Image: IEEE Spectrum; Robot photos: Cobalt, Aethon, Simbe, Savioke, Diligent Droids, and PAL Robotics Companies developing indoor robots for commercial spaces include [from left] Cobalt, Aethon, Simbe, Savioke, Diligent Droids, and PAL Robotics.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

Venture funding for robotics has exploded by more than 10x over the last six years and shows no signs of stopping. Most of this investment has been focused on the usual suspects: logistics, warehouse automation, robot arms for manufacturing, healthcare and surgical robots, drones, agriculture, and autonomous cars.

But after looking into the robotics industry as I set out to launch my own robot company, Cobalt, founded last year and which came out of stealth today, I became convinced thatthere is a new emerging segment about to become one of the fastest-growing in coming years: Autonomous indoor robots for commercial spaces.

For many years, autonomous indoor robots meant one of two domains: 1.Manufacturing or material handling robots in factories and warehouses; or 2.Simple home robots. These robots sit on opposite ends of the structured spaces spectrum:

In years past, robots in factories and warehouses required extremely structured environmentsessentially, automation engineers modified the environment and kept people at arms length so that the robots could perform repetitive tasks in relative isolation. With advances in compliant manipulation (e.g. Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots) and mapping (e.g. Fetch Robotics), this equation is slowly changingbut thats a story for another day.

On the opposite end of the structured spaces spectrum is the home. Homes are notoriously unstructured and dynamic. Homes can change moment to moment and they have extremely high variability, lots of people (adults and children alike), pets, clutter, stairs, and unreliable communications. Of course, wed all love to have a general-purpose home robot (i.e. Rosie from The Jetsons) to clean, do the laundry, feed the pets, etc. But its pretty obvious that inexpensive appliances (like Roomba) and robot toys (look at CES this year) are the only viable home robots at this time: The home is hard!

But theres a massive, untapped market that sits between these two on the spectrum: Commercial spaces such as hotels, hospitals, offices, retail stores, banks, schools, nursing homes, schools, malls, and museums.

Commercial spaces could serve as a great stepping stone on the path toward general-purpose home robots by driving scale, volume, and capabilities. Commercial spaces have a number of key advantages compared to the home:

Owing to these factors, weve started to see a number of autonomous indoor robots for commercial spaces popping up in the last few years. To name just a few:

In fact, each of these companies is building what amounts to an autonomous car,but with different form-factors, value propositions, and customer segments. So while billions of dollars are being spent on autonomous vehicles for R&D and production at scale, these new applications reap the benefits (tech advances and cost savings) on sensors, computing hardware, algorithms, AI, machine learning, and open-source software.

However, indoor robots present some of their own unique challenges. Unlike autonomous cars, indoor robots are required to interact closely with and around people and integrate seamlessly into brand-conscious enterprise organizations. Because of this, factors such as industrial design, human-robot interaction, and psychology become increasingly important. Therefore, it is increasingly important for companies in this new market segment to engage experts in these fields early on (that was certainly the case at Cobalt).

Im excited about the prospect for this new market segment. These companies are eschewing the classic roboticist temptation to building sexy robots for the sake of robots. Instead, they are solving real, diverse problems with real, paying customers. Many, if not most, of the companies mentioned are already starting to deliver robots in the field, so keep an eye out for them. If my intuition is correct, there will be a lot of these robots very soon!

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Why Indoor Robots for Commercial Spaces Are the Next Big Thing in Robotics - IEEE Spectrum