a couple of years and have been doing commercial deliveries for for a very long time.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh now you know we are at the stage where we're really scaling it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Was sidewalk was last mile delivery was that ready in 2008?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the technology for that was you know, orders of magnitude less complex to build.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, we did we did commercially launch that, I think, and we're you know getting paid for uh doing actual real customer deliveries years before I think a self-driving car space achieved that milestone.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the amount of investment going into each one of these was was very different.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But if if I were to, or most people in 2017 were to start in the space, the odds that you would be a VAMO and have that kind of you know infinite capital was probably not very high.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to pick one, you wanted to pick one that where the complexity and um you know feasibility made more sense.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of your big things, one of Serve's big things and one of Diligence's big things is is testing in the real world.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the potential downsides of that is that when you fail, like you fail in front of people.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And these days you fail in front of people with camera phones.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, you know, there was a very unfortunate Waymo accident recently, and we're probably gonna be having conversations around that for a long time.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if I know it was an Uber Eats car, the uh the railroad track in Florida.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Was that a serve robot?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: That got that wasn't a serve robot, I guess.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously the consequences are less dire when something goes wrong with a for the most part, with a through delivery robot than a self-driving car.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it is it is still you're taking a big risk by putting a robot out in the world.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I would say you're taking a bigger risk by not doing so, which is building the wrong thing and not solving the problems that you ought to be solving.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think when we sit down in a lab and make plans and go on for you know a couple of years, and there are companies that have taken that approach, not just in robotics in in other spaces.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would uh mention, I don't know, humane with the AI pin, for example.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, it was years, lots of capitalization, lots of excitement, but it wasn't built uh in real life.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, I was I was always kind of watching that, puzzled and quite concerned that this is this may not be the right approach because there's you're gonna have false positives and false negatives as far as your plans go, which is you may kind of think there's something you need to solve that's that's really important, and it actually may not be that important, and vice versa, you may miss something that you don't even know about or you think it's not important, and it ends up being the most important thing.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So being in the real world helps you calibrate and learn what and where you need to invest.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have such limited resources as most startups do, I think not doing so is a bigger risk than doing so.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and look, being in public, you gotta be in public at some point.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you better build those muscles and learn how to how to deal.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other really interesting elements, we've been seeing it more recently with Waymo, particularly in San Francisco, is human behavior, which you know is often like very it's unexpected.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember in like the earlier days of deliveries, like there seemed to be a lot more weird stuff going on.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: There still is from time to time we hear we hear a lot of these stories, but that also seems to be an important part of testing out there is like you just don't know how people are going to react when these things are on sidewalks.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and look, I actually believe that my job as a founder, as an entrepreneur, and and our organization in general as a startup, our job is to deal with the weird stuff.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of what we signed up for because we are making something no one has ever made.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, that's true about any startups.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing some some aspect of what they're doing, whether it's a product, the tech, the go-to-market, something is really new and novel and never tried before.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: We are really going into this uncertain environment with a lot of unknown unknowns.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, a nerdy way of explaining this is I think we are an entropy conversion machine.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're just reducing entropy and turning it into knowledge in a very effective way.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's what startups do really, really well.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So once you really kind of grock that that's your role in the world, it gets so much easier to wake up every morning and get punched in the face with something totally unexpected.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, okay, that's the job, that's what I'm signed up for.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go figure this out today.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anything like stand out to you in particular over the last like eight or nine years that's happened when you know, once these things started being deployed.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like what's what's what's like really what's really weird, like really, really weird?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um being blackmailed.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It took a darker turn than I expected.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And not by something that was done wrong, by something that just happened to go viral that was misrepresented.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the nice thing about our our field is we have videos.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We like it's right there.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: We can go and watch it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then you're kind of wondering how do I deal with this?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do I show the video?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do I try to kind of not be as competitive?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're we're in a community and we want to be good players.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I'll give you a funny example that that uh that that happened fairly recently, which is someone reached out to us and said we broke their guitar, our robot broke their guitar.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, that's terrible.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to just like pause real quick.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're giving one one example.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that to me that implies that this has happened more than once.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the blackmail thing, a couple of times.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe it's a bit of an exaggerated word, but you know, to something, someone asking for money to like not um, you know, extortion might be the word.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, something like that.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you know, we had to kind of come up with a policy, but like I'll I'll finish that example of the guitar, which is they reached out and said, listen, you your robot broke our guitar, and we're like, Well, that that's that's awful.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And said, Oh, it is how I make my livelihood.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, okay, send the robot that they mentioned uh back to the you know to the office, investigate, see what happened.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And within a couple hours, we saw the video, which was they tried to kind of kick a robot for whatever reason.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the robot was not in their path.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: The robot was going left, they were going right, and they just came forward, kicked the robot, and in the process of kicking the robot, they hit their guitar to the back wheel, and it broke the neck.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we are kind of standing there reading the email that says, I'm gonna go and you know, I'm gonna sue you, and I'm gonna tell the press.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, we're like, Are you serious?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do we do with this?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: We ended up replacing the guitar.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just the way we ended up deciding this was listen, we can tell her this is not what happened.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: We have the video and we will kind of, you know, show it if you if you try to do that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can just try to be neighborly.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: This person said their livelihood depends on the guitar.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Be a good neighbor, this is what happened, replace the guitar, even though it might make us look guilty.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the kind of thing you deal with that are completely unexpected, but it's it's kind of part of the job.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's make us look guilty, but then there's also you do it, and then you tell the story and you go on a podcast that presumably millions and millions of people are going to watch, and then you just admit you gave this person a free guitar in spite of that.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And are are you all of a sudden like opening yourself up to like having to just give out free things to people?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have to have a bit of trust in kind of humanity at the end of the day.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there are bad actors, and we will make that judgment call.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when we we again, this was a case where it seemed like this person was in need.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's very different than someone trying to kind of frame something.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: There are cases where people again made the same type of attempt, and we we simply told them, listen, tell us what the damages are, and you know, we'll we'll look at this kind of thing when when those claims come in just through insurance.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if the insurance thinks that we were at fault, we will, you know, we'll pay that.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if not, and they never did because it was completely false.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we had the video.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So this is again to me, it's like robots in real world.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of thing you have to deal with.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, there's so many good stories, there's so many like kids reaching out, parents reaching out who love their robots.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we have actually sent people like kits, little Lego kits of our robots because they just want something to have.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, there's a lot of positive ones that energizes you, and every now and then you have to deal with this kind of thing.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you're gonna have to send me for my my Lego robot Lego collection back there.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: But second of all, like obviously, you know, I there they're you put enough robots in the world at some point.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: A robot is going to break maybe a guitar or something else, like it's going to happen.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and that relates to the Waymo story, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know the circumstances behind that specifically, but I think everybody in well, one, everybody in and around self-driving agrees that you know safety is paramount, but they also agree that like at a certain point with a certain number, like accidents is going to happen.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like that will that is going to happen at some point.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's gonna damage food or it's gonna, you know, run into somebody, or something bad will happen.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, the safest vehicle is the one that's not moving, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's as soon as you start to move, there's a risk.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've kind of tried to solve this with a couple of uh you know principles.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: One is um we want to make cities safer than we found them.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually don't think that's a challenging task because cars are just really unsafe.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at um, again, the rate of injuries and death caused by vehicles in some age groups is the number one cause of death, for example.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right hook accidents at intersections, exactly the kind of places we operate a lot.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So this kind of goes back to our famous kind of mantra of why move two pound goidos in two ton cars.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: It just highlights that fact.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have 3,000 times less kinetic energy.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So as long as we are thoughtful in how we navigate the sidewalk and interact with people, the idea that we can make cities safer uh is not very hard to I think believe or make happen.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the principles that I think gives us a lot of um comfort and encouragement to do what we're doing.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is you're right, bad things are gonna happen.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and because we are at scale, there are thousands of devices that we have outside right now, 2,000 to be specific and growing.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of our company values is principle over perception.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: The meaning behind it is do the right thing first, independent of how it looks like.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And only after you kind of made the decision and decided what the right thing is, and and you know you're executing that, only then let's have a conversation about how do we explain this.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as long as we've always done the right thing, I would get on any stage or any podcast or any TV show and explain why we made a decision, why things kind of played out the way they did.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Over the long run, to me, that's the only strategy to kind of you know build a real business in this space and and not get caught up in situations that could be uh really problematic.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like as long as we always have confidence, we we did the first principle, the right thing, the explanation kind of can be taken care of, I eventually.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and I've been doing the journalism thing for a long time.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, something that I've learned over the years is that you know, you you you report out, obviously you report out stories based on the information that's available to you.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, sometimes later maybe you'll find certain nuances or little you know extra machinations as far as like what was happening like internally, as far as those decisions go, those pressures go, which sometimes people again are just bad actors.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes that is there an example that you can point to of something that you feel like maybe the optics weren't great, but in the long run kind of proved you out?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: The proving part is, I guess it's you know, maybe it's still outstanding.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like some people, that the reality is look, this is new.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is um something that people have a lot of strong feelings about.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Part of it is there's been a dystopian perception about you know robots, part of it is just the fear of jobs.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like honestly, it's a tale as old as you know it gets, because we've had this same kind of discourse every time new technologies have been introduced.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a very human reaction we are experiencing, and we all have to be very empathetic to that, even if we don't necessarily believe with the the fears or the conclusions.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so some of this is some people are gonna just not like this.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been true again for every technology.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: As long as we can stand on what we've done and feel like we've had the right approach and right way of doing things, I I don't know, it gets me up and bed in the morning much more easily and uh helps me kind of, you know, get our team comfortable.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: But things have happened.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: There was a report once that like we are collaborating with LAPD and sharing videos, and I was just completely false.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the reporter literally refused to put our response in the story because they just it didn't fit their narrative.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we kind of explained that, yeah, look, we have a set of protocols.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: We only share if our property is damaged or people are threatened, which has happened, unfortunately.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, in those cases, we defend ourselves, but we don't have a any kind of such partnership with LAPD where we're like just sharing videos with them.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's to me, it's completely unacceptable.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I grew up in Iran in a police state, and like this is just goes against everything that that I I value, having kind of moved as an immigrant so that I can have certain freedoms.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So unfortunately, people frame it that way.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And some people, I'm sure, now believe that because of that report.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: But what are we gonna do?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: We just we have every proof that this is how we've been operating.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think again, in the long run, I believe we would be kind of uh shown to be good actors, but in the in the short time run, it's really hard.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end, we just gotta put our heads down and kind of keep building.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's necessarily a bad instinct to be, I don't know if skeptical is a right word, but you know, suspicious, because obviously, like there are instances of tech companies that have worked with that.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand why that's there.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: But as a journalist, it's your job to work with all available information and you know put together the best story you can.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I but I I wanna I wanna back up um because I think I think the car argument is a really is a very interesting one and and something that I hadn't really considered.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm you know, I spent the better part of two decades in New York City, which is a very walkable city and has, you know, the best public transit system in the country.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I I'm a big fan of, you know, if we can if if there's a way to kind of reduce car traffic and and and and in and improve walkability, both in terms of safety and obviously like environmentally getting cars off the road maybe is probably net positive.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the jobs conversation is always an interesting one.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting here because, you know, obviously, like we have it and we talk about it a lot in terms of automation and industry.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that conversation usually is usually okay, well, this is coming in and this is replacing um the job that nobody wants, and but it's kind of offsetting that and creating more good, better paying jobs that people want.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Here, at least the one-to-one is effectively the thing that it is replacing is that like delivery person job, whether they're on a bike or or in a car.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there sort of an argument there that there's a a positive knock-on effect that it is ultimately creating more human jobs?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely believe that.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: The model that I use is um, in fact, looking at um the impact that long-distance shipping had in the global economy, like the the amount of jobs created now, in this case in many countries, because of literally the shipping container, the fact that that brought down the cost of long-distance shipping so significantly that uh you know, industries were born and so much, uh, so many people were lifted out of poverty as a result of that.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just to give you some numerical examples here, a single cargo ship today, which usually I believe have about 20, you know, uh staff, uh sailors basically running them, uh, they move more goods than the entire British Navy of 100,000 people moved a couple hundred years ago.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a you know, work of 100,000 people being done by 20.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But you can bet that there's so much more goods to move than ever before.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And for every one of those ships, there is so much more manufacturing and production and consumers and benefits to the whole society.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if I use that as an example and then compare it to last mile, I actually believe the way that the long distance shipping cost reduction brought again globalization, the response to globalization that everybody wants to have by flourishing local economies, it would actually be in again, shipping, but in the in the short distance, the last mile.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right now it costs about$10 to move something from Chinatown to your door, but$2 to move it from China to your door.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's because of that cost reduction that happened in long distance I just talked about.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: But in in the last mile, our productivity gain is 2x rather than 5,000 X over the last couple hundred years.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's a really big difference.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: If our robots bring the cost of last mile from 10 bucks to a dollar, I am willing to bet everything I own on the fact that it's going to create many, many more jobs than it's going to destroy.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And these are going to be better jobs for local businesses, for people who run and operate and help the robots.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: These are higher leverage productivity than you know a single person moving a single package to every single door.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I actually believe this is one of the best things that can happen in the local economy scale, which is again an area we've always talked about wanting to improve uh everybody's lots.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that's again, that's my conviction.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I know people who are gonna be skeptical and disagree, but I think it's a discourse and conversation that we should have.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Before the segue came out, there was like a huge, this huge hype thing.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is this this thing?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna revolutionize transportation.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and one of the lines that people said is this probably Dean Kamen, frankly, who said this like this is going to transform the way cities are built, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking about that in context of these robots.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, let's say this has like, let's let's say hypothetically, you know, 10, 15, 20 years from now, uh last mile delivery robots have a transformational impact.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: People are driving fewer cars.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Congestion is a little bit different now because now it's like these things that are primarily navigating on sidewalks.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is this going to require a fundamental rethink of how cities are built and laid out?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is going to be an evolution for sure on how cities are structured.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope it's a positive one.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've learned a lot about how to build cities and how not to build cities, how like running highways in the middle of a city creates so many problems uh as well.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a time where we were all so excited about highways.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um read that Robert Moses book if you have it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's very good.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which one is that?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: The uh power broker is oh, I haven't.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Highly recommended, yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Add it to my list.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have spent a lot of time in Vancouver.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's where uh, you know, right now I live in Silicon Valley, but Vancouver is where I moved to from Iran uh when I was, you know, at 19 years old.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a city that doesn't have a highway actually running through it.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's the, I believe, the only major North American city.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the vocability and the way just the city is laid out and how businesses and residential towers are next to each other, like it's a really good model.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's also one of the most beautiful cities in North Minnesota, and you got the island there, and you can take the ferries and everything.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, great, great city.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's my favorite place to be anytime.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the point I want to make is reducing dependence on cars has already been proven to make cities more livable and more friendly for people.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that model already is one we should be trying to replicate.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, as we do new stuff, you're gonna learn new lessons and we should be thoughtful about it.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think we are much more conscious about these decisions today than we've ever been.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I do think our robots and and by the way, when when I'm talking about this local economy boom, I'm not talking just about our robots.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about the impact of robots and self-driving cars and drones and all this new technology that enables things to move.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think they're going to have potentially really positive impact in things we really care about, like having more social spaces and green spaces and less less accidents and less congestion and less emissions.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's it's a vision that I'm excited about.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know a lot of people are skeptical, but I think it's what we should be striving for building.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the early-ish history of the electric car, right, I mean, you know, a lot of coverage around that, you know, has suggested that, you know, maybe there were like strong lobbies in place, you know, that made it more that made it more difficult.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and understandable, there are a lot of um well-built-up industries, um, you know, and if they perceive some new technology potentially as as a threat, you know, they're gonna want to do what they can to um continue to operate the way that they have.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you feel like you're at a point or you and food delivery services will be at a point when you will be a perceived threat to uh automotive or other you know big large corporations?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I found automotive so far to embrace this because they understand there's it's a whole new sector for you know vehicles, basically.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I believe they're just as you know, going from a horse carriage to car, we the industry grew.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Not as many horse carriages are being built, but you know, there's so many different forms of vehicles that exist that never existed before, couldn't exist when you had to have a horse attached.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're removing the dependency on a car, on a person, on a driver.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's gonna have this implosion of new possibilities, new forms and applications.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I found them to be generally very practical and generally very excited.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I do I do believe that there would be some you know pushback.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: There has been.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at broader autonomy, there's you know, some unions that are now pushing back, which is a tough, tough argument to make given that it's literally life-saving.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're just looking at you know the statistics.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, you know, like again, you know, it there are always, you know, we can we game out sort of long-term job game gains, but again, you can't, it's hard to fault people, it's hard to fault the taxi union for you know being concerned when Uber comes into town, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because those are people who have been doing that job for a long time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I and this kind of goes back to my early comments.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have to be empathetic to these concerns, some of which are true.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not that they're not correct.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean the taxi industry was disrupted by Uber, but also there are a lot of Uber drivers, probably more than the ever taxi, because we can reach that uh, you know, this service much more easily now.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think it's a it's a conversation that sometimes happened with a lot of temperature, and maybe a more thoughtful and nuanced version of it would be more productive.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think we owe it to the next generation, just like how much our lives are better than than you know the previous generations because of this progress.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: We can't be the brakes and say, okay, now we're gonna stop because you know we don't want to lose a job, but it's okay if you know car accidents kill people.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's just not a winning argument.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's never going to be.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: If auto manufacturers have learned from that whole uh the electric car situation or the early days of uh of autonomy, um, and I think a lot of them have, you know, we talked to Michael Taylor from GM, um, and she is leading like a lot of the robotics research they're doing.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: So like they are like they're you know, they are transitioning to be more tech companies.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, if they are smart and invested in the future, then they are going to be invested in some of these alternative transportation systems.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Postmates to uh Uber transition is always is always interesting to me because you know, obviously you're like you're effectively like going from one food delivery service to to another, and it was spun out and it was developed internally at Postmates.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were interested in this, and I'm sure that like you know it will continue to be of interest over there.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Was that project not a good fit at the time?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a better fit for what Uber was doing?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can't really speak for Uber, but I can tell you what I was thinking at the time, which is sure your job as an entrepreneur is just to make sure you always put yourself in a position where you can control your destiny.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of projects that are inside bigger organizations when priorities shift, um, they get killed.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: So from the day I started at Postmates, uh, we actually had like I think an 18-month plan uh budgeted and everything.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: But to the team that I started building there, I always told them we have six months.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because after six months, there is no guarantee that the priorities haven't shifted.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, even though we have a budget approved or whatever, it could all go away.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So our job is in the next six months to show so much progress that we earn another six months.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is a point at which I think you join a bigger organization and you really don't have that level of control.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've had a bigger um, you know, role inside Postmates that we were gonna have inside Uber.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't know really how that's gonna go.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just knew that I'm gonna be at the mercy of much you know bigger forces.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but interestingly, our process of wanting to spin out had started inside Postmates.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: We were already talking about doing that because it seemed like it would work better as an independent company than being inside a more mature startup that's now really focused on profitability.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: We were kind of going in the opposite directions.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: We needed to spend more money in RD and really build technology.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: They needed to, you know, prove unit economics and get to you know positive cash flow.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it just didn't seem like it was the right fit anymore in that sense.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it made sense to spin off.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as we joined Uber, I just reached out to them and I said, hey, I already have investors lined up.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: This was what we wanted to do.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you guys think?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: If uh you know, if it makes sense, we we should just keep going.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, within a couple of months, we basically had uh reached that same decision and and continued that process.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So so basically from day one or day zero, there was the expectation that you were eventually going to spin out and and IPO?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it took a while because even the acquisition itself took months before it was accrued by the UJ.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh again, I was never in the room on the, you know, in Dara's boardroom or executive meetings to know exactly what their thought was, but but I did have a good plan for what a spin-out version looks like.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: How would we partner with Uber?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why does that make sense?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: And to in my mind, it would just give us a lot more certainty about our own future, and we can kind of control that and again have Uber as a major investor and partner, and they've been fantastic to have.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but at the same time, we get to, you know, make decisions and not be in a position where again a shift in the market suddenly has a material impact on us because you know, we we are we are not uh in control of our own path.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've been through this process in like all sorts of different ways, you know, in terms of uh accelerator, you know, you've launched your own startups outside of outside of companies, you were purchased by a different company, you spun out, you you IPO'd.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why we uh talked recently was the the diligent acquisition.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Having been on that other side, what did you learn and and what are you taking into the acquisition of this company?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: What are you applying to the acquisition of this uh healthcare robotics company?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think you develop a lot of empathy about what the other side is experiencing.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's obviously a lot of uncertainty and anxiety and questions about, you know, people at an individual level, all the way to just, you know, if you're a founder and you've had this vision and you worked really hard on something.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think part of the reason uh pretty much in every acquisition we've done, we've we've announced four of them, there has been some competitive offer uh that folks could have accepted.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what has really helped us, and it's not just me, uh, you know, our president, CEO Touraj literally wrote the book about exit COP.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: He has done many uh on the kind of acquire side and and many on the acquir, you know, being acquired side.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that empathy I think goes a long way to be able to tell the founders, hey, I want you to come here and actually make your vision come true and we will support you.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and answering a lot of those uh, you know, uh anxieties that people have naturally, I think it goes a really long way.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have never experienced the other side of this and you're in a big company just uh, you know, running the process, I think um you may not just be aware of a smallest thing you might be able to say that have a really large impact on the person on the other side.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, autonomy obviously is incredibly important you know, for companies like that, maintaining brands' identity.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very different company in terms of the market that they're serving, you know.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you're acquiring this company with these two like amazing, well-respected founders, too.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I assume that a part of the process of bringing them on board is that reassurance that like we're gonna let diligent be diligent.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the first reasons that this became a serious conversation was very quickly we uh kind of had this sense that there's a lot of good DNA match, like cultural match between our team and Andrea and Vivian and and their team.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that was basically universally agreed on our side of the conversation when we were you know getting to know them.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I like to think that they they also agreed, and you know, that's what uh you know really brought us uh together because as I said, there were there there always is another offer that that's uh available.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh I believe there was actually someone like really harassing Andrea for making an acquisition offer and calling them and you know on in an unsolicited way.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And but at the end, I think we presented a companion case that listen, this is I think a place where you're gonna really bring your vision to reality that you've worked on for almost 10 years.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think calling up and harassing women on the phone is always a good way to get what you want.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: It always works out well.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: That may not be the right uh, but yeah, I I know, but but you know, it's like you know, it's like all right, you make your offer and then you know either either you either the offer you know uh evolves or you know, you you you you move on.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um or or you wait for the fortunes of the company to change, I guess.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: But but um I you know they're they're they're an interesting company for a lot of reasons.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh last time I was in Austin, I went out and visited their headquarters, you know, and it's in a lot of ways they are a humble company.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, it's you know, I think impressive like what they've done in terms of like real-world deployment, but you know, not a huge office, and they were doing all of the assembly of the robots on site there in Austin.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and when you and I spoke last, that this was in the the feature that went out in the newsletter, um, you said that one of the key things that you're bringing is that is that scale.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I wrote the numbers down, and you can like fact-check me if I got them wrong, but I think you said uh so they have about a hundred robots today.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: A year ago we had a hundred robots.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have two thousand robots.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So like a hundred to two thousand in in a year is obviously a huge jump.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what what had to happen to make that happen?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, eight years of work that preceded that that's it's that whole like it takes like eight years to be an overnight success kind of thing.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely right.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, like for many of us in this company, years before that, like whether it was the education or the startups that we've done in the past and a lot of the learning lessons there are folks in this in in serve that actually work with me at other startups.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we build a lot of muscles together, uh, even before Postmates.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, but but you know, more specifically, we had been operating a robot since 2017, effectively.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: The robots that look like Serve today, so you know, the first generation uh started in 2019.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was years of kind of again waking up, getting punched in the face with new realities or new unknown unknowns, and then dealing with it and fixing it and building the technology and building the partnerships and all that work so that in 20, you know, 25, we started the year with this, you know, uh momentum to launch 2000 robots.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a target we'd set out publicly, and you know, it was very exciting.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: We actually went and rang the NASDAQ on the day that we actually launched the 2000s robots, which was a really fun moment of celebration.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, again, as you said, like 10 years in the making for an overnight success.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you foresee that there might be like a similar hockey stick as far as their deployment goes?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly hope so.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wouldn't be able to provide any numbers right now, but you do have to some kind of uh groundwork on the manufacturing side, et cetera, to kind of get ready for that kind of scale.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the playbooks are very similar.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the actually the other folks at at Diligent, like Todd, the COO who came from uh Cruz, and and as we talked to each other, we've learned there are things that he had experienced because Cruz was uh you know further in in some of their deployments than than Viewer.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they had uh very similar experiences to you know what we had been experiencing, and and you know, they were maybe a step ahead and we could learn from those experiences as well.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think there's a lot of like cross-pollination here that you don't need to learn everything from scratch, and you know, somebody else in the room has already experienced that and can kind of share a playbook.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I think that's one of the magics of the startup scene and the fact that these companies uh coming together can can you know move faster.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know one of the big selling points for you too as well was that that uh indoor navigation.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, like you have been in outdoor navigation for your entire career, and even like that's what you got your doctorate in, right?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like you stuck you went to school for inner navigation.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: But like the another really interesting thing, arguably diligent's like biggest breakthrough as a service robot is they figured out how to navigate between floors.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: It can autonomously can operate an elevator.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that since you know the first days of serve, people are like, all right, when are the arms coming?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody is everybody's always constantly thinking humanoid.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that Amazon tested humanoids a while back.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know Ford was looking at Diligent for delivery.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are there or will there be situations, last mile situations, where, you know, maybe a pair of legs and a couple of arms might come in handy.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, right now, like let's say crossing an intersection that has um push the cross button that you know is not automatically activated, would be nice to be able to press those buttons.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right now we have to kind of reroute around them, or sometimes we actually ask people.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the robot kind of uh you know displays a message asking for someone to press the button.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that sometimes you do have to do more than just move around.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have to manipulate the environment to be successful.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Indoors, that's more so, and that's why uh, you know, Diligent had to actually solve these problems now.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: It includes, I don't know, scanning a badge and opening a door and and going into an elevator.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And these are really interesting problems.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: And again, part of what's really fun about learning in the real world, because you may sit in a lab and think the problem is just getting from A to B in terms of you know, how do you move around things and predict their uh path and and whatnot.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: But reality is like, oh, there's a door.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I now have to go through this somehow.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and how do you do that in a way that's reliable, that works every single time, and it's also cost effective.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: You you you don't want to have you know a super expensive piece of hardware just so that you press a button.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: The ability to solve those problems is something that I'm proud of and they should be proud of, and and made it very compelling for us because a lot of these problems are are actually common.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as synergy goes, I mean, you know, you can you have the opportunity to win over a lot of healthcare workers by like really getting last mile delivery for this food.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, getting somebody say somebody ordering some food and it actually like coming up to their desk would be a big win, I think.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: We have, I believe the numbers I I've read about this is like 200,000 uh you know, nurse shortage in the country.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And nurses are so extremely overworked.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, what they should really be doing more of is just patient care and spending time, that human kind of connection, rather than walking you know, long hallways and uh and and you know, grabbing supplies, for example.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: So whether it's food or supplies or medication, uh, I think that's the opportunity.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like about this, by the way, it's it's one of those where people just, because we all know about the challenges with nursing, they understand that this is not about replacing.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's about augmenting and helping and supporting, which I really believe that's kind of what we do ultimately, even with Cybok robots.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of deliveries we do are not very compelling for people because you know, high traffic areas, parking challenges, short distance, you may not make as much money.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it actually drives down the cost of delivery, which means there's now more jobs for everybody to do because more people are using uh these services.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: So uh this kind of augmenting is more obvious in the hospital, and I really like that.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh Ali, uh as always, been a pleasure.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Automated.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to Ali for joining us.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you've been enjoying the show, the easiest way to support us is to like, subscribe, leave a comment, tell a friend.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find uh more info and relevant show notes along with our weekly newsletter over at automated.fm.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, we will see you next week for another episode of Automated.