Smart, versatile and (relatively) cheap machines are moving beyond the factory
Tomas Gorny, cofounder and CEO of Nextiva, a cloudbased phoneservice provider in Scottsdale, Ariz., spends half his time traveling. But even when he’s out of the office, he’s in — in the form of a telepresence robot from Double Robotics. Dubbed Double TG, it’s an endearingly awkward union of iPad, selfie stick, Skype and Segway.
“As a communications company, we have a lot of technologies to stay connected, including videoconferencing,” says Gorny. “But one of the most effective ways to feel like I’m in the room is by using my robot.”
Telepresence is the latest recruit in the robot revolution. Robot sales set records in 2014, when, according to the Robotic Industries Association, an industry trade group, 25,425 robots valued at $1.5 billion were delivered to customers, up 13 percent from 2013.
You may be more robot-ready than you think. Telepresencerobot makers, including Suitable Technologies, Anybots, VGo and iRobot, are leading the charge beyond manufacturing and into health care and education, among other areas. The bots are increasingly affordable too, ranging from $2,500 for the Double Robotics bot to $2,500 a month to lease an iRobot/Cisco AVA robot.
Particularly to smaller manufacturers, Boston-based Rethink Robotics pitches its relatively affordable Baxter and Sawyer robots ($25,000 and up) as “work force multipliers.” Unlike earlier industrial robots, Rethink’s machines, which have arms and a digital “face,” can be “taught” new tasks by demonstration, rather than by being reprogrammed.
Of course, you may need a highly trained person to work with a robot. Other costs include power, maintenance, security and software integration that will require your IT department’s input. Too much of a bother? Outsourcing and rent-a-bot services are available, especially in areas such as logistics.
In a more artisanal example of robot outsourcing, BodyLogicMD, a franchise of clinics doing hormone-replacement therapy, started sending patients handwritten reminders that appear to be in their own writing — created by calligraphy robots that take a writing sample and then work from a text message to produce customized cards. The robo-writers are based in New York at a startup called Bond, which launched in 2013 and has customers in retail, real estate and the nonprofit sector.
“It’s not cheap,” says Brandon Seymour, BodyLogic’s director of SEO. “But it’s a more humanistic approach to communicating with patients via direct mail.”
Don’t bother asking whether you can be replaced by a machine. A recent study by the University of Oxford estimates that, within two decades, nearly half of all occupations (lawyers, managers) will be replaceable by robots or software. Maybe even entrepreneurs?