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Erik Nieves on Why Humanoid Robots Are Failing the Most Important Test · Automated with Brian Heater

0:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, while I'm enthused about what's going to happen as we try to replicate some of this human form factor, and these certainly enterprise level users, they don't really care.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: What doesn't change is their King PIs, man.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: It still has to be 2200 picks per hour.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: It still needs to have three nines of uptime.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: It still needs to, they don't really care what it looks like or what you actually deploy, but does it deliver these things.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: We've got another special episode coming up for you this week, which I realize is a thing that I say in some form or other every single week, but this time I really mean it.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: This is actually the uh third ever IRL episode of Automated.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: This conversation with Plus One Robotics co-founder and CEO, Eric Nieves, was recorded back at the A3 Business Forum in Miami back in January.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, really great chat with easily one of the nicest people in automation.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much to Eric for taking the time.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Thanks to you as always for tuning in.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: If you like the show, don't forget to like and subscribe.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Please subscribe to our newsletter over at automated.fm.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And with that, please enjoy this conversation with Eric Nieves.
1:32
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1:37
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1:59
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2:01
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2:06
SPEAKER_01: Astronomy.
2:08
SPEAKER_02: Astronomy?
2:09
SPEAKER_02: Astronomy.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: You want to talk about astronomy.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: You studied astronomy?
2:13
SPEAKER_02: I studied math and physics.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: But my college job, I was the TA for the astronomy, you know, undergrad course, which was cool.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: But the real thing was it had the largest observatory in north central Texas.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: This tiny little school had a good observatory.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, got to work there.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: And some of it was, you know, whatever it was they needed for classwork and the other, but the other was once a month on a Friday night, we opened it to the public.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, at that time, this was in the mid-80s.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: You were doing like laser floyd.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: Wasn't quite that sophisticated, but you know, we show M catalog, you know, stuff.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: But that was a year hang these comics.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, we had when it was at its peak, we had people lined up for hours out the door.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: Is this like every 70 years?
3:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like what the last one before that was Mark Twain's birthday year.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: So, um, but uh, you know, if I had one more person climb up the little ladder, look in the eyepiece, and go, is that it?
3:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I waited in line this long and that was full of things.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's dirty ice flight or space.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: That's the thing.
3:32
SPEAKER_02: It's just crawling along your eyepiece, and they're just saying, you know, but we were enthusiastic about it.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: And you know, you're just trying to promote that enthusiasm, and you just land that folks took the time.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: And maybe this does relate to actually robotics in a very roundabout and weird way.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: But an interesting thing about space is obviously uh people are really excited about it.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's pitched to us.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: We see all these show, these uh, you know, uh shows of like you know, Hubble telescope, and everything is like move, it's moving in fast motion because everything has been you know adapted for for the TV age.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, this is like a glacial time frame.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: This is like you know, a cosmic time frame.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: It's moving extremely slow.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, we get these are these are stationary bodies, like yeah.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they call them wandering stars because they actually were curious in that they didn't hold their one spot in the cosmos all the time, right?
4:30
SPEAKER_02: And that's what it was.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: It was a wandering star, and people are intrigued by it.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: So here's how I wanted to range robotics because this is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit, especially now that we're two weeks out from CES.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Did you follow it at all?
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I saw the humanoid coming out of there.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all right.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: So, so you know, I I was wet to like the last 15 CES.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I didn't go this year, which somewhat ironically, there were a lot of robots here.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: I also followed it from afar.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as you said, uh humanoids there, and largely like humanoids doing tricks, right?
5:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, not necessarily doing and I understand that, right?
5:10
SPEAKER_01: This is a show, one, it's like ostensibly the consumer electronic show.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Two, it's like a show for ostensibly people like me, people on the press.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: But I I feel like to a certain extent, maybe there is a parallel between space where it is this on its face a really exciting thing, but maybe actually like the reality of it is a little bit sort of slower moving and day to day.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: I actually see space and you know, sort of travel, space travel and conquest and all of that, and humanoids as being two expressions of the same thing, right?
5:43
SPEAKER_02: Which is we have this sort of innate desire to, you know, go there and replicate ourselves.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, these are like the two things that are set the bar for you know, us as a species is hey, can I go someplace we've never been and can I make more of myself?
6:05
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, uh it's kind of interesting that it's so much of it is happening right now.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: This is this is my this is my intrusive thought every time I go to a fine art gallery to just stand there in front of the painting, you know, like a foot away, and I have to stop myself from trying to touch the painting.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that might be the impulse that's driving humanity to go out and actually like colonize all of these distant plants, whether or not there is like mining or any resources to be had.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there's something too pretty much everybody's um sort of icon for robots is this?
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: And it's a robotic hand and a human hand, right?
6:44
SPEAKER_02: It's the same expression.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: How have your conversations changed, if at all, around this bubble that we're going through right now?
6:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I it's some of it is just as the capital has flowed so heavily over the last couple of years.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: Rising tide?
7:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, it's it's okay.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: Are we in a place where the capital has outpaced the technology and where it's going and the returns that it can bring and all of that?
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And I've been Well, let's let's do that.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: Let's do that one by one.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: So has it outpaced the technology currently?
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yes, absolutely.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the promise.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: The promise is, I mean, the promise is can we clone ourselves?
7:26
SPEAKER_02: Right, sure.
7:27
SPEAKER_02: And that's the that's and can we like not ever have to work again?
7:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, okay.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: So that's fine as long as we can still feed ourselves.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: Sure, right.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: Or they can feed us.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm a human exceptionalist, right?
7:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm pretty open about the fact that I don't believe it's possible to recreate who we are and what we do and how we do it.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: And that that means the most advanced robot we'll ever make is still going to pale in comparison to what we offer.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, that might be an ideology.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: Straight up.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: It's a belief.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: But it is mine.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh you like, I mean, you also, again, just did the parallel to the cysteine shackle.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: So there is something spiritual about that.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: No, for sure.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh and, you know, but to the question of the capital inflows isn't has it outstripped the technology and has it outstripped the promises, you know, am I going to see a return on all of this investment?
8:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I do think that you're in a place right now where the capital has just come in.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: Anytime you see that much money flowing into anything, I don't care what it is, the expectations for return outstrip the prospects of that return.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Right?
8:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think of an instance where this all worked out really well.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Good luck.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, right?
8:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're also waiting on it on you know, autonomous drive, sure.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, fill in the blank.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh, so I'm I do believe that markets are not rational creatures.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: And there is a lot of FOMO in the world, and humans for all their words aren't always rational creatures either.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: Also true, which is why the market isn't rational.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: Because we're not.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: But in in in terms of I I suppose sort of, you know, like excitement or interest around what you do, around customers talking to you, around.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know if you're even like it seems like you're probably beyond the stage where you're seeking any sort of capital investment.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, that's that's not the case.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, plus one, as an aside, is now year 10 for us.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: 2026 is and um, you know, if there's such a thing as a overnight success 10 years in the making, may this be the year that's true.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh, because no, I mean us, and I would expect a lot of our cohort or sort of warehouse automation companies are still in this cash-burdened mode, yeah.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: Where some of it is for growth and some of it is, hey, uh, the market is adoption is slower than anybody expected or anticipated, or certainly put on a spreadsheet.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: So, no, we'll be uh, you know, fundraising again at some point.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, we've been very fortunate that you know we've been very capital efficient.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: Some of that is just based on our DNA, and some of that is based on the fact that we're in San Antonio, Texas.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: And we don't have that sort of same Silicon Valley ecosystem expectation.
10:31
SPEAKER_02: And so the money just goes further, um, which has been, you know, I think accretive to plus one's uh durability.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah um, but you know, we have to, you know, go out there for money, sure.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so fair enough.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: And and it strikes me as somebody who, again, you know, spent the last nine years like not exclusively, but largely covering startups, then that that's not an uncommon story.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, uh certainly relative to humanoids, you have a very pragmatic product, right?
11:04
SPEAKER_01: And you have a product that's out there, industrial robots, largely speaking, or approved.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: They've been out there for a long time.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: And even with that, it's still taking you this amount of time to ramp up.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: I've been thinking a lot about what has changed over the last 10 years, yeah, and what has remained the same.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: Right.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: And what has changed is the soft, the underpinning software stack.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: So when we first, yeah, I mean, a lot of what we do is computer vision.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: So uh computer vision, when we were first doing it, was all very traditional approaches.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: Oh, plus open CV.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: That was the cool part.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: I well, you know, it wasn't too much longer, and then it was all this AI and segmentation and all of that, and now it's okay, foundation models.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: But if you were to stand back and look at two of my systems in the same facility, one, you know, vintage 2018 and one from last year, you couldn't tell them apart because what hasn't changed is robot plus gripper plus camera.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, the other is plus software.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: So the plus software is what has changed, but it's still industrial robots.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: It's still, you know, a gripper of some kind and the camera.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: There's an argument to be made that, you know, if you really boil down humanoid robots or essentials, that's kind of what they are as well.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, while I'm enthused about what's going to happen as we try to replicate some of this human form factor, and these certainly enterprise level users, they don't really care.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: What doesn't change is their KPIs, man.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: It still has to be 2200 picks per hour, it still needs to have three nines of uptime, it still needs to, they don't really care what it looks like or what you actually deploy, but does it deliver these things?
12:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's why I believe industrial robots has been so stable because they do offer that uptime, and they do.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: You can get support from them all around, you know, the ecosystem and uh and they make the rate.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: 2025 figure had the video of the humanoid doing parcel flipping and reorienting.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: It was fabulous to watch.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: But we understood right away this is going to be limited in its ability to meet the rates and the KBIs that these users are kind of required.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Scaling is going to be a huge issue.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: And so uh I believe that humanoids do have a role to play.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm excited about some of the technologies that are going to come from that effort.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: Industrial robots are largely single-arm machines.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: Even in an automotive plant, and they may have eight robots in one station doing spot welding, those are eight individual arms, and they're all sort of staying in their lane.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, they may have some interlocks between the neighbors to the left and the right, but they're treated individually.
13:59
SPEAKER_02: There's not a lot of coordination between them.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: The human rights base, this is not going to work.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:04
SPEAKER_02: They absolutely need left-hand, right-hand coordination.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: While moving.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: And they don't have it today, which is part of why I think foundation models are, you know, they kind of have to do this.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I believe they're going to solve that.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:21
SPEAKER_02: The industrial robot market's not going to solve that.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: I was in Yeskawa for 25 years.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: And we didn't make any headway in left-hand, right-hand coordination like this.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: So they're going to solve that problem.
14:36
SPEAKER_02: And you're going to see all of the industrial people adopt those techniques and say, thank you for that.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: We're going to take and now have industrial robots that can perform more complex operations, but still faster and still with three nines of the liability, et cetera.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: But we couldn't do it ourselves.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm not surprised, Ryan, because the industrial robot space has never been big enough to drive our own tech.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: Right?
15:03
SPEAKER_02: It's always been consumer electronics or whatever.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: And now there's all this influx of talent and capital in humanoids.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm here for it because it's going to make my life easy.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: What does big enough mean?
15:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, if you think there's three million robots deployed in the world, that is not big enough when you compare it to the scaling factors of iPhones.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: You know, any consumer good.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: That's that's that that's fair.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: And something that I think about a lot too, in terms of, you know, and this really does play into uh by Dead Source manipulation, is that we really we kind of like jumped an entire um like a missing link of robots, right?
15:48
SPEAKER_01: We we went from AMRs to uh to humanoids, right?
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And and we missed uh uh uh you know grippers mounted to mobile robots.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you that's what I was looking at at CVS.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: Um the demos are very compelling because they just show so much sort of mobility is expanded, right?
16:14
SPEAKER_02: And yet, what I'm looking at is this what are the hands capable of?
16:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah because the business end of Eric Nieves on a factory line is not Eric's legs, it's Eric's hands.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so and and and in that sense, they they all really uh they're they're kind of working backwards, right?
16:36
SPEAKER_01: They all had to start with the legs.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, agility, and I think they're a great company, but like that was John Penn's research.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's how the company came to be.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: That's terrific.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad we're all working towards you know, these machines that can do fractional labor at different workstations.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: I think there's value there, but it's not going to be realized value until you can do something about the hands.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: You know, uh robots today are effectively, you know, they're like they're handcuffed with, they have oven mitts for hands.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean, why is it that every demo you see for a humanoid is it's moving a tote?
17:10
SPEAKER_02: Why?
17:10
SPEAKER_02: Because it can.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it can do much more.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Boom, that you know, this the dexterity and manipulation today is, you know, not as good as a toddler's is.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: If you're gonna stack blocks, you can probably do that with a humanoid, but you're not gonna assemble anything.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, uh, there's certainly work afoot there, uh, and you know, but that's a big problem and it's a long-term problem.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: In in terms of, again, you know, by Dexter's manipulation or injuries of two arms, I mean, I assume that that's something that that that you haven't looked at, that you've considered that possibility.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: You there just hasn't been enough uh capital or enough interest to really invest in that.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: Or you pick the applications that don't require it.
17:59
unknown: Right?
17:59
SPEAKER_02: And that's problems to solve with one arm.
18:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's plenty of problems to solve in the warehouse context that are, you know, one-arm machines.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's what depaletizing is.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Now, um, if I have to depalitize it and oh, by the way, you need to flip it over and always make sure the label is phasing some way.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, now you're adding some complexity to the manipulation, and maybe a second hand would be helpful in that instance.
18:23
SPEAKER_02: But there's still a lot of, I don't want to be picking up a 35-pound box, you know, 10 times a minute for the next four hours.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: Please put a robot here.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: And that would be just a single wine machine.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: There, yeah, I was just having a conversation with somebody at a humanoid company, and it and it is really interesting to hear them talk about, you know, because and I, you know, this, I think this does apply to you as well.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, you again, you you you study math and you've been in in robotics for a long time, but obviously you have to learn about industry and you have to learn about what they need.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: And um we were talking about wheels versus legs, and he was saying, well, you know, we're finding like these like really interesting, not even edge cases, but um these instances where you know there are surprisingly uh uh narrow aisles and like machine shops, and you can't, you know, you a base sense that uh a wheel base is too wide to get through those.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there there are you do find a lot of interesting use cases, and and I suspect that they are still to certain extent kind of evolving over time.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the whole notion that build a humanoid because it can go where the people go and not other things can is true.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: The question is, how much of that is there?
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
19:46
SPEAKER_02: It if it isn't an edge case, it's certainly not the majority case.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: The majority case is, hey, it's still accessible to wheeled bases because a forklift went down there too.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, the whole argument of legs versus wheels and hey, we we've it's been hashed out plenty.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: I think everybody can agree that if you can do it with wheels, please do.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: Um I uh I disagree that everyone would agree with it with that.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: But sure, I I agree with that totally.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, dynamically stable is it's uh I would rather know that when I hit stop, yeah, when power loses, whatever it might be, then it will just park itself.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: And if it's going to fall over in some way that I can't predict, that's a problem.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be a problem from the uh, you know, from the big enterprise.
20:42
SPEAKER_02: These big enterprises are also the ones that are most sophisticated in their risk analysis, and you know, will be saying to you, uh, I can't deploy this at scale because I can't get this insured.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Right.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, I do believe that the humanoid folks will ultimately have to deal with this uncontrolled problem.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: And at least, you know, agility thought about that from the jump and said, hey, look, when this thing loses power, I just want to collapse in place.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: Uh, that was very wise design choices earlier.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: And they didn't have to pay for that in, well, now we're wider, we can't make it down that same narrow is they can and they can still do it safely.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I they they've been thinking about safety.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, definitely info companies have been thinking about safety, but um are the majority of your robots still behind a fence?
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh and that's true, even if I deploy a coupot, right?
21:49
SPEAKER_02: Um some of it is at the rates that we run.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: Most of our implementations, nearly all our implementations are industrial robots.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: If you have to do this many cycles per hour, you're going to be running really fast.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: And I don't care what the mass of the arm is, it's going to be a risk.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: So uh yes, ARM robots are caged.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh, where the exception is, is sometimes at so the end of line depaletizing or palletizing, that might be co-op friendly and could be more in the open.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: But even in those cases, you're gonna have LIDAR doing you know presence detection of the people so you can slow the robot down, whatever.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm not a big believer in just uh you know force as the safety mechanism.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: I don't ever want to answer the question, yes, I passed risk assessment because my robot hit you, but it didn't hurt.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: I just don't want the robot to hit you.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: So I just want to know where you are.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know that in a safety-rated way.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: I I was I was I was looking at the uh the speech that you gave at amazon, and uh I'll probably butcher this, but I think you're gonna use something along the lines of like the fence is not there to prevent the robot from attacking you.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the robot isn't trying to escape the zoo, right?
23:11
SPEAKER_02: It's the fence is there to keep you away from the robot.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: And uh a lot of that is just people inadvertently walking places where you don't want them.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: And the effect of that would be if I didn't have a fence and I was just using a laser scanner, uh, and that laser scanner's job was to, ooh, somebody stepped into my near zone, so let me slow down.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: This can happen multitude of times a day.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: I would be the first person to walk headfirst into the robot.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: And you don't have to walk, you just walk right by it.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: You didn't know that you affected that cycle time at all, but you did.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: And you would just as easily have walked outside the fence and left that robot running at speed, but you didn't know.
23:55
SPEAKER_02: And you know why you didn't?
23:56
SPEAKER_02: Because there wasn't a fence.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: The cycle.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: The cycle time, but also, you know, um another thing that you bring up in the in that talk is just um, especially when we're talking about these big industrial systems that are uh, you know, effectively like repeating the same thing over and over again, how much a centimeter makes a difference.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and uh you just don't want anything that somebody can defeat, right?
24:20
SPEAKER_02: Meaning from a safety sign.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, put a fence up.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: You're only ever, it's no different than locking your front door.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: You're only ever keeping out the honest criminals, right?
24:31
SPEAKER_02: If somebody's hardcore going to defeat your safety, they're going to.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: There is no foolproof safety system out there, but it is incumbent on us to do what we can.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that means I put up some cages.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: You I think last time that we spoke head automated.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: I think we talked a little bit about this idea of the Cambrian explosion, which is something that you talked about quite a bit.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, are we there?
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Are we approaching that?
24:59
SPEAKER_02: That is one of the things that I think about over the last 10 years.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, am I seeing more of that explosion?
25:04
SPEAKER_02: And we sure are.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, of course, humanoids, but not just humanoids.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: Locus array, right kick.
25:12
SPEAKER_02: There's all of these different sort of high manipulation with motion and such.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: That's a robot.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: Locus array, you know, in a perfect world would have gotten a lot of the press that a lot of these humanoid robots are doing.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: It's a really cool oppressive robot that I think we're going to be seeing in a lot of places.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's not something that we pictured 10 years ago.
25:34
SPEAKER_02: Right?
25:35
SPEAKER_02: This is what Chambrian means.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: You just have this evolution, but it's on a very quick cycle.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, and so yeah, I do think that we're seeing a lot of it, and you're seeing a lot of it on the mobile robots as well.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Just think of all the different sort of flavors of AMRs now.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: It's not just, you know, omni-wheels with a top, and you figure out what to put on it.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: There's tugs, there's pushers, there's um, you know, roller conveyor ones.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's just a lot of different morphologies now of robots.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: So is the Cambrian explosion?
26:10
SPEAKER_02: The question to me is, is it when does it end?
26:13
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we're there yet.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, be interesting to see where we're at the next time we talk about this in four years.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: How many different kinds of AMRs are there?
26:23
SPEAKER_02: And what happened between AMRs and humanoids?
26:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, how did this happen?
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or did we kind of go back?
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Because I, you know, certainly like right now, we're having the conversation of, hey, maybe whales aren't so bad.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Where where were you at and and where were your co-founders?
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Co-founders?
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Where were your co-founders at uh at the beginning of that cycle, you know, 2016, you're coming from some of these like larger industrial companies, and you go, hey, let's try your own things.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's actually a little bit different story because it was my co-founder, Sean, who was the instigator.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh Sean, was it Southwest Research?
27:05
SPEAKER_02: I feel like in every instance that you're evolving, you would be the instigator.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: So that surprises me.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh so I was running, you know, tech advancement at Yoskawa, spent a lot of time, you know, one foot in uh industry and one foot in academia and research.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: And that meant that, you know, I saw a lot of Ross initiatives at all of these universities.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: You know, we're talking 2012, 2013, 2014.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: And one of those institutes that did a lot of the early Ross work was Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: That's where Sean was.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh and Sean uh was doing sort of important early work in computer vision for cluttered piles.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and you know, how do we extract this using this new thing out of a little garage?
27:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh and he, you know, a customer caught wind of it, had him go up there, said, we know what that is.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: We need that to help move packages.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: If you do this, we'll buy a line of them.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh and he thought, wow, we should make a company out of this.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: And that's when he approached me and said, Eric, you've helped me, you know, with this Ross initiative at Willow.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: You're kind of known in the industry.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: I think we could use somebody uh on that front.
28:19
SPEAKER_02: And I was not really going to do it.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I turned it down, you know, at least the invitation to talk about it a couple of times, but I finally walked in to a breakfast and I saw it wasn't just Sean Edwards, but it was also Paul Voss.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's another uh Southwest research uh researcher.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, if these two guys are gonna do something together, I want in on it because they're just that talented and that motivated.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: And I changed my mind over a meal.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: But I was not the instigator of plus one.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: Foam is a very powerful drug.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it took me away from a really good job that I enjoyed uh at Yaskawa.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, when when I just sit back and go, okay, let me think about the macros here for a minute.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: Is anybody gonna have fewer packages arriving at their doorstep in a week over you know, the next thing?
29:19
SPEAKER_02: No, there's gonna be more of them.
29:21
SPEAKER_02: Are there going to be people longing to do that work on my behalf?
29:26
SPEAKER_02: No.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Okay, this is gonna be a great opportunity for robots and automation.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: You're projecting out the success, but you know, the the other, the the other pragmatic part of you is a guy who has kids, who has a secure job.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there must have been some sleep old science.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: No, you're right, but this is also why I think our approach of human in the loop was necessary.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: If if this had been we're gonna make a lights out warehouse, I would not have done this.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: But because we were kind of sober-minded that for as important a role as AI was going to play in every single system that we deploy, and that is true, we knew it was going to disappoint you on occasion, and that that was going to really matter at these enterprises, where it is 99.9.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: And so uh if that's the case, and we went with this human in the loop uh human-in-the-loop approach, it just meant we were going to be able to narrow the catastrophe gap in the mind of the user.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: And that's what was appealing to me.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: It sounds like something as well that uh having humans involved in affords you is just the ability to get to the market more quick.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, uh, I would say yes, but it also, you have to understand these markets are such reticent adopters of technology.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: We largely service the parcel couriers.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: That is time-definite shipping.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's got to be there overnight, and they know this.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: People can do this job.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: And they also know that, like, you know, even like brown gill technology is gonna take, you know, hours or days away in order to install them, and that's gonna throw things behind us there.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you know, because they're reticent adopters of tech, uh, you can't go to a typical warehouse and say, um uh, I have this black box of AI and we're here to solve your you know, labor constraint.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: They're just not going to sleep at night because they know that if this doesn't work, yeah, I'm missing SLNs.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: They can't have that.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: So if you go to those same folks and you, yep, AI is a very good tool, we use it all the time, but we also have this human in the loop that steps in when the unexpected is upon us.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: You just help them sleep better.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: So it's not only about access to early access to the market because we don't have all the data yet, but later we will.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: No, it's you are making them comfortable taking the step.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: That's hugely important for us, and that's not going to change.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: You're in Mexico as well, right?
32:17
SPEAKER_01: What is what did you obviously very different market, but a lot of manufacturing happening down there?
32:23
SPEAKER_01: What did you learn from that experience?
32:25
SPEAKER_02: Well, it was a an exercise in uh understanding ROIs in low-cost labor markets.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: And what was the warehouse if it wasn't a you know low-cost labor market?
32:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so it was a proven ground in that regard.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh I was in Mexico over four years, and you know, I uh it was a very important part of my professional development.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: It was the first time I had any sort of PL responsibility, right?
33:02
SPEAKER_02: I was a robot engineer and I was a robot instructor.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: I just happened to speak Spanish, so you go.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: All right.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: And so um uh we're glad that we did, but it was formative in that sense.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: How do we think about the value robots bring?
33:18
SPEAKER_02: And in the face of, well, labor just doesn't cost me that much.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: And it is, you have to sort of step back and say, all right, do you want the same processes and the same checks and balances in place in all of your facilities globally?
33:36
SPEAKER_02: Many of the customers would tell you, yes.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: Okay, then automation does have a role for you in this operation that might be in Mexico or Brazil or you know, what have you.
33:47
SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, it can't just be about how much am I paying for a fully loaded STE.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a really interesting way of framing it and something I haven't heard people speak much about, especially in terms of, I guess what you would say it's sort of like the ultimate certainly the ultimate manufacturing environment and the ultimate kind of low-cost labor environment of Asia, because the automation has taken off in a huge way there, which would almost seem counterintuitive because labor has been so low cost, and that's why, you know, unfortunately, like all of the manufacturing and certainly in the US moved over there.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, and robots are going to be the end of labor arbitrage.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's an important thing to think about is okay, well, what happens when labor is no longer what dictates manufacturing footprint?
34:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: Then it is, okay, I want to be closer to my customers and I want to be closer to engineering so that I can be responsive to my customers.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh and that might mean, yes, my customers are growing in Southeast Asia, so I'm going to put my manufacturing, you know, right there in Vietnam.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: Or it might be my customers are in the Bugai, so I'm going to be building a facility in Quad Cities.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about this because it's just something I've been discussing with people for like for years and years now, like at least a decade.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: And you know, years ago, it was really in relation.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, this didn't come to fruition, but it was really in relation to uh added additive manufacturing at scale, right?
35:27
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be able to bring uh manufacturing closer to us uh because we can 3D print everything.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're having this conversation again.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we're in strange times right now.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Um and we've seen certainly, you know, a handful of initiatives, some very high-profile uh plants, you know, like the intel's the world.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: But is that shift like really happening?
35:56
SPEAKER_01: The decentralization, is that really happening in any meaningful way right now?
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Uh I have seen it, yeah, right?
36:05
SPEAKER_02: I do think the chip foundries for sure.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but in terms of is manufacturing coming back in a big way, folks would tell you it hasn't materialized.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: And for the pronouncements that you'll see in the press releases from the administration, et cetera, great, but in the net, we're not where we want to be.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: I'm actually a proponent of nearshoring as opposed to uh just entirely reshore it.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: Uh we might have to, given the political climate, reshore because we don't have any friends in our near in our neighborhood anymore.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we we could you know near shore in uh Greenland, for example.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh, having been in Mexico for as long as I was, it's a great partner to the United States for manufacturing.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: And you know, sooner or later, I do believe that heads, cooler heads will prevail and we'll figure out well, what is it exactly we want to manufacture?
37:02
SPEAKER_02: And what do we not want to manufacture?
37:06
SPEAKER_02: And then you'll make some decisions.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: Reassuring effort, does it have merit?
37:11
SPEAKER_02: A hundred percent.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: We never want to be in another situation like we were at COVID, where uh we needed goods we know we didn't no longer have access to.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: So, of course, medical devices and PPE, you know, fill in the blank are things that we ought never to have to rely on anyone but ourselves.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: So, of course, there's going to be some amount of reshoring.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: But uh, there's a lot of things that we can build in Mexico, Canada, uh you know, here that don't require us to be doing it in the Central Valley, right?
37:45
SPEAKER_01: So is is San Antonio's proximity to Mexico, is that a marked advantage for you?
37:53
SPEAKER_01: It is.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and not just plus one, but a lot of the engineering and manufacturing industry in San Antonio.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: So Toyota has a giant facility in San Antonio, the Toyota Tundra comes out of that plant.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: A lot of their engineering talent, you know, might have come from the McQuiladoras right across the border because they've been building for many, many years there.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: Let's build our coldest sounding car in San Andreas.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Right.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: Right.
38:20
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh, but yes, there's a lot of influx of labor, and there's a lot of influx of talent that have been doing manufacturing and assembly for a really long, long time.
38:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, wiring harnesses, I don't think a wiring harness has been built in the United States in probably 30 or 40 years.
38:38
SPEAKER_02: All of that's been in the maquilas.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you alluded to this, you know, as as far as um, as far as the school, you know, obviously, like uh over the over the past like decade, decade and a half, we've been talking a lot about uh brain drain around universities.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: And um, but it sounds like the university is a nice funnel there.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: But you know, beyond the manufacturing the wiring elements, as far as actually like hiring and keeping AI people and engineers, is that or can that be a difficult challenge in San Antonio?
39:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh it historically has been, and it's been part of the appeal of you should put your robot startup in Silicon Valley because look at all this access to talent.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in fact, I mean, we'll we'll see that sometimes at pitch decks.
39:23
SPEAKER_02: People will say, here's my startup and here's my pedigree of where our engineers are coming from.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: And so look at this concentration of AI.
39:30
SPEAKER_02: This is the place to be.
39:31
SPEAKER_02: Um, AI is itself being democratized.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we're fortunate.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: Uh San Antonio has we have access to UTSA, University of Texas, Texas AM, Treata University.
39:43
SPEAKER_02: Uh and AI programs are growing everywhere.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: And you're not competing with each other million companies.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean not.
39:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a competitive advantage for plus one that, you know, we might be the bell of the ball in San Antonio, where we certainly would be competing with a lot of other really good companies if we were in San Francisco.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you read my newsletter.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: It's okay if he Daryl.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: I know you watch the podcast, and so we're cool.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: We're cool.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh, a big piece of the newsletter, though, something that's been very important to me, um, just doing my job generally is uh it is job listings, right?
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Like especially over the last you know six years.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: I had somebody come up to me at uh an event not a long time ago, ironically asking this question in person, but they pointed out that still like the vast, vast majority of the jobs that I'm posting, they're right about this, the vast, vast majority of the jobs that I'm posting are still in person.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: And you know, and and my my immediate response to that was hey, listen, I know I've been covering hardware for a long time, and this is what hardware people do.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, you need to be in in person.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, are you do people still need to come into the office?
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Is that still really important for you?
41:04
SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, it is.
41:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh correct.
41:08
SPEAKER_02: At some point, this software is going to be targeted at a robot, and that's a piece of hardware.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: You need to understand what it's going to do.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: And sure, digital twin and sure simulation.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: There is nothing like the real machine.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: And so, no, we require our engineers uh to be uh in San Antonio or at least one of our facilities in Boulder or in the Netherlands, you know, most of the time.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: Of course, everybody acknowledges that after COVID and hybrid and remote work, that people anticipate some amount of flexibility.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I don't know that that flexibility needs to be.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: You work in the office two days a week and you can do what you want from home three days a week, and you know, just make sure that you know you're on the logged in.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: I think we just treat it the way we always did, which is we have a job, this is where we do it.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: You're a human being.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: If you've got something to do with you or your kids or your doctor, go do it.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but this is the job, and it's here.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and another really important part of this is uh in addition to all the cultural stuff, it's the mentorship.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: And we just talked about this, these universities, and we're getting all of this influx of young talent.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: They need direction from their seniors.
42:34
SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't work nearly as well over a teams meeting.
42:39
SPEAKER_02: They really just want to take and go to them and say, okay, this is what I'm thinking is the right approach here.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: Is this right, wrong, or different?
42:46
SPEAKER_02: I want that senior engineer to go, come with me, let me go out here on this machine and show you why I would do it a little bit differently.
42:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:54
SPEAKER_02: Right?
42:55
SPEAKER_02: That level of mentorship is lost if you try to do the preponderance of your work remotely.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: So, no, I'm a big believer.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, software-enabled hardware is in-person work.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so so Boulder, you know, there's there's a there's a lot of uh companies out there.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Um the speak up ThinkNecks, uh, Bray Picks, uh, a handful of other virus companies.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: There are, you know, there are a number of companies in in the Netherlands, but specifically, how did that become the third leg of your Sewell?
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it has to do with our market.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: You could make the case that any robotics startup in Europe needs to be in Germany.
43:39
SPEAKER_02: Because that's the bulk of the market is, you know, German manufacturing, but not for warehouse.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: In the warehouse space, and maybe it's because the Dutch have been doing supply chain since the Dutch East India Company, right?
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, there is a lot of talent and a lot of machinery build.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: In the Netherlands.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: Wandawanda is in the Netherlands.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, just for one.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: And some of it, of course, is Rotterdam at the big port.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh, so when we looked at where is the talent for what we do, warehousing uh and such, it became very evident that the Netherlands was a better place.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: And so we've got, you know, folks in Eindhoven and they run all over the continent looking after the equipment and taking care of our customers.
44:25
SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
44:25
SPEAKER_02: And you can put people in tulips.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: You know, we did have a lot of learning about just what it takes to employ and manage personnel abroad in the Netherlands specifically, because they're just their labor laws are so much different.
44:41
SPEAKER_02: Think they've got like socialized healthcare there, things like that.
44:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they do.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: And they have this concept of, you know, that everything here is almost effectively right to work and uh it's at will employment.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm you're here today and gone tomorrow, and we're still friends, but that was the job.
44:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh and over there it's not quite like that.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: If you have to separate for whatever reason, uh business reason, then there's a process and it's kind of an expensive one.
45:07
SPEAKER_02: And uh I never heard the term garden leaf, but boy, I learned it.
45:11
SPEAKER_02: Garden leave.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: Garden leaf.
45:13
SPEAKER_02: Garden leave is okay.
45:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh I no longer have a job, but you're gonna be paying me for six months.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, but it's a no-shown job.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: Do we know why it's called garden leave?
45:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: Maybe because you're gardening the whole time.
45:26
SPEAKER_02: I guess I guess I think the Dutch also embedded very houses.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh that might be.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: So uh, but yeah, then I the idea of garden leave was something I never considered before we put up you know operations in in the notes.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean something something that I learned in my last job, you know, thus being very international, um, was the labor laws in France are very interesting friends.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: And they passed a few uh during our time together, one of which is um that I think it was made illegal for uh jobs to force you to check your work email over the weekend.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
46:01
SPEAKER_02: You were precluded from checking work email?
46:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that like you would necessarily be arrested if you check your work email, but like I don't think that a job could say could yeah, I don't think you could be held accountable for not checking your email on Saturday.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: I thought, but but I but I think you know, I think there's there's a lot of lessons here, both just in terms of um, you know, the hiring, like bringing people on that side, but also just as you're just broadly sort of like expanding into other countries, like the needs are different, the cultures are different.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: Um but it's also exciting, right?
46:31
SPEAKER_01: And it's also really cool to learn about other cultures.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: You have to have a North Star that crosses all of those cultures, yeah.
46:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: And that's one thing I think I do believe plus one did well is our we only have one KPI for the entire company, and that's increasing our total customers' picks per day.
46:50
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
46:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everybody knows that they've got a role in that, right?
46:54
SPEAKER_02: Sales knows and just sell more, or engineering knows, make a better system, and uh vision knows, make the vision system faster.
47:02
SPEAKER_02: Everybody got you know, sort of work on total picks a day, and it's the same across culture and geography, right?
47:08
SPEAKER_02: They all know they don't you don't have to speak English, Dutch, or French.
47:12
SPEAKER_02: Don't have to make this company.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter, right?
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: There is is there like a is there a number of picks where you're like, all right, we're we're in black now, we're good.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh I know that if you come to San Antonio, and you should, uh, there is a tote that's running just inside the door that is a live feed of the picks happening in the world.
47:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:35
SPEAKER_02: And it's uh, you know, it updates every two minutes, and you'll see, hey, we're doing about 1.1 to 1.2 million picks in the world every day.
47:44
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then it shows a you know cumulative, and it'll be two billion picks before too much longer.
47:49
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it's it's the one thing everyone can understand your employees, your customers, investors, the media.
48:00
SPEAKER_02: Okay, that number going up and to the right is a good thing for everyone.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, Eric.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, always a pleasure.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that we'll speak again.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh probably about five minutes or it's great speaking with you.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Brian.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much to Eric and Plus One Robotics for the chat.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: Thanks to you as always for tuning in.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: If you're enjoying the show, please like and subscribe.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to check out our newsletter over at automated.fm that features exclusive interviews every Thursday morning.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have a lot of great interviews coming up on this year podcast.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: We've got Serve Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Physical Intelligence, Kinesie, Carnegie Mellon, lots of great stuff lined up.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: So uh stay tuned and thanks for joining us.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: We will see you next week for another episode of Automated.