EP10: Robots on the Move: Disrupting Delivery with Ottonomy ft Ritukar Vijay

Are robots going to take over the world? They are not having robots is a good solution there not to replace people but to help them do more with minimal stuff. Let's debunk this myth for them. But uh definitely there'll be more robots in our real day-to-day life. No driving, no steering wheel and it is a pod which runs like hey take me here and that's about it. How did you think about diversifying across so many different ranges of use cases in the same and adding depth to each uh each of these applications? When things are early, you always have that opportunity that you

can uh touch upon a lot of other things as well. You you know filed for more than 60 patents in your journey. Unless you do something you know really out of the world, there's no patent at all. But uh sometimes it's very important to understand that smallest detail aspects of a overall system is a pain in itself. What were some of the key challenges that you faced less people can do more if the develop world wants to have those services which you know the developing world is enjoying so they need to automate a lot of it and it was fantastic to have this conversation with

you because I think you and your team were like snappy a lot of learnings led to where we are right now. If you could have a personal robot assistant, what kind of crazy wacky features do you would like to add to that? [Music] The Hustle Group Company. Let me introduce you to the Hustle Group Company. It's a lifestyle brand that's redefining street wear through the power of fashion, self-belief, and resilience. The second one being Discover Dollar, which is an AIdriven tech company that helps brands and retailers recover

hidden dollars from overp payments and leakages. Docs Now's intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect, manage, govern, and collaborate on the data front, transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line, all in a secure and a single environment. Hello everyone, welcome to yet another episode of the innovators and disruptors podcast. I'm your host Abhay Tundan and today we're going to go into deep into the world of robotics and robots and for that we have a very special guest here

with us today Rukar. Ritukar is a dear friend but he's a amazing technologist. He's a subject matter expert when it comes to robotics. He's the founder of a fantastic company called as autonomy and he's also fondly known as the delivery robot man. Thank you so much Ruger for joining in. Lovely to have you here. Thank you so much A to uh you know to have us here you know. So the most important thing is uh that uh you know uh very few podcasts are more focused on uh so many aspects around uh people technology and loved a few of the initial episodes and uh glad to be part

of here. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm glad that you liked it. Like you said, right, we're going to focus on a lot of stuff about you, you know, who you are as a person, how you got into robotics, and then, you know, we're going to dwell a lot deeper into some of those robotic concepts. I'm sure the audience would be very keen to understand uh some of the technical concepts in a very simplified way. So, we're going to touch upon some of those things and more importantly, the impact that it's creating in the world today, right? So you know let's address the

elephant in the room first. Is are robots going to take over the world? They are not. Uh but definitely there'll be more robots in our real uh you know day-to-day life uh as right from autonomous vehicles to delivery robots to you know house assets and you name it. So so that's going to happen and that's that has started happening since last couple of years now for sure. I mean I see robots cleaning the floor. Yes, I see robotic arms doing a lot of automation in industrial environments. Uh in the company that I was previously working for, TVS Motor Company, I saw

robotic arms with 16 touch points run by a neural network uh for the paint function. Right? So you see a lot of these things now actually getting and becoming a part of our daily activities. We just don't realize that robots are everywhere today and they're just going to be more meshed up. So the intermeshing of robots in our lives with human lives is going to be a lot more like you said. So fantastic to hear that. So people who are worried, let's debunk this myth for them. Robots are not going to take over anytime soon. At least I'm hopeful. For all the folks who

are into these kind of conspiracy theories as well, AGI is far off. It's fairly far off. ASI is further far off. probably not in our lifetime and we're not going to see robots take over. They're going to be there to help us out. So, now that you've addressed this uh let's go a little deeper into understanding who you were as a kid. You know, what how did you grow up? You know, what what brought in that scientific mindset to solve for some of these challenging issues around robotics? I just wanted to understand a little bit more about your growing of

phase. Yeah, I think I think a lot came in from sports, right? So, you know, uh I used to uh run 100 meter sprints and uh you know, football, used to play football uh during my school days. I was telling my son a couple of days back uh it was a sports day when I told him that my uh 100 m sprint was 10.53 and the India record for today is 10.23. Wow. So, I was telling him the importance of you know uh less than a second. How does it matter? So, uh you know sports actually tell you a lot about like solving problems, things which which are very difficult to do and

you get into a mindset that you know whatever you want to do you can potentially at the end of the day that also tells you a lot about failures. So that mindset is ready once you are like early in the you know journey part of the sports. So when fast forward you know when it comes to technology or anything which uh which interests you you know so I was very fascinated by moving things and uh you know you know RC cars and moving things. So, so eventually uh you know it got into an interest that how what else we can do. M uh Hollywood sci-fi played a very

important role in you know probably every technologist uh life and that also kind of created that you know interest and curiosity to you know uh what can we do I mean back in like '90s if you see uh if you see a movie like Terminator so that's that's how your p you know perception of robots you know at that point became and uh that's how the journey started I think uh it's a sports sci-fi that led to curiosity and that's uh that's what that was the initial point. Wow, that's amazing. Right. because I mean it's so impressive to understand uh the kind of background

that you had in sports and connected that to the moving things aspect of life and connecting intersecting that with sci-fi because a lot of innovation that has happened has been because of sci-fi right you get inspired by sci-fi and that's why storytelling and meaningful narratives science fiction narratives are so critical sometimes for us to you know imagine far beyond and think about how to bring those to life in In fact, I don't know if you've heard of this book called as uh hieroglyph uh by Neil Stephenson. It's a fantastic book where they brought in a bunch of scientists

and a bunch of storytellers together to actually uh you know base their their chapters or individual stories not in 202200 AD or 2500 AD but rather 2250 AD. So that's still in the near future 30 years from now but having very scientific backing to every story. Yeah. Right. And that's what inspires us. That's that's where this project was formed project heroglyph to come up with the stories that can inspire us to solve for some of those challenges. Very interesting. In fact, I think for as long as I understand in my research, you've been into autonomy. And this is

not the autonomy of your company, the autonomous vehicles, autonomous technologies at large. And one of the first ones of first exposure to robotics that you got was in your undergrad in Jaipur where you also won a lot of uh prizes and grants as well including a grant by DST departments on science and technology. Do you want to share a little bit more about that part of your journey as well? So I think uh early on in the journey u you know uh when I came uh when I started engineering the very first year I applied uh you know for kishor with viganic pranujna by ISC it

was young you know scientist program to support them and uh you know I I thought about an idea that how can we garner like you know sunlight during the night so solar power so a couple of geostationary satellites which are like you know passing on things here there and you know a small paper was created and submitted. I never heard back from them for obvious reasons because it was uh very less uh you know organized. Obviously it was missing out the details because I didn't knew everything at that point even now in that particular subject but uh you know that failure

actually uh you know prepared me to do better you know and uh and that's why you know uh we when I submitted for the next uh uh you know uh application for department of science and technology it was slightly better prepared uh more focused on the objective that what what needs to be done here. So that was my first grant in my second year or third semester so as to uh to create robotic arm with ultrasonic vision and uh you know fast forward uh you know two years back uh garnering solar energy through you know uh during the night actually got published by somebody else a large

research organization and I was smiling and you know I was telling my wife and she was like okay come on so so so that's how it happens sometimes you know you you think about it, you don't have the means uh to execute it or to you know and that's where you need a team and that's exactly what we did back in college. So once I got like you know a scholarship from uh DST then uh you know created a team of people uh like-minded folks uh and created a robotic club. So that became my majority of my engineering and everything else was secondary per se. Yeah. Fantastic.

You even won a the best autonomous robot in 2006 and uh to your point right it's a full circle it's a circle of transformation is how I would like to call it where you envision something way back so many years ago and now you're seeing it fulfilled sometimes by your own effort sometimes by someone else's effort but the fact that you know it's got fulfilled today that idea took shape and is some is is materialized today is a it must be a fantastic feeling yeah it it it was good and uh you know uh one of so creating that team and to execute it that was biggest learning from that

right and fast forward within the same robotics club I never imagined but one of our co-founders here at autonomy is from the same robotics club oh wow so yeah yeah amazing that's so so super amazing in fact uh if I'm not wrong just after college you got into autonomous vehicle software discipline and build these uh softwares autonomous vehicle softwares for unmanned uh battle tanks. Am I am I correct? I mean this is fantastic right? So what was that journey like? What was the transition like? I was fortunate enough because there were hardly any robotics companies

in India back in like 2009 10 around around that time and uh you know there was a company called Hi-Tech Robotics uh led by you know Anoj Kapoora a dear very dear you know mentor I'll say and uh we had the privilege to work on the most cutting edge technologies which was unmanned ground vehicles for defense applications and uh pretty much uh the 3D ladders which you see on the autonomous cars uh we were one of the first ones to get it from us uh you know in the APAC region itself it it was that early so uh all the DARPA grand challenge back back in 2007 2008 those

were the latest research which were you know which we were referring while building those technologies so it was uh it that just set the stage I mean you you you are new into that space you are very enthusiastic you have you know burnt your fingers doing small things but then uh that gave a lot of exposure about you know how to build real unmanned ground vehicle systems uh which can be used uh by as you know the one of the most you know important customers for any technology where life and death is important is around defense right so I

think couldn't thank enough uh I was fortunate enough to to get into that and uh spent good amount of time um across the you know across India uh with variety of DRDO labs at Hi-Tech to uh to to you know pursue those things into you know conceptual items into a real world you know product that's amazing in fact uh I think it's it's probably during that phase that we ideally would have bumped into each other I remember in in one of our conversations much later that we both were at the same conference that was organized by one of the companies that I was a part of at that point of

time in Goa and I remember highex robotics I remember Anurj and I remember hearing your name because you were also there. I don't know if we bumped into each other. Did we speak? I'm not sure but we definitely were present at the same place at the same time way back in 2014. 2014. Yes. Right. And I think much later in 2020 is when we got together had an amazing brainstorming conversation. I'll refer to that brainstorming conversation a little later in the conversation but I think that's again when we really got in touch and we started you know speaking a

lot more small world right so so 2014 uh at that point of time me and Anoj were scouting for you know uh robotic startups uh and uh you know uh we went to Goa at that point and uh obviously when when you said that you were at the same event and it was very closed event per se we would have definitely bumped into each other I'm sure so I think it's Cosmos which you know got us back in 2020 uh where we got in touch again and discussed a lot more opportunities there things were changed at that time yeah true I mean uh fantastic journey as well right in fact that didn't stop there for

you I think uh you continued the whole uh you know going deeper into applications around autonomous technologies going from autonomous warehousing to autonomous shuttles and then including the BMW's L4 uh uh you know vehicular technology technology right uh on on the autonomous front how did you think about diversifying across so many different ranges of use cases in the same and adding depth to each uh each of these applications I think it it was uh you know it started with a large set of curiosity where you're wide uh you can choose anything which you want

and uh when things are early you always have that uh you know opportunity that you can touch upon a lot of other things as well right so when we started defense I mean uh uh at high-tech so then obviously there was a commercial side which was around warehousing so that get a flavor of autonomous mobile robots and warehouses and manufacturing facilities and uh you know there was a wonderful team which was executing it and uh then we also realized that you know what can we do in autonomous uh you know driving side and that's where uh Indian you know India as like not just the

infrastructure but you know the driving habits are such that it's very difficult to have like autonomous vehicles on road, right? Uh so we think thought of uh like uh campuses where you know these shuttles can be uh run and those were like you know everybody was you know kind of iterating and learning that what will work because the technology was there right and uh that always happens with the evolution of uh you know core uh you know underlying uh technologies which are deployed somewhere right so even today if we fast forward we look uh the AMR business is growing you know

wonderfully well. Everybody knows autonomous mobile robots and warehouses or manufacturing setups. Um the shuttles still are coming up is still not there. Uh and that probably that had it been in a scenario if we would have not done that time we would have never realized that part right but uh yeah and automotive is again you know levels of autonomy. So, so that's where I got into you know I moved to Germany uh joined a company uh called Aptive where I led you know the BMW's urban autopilot program and uh it was that time when you know multiple levels of autonomy actually

came into real life because that was a live automaker and uh uh while uh you know we were looking at highway autopilots uh urban autopilots and uh but still not fully autonomous uh you know L4 for autonomy where there's nobody behind the wheel right so so that's that was kind of a you know general progression towards you know understanding more and uh that was just before autonomy and uh you know a lot of learnings led to where we are right now yeah in fact I remember in 2021 if I'm not wrong it was 2020 rather because 21 was already co so 2019 in fact uh

September I was in US. I was in uh New York at the naval yard uh the research park there, right? New York naval yard. And I saw autonomous shuttles there. Yeah. Only to be, you know, for people to be moving around within the naval yard ecosystem and I was like, "Wow, man, this is pretty cool." Cut to 2023 and then you had some uh mainstream cabs being autonomous as well, right? So it was fantastic to see the progression in four five years that has happened in this space and I'm sure that you know you've also had a good role to play in this whole ecosystems development as

well. So fantastic kudos to that. But Retukar along this journey one very fascinating thing was you you know filed for more than 60 patents in your journey. It's not a small number 60 patents is a huge number. Do you want to talk to us a little bit uh about you know how easy was it to file those patents? How many of them were granted potentially uh and specifically for the consu I mean for a lot of lot of audience members who are in the R&D space there is uh a lot of apprehension in terms of filing for patents. I also want

you to talk to us a little bit about the advantages in developing your own IP and using that as a tech mode. A lot of people forget that tech mode is super critical from defensibility standpoint and how did that help you? Yeah, I think uh you know um uh when I was in my previous organization and you know uh we had a lot of technology which were developed and uh very less parents filed. So we just roll our sleeves that what is happening. I mean uh we need to have some parents filed because normally parents are filed when the at the

inception of the idea right and there we were sitting where we have built it and we have not filed it. So, so then very few patents were filed but then we thought that there's so much which we can parent and uh a normal perception is unless you do something you know really out of the world you should not f I mean there's no patent at all but uh sometimes it's very important to understand that smallest detail aspects of a overall system is a patent in itself right makes sense and uh and that understanding we got and you know there were so many things uh which we started

and um the hang of getting the patents uh you the process uh was uh because uh I also you know drafted couple of patents myself and uh while it was very difficult for a tech team to a legal team to you know conspire together to you know come up with the write up and the all the claims and everything uh we actually got into it. Let's let's figure it out. Let's let's do it. And uh once we did that uh you know one or two times uh we got the understanding of you know what needs to be done here. So now we had a better understanding that when we are doing something new um you know uh

where you know what will be the system what will be the method what will be the claims and suddenly you start thinking like that and then it becomes easy because uh once you are working in a technology field which is continuously growing every day something new is happening so I mean uh it becomes easy for for any uh you know technology company or a person to start filing more and more patents that's what happened we never thought of any number in mind But uh whatever we were doing we started filing and um to our surprise almost uh 70 or 80% have been you know granted and

a few of them are still under evaluation. So I think that's one of the fundamental things that you know where we think that patents are you know a very very big thing. It's it's just part of the process and if you start doing it I mean uh even if you have a conversion of 70 to 80 uh there's a portfolio right there for sure and what it does to you is uh you know defensibility I think there are few things which should not be patented like secret source of of the system they should not be patented because you know at the end of the day patents also get published right so uh

once they are granted everything is out so I mean uh not everything should be patented as well so there's some secret sauce source which you can still keep it with yourself but everything else uh you can just put it out for you know for people to know that this is yours and you know you defend yourself. Uh strategy uh for early stage startups should uh you know my recommendation should never be on the offensive that we have this patent so you can't do it rather it should be the other way around since we have the patent so we are you know legit to do it. That's that's the

fundamental thought process here. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's a very good perspective, right? Uh uh you know because because sometimes people do not look at collaboration. It's important to collaborate when you have patents because that's when you can Yes. Right. You can license the technology out and you can still make money. I mean look at Amazon. I there was a phase uh in my life when I was just following the patents that Amazon was filing in the delivery space and I was like going bonkers because every week there was news about some or the other radical

patents being filed and I'm like wow like I think there was a there was a patent filed on hot air balloons having a whole damn warehouse and drones delivering it from that warehouse and that hot air balloon is in floating in the here across a continent and drones would just deliver it depending upon where that balloon is and you know what is being asked of another was underwater delivery system and I'm like what is going on with these guys right I mean how feasible or realistic are these delivery mechanisms but having said that they have made made sure that they've

got a lot of these things covered today in the future if ever there's a scenario they know they can just license out the technology they can always I mean uh look at like what is happening underwater like All the data centers are now set up underwater because of two reasons. One is the space of course there's there are a lot of oceans there right you know on earth I'll say and then uh you know the biggest challenge for having a data center is the heat and the electricity which uh it is used to you know cater to that uh you know temperature. So underwater makes 100%

sense. You don't have to spend uh you know millions on uh electricity to maintain that temperature. And there's you know open space. So imagine if uh they were just setting up a you know a dark store underwater. So here you are. I mean some some some of the overlaps can be there right away. Right. And the longevity as well. Longevity as well. So so sometimes you don't even anticipate what what might happen and maybe the core function might be different but the use of technology can be completely done for something else. Very true. That's fantastic. Right. In fact uh so so any

any one or two patents that were really close to your heart? I mean um the first one which I drafted are always you know part part of my life. It it became like I'm writing a book. Nice. So, so you know uh those patents were like uh you know uh very very close where we we were creating a new system for uh you know uh you know warehousing uh automation and uh I think it took some time like about uh one and a half months for me to really spend some time there and uh when I was writing that then I realized at some point in time I can write a book as well. Nice. Have you? No not I mean it's

it's it's not worthy enough till date. So so let's let's wait for that. Yeah. No, we should we you should write you have a lot of amazing understanding and you you've broken down a lot of these concepts into very simplified uh pointers as well, right? For a lot of masses, right? Or layman, people like me who can now understand robotics a lot easier. So, so you know, you should actually pen it down and uh write a book. We'll definitely I mean yeah, at some point in time, yes. Awesome. uh I want to talk to you about autonomy but before I go there I think uh a lot of

people still don't understand uh what are the different levels of autonomous or autonomy and when I say autonomy I'm talking about a U t o n o m y uh so when we talk about autonomous technologies there are multiple levels could you for the sake of the audience talk about what the different levels are and then we go deeper into your company autonomy yeah I think So uh levels of autonomy basically depends on fundamental uh aspect of human engagement when the vehicle is uh you know processing something and giving an output. M for example an L0 system is a

warning system right so so it'll give you a warning uh whether a front collision uh which is imminent about to happen it'll give you a warning uh or it is a driver state uh where you know driver is drowsy and it gives you warning so that's an Lzero system where the system is not act you know actuating but it is giving you warning based on all the sens whatever you know minimal sensor data uh you know which is these days present in you know trucks and cars already True. And uh then we have uh L1 which is uh emergency braking. So that uh that is like if you if you're driving

the vehicle at some point in time automatically it'll break. So that's the first stage where only the linear system is getting you know uh activated when there is an imminent collision. L2 comes in where you know you have a control on the you know acceleration and brake which is you know maintain the speed which is cruise control. Yeah. And uh along with that you have uh some level of steering as well just to maintain in a lane for example. So lane keep systems are L2 basically and uh then the L3 systems are where you have larger control on both steering and uh linear

actuation where you can start changing lanes as well. Got it. So till this point it is like all mostly you know uh so the warning systems can be anywhere but uh the the L1 and L2 normally works very well in highway situations right and that's where you know uh the initial Tesla Tesla autopilot is normally you know when when you are on a uh not in an urban environment but you run it there but the current version of Tesla autopilot is pretty much you know crossing L L3 L4 you know area so it remains as an L3 system yet because there is a human in the loop those you

know there's a human behind the wheel still so that's where you know it is uh you know uh again the system is running autonomously but at any point in time you you might have to take control and you you there has to be an attentive uh you know driver behind the wheel right now L4 is uh when everything is autonomous you're just you know part of the overall system and uh but still there is a steering wheel at some in the vehicle which is like which we call as whimo which is running the the vehicles still has a steering wheel. So at some point in time somebody might have to

drive it maybe for you know taking out from the shed to start you know uh uh or or anything anything right so uh the vehicle still has a provision of a human driving element right now the last is L5 where you know there's no driving at all so so I mean no no driving no steering wheel and it is a pod which runs like hey take me here and that's about it amazing so just to recap and fantastic analogy by the way you know and using these levels from a from you it's it's a lot more relatable when you talk about the analogy of cars because people know L0 just trigger warnings. Yes, it could

be the trigger around uh you know driver's state of mind when he's driving or she is driving to actually you know showcasing that they have to break immediately right a trigger is what L0 is L1 talks about um braking braking right linear so anything linear it's just taking control but for a very linear mechanism of emergency braking L2 talks about cruise control where you're maintaining ing the lanes, but you're maintaining the speed. Yes. Right. L3 is now shifting the lanes. So now you're talking about braking as well as control of the the steering as well. So you're

changing lanes. L4 then becomes autonomous to the degree that you know you don't have to do anything. The vehicle will take you from point A to point B. But there's still a provision of a wheel just in case of a Vimo uh cab as well where just in case it is required there could be some human intervention that can come in an L5 is a complete autonomy. Yeah. Right. Where you know there's no provision to drive at all. There's no provision to drive. Amazing. And you know so so that's how you know uh NSTSA defined these uh five levels of autonomy. When it comes to

robotics world, it's like you know the the human replaced is from a you know tele operator right. So how much human element it is because robots you know are not driven by people physically but uh the human element comes from a tele uh teleoperation side. So so that's how we we have the entire levels exactly the same. It's just uh instead of a steering wheel it's it's the remote driver uh situation there. Yeah. Fantastic. Uh then let's get into autonomy your company. Now this is spelled as OT t o n o m y and your robots are called autobots. Yeah. Right. So could you

could you tell us a little bit more about when did it start? How did it start? What was going on and what led to autonomy being autonomy? Right. I mean the vision behind it. So I think uh you know uh first of all we started a couple of uh you know people in within the group. we we started uh jamming about what should be done. Uh we have you know there are so many so many transformation is happening in the industry. So you ought to think that you know we need to do something. So uh I mean uh myself Hardik who is you know from from the same club uh then Praot and Ashish we we

worked together like long back starting from 2010 2012. So we know each other and uh we started working on you know looking at various uh scenarios like what should be done. So uh but one thing was clear uh that the only thing which we knew was autonomous systems. So we thought that no matter what we do the company should be autonomy. So so that's how the name came about. Uh we got the domains very early which helped us to to to get the name get the you know trademark and everything. And uh fast forward uh when we had the bots, the robots uh it was pretty obvious that hey

you know these are Autobots and you know pun intended I mean the Transformer movie also came in with Autobots and uh while you know and one of the latest Transformer movies when it was getting released we got an email from you know the studio that they want to promote the Autobots with our Autobots and although that didn't happen but because they were like 10 days and you know we were on 100 Autobots and I was like Okay. And that's that's really difficult to pull it off at that stage in the early stage in the journey. But I think you know name branding plays a very very vital role uh

in the longitivity of the company. So so that's uh that's something which happened uh and uh we are learning every day that uh you know how people enjoy the name. Yeah. People say autonomy they talk over you. Yeah. Amazing. you know in your journey of autonomy is when I think early on is when I reached out to you probably in early 2020 onset of pandemic. I was working for uh uh this large US retailer and I realized that one of the problems that we wanted to solve for was uh around COVID and safe distancing of consumers as well as the frontline staff

workers right and we thought that you know we while we're promoting bopus as a concept concept which is by online pickup and store do people still have to go inside the store to pick it up and that's when I had come across autonomy and I was like you know let me reach out to you because maybe we could come up with something very interesting. And it was fantastic to have this conversation with you because I think you and your team were like snappy. You came back so quick with certain very interesting render designs, 3D models, etc. to to to you know visualize how Autobots or I

don't know if they were called Autobots back in the day. Not at that time. Yeah. But but these robots would actually pick up the stuff from the store, bring them to the car parking of the consumer. They would be able to scan a code, pull out their stuff, put it in their car. The robot goes back in. There's a UV uh you know sanitizing disin disinfectant as well as sanitizer as well which was sanitizing the whole environment. it would go back in and then again it would interface with the frontline worker of the store and that would mean that you know there's no probability of covid

being transmitted from one person to another everyone is safe and yet so meaningful impact creating solution right so this was a fantastic brainstorming session that I was so happy about and I think it happened over a span of 2 weeks I think it it was impactful from a perspective that you had the functional knowledge that what is required at the store uh what we had was a technical you know strength that uh yes we are already you know into making robots and pretty much on the same lines uh but to cater to a specific curbside you know delivery or curbside

pickups was something very very interesting and uh you know uh I still remember uh you know the UV uh disinfect uh sanitization of the packages it was a crazy time right so so covid was like everybody you know and now if you look at it people were washing their stuff what what they got from the stores before using So, so it it was you one of those people. We we one of everybody was I mean everybody was in panic. So you know the enthusiasm to contribute uh in difficult times I think that was high and if you can do it with the you know

the fundamental thing which you're doing like the work uh nothing like it right creating something new for that those times it was was very uh you know motivating for us and obviously it gave a lot of direction from what the customer wants right and uh that helped us in the in our journey uh although that didn't work out at that point in time but later on with a very large retailer we were able to do the same thing and you know the largest one of the largest you were able to get ahead with right so that's that's fantastic and cut to the journey today if I see uh

you know today you have uh autonomies robots or autobots across large uh medical facilities hospital chains medtech companies to one of the largest space tech companies too right and in fact international airports a couple of them if I'm not wrong so it's it's spread out very very well you have some very strong names as your clients today. What's that journey been like? Because this is such a I mean I feel so happy and I've of course been following your journey for the last few years. It feels so good to see how autonomy has grown. I think uh you know we we thought about a

lot of things when when we came up with delivery robots, right? So uh there were some food delivery robots which are which there in the market and which people know delivery robots as food delivery robots, right? But there's a lot more to it because if you look at it and you know there are things like in healthcare uh you know you have blood samples you have telemetry equipment you have uh uh vaccines which needs to be moved from point A to point B right and uh you know specifically in the west uh in in the US uh the labor shortage led to a massive increase in early wages and

because of which uh you know having robots is a good solution there not to replace people but to help them uh you know to do more with minimal staff. A typical example for a hospital is like a hospital nurse walks about 15,000 steps a day and that's like uh that's not his or her primary job, right? So if you can you know eliminate or minimize that uh that walking uh part where where they're taking things from here to there uh that is a massive opportunity for the caretakers to actually do care you know take care of the patients and that's where we see a lot of ROI for the

customer coming in uh for the healthcare areas and uh you know same with the you know biosciences or you know pharmaceutical companies similar aspect like the vaccines should be temperature control moved from point A to point B 100% it makes sense and all they're doing is they're doing deliveries uh with a maintained chain of custody so that nobody should should have access to while the things are you know moving from point A to point B and uh none of us actually thought about it that uh this might be the you know most important use case run it but at the

same time what we also realized that uh you know these robots are also doing last mile delivery for a customer in uh in London in Milton Kees with DPD uh who are actually uh you know it's it's a it's a logistics company delivering all the Amazon packages in KE and uh the robots are delivering you know right from uh food to you know iPhones and you name it. So I think uh it is not 2014 where we have purpose-built robot to do just one thing right it we are we are living in 2025 where uh it's it's more of a horizontal play where you have these robots you

know running in different ODDs or you know operational areas right so at this point we we are running with you know hospital hospitals uh pharmaceuticals last mile hyperlocal last mile airports and you name it so it doesn't matter matter anymore. What is the use case? It it does matter that the technology and the platform should stay the same and it should run or you know deliver items from point A to point B. Uh in all of these scenarios so so that's the generalized you know a pseudo generalized AI layer which we are creating right now. It's

very good that we're thinking of technology to help our frontline nurses save time so that those that's time that they can dedicate to taking care of patients. So technology we need to use this. It's really good. Right now we're talking about our telemetry, right? Our telemetry boxes and all that. I could see it being used with uh processes with our laboratory like blood products, retrieval of blood um blood products, etc. We could use it for our pharmacy cuz sometimes our our pharmacy techs um bring patients back and forth. So that's

so amazing. In fact, you must have had some detractors or naysayers who would not be very happy with your approach about taking this as a horizontal layer, right? People would I mean more often than not I've seen investors talk to you about you know put putting in vertical niches. Yeah. Right. You know so that you take you know there's always the saying that you know do not do not have your foot into both right. You just focus on one you go in depth in that one particular area and build your expertise there. But you took a very different approach. You said that you know we're

going to use this we we're going to platformize this right. We're going to make this as a horizontal and solve for the tech behind it such that it's modular enough that any different kind of use case could be addressed. Yes. Did you face some of these challenges? Of course. I mean vertical growth is uh something which uh you know every investor will talk about. So do this one and uh do this for 3 years, 5 years and then diversify. That's that's you know the standard way of doing things. Yeah. But uh we need to step back and understand you know uh why hardware and

robotics is still evolving why it is you know you see in last 10 years the there are hardly any billiond dollar you know robotics companies which were vertically growing right uh actually you know it's it's a hard fact if you ask a couple of investors they'll be they'll go back and do some research on it right but at the same time there are 6 months old AI companies which are multi-billion dollars why because uh the approach is plat platform. They are not building an AI solution for a legal firm. They are not building an AI platform for something else. And you know they're not

going vertical. And the reason uh the moment you start going horizontal and you you are able to crack and build a system which can cater to you know multiple domains that's where you know uh that's where the opportunity is and we don't want to settle for like uh you know 500 million you know valuation. We want to be the you know billion dollar company in robotics. That's that's fair. That's fair and that I think makes a lot of sense. I think we have we've already I think a lot of those legacy companies have also started moving towards Mac architecture because they understand

that that's the way to go about right. Platformizing is the way you're going to be addressing a lot of different needs but by making sure that the architecture in the first place is addressing a lot of these challenges. Right? So you're you're still developing it modularly but then you're developing it to solve for an end toend solution. So, so you you well thought out the system, you have provisions for everything and you start working for customers. So, for example, today we are doing you know hyperlocal last mile airports and you know healthcare healthcare being one of the

major focus areas for us. So, we are going deeper into healthcare integrating with their ecosystem you know uh things. So, uh but at the same time uh you know we we also have to realize that uh you know uh the technology also is very very important to you know crack that for sure. So la this January we came out with our contextual AI 2.0 uh framework uh which uh where we worked with umbrella and uh Stanford and we released it in January uh where uh you know we are automatically identifying the places where the robots are running. So because at every place so a hospital airport or

a you know sidewalk the robot behavior is different and till like last year we were tuning those behaviors based on where it is running manually or you know pseudo automated way. Now what we're doing is we are automatically identifying you know these uh these uh environments like uh you know the scene understanding that okay this is a hospital indoors aisle uh brightly lit and uh if it is a you know outside a warehouse which is a loading area uh you know dimly lit you know uneven surface and all those things and we automated way in an automated way we associate the

behavior around that amazing and this is something which we are doing by running uh you know standard VLMs on edge edge hardware. So, so you know you see I mean we couldn't have done it like 5 years back right this is the right time to do it and that's what you know you know use of AI you know in a system which makes it more generalized in a horizontal so you know if 5 years back any investor would have been talking about horizontal approach for robotics they would have like you know we'll talk we'll talk about it later so probably later is 5 years now I mean this is the time to

talk about it yeah no that makes a lot of sense so I think uh the difference that 5 years has made is the edge computing has become cheaper, much more accessible and contextual AI with the new models out there is becoming much stronger to learn accessible as well, right? So fantastic. So that's such a such a good vision, right, to have 5 years back to get into the space and now this place is completely ripe and you already have your platform in place. Absolutely. That's that's fantastic visioning. Thank you so much, you know, on sharing these insights. It's it's

it's fantastic. But across this journey, just wanted to also touch upon this thing. What are the other challenges because uh uh this space has been evolving you know it's not been fully mainstream about 5 10 years ago and you've been at it for a while. So applications have changed, applications have now been uh more uh people are more open to utilizing those applications. Let's put it this way, right? Uh what were some of the key challenges that you faced? So um one of the key challenges which we faced uh you know how do we you know so it's it all goes back to team

right so how is the team you know organized in a way so that uh you know retraal from oo he once said that have microscope at one hand and telescope on the other hand right so you need to have a longer vision but you also need to have the microscope to do to see what's happening in a on a day-to-day basis and I think in in our early phases like uh uh we didn't hear ret. So, so either we were too visionary or we were too you know uh micro uh you know going micro and about like one one and a half years from the starting of the company we realized that we have to balance it out

you know so uh what we did was uh we focused on uh you know deliverables throughout the year but uh at the at every CS uh you know we we we have participated in like three four CS out of it three we actually had our booths there. So we made it a point that in January we need to come up with a groundbreaking innovation uh which is uh not an innovation at our end but uh it is it is a global breakthrough. Amazing. So in you know in the first CES we just announced our indooroutdoor robots. In the second CS we came up with unmanned you know unmanned deliveries. So it can

just deliver without a person taking it. It delivers and goes. So you know uh on the you know third CS we came up with Autobot brew where we have a you know beer tower on the robot. So you know it's anybody's dream to you know just just you know call call a robot to get you a fresh brew of beer right so I think that helped us to you know balance out innovation and you know far thinking uh from new products. So innovation on the house basically these three four innovations each year we come up with something and the output is a resultant of many ideas which were discussed only

few of them were like you know this is the only one which we are going ahead now in two years back when we announced unattended deliveries obviously there was no market for it at that point in time today uh you know as the year unfolds there are lot many announcement which are coming around unmanned deliveries uh where you know the robots are delivering and uh you know going away from from that. So you know normally it doesn't happen for food and beverage because you're hungry you want to you know even if it is outside your building you'll go out and take it but

uh when it comes to your e-commerce and uh you know anything from you know B2B scenarios it's okay to to deliver it to something right makes a lot of sense you know on that note you know since we're talking about such a platformized approach and solving for so many different challenges and use cases can you talk to us about three areas of impact that you think autonomy is creating for the world today. So one of the key impacts is you know uh you know less people can do more I think uh and specifically you know where wherever

there's a labor shortage uh I think it is important uh because if you look at US and uh you know and if you look look at India the amount of services which uh you know Indians are privileged to at this point in time are not there in US of course you you imagine companies like blinket zeppto you know you you know you're cooking something and you order something meanwhile and you get it in 10 minutes. That's not happening in US and that's not because of any you know uh developed country or you know developing country sort of a thing. There's a labor shortage issue. So people are not

available here. People are available to do it and uh that's that's that's why it's happening. So we need to take labor shortage uh along with you know the services which you want. So if the develop world wants to have those services which you know the developing world is enjoying so they need to automate a lot of it and a good example is another like automating a lot of uh manufacturing processes like uh so so you know a lot of manufacturing is going back to US and you know every country wants to have their own manufacturing today. So people uh places

where we have people places where you know the fundamental reason why it got outsourced was people. So, so you know the opportunity is bigger than we can even imagine but uh it has to be channelized in a way so that uh you know there there you know stages where you know uh that can be adopted by multiple industries. That's that's our view on this. Yeah. So one is labor shortage. One is labor shortage, second is uh services uh with labor shortage. Uh then we have like uh you know uh employment. So that's another aspect which autonomy touches. So, so we try to, you know,

empower. So, we had a specific program called uh internship cohorts. So, you know, uh we are young startup. We can't hire everybody. But we do have internship cohorts where people learn and you know they they've went out to go for masters, they pursue higher studies and whatnot. And that that is always good for us, right? Good for us, good for the ecosystem. So, so that's something which we try to contribute how we can you know kind of give it back by internship cohorts and uh helping people you know young uh you know engineers to to to do something give some them give

some directional inputs and the third is you know breaking barriers like you know we were sitting in India in midst of co we cracked few of the top customers in the US so so thinking uh that uh you know uh you know you have to be you know at X place to do you know Y things is is not there so so you know breaking barrier is something uh you know do it I mean don't do not think that it's not going to happen so inspiring you know all the folks opening up the strategies how we can do it it's the third impact which we can do I mean I mean those are the three things we are doing pretty

much I mean everything else is an outcome or you know an ingredient to that true I mean if if I may take the liberty I think sustainability is another angle yeah I mean sustainability So so impacting lives is like sustainability you know these are electric vehicles so I think at 2025 these are like things which every company should be working I mean if somebody's not working that's a different story altogether so say to say that we are working towards sustainability we are and we should be I mean that's

not that's a table steak today that that's amazing uh so thank you thank you so much for stating that uh none of the podcasts are going to be complete without a rapid rapid fire, right? So, we're going to get into some fun elements, some fun questions, but I think also debunking a lot of myths around robotics. So, we want to ask you a bunch of questions rapid fire style. Please give us rapid answers, too. I I'll try my level best. Awesome. So, which robot from movies or TV shows do you wish was real? So I think u a volley would have been real and uh so so that

that is the form factor which I really wanted to happen. Uh the one which should not be real was Terminator. True. We still want to live. Yes. Uh if we could work on any robotics project without budget constraints you know what kind of a project would that be? Well um you know uh a lot has been spoken and done around space. Mhm. And uh we are still looking at like uh sending you know people uh there and uh last 2 years a lot has happened in the humanoid space. Mhm. So and the reason is not because like our perception of robots being human from the sci-fi age

right uh it is because the world is made for humans. That's why the robots which are like humans will you know contribute to more areas without any changes. So I think uh you know clubbing space with humanoids is something which will be definitely of a great great interest. I'm assuming that's also the the field in robotics that inspires you the most. Uh the field of robotics I think uh it is it is uh you know more on delivery uh space because uh that is something dirt and dirty is always the the way to go for robots and and that's that's really important. Fantastic. what was the most

challenging robotics project that you've worked on? Uh one of the most important uh I can say exciting project. So, so back in like 2010 111 we came up with a small robot uh which was running in an ambience mall in Gurong giving suggestions and if I remember correctly we had a tough time having uh touchcreens because touchcreens were not widely available back in 2010 right uh so that was a fun project we we published a couple of papers there and that is that is the first uh experience around interaction engines at that point

yeah fantastic what do you think will be the most significant advancement in robotics in the next decade Oh uh I think uh advancement will be uh towards generalized AI. I think uh a lot will happen sooner unless uh really you know somebody some you know barriers with come with in terms of governance comes into the picture to stop it. Fantastic. Uh what kind of exciting innovation have you recently seen? Something that excites you about innovative work in robotics that you've very recently seen. So I think uh you know uh there a lot of them a lot a lot

is happening difficult to choose but uh I think uh you know Boston dynamics you know doing somersaults I think that is one of the most interesting things which which anybody can imagine and that's that's what you do when you have unlimited budgets and you you're doing some assaults but uh you know that's a strong statement that uh sometimes you and you and me can't do some assaults but robots can so so that's the statement which it makes. Wow. What's a common myth about robots that you would like to debunk? Uh that they are taking away jobs. Uh I think that's that's a

very common one and the same happened when the computers came in. The same happened when AI came in that uh suddenly you know every now we do do not need developers. We start firing off I mean I mean there'll be some reorg whiches happen which will happen and uh people are needed to contribute to you know building ecosystem around AI as well. So, so that's one of the biggest myth uh which needs to be broken rather we need to think beyond that that how to you know continuously update ourselves. Amazing. If you could have a personal robot assistant what kind of crazy wacky

features do you would like to add to that? The list can go very very long but I'll stick to a couple of them. So I think if it can uh you know automatically reply all the emails that'll be passed but uh because because that is something which takes away most of your time. Right. Right. And uh you know I think lot of things like cleaning and other things are already taken care by existing robots. So cooking is something which will be very interesting where robots can actually cook and effectively cook. A lot is happening in that space also. So getting it to a

point where it can be a you know household thing just like you're having a mixer and a you know toaster you have a robot to cook. So that's about it. Yeah. Okay. So when I when I said wacky I was thinking Star Wars. Star Wars. Okay. I mean uh still we we trying to make it simpler and exciting for for for the normal things. So so I'll stick to that. Right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for fantastic answer that you have just shared with us and with the audience. And on that note, I'm going to give you something very interesting. No podcast is complete without a hamper. So

we've got one for you as well. Thank you so much. And a couple of Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks a lot. And uh this is sponsored by Capeek Designs, our partner who personalized stationary and gifting for corporates. So this is personalized to you. Thank you so much. We can use it at autonomy as well. Thank you. We should thank you. Thank you so much hosting you today. Uh for the folks who are listening to us today, thank you so much for you know hearing us out. you I'm sure you must have learned a lot about robots and the world of robots and

how they are actually meshed up in our lives in every aspect of what we are doing today and in the future. So if you like this episode do provide us comments provide show us some love and give us suggestions. Thank you so much. Signing off. [Music] Feel [Music] free to share your perspectives through comments. Subscribe to the channel and do send us some suggestions as well. Thank you.