
Boston Dynamics CEO talks profitability and the company’s next robots - sandwall
https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/14/boston-dynamics-ceo-profitability-roadmap-next-robots/
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cobookman
Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago.

Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3
decades of operations.

~~~
smabie
And people claim the markets/VCs are too short-termist. If anything, the
opposite is true.

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rexreed
The markets and VC are too short-termist for things like this. The failure of
many VC-funded robotics companies is evidence of this. Rethink Robotics. Jibo.
Anki. I can keep going. The VCs ran out of patience long before the product
gained market traction.

And Boston Dynamics is not an exception. Government funded primarily until
2013 when it was acquired by Google. Google then didn't have the stomach to
continue to fund it, so they sold it to Softbank.[1]

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-
googl...](https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-google-sold-
boston-dynamics-to-softbank/)

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bane
IMHO, what BD really needs is a specific target use case to build towards.
Right now Spot/Handle/Atlas are being positioned as robotics platforms.
They're leaving it entirely up to others to figure out the use-cases based on
the platform.

However, without a really salient use-case to demonstrate why a $75k quadruped
is better than a similarly priced remote-controlled and tracked robot, it's
hard to envision how these things will take-off. The use-cases that I've read
offered "search and rescue, bomb disposal" remind me of how early personal
computers kept advertising "recipes and electronic check balancing" before
they found their potential.

What if, and here's a stupid example, BD knuckled down and super optimized
Spot for truck-to-door package delivery. What if the driver never had to get
out of the truck, stop the engine, or secure the vehicle to go walk the 30
feet down my driveway to drop off the last package I ordered? What if Spot
simply grabbed the package, jumped out of the truck, dropped it on my doorstep
and the ran back to the truck and repeated for all the houses on my street?
What if over a period of some number of years it could be shown that this
increased efficiency for a truck to more than cover the cost of the $75k
robot?

Spot would have to be able to: \- charge on the truck while in transit \-
autonomously identify packages it can deliver (reading barcodes) \- have a GPS
database of all front stoops then navigate safely to them with a package \-
find it's way back to and onto the truck \- alert the driver when a package is
too large/awkward for Spot to handle by itself, \- know when the driver
decided to deliver the package instead of Spot

You lose some truck volume to Spot, some batteries and a charger. But as the
truck fleet electrifies, it could just use the truck batteries for some of
this.

Let's say each truck upwards of 200 stops on a route [1], at 1 minute per
stop. A Spot enabled truck could drop that down to 30 seconds per stop. At the
upper end (200 stops per route) that saves more than 1 hour of delivery time.
Assume we're not trying to increase the carrying capacity of the truck, but
reduce the hours worked per driver. UPS drivers make around $32/hr [2]. With
Monday - Saturday delivery, that's about $10k per year per driver saved. At
current Spot prices, that's about 8 years of operational service to pay for a
Spot. Assume at volume the price per Spot can drop down to $50k per robot.
Then that's a 5 year return.

Let's say that this system works for $35% of all UPS and Fedex routes
(delivery to single homes and townhouses) and there's one truck per route.

Fedex - ~30,000 total trucks = 10,500 Spot enabled trucks

UPS - ~100,000 vehicles = 35,000 Spot enabled trucks

Total of 45,500 Spots = market of $3.4billion for BD at $75k per Spot, $2.27b
at $50k. BD could probably do somewhere in the middle if they just leased the
fleet of Spots, and provided managed maintenance, upgrades, and other
services. What if USPS could take part in this, they operate ~140,000 LLV
(mail trucks)?

Now let's say these fleet delivery operators get self driving delivery trucks.
How much of all package delivery could be handled by an automated truck + spot
system and how much does that save UPS/Fedex in salary? There's no point
making the trucks self-driving if the last leg of delivery isn't solved since
they then have to pay a premium for the trucks and still pay for the delivery
human, so a Spot-like solution would have to happen first.

1 - [https://www.quora.com/How-many-stops-does-the-average-
FedEx-...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-stops-does-the-average-FedEx-drive-
make-for-residential-deliveries?share=1)

2 - [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/ups-driver-salary-
SRCH_KO...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/ups-driver-salary-
SRCH_KO0,10.htm)

~~~
bigdict
I though military was the obvious target use case this whole time.

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TheMblabla
I think they were just the easiest route to getting lots of DARPA money, not
necessarily the best business model though

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reizorc
I really wish they'd make tree planting robots

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suby
I have to imagine that blanketing an area with seeds dropped from a flying
drone would be far more effective than a ground based robot which planted
trees. Obviously the success rate of a ground based robot would be far higher,
but I think we'd be better off going for quantity over quality.

If that assumption is true, then we already have the tech to do this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I recall when HN was discussing dropping seeds from an AC-130 few years ago,
someone pointed out that it would be much more cost-effective to just _hire
locals to do it by hand_. The same will probably apply to drone-planters.

~~~
toyg
Not even "locals" \- depending on location, you could bus in (or even fly in)
masses of low-paid low-skill workers from somewhere else, like it happens for
other agri tasks.

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AniseAbyss
Its not really an issue for the US but in Europe the population is aging. That
leaves Africa or robots. Companies like Boston Dynamics will be very
profitable indeed in the next decades.

~~~
tokai
>not really an issue for the US

You got a source for that? The communications from the us census bureau seems
to disagree.

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2018/cb18-41-...](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2018/cb18-41-population-projections.html)

~~~
leereeves
It's somewhat less of an issue for the US.

The median age in the EU is 43, vs 38 in the US, and 30 worldwide.

And the median age in Germany is nearly as high as in Japan, which is famous
for its aging population.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age)

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deegles
Seriously, I wonder how the engineers there will feel when these are sold to
the military or the police and weaponized. Maybe they say they won't now, but
to say it will never happen is wishful thinking IMO.

~~~
bitbckt
This is already a thing: [https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10682746/boston-
dynamics...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/29/10682746/boston-dynamics-big-
dog-ls3-marines-development-shelved)

No doubt, it will continue.

~~~
kyuudou
I'm guessing this [1] is derivative of BD's work, robot dogs policing social
distancing in Singapore.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz7A8Umw5zY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz7A8Umw5zY)

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chr1
Would be cool to have a mobility device based on their handle robot (the one
with wheels). Basically a hybrid of bicycle and wheelchair that can go over
stairs, and be safer in case of accidents on the road.

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webmaven
_> Would be cool to have a mobility device based on their handle robot (the
one with wheels). Basically a hybrid of bicycle and wheelchair that can go
over stairs, and be safer in case of accidents on the road._

Didn't Segway demonstrate something like that?

Edit: Okay, it's only _somewhat_ Atlas-like, for very low values of Atlas.
Dean Kamen first demonstrated the iBOT wheelchair in 1999:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT)

~~~
chr1
The robot would be more like exoskeleton with wheels.

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zepearl
Even if they seem to work quite well, I always disliked a lot the design of
the robots of BD.

They look very weird, and how they move isn't much better => I always have a
hard time when trying to keep watching one of their videos :P

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bamboozled
Is it just me or is the next robot already a drone?

Why walk when you can fly?

~~~
taneq
Maybe because you want a robot with more than 30 minutes' autonomy?

Wheels (if practical) are best. Then legs (or wheel/leg hybrids). Then fixed
wing (if you have somewhere you can take off and land). Multirotors are easy
and fun but only practical for short missions.

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echelon
There aren't fixed wing drones with VTOL? I'd imagine something like an Osprey
would do well.

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taneq
There are, but I was trying to keep it short. Alphabet's "Project Wing" drones
work like this, for example. They seem a bit inelegant though.

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unixhero
I actually wosh they would stop.

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eyeball
Cops will be using these to crush protestors in 10 years.

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creato
Why would they do that when they can just use a horse or a wheeled/tracked
vehicle?

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bildung
Because then suddenly it's a tragical accident caused by a software fault,
with no human responsible - just as most data breaches are framed as "cyber
attacks" instead of what they actually are: negligence.

