
Underwater Drones, Mars Rover Parts and a High-Tech Revival in NYC - dankohn1
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/nyregion/tech-manufacturing-nyc.html
======
belinder
Surprising to hear them survive for 4 years, a 150k investment is not gonna
last long in new york city

~~~
tashoecraft
A lot longer then in SF, you can find housing for not too much if your willing
to look outside of Manhattan

~~~
frutiger
Manhattan (aka. New York County) is twice the size of San Francisco County.
Couldn’t you find somewhere affordable if you’re willing to look outside San
Francisco County as well?

------
OnlineGladiator
What is Duro's business model? Who wants to buy underwater drones, or pay them
to survey areas? My understanding is Liquid Robotics was acquired by Boeing
(and their business model transformed from academic research to military
defense) because they couldn't make the business model work. Of course Duro is
trying to make it cheaper, but I'm still curious who their target customers
are.

This is not a criticism - I am actually really curious about this space.

~~~
jpm_sd
The unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) industry is already fairly mature. These
guys in NY are competing against large, established companies that already
acquired reasonably successful startups:

Teledyne (Gavia)

General Dynamics (Bluefin)

Kongsberg (Hydroid)

L3 (Ocean Server)

BAE (Riptide)

------
brenschluss
Seems like a pretty thin article that doesn’t contextualize the push for
manufacturing that has been going on in NYC for the past 5 years, through orgs
and networks like NYCEDC or Futureworks, etc.

------
cosmodisk
While I always appreciate such initiatives, it look like they are going too
slow. In a few years time...There will be dozens more doing the same.

------
ipunchghosts
I dont see how these guys will survive with the remus 600 and 100 vehicles
established.

~~~
FrenchyJiby
I'd say there's some room for competition with:

\- cheaper vehicles (not "crazy-expensive")

\- easy to integrate/extend (modern software practices...)

\- more varied domain applicability (not everyone looks for pipeline
leaks/hunt mines for a living)

\- fast reactivity, rather than moving at the speed of government

I'd wager cheaper/better hardware & other improvements means orgs will be able
to get fewer, cheap underwater robots.

