Work with external developers! Seriously?

[5 minutes reading]

We are in a very fast technological world, where we need to surf over the waves all the time. As companies, we need to give more and more added value to customers, not to beat the competitors, but to help customers with better solutions, that also help them to be better productive companies.

To do so, many companies only look at their internal resources and try to do everything on their own, instead of looking for other companies or freelancers to help them. This usually happens due to some incorrect assumptions:

• Our product is "secret” so my intellectual property is at risk if I use external developers. WRONG!
• No one understands our products except our employees. WRONG!
• The cost of working with external developers is too high. WRONG!
• I will later have dependencies on external developers for maintenance. WRONG!
• …and many other

Some others think in the opposite way, but sometimes with wrong considerations:

• Incorporating external professional resources will give as fast results in a short time. WRONG!

The reality is as follows:

• In many cases, companies do not have the capacity to overcome all the developments needed, and therefore, or they delay deliveries, or lose market opportunities.
• In most cases, it is possible to fragment developments in parts, modules, or services, so internal people could focus on the core "secret intellectual property" parts and external developers could work on the rest.
• You have to focus on doing well what you do well. If you want to be on everything you will lose focus and opportunities
• Using good external developers, even being more costly than internal resources, in the end, could be less costly because you may use your internal resources for other more valuable developments and external resources, in the long run could do the work faster.
• Working with external developers as part of a team helps your internal resources to learn from the external developers and do a smooth technology transfer while development is done, so no dependencies will later exist from external developers.

So, externalizing development is a good option, but you need to have some extremely important considerations, especially when you start working for the first time in this way:

• The external development service most of the time requires very clear requirements, usually more detailed than the ones you might use internally, because they do not know many internal assumptions you usually have, due to your knowledge of your products. So consider it will take time from your side. 
• Set clear short-time deliverables, in an agile manner. This will allow getting results and integrating them into your product soon.
• Set weekly meetings with the external developers, to follow up on progress. This meeting is not to make pressure, but to help the external service to have a clear common understanding during development.
• Encourage your team to work frequently with your external developers during the development process and involve them in the testing phases. This is an investment of time from your resources that will give you two things: a) smooth knowledge transfer of the guts of the development for future maintenance, b) help your team to learn from other professionals.
  
  
  
• But there is probably one of the most important things you have to consider: Having external development services is an investment, not a one-time work. The first time you work with an external service, it will take you time, effort, and money just to help them understand your projects, your standards, your methods, your products, and learn to work together as a team, so do not expect fast and cheap results in the first work. But, this investment in time, money, and effort will greatly help you in subsequent works asked for the same development service. They will work with you like one, already knowing your team, your expectations, your product, your culture, your standards, processes, and methodologies. This is when you really start getting the fast and good delivery, worthing the effort, time and money spent in the past. This is what the graph at the beginning explains.

In the end, it is more a strategic decision than a quick-fix solution for internal capacity problems. Working with external developers, before you have serious capacity problems will help to be prepared for the peaks and valleys that will come.

Robotics Museums. A seed for passion

[3 minutes reading]

A good museum is not only a way to keep the history of our human evolution, but also could be an opportunity to discover inner passions. Also good Temporary Exhibition, Shows and Fairs are interesting ways to see more actual works.

Few weeks ago I visited The Robot Museum of Madrid (Spain) managed by my friend Daniel Bayon.  In this museum I have since 2017 several of the robots I worked on, like Sam, Melanie and Retrobot among others. 

This was not only a good opportunity to meet my friends and robots, but also to see again the collection this museum is offering. Some of them from the 80's that reminded me my origins in this passionate world.

From left to right: Daniel Bayon, Angel Hernández and Alejandro Alonso

Museums solely dedicated to robotics are not common yet. More common are the temporary exhibitions in different science museums around the world. Many times this exhibitions (either temporary or permanent) are linked to activities for kids related to STEM and robotics/programming workshops. Particularly I see it interesting, because the changes usually comes from the young people and interestingly, more and more is happening that young people, specially in STEM disciplines, wants to work only on what motivates and passionates them, not having any fear to loose a job if they don't like it. 

It is anyway not so easy, in one part because sometimes there are not enough job offers in what people loves, but other times is because people do not find their inner passion. Fortunately Robotics is one of those professions that are more and more offering good profesional opportunities. If we could unveil their passion at least for those who has robotics in their heart, then we will help the world to have a change done by passionate people and not just by workers.

Robotic museums around the world

This is a list of museums that I either visited or know they have at least a permanent section related to robotics. If you know more, just let me know and I will add to the list. Most of them are nowadays temporary closed due to Covid-19

Europe

• The Robot Museum. (Madrid, Spain)
• Tekniska museet. There is a permanent Robot Zone in this museum. (Stockholm, Sweden)  
• Science Museum Leonardo Da Vinci. It has a permanent section Robotics and Biotechnology (Milan, Italy)

USA

• American Computer & Robotics Museum. Founded in May of 1990 by visionary collector George Keremedjiev. The museum exhibits span 4,000 years of human history, from original cuneiform tablets to the first personal computers, and include topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, the Space Race, Cracking the Enigma Code, and more. (Bozeman, MT, USA)
• Carnegie Science Centre. It has a permanent exhibition called Roboworld. (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
• MIT Museum Robot Exhibit. (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
• Computer History Museum. This museum, although devoted mainly to computers history, opened a permanent gallery on 1987 devoted to Smart Machine. (Mountain View, CA, USA)

Asia

• Miraikan (Japan). With a permanent exhibition of robotics
• Robotics Museum Expected to open in 2022. (Seoul, Korea)
• Suzhou Robot Museum (China)
• Robotics Park (India)

Temporary Robotics exhibits

What is more common is to have temporary exhibits about robotics. Usually most of the Science Museums have this kind of exhibition, usually once every one or two years. Just to mention here are some of the past exhibitions done in some of these museums. Clic on the museum links below to access to those past robotics exhibitions:

MIT Museum (Cambridge, PA, USA), Science Museum (London, UK), Science + Industry Museum (Manchester, UK), Museum of Science & Industry Chicago (Chicago, IL, USA), Science Museum Group (UK), Vitra Design Museum (Germany), National Museum of Scotland (Scotland), V&A Dundee (Scotland), Hong Kong Science Museum (Hong Kong)

Hardware Technology Opportunities & Challenges

Some weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion at the IEEE HardTech Summit Singapore, about Hardware Technology Opportunities & Challenges for entrepreneurs, both from the technical side and from the financing side.

The panel was moderated by Mohan Belani, Co-Founder & CEO at e27 and the other panelist with me were Kelving Ong, CEO at Focustech Ventures and Alexa Zotova, Principal at Ruvento Ventures.

Although I was there as CTO of Infinium Robotics Singapore, my past experience as founder of my own company in Spain, Quark Robotics, gave me the opportunity to deeply enjoy the moment with the other panelists, more from the investors' side.

Here are some key ideas from the panel, that I would like to share:

• There are great opportunities for Hardtech companies in the markets of Smart Cities, IOT, Robotics & Automation, Drones solutions, and Industry 4.0 (Read my posts about IOT and Robotics in Smart Cities and Drones Market in figures for more detail)
• In the case of Singapore, the Government created the National Robotics Programme (NRP), a funding programme of more than $450 million to support SMEs over the next three years. A great opportunity indeed.
• In the case of small startups, there are some rules of thumb that should be considered when trying to get investors: (a) Getting a first financing from family & friends is always something that external investors will consider as an important commitment.  (b) You could not go to find investors with just an idea. you need to have a prototype, a proof of concept to make them feel confident on you. (c) Obviously a Business Plan, but with considering three scenarios: Optimistic, pessimistic and conservative, and also a Plan-B in case things goes wrong. (d) your product/service should be scalable, (e) You should demonstrate that you are focused on the market. Having agreements with future potential customers to help define and validate the product/service is a valuable point.
• Where to find mentors for an entrepreneur: There are several sources (a) other entrepreneurs, preferably with at least 2 years of experience, either if they succeeded or not, (b) investors (c) potential customers, (d) Business Development professionals, who could share their knowledge of the market.
• There are several challenges that hardware startups usually miss out or don’t look at early on: (a) Sometimes they are very optimistic and very technical focused (not market) (b) R&D takes time and money that commonly are not properly considered. (c) the Integration part is the key technical issue in any tech startup. Sometimes, this point is not even considered.
• A jump from a prototype to a final product (industrialization phase) is a serious step. The prototype could fail, the product not. There are also regulations and certifications (Like CE, FCC,...), usability aspects and even the design of the box, manuals, support,... that sometimes are nor adequately considered, mainly due to lack of knowledge or experience in this critical phase.

You may find more interesting points in my previous post: What is the key to get the successful product?

Robotics & Automation are welcome to Singapore

Singapore is the country where I live. It is a small country in size (less than 6 million citizens) but big in initiatives to promote the Technology, Innovation, and Productivity.

Singapore has very special good conditions that make it really interesting for Robotics & Automation:

Government priority

This sector is so important to the Government, that this year the Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat unveiled a comprehensive package under the new Industry Transformation Programme (ITP) to stimulate growth for industries and firms [1]. It includes:

• Automation Support Package, to support companies to automate, drive productivity and scale up: S$400 million[2] grants over 3 years.
• National Robotics Programme: S$450 million grants over 3 years for the development and adoption of robots. These robots will be used in sectors such as healthcare, construction, manufacturing and logistics.
• Up to S$4 billion under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2020 Plan will be directed to industry-research collaboration. The Government will provide a top-up of S$1.5 billion to the National Research Fund during this year 2016 to support these initiatives.
• An existing Double Tax Deduction for Internationalization scheme has been extended up to 2020. IE Singapore is expected to support 35,000 to 40,000 companies to expand to markets overseas .
• The Government created a new portal to help companies find the suitable grant for their needs (https://www.businessgrants.gov.sg). Very helpful considering the amount of schemes and agencies managing grants (IE Singapore, SPRING, STB, Design Singapore,...)

Educational Institutions

Singapore has a very good reputation in terms of education. There are several technical universities (NTU, NUS, SUTD,...) really well prepared not only for education but also for R&D, acting as incubators and being able to work with companies for the success of product developments.

Language and Culture

Singapore is a country with a mix of ethnic groups (74.1% Chinese, 13.4% Malay, 9.2% Indian, 3.3% others) and four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil, being English the common business language. A country open to the western cultures, being ranked as one of the less corrupted countries in the world [3], secure and reliable. Singapore is a perfect hub between Asia and the rest of the world.

Communications

Singapore is a major international transport hub in Asia, serving some of the busiest sea and air trade routes. Currently the world's second-busiest port in terms of total shipping tonnage, it also trans-ships a fifth of the world's shipping containers. There are also eight airports in the country.

These privileged conditions make the Country really suitable not only to market in Asia, but also to the entire World. The diversity of the official languages and cultures eases the relationship with China, India, Vietnam or Malaysia for manufacturing purpose at low prices, while the headquarters, design and trading could keep in the country, with the help of a Government with a good understanding of the priority of innovation in our actual world.

Reference:
[1] Industry Transformation Programme
[2] Singaporean Dollar (S$) exchange rate
[3] Corruption perception index

Scrum Agile methodology for Engineering?

Some days ago, I had an interesting chat with some colleagues about the goods and bads of Scrum Agile Methodology and its applications in engineering. 

In my professional life, I have used traditional (waterfall) project management methodologies, as well as Agile Methodologies, mainly Scrum, as I am Professional Scrum Master certified.

The traditional methodologies are based on a good definition of the product or service requirements upfront. Changes in the scope are allowed using Change Management, but Agile methodologies are more focused on those projects were not all requirements could be defined upfront and where changes could occur very often. Let’s say that Agile methodologies, like Scrum, are more adaptive to customers and market needs. 

Although Scrum is more focused on software development, it could be used for other sorts of projects, like engineering projects, but only if you could adapt your project to the Scrum framework, artifacts, and tools.

But one of the things that I most like of Scrum is how it is “release” oriented. With traditional project management, you define a product and work through all steps until you get the final product. With Scrum, you divide the product into parts that require less than a month (a Sprint) to be releasable. And after it, you continue developing new releases of the product. The god thing of this is that your time to market is shorter and you could build new releases based on the experience of the use of previous ones. 

Source http://www.agilenutshell.com

Obviously, you could not use Scrum in all sort of projects. There are projects that require a traditional approach and other that require Agile methodologies. 

Some people say Scrum is outdated. It is not, as well as traditional PM is not outdated either. We are in a world were incredible engineering and software developments are produced every day based fortunately on both PM methodologies. 

UAVs in Asia

Some weeks ago I was invited to give a lecture at the Commercial UAV Show Asia 2016 at the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore. The lecture was about Automation in Warehousing Industry, mainly focused on the area of UAVs, as the event was really about the UAVs market.

Apart from the pleasure of sharing this time in this so kind country, I had the chance to talk to representatives of many companies from different parts of the world. 

They were well-known companies in the Commercial UAV market as expected (DJI, Parrot, Yuneec, SenseFly, Aerialtronics, Tarot), with rotary and fixed wing solutions, but also I found some other solutions in this trade fair:

• Hybrid fixed-rotary wing solutions: This is not something new. I saw this sort of solutions more than three years ago, but now I see they are getting mature. Companies like Aldara (Wincopter) or Aerolution Systems offered interesting machines.

• Energy: Some companies like HES, Alta Devices or Ascent-Solar offered alternative sources of energy to the traditional LiPo Batteries. I expected more companies, as the size of this market is clearly huge.

• Sense & Avoid solutions: Some companies, mainly start-ups offered solutions, mainly based on tiny radar technologies, like Fortem or RAN Systems, although DJI (Guidance) and Parrot (S.L.A.M.dunk) are also in the market.

• Anti-Drone Systems: I saw only one company offering Anti-Drone solutions, what surprised me, as I expected more systems would be offered to the market. Teleradio was offering SkyDroner, an interesting solution, able to identify the drone radio signature, hack the signal and take control of the drone.

• Other: Companies like Infinium Robotics offered solutions for Stock-Taking with autonomous drones in warehouses and Riegl offered powerful Lidars for terrain 3d Mapping between others.

I heard some people expected much more innovative solutions in this trade fair, but the reality is that the drones sector is maturing slowly, step by step. The main technical areas that require improvements are well known: flight endurance, sense & avoid (no collision), autonomous navigation in constrained areas and fail-safe reliable systems. The drone applications are available, but the former improvements are needed to give the professional drone market a real exponential growth.

Indeed, many companies worldwide around are working for this market, going after the Treasure Island, promised by most of the sales forecast statistics. But an important question is how to survive to this difficult, expensive and long trip. Unfortunately, I found many companies taking bad practices that may make them loose the race very soon:  

• Some companies are trying to have a drone in the market that is not so different than competitors and not really cheaper.

• Some companies are trying to develop complex innovative systems from scratch, being start-ups with not much funds. Developing anything for this market is expensive and requires much time and effort.

• Some companies build complex systems that the users are not willing to pay for. Maybe because they are very expensive for what the customers really need, or because the target customers do not have the funds for such investments. Therefore the amounts of units sold are very low, not recovering the investment.

• Some companies develop solutions that are non-scalable and do not pay attention to international markets. 

• Some companies develop local solutions in countries with very restrictive laws for aerial navigation and therefore sales are far less than expected.

• Some companies lose much time and energy in tailor made solutions for “important” customers that at the end do not give enough incomes, are not scalable and require a lot of personalized support.

• Some companies expect in their business plans they will sell many units of their top quality, highly efficient but expensive systems the first year, but the reality is that in the majority of the cases, the first year the sales are low, as potential customers prepare their financial plans on a yearly basis, so they may not invest in expensive systems as soon as expected.

• And last but not least, some companies do not value correctly the customer support and maintenance requirements for their products and get blocked with the amount of support required from customers, “bleeding” much time and money.

This is a new technology, still in its infancy, in a world that is becoming more and more global and commercially hungry and aggressive. Companies need to plan and execute very well to compete in this market.

What is the key to get a successful product?

Some weeks ago my wife Blanca and me had the pleasure to spend some time with not only Robotics experts, but very good friends from California (US), Bob Allen (COO at Ologic Inc), his wife Cori and Angel Hernandez (Business Development Director at Fetch Robotics).

We talked about a lot of personal and professional questions during a nice and relaxed dinner at a typical Spanish restaurant, in the oldest area of Madrid (Spain). But one of the (professional) questions we talked about was the jump from an R&D prototype to a successful product in the market. I have to anticipate that none of us had the magic key, but was really interesting to share our ideas and experiences. All of us have the experience on transforming R&D prototypes in commercial products, but not always these products had the success we expected. This is not rare at all as most product launches fail (see article Why Most Product Launches Fail from Harvard business review). The key is to do as much as possible in order to increase possibilities of success. So, how to do that?. Let me give you advice on some steps you may follow from the very beginning

About the product

• “Think big, but start small”. Sometimes we think on products that may be very interesting, but complex. Sometimes it is better to go step by step, so we could have a product in the market soon, so we could then learn about the acceptance of it and start gaining market quote. Then we could make a better and more complex version. Sometimes go to a very nice and complex version may take too much time, so we lose market opportunities.

• When defining the product, see it from the eyes of the customers and not from your eyes. The customers are who will pay for it, so you should cover their needs and not your desire to do something interesting for you. It is key to have the advice from potential customers not only in the moment of specifying the product, but during all the development and testing phases.
• If you could not offer a product that is either cheaper or have a great difference from the competence, do not spend time trying to produce it.

Market research

Ok, you have a great idea. Are you sure there is enough people interested in paying for it as you expect?. Let`s start doing some kind of market research. Yes, it takes time and effort, but it will help you understand where you are. It should include:

• A definition of your product and the needs you will cover (for example a cleaning robot may cover your need to have more free time and do less work)
• An analysis of the market target and size (for example people between 18 and 80 year old, with high education and located in these or those countries)
• An analysis of the competence, the price and other characteristics of their solutions. This point is crucial. May be we have a new product that does not exist in the market, so we could think we are the unique one that found a Blue Ocean, but this may be wrong. The competence is not only the group of companies that produce a similar product (for example cleaning robots), but any company offering alternative solutions to cover the same needs for our potential customers. For example a broom is a competence of a cleaning robot. Believe me, when I was selling cleaning robots at an online store I created several years ago, a potential customer told me that a broom was cheaper and faster way of cleaning than a Roomba. The size of our market may be much smaller than we expected (or dreamed). If you could not offer a product that is either cheaper or have a great difference from the competence, do not spend time trying to produce it. For one person a broom or a vacuum cleaner may be better than a cleaning robot just because the user have the full (manual) control of the tool, so they could find very fast were the dust is and rapidly clean the corners, but for others, the idea of having a useful robot at home may be even a more powerful decision factor than the pure results. The “needs” covered may be quite different from one people to another.

Ok, after a first quick market research you have some preliminary information that may help you decide if it worth the effort to jump to the next step: Do a Business Plan. 

Business Plan

A Business Plan should cover the following points:

• Mission, Vision and goals
• Sales and Marketing analysis: Needs to cover, Business model, Competence analysis, Product definition, Costs, Price, Margin, Target market, SWOT, Sales plan, Marketing plan, Sales channels, After sales service.
• Supply Chain: Suppliers, Manufacturing, Warehousing, Channels and Delivery.
• Technologies: Intellectual/industrial properties, R&D, IT infrastructure
• Operating and organizational structure: Shareholders, Human resources, …
• Finance analysis: Incomes, payments, accounting, payroll and taxes, financing, results forecast, treasury forecast
• Milestones, actions and Plan-B

There is a lot of information in Internet about how to produce a business plan, so I will not go very deep in it, but I will just give some recommendations on this process:

• Be very pragmatic. Creating a business is always a risk, but also something that may produce you a lot of proud, so we have to fight against optimism and be just pragmatic with dates, sales and financing.
• Ask skilled people to advice you. The view from others could give a complementary vision, making you pay attention to details you may forgot.
• If there is a R&D phase, consider it may take more time and money than expected. R&D projects tend to find issues due to the uncertainty of the results. 
• Always consider a plan-B. Your plan may be on time and cost or may not. You should plan alternative routes to follow in specific times. You should set milestones in your plan, so you have an action plan if the results are not expected by those milestones. Consider to have Plan-B for very few but important milestones. For example a milestone could be: Complete the product by month M. The Plan-B action may be: If not completed by then, reduce operating costs by x% so the project could have enough funds for another x months to get to market. 
• Keep attention to the core business and if possible delegate or contract the rest. When running a business, even a very small one, there are several tasks that make you lose attention to what makes the difference: The core business, therefore consider in your plan contracting them. This kind of things may be: administrative tasks (accounting, HR, mailing,…), Technology infrastructure tasks (computers, printers, lan, phones,…), Marketing (web page, online advertising, Internet presence,..), facilities maintenance (cleanup, maintenance,…)

For more information on preparing a business plan see the following articles:

• How to Write a Great Business Plan 
• The business plan  

Funding and investing

Another key point. May be you have enough money to run the project or may be you need some external funding. Also for this point you have a lot of information here and there (see the article 35 Great Ways to Fund A Small Business) but let me just give some advice on this point:

• You prepared your figures in the business plan. Just be sure that you consider at least two cases: the pragmatic one and the worst case scenario. This will give you more vision on the risks. Either if you have the money or ask for funding, you will know the risks in case someone find out them and believe me, investors are pretty much expert on finding risks. If you do not have answers for that or a Plan-B, they will not feel confident.
• Consider also how much time could your company or project survive if it doesn’t get incomes. This will really be the worst worst scenario: You get long delays to reach the market with your product. Investors will ask you this in order to understand risks.
• If you incorporate investing partners to the company, even if they are family or friends, prepare a good partners agreement, detailing any possible action. Remember always this is money, not friendship.
• When you have the opportunity to talk to an investor, don’t just talk about your project. Be different. Consider that investors have the money for lots of hungry business and get lots of boring offers. Surprise them and if possible, make them enjoy your presentation.
• Be sincere. If your project figures are unrealistic, they will find it. Do your job and get the correct figures to make the project work. Running a new project or business is always a risk and investors know it. Doing your figures as perfect as possible do not ensure the business will work.
• If you have a running company and want to put another product in the market, please take care on the investment limits so you do not put the whole company on risk. Is key to set a milestone that limits the investment in a project. Is better to abandon or stop temporarily a project/product, even considering the time and money lost, than putting all the business in risk. May be the development of the product was more costly or complex than expected, or may be we reached the market but sales are not as expected. A point of review and limit should be stablished and actions should be taken.   

Running the project

Ok, we got the Market research, the Business Plan and the money to execute it. Then let’s do it!. Let me give you some advice:

• Find the correct people to work with. Never hire for friendship. Do it for knowledge and experience.
• Be in the business. Check that everything is ok in a daily basis. Help to make things go on.
• Do not forget that the steps from "Prototype" to "Product-ready-for-the-market" takes time. Industrialization steps should be performed with care (selection of components, product oriented to optimal mass production,...) 
• Review monthly that you are following the business plan and make a good communication with stakeholders, so they feel confident. Lack of communication is one of the first things that start warning investors that things may be wrong.
• Do not forget paying attention to the milestones and execute Action-B if needed. Don’t miss this unless you have a clear and powerful reason.
• Encourage people. Make a team, so people feel motivated, not only because of their salary or position, but because they believe in their role in the project.
• Train people. As Peter Drucker said: “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance”. Training is key in order to increase people productivity and sense of professional growth.
• Have fun. Running a project or business may be hard because you have to be prepared for the uncertain, the time and funds limits, usually the lack of resources and the motivation of the people. This is the reason you should find ways to have fun with your work for you and your team. Enjoyment and good ambience is key to maintain the team energy alive and the higher this energy is, the better are the productivity, creativity and involvement of the people in the project.

Getting to the Market

So you got the product ready for the market. Then lets go ahead with some more advise:

• Normally it takes some time since you have the product until potential customers find out they need it. Therefore is good to start some marketing activities before the product is ready to the market. There are loads of methods to do that either online or by using mock-ups in trade fairs. But take care to be serious in your advertising, so what you offer is what you will have ready to the market in a short time. A lot of companies advertise about product that are not even finished the prototyping phase and the only thing they make is inform possible competitors on your technologies, so they get time to modify their technologies and get to the market at the same time as you.
• Make a lot of noise, ask online advertising companies to make viral videos of your product, contact media, go if possible to trade fairs, but choose them correctly as they are usually very expensive, so you go to those were your potential customers also go as visitors. 
• Keep superb relationship with first customers. They are the early adopters, using your product possibly in different ways you did in the testing phase. Make them help you improve the product and services around it.
• Ensure your product follow the correct legislation. Depending on the country it may be different. For example in Europe, for electronic devices there are several considerations to have (make the product be CE compliant, follow the rules of electromagnetic compatibility, etc.)
• Get an insurance that cover the products sold, so if the product cause any trouble to the facilities of the customer, the insurance could cover it. Take care on the previous point. If insurance company find that you do not have the correct legal documentation of your product, they may reject paying.

These are just some advice on getting to the market with a product. If you need more information, just tell me your needs.

Written by: Alejandro Alonso-Puig. HISPAROB Robotics Platform Vicepresident, IXION Industry & Aerospace MR Systems Manager and Quark Robotics Partner.

Drones: Mandatory for Business?

Recently I gave a class about Drones for Business Applications at the IE (Instituto de Empresa) of Madrid (Spain) as part of the IT Management & Digital Innovation Program. IE is one of the most important Business Schools, with 27 offices around the world. 

The participants attending to the class were professionals from different important companies. Professional people with different perspectives around the uses of drones and their applications, since what matter most for companies, as potential customers of this technology, is to have results that give them real added value to solve problems or take decisions as quickly as possible, at the lowest cost and with the less possible complexity.

Drones are fashionable nowadays and lot of people try to sell the idea that drones could do almost anything, but drones are not always the solution. In some cases even being a possible solution, other factors such as laws limitations, costs or risks could make drones not to be the appropriate solution. At the time of deciding if drones technology could help us, I suggest to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. What problem do we need to solve?
2. Is drones technology the unique, easiest, cheapest, fastest, less risky and feasible way to solve the problem?
3. If so, is it better to buy a drone, or to contract a service company?

The first question and how to deal it is critical. For instance, if you are a farmer and your crop production is nice for you, apparently you do not have any problem, but what happens if there are new ways to improve your production and you do not do anything to use them (possibly because you do not know them), you may have a potential problem, because other farmers will use this new ways to have a competitive advantage over you. This will allows them to reduce prices or to improve the quality. We live in a competitive world and to know the state of the art and ways to continue being competitive is a key task of any company. In the case of farmers, technology give them tools to do what is called “Precision Agriculture”: a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. With the use of drones and multispectral cameras, it is possible to acquire and process images to derive maps of crop biophysical parameters. Also with wireless sensors networks is possible to measure parameters like temperature (air/soil), humidity (air/soil/leaf), wind or stem diameter [1]. Connecting this information with other databases, about climate statistics and other historical information, mixing everything in a cocktail, and calling it Big Data, we could get crucial information that can significantly reduce the amount of nutrients and other crop inputs used while boosting yields. Farmers thus obtain a return on their investment by saving on phytosanitary and fertilizer costs. This is just an example on how technology could give a competitive advantage.

The second question is also a key point. Nowadays that drones are so fashionable, it seems that they could solve all our problems, but maybe there are other ways to approach issues, may be simplest, cheapest, or just less risky. For instance, if you are thinking on the use of drones in cities, to ensure the delivery of urgent parcels for Christmas in less than half an hour instead of the day after, why drones are supposed to be so important for that? I receive my warm pizza at home in half an hour and I do not need a drone for that. 

In the case of the third question my opinion is always the same: If having your own drone and working with it is not your core business, then contract a specialized drone service company. They will do better, with lower economic impact. They will take the risks, maintain their own drones, prepare all the legal documentation and take care of the logistics; to sum up, give you what you need: The added value for your business. Do not waste your time and money trying to introduce this kind of technology in your operations if someone else could do it with less problems, without a learning curve and faster. The money you pay for the service will worth you the effort.

Written by: Alejandro Alonso-Puig. HISPAROB Robotics Platform Vicepresident, IXION Industry & Aerospace MR Systems Manager and Quark Robotics Partner.

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References:

[1] Precision agriculture. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_agriculture 

Congrats KAIST friends!

Was 2007 when I had the pleasure and honor to meet Jun Ho Oh, professor of mechanical engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who led the KAIST Team, who won in June 2015 the worldwide recognized DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) and its first prize of 1 Million Dollars.

Professor Ho Oh, came on 2007 from South Korea to Campus Party, the biggest LAN event in the world, were I was leading the organization of the Robotics Area (CampusBot), with his team from KAIST and Albert Hubo Robot. In that moment Hubo had a fully motorized Einstein face, able to reproduce not only mouth movements but face expressions. 

I found in Professor Ho Oh not only a brilliant mind now worldwide recognized, but also a very nice, sincere and friendly person, that was managing his team with a very close implication and understanding. Their robot did what was expected. In the picture I’m with him and with our respective robots: Hubo and Sam.

Professor Ho Oh and his team continued working in Hubo robot and improved it in order to perform real tasks in a real world. Therefore they won the prize. They deserved it. 

DARPA organized the DRC after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, expecting to advance the field of disaster robotics. The DRC Finals called for 23 teams of semi-autonomous robots partly controlled by human operators. The robots created by universities and companies included legged robots, wheeled robots, and hybrids robots as well. The following image shows the DRC Finals team standings, being on first position Hubo of TEAM KAIST from South Korea, on second position Running Man (Atlas) of Team IHMC Robotics from the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Florida/USA and on third position Chimp of Tartan Rescue Team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania/USA.

The Robots had to perform things like drive a car, open a door, drill a hole in a wall, walk up stairs, open a valve and tread uneven ground. Also the Internet network that teams used to communicate with their robots at times didn’t work for 30 seconds or more, to simulate real-life conditions. Therefore this was a very difficult set of tasks to complete. Most of the robots didn’t perform some of the tasks, even most of them fell down sometime during the execution. But from my point of view it was a very interesting competition. People criticize that most of the robots failed, but most of the people don’t understand how difficult is to make robots perform like humans in real world. 

We made a world for humans. Everything in this world is prepared for humans (stairs, chairs, doors, vehicles), and this is the reason why most of the robots at DRC where humanoid robots, just to ease the execution of the tasks, but really is not a question of creating robots exactly like humans. There are better options, and teams like KAIST understood it when they decided to give HUBO the possibility of moving using legs or wheels, as well as being able to rotate its torso 180 degree. This couple of things between others showed that KAIST team did something great: Thinking very creatively, trying to find ways to even improve the human body limitations in some ways. My congratulations to the KAIST team. I wish them the best!

Recommended Links:

• Darpa Robotics Challenge official website
• How South Korea's DRC-HUBO Robot Won the DARPA Robotics Challenge (IEEE)

Día de Internet. Reflexión.

Hoy es el Día de Internet.

En una ocasión escuché en la radio un comentario en el Día Internacional de la Mujer Trabajadora. El autor del comentario decía que aparecen muchos “Día de..” como consecuencia de un problema, para refrescar las conciencias de la gente sobre ese problema y, mientras sigue existiendo ese  “Día de..“, significa que el problema persiste. En este caso se refería a la aún injusta desigualdad entre la valoración que se hace de hombres y mujeres en ciertos entornos laborales.

Pero lo cierto es que hay muchos  “Día de..“  que persisten y ya han pasado de ser un día para hacer toc toc en las conciencias, a ser un día en el que celebrar el éxito de que finalmente esas conciencias han cambiado las cosas a mejor.

“El Día de Internet pretende dar a conocer las posibilidades que ofrecen las nuevas tecnologías para mejorar el nivel de vida de los pueblos y de sus ciudadanos”, es por tanto un día de concienciación y sobretodo de acción, pero yo pienso que es también un día de celebración. Un día en que es bueno pensar en el fenómeno Internet. En cómo algo que hace 15 años conocía una minoría, hoy por hoy mueve toda una sociedad.

Un buen amigo tiene escrito en su firma de correo electrónico, bajo su nombre, una frase muy interesante: “Internet no es una red de ordenadores, es una red de personas“. Internet nos ha acercado de una manera tan espectacular, que a veces llega a asustar y maravillar a la vez. Hace unos días estaba en Second Life, charlando con una amiga que tengo en Australia. En el mundo virtual de Second Life yo estaba con ella, sentados en una fantástica playa charlando de ideas comunes. En el mundo real estábamos en lados opuestos del globo, sentados frente a nuestros ordenadores. Eso fue lo que yo le dije: “Es sorprendente cómo a través de este mundo virtual puedo sentirte tan cerca, cuando en el mundo real estás tan lejos“. Que enormes posibilidades nos brinda Internet para crear nuevas alternativas, nuevos enfoques, para acercarnos más y formar una unidad.

Internet ha cambiado nuestras vidas y seguirá haciéndolo, seguirá ayudándonos a estar más cerca y a hacer que no sea una red de personas y ordenadores, sino mucho más. ¿Sabías que hay modelos de telescopios para aficionados a la Astronomía con conexión a Internet?. Los controlas desde cualquier sitio y puedes ver imágenes a distancia sin problemas. Ojo, he dicho “cualquier sitio”, porque ¿dónde en el mundo no hay Internet?. Si no es por conexiones WIFI es por GPRS, UMTS, cable, satélite,..

De la misma manera que esos telescopios se conectan a Internet también lo hacen neveras, para hacer el pedido al supermercado del material que se está agotando, o cámaras de vigilancia, e incluso lavadoras, para avisar del final del ciclo de lavado y facilitar su programación y activación.

Internet nos conectará a todos, humanos y máquinas. Facilitará una fluida comunicación entre humanos, robots, dispositivos diversos, mundos virtuales, para formar un todo etéreo que ampliará nuestra mente a nuevas posibilidades de crecimiento y de creatividad. Nos llevará a un mundo que hoy no podríamos entender, igual que la mayoría de nuestros bisabuelos no podrían entender el fenómeno de Internet por mucho que se lo explicásemos. Los míos ni siquiera conocieron lo que era un coche…

Qué cambios, que evolución tan espectacular se está produciendo en el mundo de la tecnología. Lo siento como una gran ola que se está formando. Es el momento de no tener miedo al futuro, montarse en la tabla de surf y deslizarse al ritmo espectacular de la evolución socio-tecnológica que estamos creando.

Conferencia en el SEK y reflexiones

Ayer estuve dando una conferencia en el SEK en Barcelona, concretamente en la localidad de La Garriga, en las laderas del Montseny. Un lugar muy bonito.

La conferencia iba dirigida a un grupo de estudiantes de Bachillerato, con inquietudes por saber. Lo pasé realmente bien con ellos. Hablamos sobre lo que había y lo que venía en el mundo de la robótica. Sobre cómo yo a su edad tenía que calentar la leche en un cazo al fuego, evitar que se saliera la leche, pasarla al vaso, eso si, con el uso de un colador y luego, con un poco de suerte, que no estuviese tan caliente que me quemase los labios. Ahora uso un microondas. Ahora empieza a haber robots.

Igual que hasta hace unos pocos años no se había aun popularizado el uso de los móviles, Internet, los videojuegos en red, los ordenadores portátiles, etc, de igual manera es de esperar una evolución de la tecnología en la línea que se ha seguido, pero la línea que se ha seguido no es recta, sino exponencial. Eso da que pensar, ya que si hasta hace poco más de diez años no se usaba de forma popular Internet y ahora todo el mundo sabe lo que es youtube, el mail, el chat, Google, la Wikipedia, la compra de billetes de avión y reserva de hoteles y espectáculos on-line, los blogs, el SecondLife, el Meetic, los portales, Linked-in, Flikr, eBay y tantas otra aplicaciones de la red, sin las que ya no podemos vivir, si en solo diez años hemos creado todo este cambio social, qué será lo que haremos en los próximos diez años. Creo que si alguien del futuro, de tan solo diez o quince años adelante nos viniese a contar qué nos encontraremos, no podríamos creerle, igual que si le intentásemos contar nosotros a alguien hibernado de hace 15 años, que todos y digo TODOS, llevaríamos al menos un móvil (eso si, con cámara, 3G, juegos, mensajería instantánea, agenda, politonos o MP3, etc) en el bolsillo, o un ordenador miniatura (PDA), un GPS en el coche, aplicaciones web 2.0 por todas partes, robots en Marte, megaempresas nacidas de Internet, conexiones de banda ancha con tarifa plana en todas las casas, etc.  Esa persona se quedaría muy sorprendida del cambio. Claro que cuando yo era pequeño, pensaba (como muchos) que el año 2000 estaríamos todos viviendo en un mundo  futurista, con casas bajo el agua o en la luna y vistiendo trajes plateados :-)

Hace poco hablaba sobre estos temas mientras comía con Paco Ragageles, Presidente del Grupo Futura, organizador del Campus-Party (el mayor evento de entretenimiento en red del mundo) y las iniciativas sobre prevención del calentamiento global entre otras cosas. Él compartió conmigo una reflexión que realmente me hizo pensar. Me dijo que no creía en los Gurús, simplemente porque a la velocidad que cambian las cosas, nadie puede prever el futuro con claridad. Verdaderamente las cosas van a tal velocidad que quién podía prever hace tan solo cinco años, que podríamos descargar masivamente nada menos que vídeos a y desde Internet a alta velocidad y GRATIS. Es verdaderamente alucinante la evolución tecnológica a la que nos estamos enfrentando, el cambio constantemente acelerado al que la raza humana se enfrenta. El potencial creativo tan impresionante, imparable. Atrás quedaron aquellas frases de "Ya se ha inventado todo" porque cada año, casi diría que cada día, somos testigos reales o virtuales, que más da, de nuevas soluciones, nuevas posibilidades y nuevos campos de crecimiento personal y profesional del ser humano.

Y centrándonos en la Robótica, ¿Qué tendremos dentro de diez años?. Ni lo se. Lo que si se es que depende de nosotros, de nuestra implicación, de nuestra capacidad de adaptación, de nuestra creatividad, de nuestra capacidad de interactuar en este mundo global, de nuestra capacidad de estar abierto a nuevas alternativas, nuevas formas de ver las cosas. El mundo es nuestro, pero no se va a parar para que te bajes.

Durante la charla, que fue de divulgación sobre la robótica y no sobre toda esta reflexión, les puse un vídeo para ver un poco las aplicaciones de la robótica en diferentes aspectos de la vida (Ciencia ficción, robótica industrial, aplicaciones para el hogar, aplicaciones médicas y a la discapacidad, aplicaciones lúdicas, robótica espacial, bioinspirada, etc). El vídeo lo construí tomando partes de vídeos que conseguí GRATIS de youtube, así que lo aporto también gratuitamente para quien lo quiera utilizar.