The SiteVisit
Leadership in construction with perspective from the job site. A podcast dedicated to the Construction industry. Construction professionals, General Contractors, Sub trade Contractors, and Specialty Contractors audiences will be engaged by the discussions between the hosts and their guests on topics and stories. Hosted James Faulkner ( CEO/Founder - SiteMax Systems ).
The SiteVisit
Affordable, Autonomous Robots Transforming Construction with Steven Uecke & Perryn Olson (SuperDroid Robots) | EP96
In this episode, James and Christian are joined by Steven Uecke and Perryn Olson from SuperDroid Robots, makers of the fully autonomous, 360-degree, reality capture robot, the Groundhog.
Steven shares his background in structural engineering before founding REX.one (SuperDroids parent company), and Perryn in how he became part of the construction marketing team two and a half years ago. The company's vision traces back to 2001, when it was founded by a husband and wife using royalties from BattleBots. Initially focused on software for automation, REX.one shifted to physical products and robotics. By 2020, there was a lack of available robotics specifically designed for construction, and so, upon purchasing SuperDroid, Steven and the team aimed to develop affordable, autonomous reality capture robots for construction sites. The robot's cost is around $17,000.00 to offer an attractive return on investment for construction companies looking to equip their superintendents with their greatest time-saving tool to date.
In addition to Superdroid offering customizable connectivity options for their robots, including Wi-Fi, 5G, and 4G, they want to add capabilities that make sense, like exploring laser measurement for more accurate reality capture. The conversation wraps up with a clear message, the goal of making more useful, affordable robots for construction professionals, namely the Groundhog and upcoming Humanoid, Rocky, is to augment human workers rather than replace them entirely. They envision a future where robotics enhance safety and efficiency in various industries, including various construction applications and mining, hoping to bring these technologies to a much broader audience.
Steven Uecke founded REX companies in 2011 and leads the business, focusing on quality, innovation, and business growth. He is a licensed structural engineer with vast experience in construction and building design, managing numerous projects and achieving client satisfaction.
Perryn Olson oversees marketing efforts across all of REX's companies, including brand positioning, strategy, digital media, and business development. Perryn has been recognized for his industry contributions, written publications, and earning ENR’s top 40 under 40. He resides in the New Orleans area with his family.
For 20 years, SuperDroid Robots have helped companies make dangerous, dull, & dirty tasks safer, more effective, and cleaner (for humans), which continues to save lives, reduce injuries, and improve employee retention.
EPISODE LINKS:
Steven Uecke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenuecke/
Perryn Olson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perryn/
SuperDroid Robots Website: https://www.superdroidrobots.com/
SuperDroid Robots YouTube:
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No, we're just talking about what we're doing connections. So you know, you guys this is more your world probably, but no great videos for your products and stuff like that. But you know, we started dabbling on this thing called YouTube. Yeah. Anyway, through it a little a little, just a video of a podcast we recorded. And we tagged you guys because we got to talk about about you a little bit. And boom, look at that. Now you guys are on the podcast. So
James Faulkner:That's amazing. I love the internet.
Perryn Olson:Connect. It unites the world.
James Faulkner:It does and it was it was it was basically that that article that we were citing, right with the little robot. Yeah, yeah, it was the
Christian Hamm:little little robot, the little robot that could we're gonna get into this in just a second. But, Dave, fire up that intro.
James Faulkner:Welcome to the site visit podcast, leadership and perspective from construction. With your hosts, James Faulkner and Christian Hamm.
Jesse Unke:Business as usual as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button
Justin Bontkes:and you read all the books you read the E-myth and read Scaling Up your read Good to Great, you know, I could go on
Sebastian Jacob:We've gotten to a place where we found the secret serem, we've found secret potion we can get the workers in we know where to get them
Cam Roy:One time I was on a jobsite for quite a while and actually get some extra concrete and I ordered like a, broom finished patio out front of the site trailer
John Reid:a guy hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber Connect platform on your guys's podcast,
Zack Staples:Own it, crush it and love it, we celebrate these values every single day.
James Faulkner:Let's get down to it.
Christian Hamm:All right. So it is great. Even though we're not in person in studio, that we are joined by Steven Uecke and Perryn Olson from SuperDroid Robots. Gentlemen, it's great to have you join us today.
Perryn Olson:Thanks for having us.
Steven Uecke:Good to be with you.
Christian Hamm:Right on. Well, we did talk a little bit about connection and and how we initially met here. You guys, obviously there's lots that you do. And there's just some really cool stuff that we're gonna jump into here that we broke out on a little bit with was the name with robot initially that that one that was
Perryn Olson:groundhog,
Christian Hamm:the groundhog!
James Faulkner:groundhog. It does have a groundhog stance. I will say we're like a badger stance. You know, it's kind of like Wyden squat, you know, to me?
Christian Hamm:No, it definitely can everyone. Well, we'll get into all of that. Why don't you for our audience and unpack it how you want with the way the company is set up, or just focus on purely on the SuperDroid aspect of it. But a little bit about each of your backgrounds, and how you got to be where you are currently working on these incredible robots for construction and other applications. Perryn, over to you?
Steven Uecke:Yeah, yeah, I can I could start us off. So see, background is structural engineering. So I'm a structural engineer, started out designing buildings still designed buildings started the organization that is now that super Jordans now a part of in 2011, doing engineering services, performing engineering services for steel fabricators, actually, is where we started out and then went through a process over many years of acquiring several different companies to help build up those service offerings eventually going in, or adding in construction services, as a general contractor. And throughout all those different phases saw the, the inefficiencies in construction, and, you know, lack of data and, or at least accurate data. And that's something you know, that's something that I don't know, I enjoy solving those kinds of problems, I guess, where I see effort being wasted or communication, not syncing up between different groups. And then I like to try to resolve that. So doing that in a few different ways on the software side, and then also had the opportunity over several years to try to find a way to do that in the physical aspect as well. And so that's what got us into super bringing Super Droid robots into the organization and and so now I lead up that business unit in addition to the other ones, I'm pretty intimately involved in the Super George robots operations on a day to day basis and then also define the product roadmaps. So, bear Yeah,
Perryn Olson:I'll take a kind of the overarching piece of all the companies that Rex is this idea of making the build industry be safer, more efficient. So it's we've always had this mentality of culture or continuous improvement. So one way we're going to do that is through robots. So that's why Engineering and Construction Company went and got a robot company. So how I kind of came in as I joined the team about two and a half years ago, I've been doing construction marketing for almost two decades, really will tell you that but doing this long time,
Christian Hamm:since you were 12.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, since I was 12. Yeah, I did start kind of young, but not that young. And really just fell in love with a construction just kind of fell into it through a referral, and then did well with that client. And then that glute grew, and they referred us and just kept going. And eventually, I started specializing construction marketing with little tech on the side, more software, and it actually worked internally in it for him for about five years. And then Steve and I were connected to LinkedIn. And one day said, I was available, and he reached out and we started talking, and just the vision started attracting me. And Steven is very much a visionary. Thinking three 510 years down the road, and what he's talking about building it, Rex was really exciting. I didn't expect we're gonna get a robot company in the next year and a half. But that was super cool. And working on growing that company, and moving them from kind of this idea of a mom and pop perception to you know, a major player in this space.
Christian Hamm:Is that what SuperDroid? I mean, it's hard to say Super Droid and mom and pop in this seems something pretty substantial. But was it a pretty small operation when you guys initially,
Perryn Olson:not really me, there were 20 people working on the robots. But it was a husband and wife started the company in 2001. And actually, a cool backstory is they actually use the royalties from the coming runner up on the second season of BattleBots. And so that was the seed money for that company, worked out of their house, and then grew and grew, and got up to 20 people, and they decided to retire. And Steven bought the company. And so it's the perception from the Canada website. And pretty much when they started there, since one of the few robotic companies out there. So a lot of people came to him they've done hundreds of custom robots, and amazing what these, the team knows when when things like constant here, Steven telling them, like, you guys are better than you think you already know more than you realize. And they just, it's trying to kind of change public perception. Even just as we're, we changed the website last year, we're now doing kind of going more conferences and more podcasts and things like this. That's all things that kind of weren't happening before. And we're kind of the that true best kept secret?
Christian Hamm:Yeah, well, I mean, having known that we talked about prior to even hearing about the Super Droid and, and the groundhog, we we talked about robotics on the job site, but at a very like high level without never any real specifics about like the products that we knew, or, you know, oh, I think that there's a robot that does this layout, or whatever it happens to be. But yeah, I mean, the best kept secret, and we'll let you guys unpack everything that it all does. But, Steven, when you originally started 2011, I think you said was a robot company was Was anything like this in particular, was there some sort of vision for anything particularly like this? Are two pieces just start to come together?
Steven Uecke:No, in 2011? Not really. So I was from the beginning, we've, we've been more focused on the software side for automation, automating some of the processes. And you know, actually, one of the first acquisitions was in 2012, when we acquired a software company to do structural steel connection engineering was like a 3d CAD type of application with a calculation engine. So we were heavy in the software, and then 28 2017, then we start wanting to I kind of thought about what I would be. I don't know, I the way I think about it is if the wind blew really hard, what would be left of what I did on a daily basis? And yes, there are buildings out there, but we're so far removed in a lot of cases, you know, we're doing office work and things like that. So yes, there are people that are actually on job sites in our company. But for me, personally, I wasn't as closely involved in the actual physical products that we were delivering. And so then, I wanted to have something that I could hold in my hand and say, Yeah, I built that. And I delivered that to a customer. And so then started looking into well, what are the what are the physical things that we can be involved in that would, that would still be pointing in the direction that I appreciate impacting, and so looked at all the different types of products that we could get into, you know, physical products and robotics seem to be in this was 2018 We seem to be at a pretty good tipping point, for a lot of converging technologies coming out to be able to be more useful at a at the right price point in construction. And so we started trying to do that, from the ground up, you know, internal. So we hired people internally to work on those projects, we were able to develop the technology. But finding the customer fits in it wasn't in the cards at that time. So the thing that I found with robotics is, you can either be really good at the customer side, or you can be really good at the technology side, being able to both in one company is one in one in hundreds of companies that can do that. And so then, we, you know, we're on the second try of that. Now, in 2022, when we brought super Jordan, I had been talking to them, the Super Droid team over the course of two plus years before the transaction finally, you know, all the stars aligned, and then we were able to close a transaction, right?
Christian Hamm:So oh, that's, that's pretty cool. I mean, obviously, the vision, the vision for, like you said, something that's going to be tangible, something that you're going to be able to actually stay, or that will be there to stay. What existed. So that was 2018, starting in 2020, starting the conversations, what existed in the world of robotics for I mean, we could just talk purely about construction. That would have been like, already out there already a going concern that you had to either catch up on or again, purchase to just be in parity with.
Steven Uecke:Yeah, so the CIO, something that was available on the market. Yeah, there's, there's a lot that was just coming out there yet, the Boston Dynamics, which wasn't, wasn't specifically focused on construction, but they found over time that that's, you know, where the majority of their customers are now, I think. And then the layout tools, like dusty robotics, and you know, those types, that was actually funny enough that technology, actually, I don't know if it was originated by Super Droid, but you know, they did some of the early prototypes of that technology, 10 years prior, for one of the big construction companies, but But yeah, in 2020, there really wasn't a lot out on the market that you could go out and buy. So we didn't have, but at the same time, we didn't fully get into the company until 2022. And by then, you know, there's a lot of startups now and in robotics in construction, still not a lot that you can just go and purchase, the product is more, there's a lot still in the early stages of testing out with the customers. And I think one of the challenges now is the price point. So you can do almost anything you want. But how easily can it be implemented on an actual job site? How flexible can it be across multiple job sites? So that's the the interesting thing about construction versus manufacturing is the environment changes with every job. And so then you have to build something that works well in this environment on this type of a project. And then you also have to be able to somebody can move that to somewhere else. And it still works as well. And it has to be cost comparable to how it's being done now, or, or better. You know, I mean, if it's, if it's a one to one replacement for manual labor, as long as it works consistently, then you probably have a good shot. But the robotics isn't out. I mean, we're talking 1000s of units, maybe out there at the most. before it becomes super reliable, you probably have to have hundreds of 1000s of units out there to you can experience a myriad of environments.
Christian Hamm:It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. You said, a one to one replacement. Is that would be like just barely viable. Right. But
James Faulkner:but there's also the other the other factors of the one to one replacement is you know, sick days and yeah, you know, all of the all of the stuff that's lost in the margins. That I think is where you're you're obviously getting that well, this isn't so much an hour you amortize this thing over this. It looks like the same number. But yeah, I mean, I guess you're the reliability is still just currently as unreliable as a person perhaps.
Perryn Olson:Well, you've got the there's a lot of other intangibles that potentially are you start adding in. We've had some companies and especially like the manufacturing space, we've had some people call us and like I'm about to run out of employees in the next five. Fair enough. Yeah. just I don't have the IQ, I don't have enough people, they're retiring, they're getting hurt, things like that they're doing this really repetitive motion we've got to do, we've got to do something. And so it's not necessarily, they might actually spend a little bit more to put in a robot solution than they would to hire another grunt to come in and work a little bit above minimum wage that they really see is just the bite of the worker pool for just manual labor is getting smaller and smaller. And there's some times that other intendant Can you recruit, what's the cost of recruitment costs, and those are all those kinds of intangibles that's hard to do. But it is something our CEO is really good about is and he'll remind us occasionally he's like, you know, we're on a custom solutions call, we call it with the with our sales team, or engineering team, and Steven services, our technology officer and product owner, and we're gonna He's like, you can't solve a $20,000 solution with $100,000 robot. And that's what a lot of the other robotics companies doing there isn't enough scale. Or they're, they're the r&d, they're still paying back their r&d and their investors and all these other things that their price points are so much higher. And that's one of things we're really focused on right now in the future is how do we deliver affordable robots? I actually have a business case, they're not cool. It's it's one of the things that kind of gripes us, I've been a big fan of construction technology for years. So when kind of jumped into it with robots stuff is kind of joke, a lot of these companies big GCS will have two or three robots that they own ones, usually in Construction Technology Office for experimentation, ones in recruiting and ones in marketing, whether or not is in the field. So what good is that robot, that they though three robots probably cost them a half million dollars, they're not actually using it in the field to do the tasks that it was hired to do. Right? So that's where we're trying to really shift things. And, you know, can we get a robot out there that is usable, and affordable enough that they can actually get a business case. So that's one that ships were kind of doing as well as, like, we got a Super Droid, they built a lot of customer bots on a lot of kits, like small kits for high school, college teams, even other kind of internal robotics departments of some of these large companies. But, you know, we're trying to build how do we kind of meet in the middle find a custom solution that at some scale, can have some really powerful impact on these different industries in particular construction.
James Faulkner:Okay, so going through your the super droids website right now, there. There's lots of stuff there in terms of you go into robots, and it's like there's another whole drop down. So what are the specifics that you're using in construction? Now the article that we saw, it's obviously one of those what's the groundhog? So what is sorry, I forget from back from the the article, but what is Groundhog doing currently on a jobsite?
Perryn Olson:So the groundhog is an affordable autonomous reality capture of gotcha, right? Essentially, a robot can either go on find his own route, or you can do a plan route. Okay, that will then do the reality capture for you on your schedule.
James Faulkner:Okay, so that's basically doing a Matterport situation kind of thing it can do
Perryn Olson:Matterport, or most of the other software's, we actually did get approved by Matterport become a reseller, because we want to sell a solution that works out of the box. Yeah. So if somebody doesn't already have a rad capture software, we want to make sure that they at least had one that they could use and basically use out of the box. Cool. That was the big thing for us of, but most of the companies we know that we've talked to, in our research and conversation, people, they kinda have their go to, I can use this software game, like if it can import 360 off of basically this camera, we're good to go.
James Faulkner:So is his groundhog, a good base machine, in terms of sensors, motors, mobility, it basically knowing the environment is that a good baseline for it to do other things with other peripherals and stuff?
Perryn Olson:It could do other peripherals. Right now. It's programmed just for that 360 cameras like the autonomous features. It takes a lot of that programming, but yeah, it's got built in obstacle avoidance, because we know construction sites are dynamic. So you can have that pre planned route with different waypoints. But one day, there might be a ladder in the way or human in the way and things like that. Okay. So, but one of the things we have seen, the fact that it's automated and can be scheduled is kind of a side effect of this is some of her use cases. Actually, we're testing this out in the field in Chicago. The employer isn't like, Can this come later at night? And we're like, well, we're just testing it right now. But there's if this was running regularly, they want to be able to put it like basically right after the the last guy is off the job. So yeah, we're early in the morning so that they're not worried about privacy, because we've heard some horror stories of robots getting beat up with hammers and ya know, things like that. People are petrified they get the wrong idea. Yeah. Oh, and it's literally lost in translation. Somebody didn't tell. Yes. Spanish speaking employees. A robot on site and it's not going to hurt you. So
James Faulkner:yeah, I guess they've seen too much black mirror, right.
Perryn Olson:Oh, we are definitely we are definitely fighting that or Yeah, kind of different themes as we develop different technologies like okay, what sci fi movie we're gonna fit into this weekend. Yeah, exactly.
James Faulkner:That's pretty cool. Okay, guys, and like I mean, so does it have? So in terms of the battery technology? Is it is it on? Is it on a power cable is it is as all batteries, it goes back and charges. I don't want to say the word room, but because you've probably heard it a million times. But is it a similar concept to that? It's got a base station, it charges it. How's that work?
Steven Uecke:Yeah, so I'll touch on that in a second. I did want to go back to your earlier point of the labor issue. So this post scalable robot solutions that we've seen, the robot costs 1/6 The amount of the human counterpart, you know, that's replacing? So that's, that's when it takes off is when it's a complete no brainer. That's why it's, you know, to one, it's kind of like barely, barely viable. And that's, that's not considering the intangibles of the sick days and all that because when it comes down to selling it to the guy that writes the check, he's got to say, Yeah, I got no doubt in my mind that I'm gonna gonna make this back with the battery technology back on the groundhog, the battery technology right now utilizes DeWalt batteries. Okay, so it's a, you know, somebody has to go in there and replace the batteries, daily base, essentially daily basis. Which, you know, that's stage one, I guess, you know, what we found in the not just this project, but other projects in the past is getting something out there that's useful to customers, although maybe not exactly perfect, gets us a lot of valuable feedback for how they're actually using it. So the docking the wastage, here, the the document the autonomous charging, that's something that we're in the process of putting in across all of our platforms, which would eliminate that, that issue of the swapping out the batteries,
James Faulkner:right. So what type of projects are these being done on? So let me just ask you another question. On top of that, is, so when I, when I kind of think of a multifamily high rise, for instance, you're going from Florida, Florida floor on on those slabs. I guess the robot has to be taken from one floor to the Next there's the physical part of that it's not going to fly around. Second floor,
Perryn Olson:doesn't fly in its compact size fits on the steps. So it can't go up steps, right. One advantage, one of our competitors has reversed theirs can climb up steps. But as we were talking to one prospect one day, he's like, I'll just Mondays will be on the first floor Tuesdays, like just like, they'll just move it it's light enough and movable enough to do that. And in a key, we're really focused on trying to how do we get something that's a price point that makes sense. So were our goals under $20,000? Because that was the return on investment, if you had a superintendent making $120,000 a year with no the burden on top of that, and they're spending two to three hours a week doing reality capture. That was our target.
James Faulkner:Price. But isn't the capital cost at leasing play? Like I don't know why everyone's talking about they gotta buy this thing outright. I mean, it's,
Perryn Olson:we've we're open either one, we've had some companies love leasing, we heard some, like, I don't want another subscription. It just didn't, it kind of depends. We're flexible in those kinds of things. And construction tends to be a little bit more capital friendly. Leasing, because the projects are capital based. They might have a good year, they buy a bunch of stuff. Gotcha. Versus like, you know, an IT company or a software companies their recurring revenue. So they want that subscription, because they they get paid off of subscription.
Christian Hamm:Right. I mean, it's also at a case, what is the cost? Can you say, like, is it listed?
Perryn Olson:It's on the website? Yeah. $17,000. Okay. Yeah.
Christian Hamm:I mean, it's, when you think about it, depending on the size of the project, I guess, I don't know how many each builder would buy. Yeah, but it seems already, you know, 17k, you get that 15k. And then you start making all sorts of improvements, but still keep the you know, the price point around that. I mean, people will lose five to 10k and small tools.
James Faulkner:Yeah, that's that's not very good.
Christian Hamm:Yes. All the time. It's not it's not like, it's like a caustic, it's burden every project.
Perryn Olson:And one things we're seeing and talking to our our teammates on the construction side is some of the developers the owners are requiring weekly scans. And because they don't want it, they're seeing the cost of travel COVID kind of hit a reset button, or they used to go to the job site. Yes, a month, they'd fly to another city, do the tours and fly home, like reality capture, they don't need to do that charged. So I was actually I was talking to a real estate developer a couple months ago. And she's like, there's actually three reality captures on one site. Her is the developer. The GC has one and then I think the bank has another one. I'm like, Yep, and neither one trust the other one habits so they have three separate services essentially running the same thing. And why would you consolidate the one if you had a robot just like the robot gonna screw me over? So she's like, Yeah, well, that would actually make sense. So some of these, there's, there's inefficiencies now happening, because so many people have their different tools or things like that. So that's one things we were very conscious of, if we're developing this as kind of use the standard 360 camera that can then import all of these different software's we don't we're trying to stay agnostic with the software. And then eventually we'll move into the laser scan. And that'll add a lot more complexity.
James Faulkner:But with Lidar and all that kind of stuff, I would those guys are done. Yeah, that's, that's common. So what the cool thing I think is, is that, you know, we've seen a lot of the, the site cameras that started off mostly trying to replace security guards. Yeah. Right. And that was for theft, etc, and break ins and all kinds of stuff. And then that morphed into image recognition in terms of what's coming on site. And now we're talking about there's other ones that are a truck just showed up. It's, you know, identifying materials, all that kind of stuff. And then this next, so you've got that sort of, sort of site compliance ish stuff going on tracking and then with yours, you have this progress check tracking, from the from the capture, really. So I think that this this is, at what part do you guys have this sort of dream of robotics on the actual building side, as in manufacture, manufacturing, but like to have to simplify it more at what point are robots swinging hammers? January, yet, generally. January, January,
Perryn Olson:though, it's that quick. But yeah, Stephen, tell you a bit more on something we're working on?
Steven Uecke:Yeah. Well, you know, we've mentioned, so we're a platform company as far as the robotics. So we're focused on, we're focused on the platform, and then we apply that to specific use cases. But what that means is that we have multiple platforms. So right now the groundhog is on our smallest four wheel drive platform, we have a attract one as well, it's a similar size. And then we have a midsize one up from there, which is two feet by two feet, four wheel drive. And then we have a larger one, that's three and a half feet long, sick, big six by six, and then tracked unit. Those are the platforms now that we could put the same, you know, same payload on it can go do the scans, you know, outside or, you know, whatever. There's, there's different specific use cases for different platforms. Not everyone needs a dog, not everyone needs. You, not everyone could use a little four wheel drive. But two of the platforms that we push, since we've taken taken over Super Droid in their product roadmap is a humanoid. So we launched that product. So it's basically a person form factor, human form factor, robot. So we, we started that last year, based off of, you know, technologies that have been in development since 2018. And then we also are doing a dog as well. So there are some applications where those form factors, those platform types do work best, like you said, multi storey buildings, if there's a staircase, you want to do the walk up the stairs, the humanoid is really the one that's the I don't know, if we kind of like the breakout product, I would say. So the idea is that if we can get a platform that can apply to every situation, and can be customized with little end effector type of modifications, and then software, that that's the point at which robotics can go like mass market type of volume, to bring the pricing down so that it's affordable for all cases. So that's what we're doing. Now. Our second generation of the humanoid is almost complete, you know, for the walking test, we have it on on some of the other mobile bases as well with wheels and tracks, but the you know, the walking one is the one that's the most the most useful, or the most flexible, I would say you can go into the construction environment pretty well. And our, our concept there is that we would enable people to you know, we have some stuff filled out of the box for use cases, like the standard ones for navigation of opening doors and flipping switches, picking up boxes, things like that, but then getting into allowing people to train it to do specific tasks and then develop end effectors that are applicable to that, whether it's the hand that it would come with or some other use case specific end effectors and then allowing them to train it to do tasks like you know, swinging a hammer to hit a nail head is easy for humans, but you know, it would take some training to get it to do that. But there's other things that are probably simpler, but also very useful as well, that can be starting points. But our goal is to allow the market to assist us in bringing that to, to the masses through integration partners.
Perryn Olson:That will take a step back. I mean, nothing with robots is the kind of across the industry, this isn't a Super Droid thing is we talked about 3d ease. You know, robots are good for things that are dangerous, dirty, or dull. And we're starting to even add in the human overscan, our first version will be more of a telepresence like, somebody can be in another room safer room, if that's a dirty environment, or dangerous environment are across the state across the country, and operating this robot. So we're also adding a fourth the distance, because sometimes that's necessary. We've seen that with some of the big heavy equipment and construction that sometimes the biggest expensive equipment is actually moving the operators, qualified operators around the world. So in one of the reasons that humanoid form is, usually the best option is because the world is built for humans, you know, so if we've seen this issue with some of these robots that are like a quadruped Ed, it's only a couple feet off the ground. So we can't see a gauge that's at eye level for a human. Yeah. So how does it do that? It can't. So there's certain limitations every robot has. And that's really where we're seeing we're building SuperDrive so you have the platform for every solution that we can then customize as needed.
James Faulkner:Well, you know what, I gotta say, you guys like this is really exciting stuff that we're talking about. I've kind of wanted to talk about this forever. Yeah, it's true. So so when the when it comes to the the humanoid thing, and obviously there's some you know, mainstream news stuff that's sort of been out over the last three years, basically. So you've got the Boston Dynamics Atlas guy, right. I think that's him. That's got that sounds like he's a train is going constantly got a fan in the back of that backpack thing going on? And that's only throws two by fours that your head? Yeah. So he's he got that. And then what's the deal with Tesla and Musk's thing? Like, what is that thing gonna be? But that blackhead?
Perryn Olson:It's that sleek and good luck? And
James Faulkner:have you guys seen it? Like, oh, yeah, fully, like standing up walking around doing anything?
Perryn Olson:No. And what is it a big black box robotics companies, they're trying to build a robot that does everything for everyone, and make it as fully autonomous as possible, very much like cyber like, it's interesting. You talk robots with people. So many people kind of say what they think like Rosie from the Jetsons. I just Yeah, takes the command runs away comes back is this to Butler? Yeah, and most robots are really built for one use. So building more of a humanoid would give you more uses, because it does have that human form. And so it opens up the door, but we're trying to help with the telepresence the user, the operator will control a lot more. And we don't have to program everything for everyone. We'll have things like obstacle avoidance to help that user, but it's we're not trying to tackle the world essentially.
Steven Uecke:Right. And I don't want to downplay the Tesla, you know, because there, they will be successful long term. But we need to be realistic about what it can do in the beginning. And how long, you know, if you want to, if you want, I mean, they're trying to say that it's going to build itself? Well, that's, you know, five years out at the minimum, probably more more than that, let's focus on when is this coming to market? And what is it going to be able to do today? And what's the price point? So that's another it's going
James Faulkner:to be like the cybertruck. We haven't seen
Christian Hamm:the first one camo.
James Faulkner:Did you? Yeah, nice. It's only It's only taken five years, or whatever it's been. But yeah. So I mean, they're, they're amazing at putting out news and keeping us captivated. So what you guys are, when you're talking about a humanoid, it totally makes sense to me that you would stick that humanoid sitting in a truck, or sitting or sitting in an excavator. And you're using human element just because the environment of the excavator was designed for pedals and handles, and you guys have those. And it's not necessarily about walking around the site and not tripping over it's more about replacing the human form in things that were designed for human form. Is that correct?
Perryn Olson:Yeah, even you said pickup truck, which is interesting. It's actually the easiest way to transport a robot is to make it fit inside the cab of the pickup truck versus if you have a quadra pet or even some other robot, you got to put it in case you put in the back of the truck. Like it just it's easier to transport things in the human environment when they're human form. Yeah, that's never thought about that. So cool. Is that simple? Yeah. So it was it was something that Steven told me and he's like, hey, guess how we're gonna transport this and like, put in the back seat.
Steven Uecke:Yeah, everyone. I talked to many people about humanoids over the years and in a lot of the people, I say, what is the required Why do you need it to add legs? And they would say I don't know. The people working on the projects would say they don't know. And, and but the answer is transportation. So that's why, if you're working in a manufacturing environment environment, there's not a lot of use cases that require legs, you know, you could put it on wheels just as easily. But getting it to effect, you know, getting it to a job site is where it makes sense is you don't need and, you know, construction, you can go somebody's working on the site for a week at a time or something and getting Yes, you can do it or with a trailer and all that, but it's, it's a barrier to entry for people, you know, they, they want to be able to, it's got to be almost like a toolbox for them. Where they don't, they don't have to put in extra effort. And that's because we want it to go mass market, if you want to stay. If you want to slow a ramp up, then you can put a whole bunch of barriers in that makes it easier to develop, but we want it to be as friction free as possible. So that and to be accessible to everyone so that, you know, a two person company can have access and have it go in their truck to transport it to do the work as similar to how a big company could do that.
James Faulkner:So the the, the humanoid, like I was always thinking that there there, there's obviously going to be a place in time. And it's probably already happening now where you have people working remote doesn't matter if they're working from the home from wherever. And they are the proxy for the telematic control of the robot or of the actual excavator or whatever that is. And they're doing the work from their desk and operating via cameras of everything that's going on the site and a human's actually not there. What I think your human or humanoid does is allow that same situation to to be used on retroactive older equipment. That was, I mean, that's the key is that there's way more equipment out there in the world that was designed for human than there is going to be new equipment that doesn't have a human Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Autonomous Yeah. Yeah. You know,
Perryn Olson:we've talked to a manufacturer some of those kinds of cases like most of their competitors and their other factories had gone fully automation. But this company particulars like we can afford the whatever millions of dollars to get fully automated. We can't afford a shutdown for six months to install it. Yeah, exactly. Just they they're gonna go bankrupt trying to do that. And it's wasn't money it was a tiny they're gonna lose customers I don't like so we could plug in a humanoid robot or something. There's some other robots would complement it. We love that potentially in one day.
James Faulkner:Did you guys figure out how to say a sorry, a height? I mean, what's interesting, do you ever remember like I'm older than you guys, but there used to be this like, this space show called Buck Rogers. And, and Buck Rogers used to have this little, little robot. And when I say little, he was kind of like, you know, little little, and his name was tweaky and tweaky. That's a good name for an era your Twiki and tweaky Yeah, he was just this little mini humanoid. And the question I have for you guys is that you know if you stuffs stuff one of these, like it doesn't, you know, in an excavator you don't want someone who's you know an NBA player size you know, someone you know six seven kind of thing you know, what's the what's the form factor? You also don't want it sitting on telephone books either.
Christian Hamm:You got tips here as a car Inspector Gadget so
James Faulkner:like, when you guys are like How should how tall should your humanoid B actually do you have a name for a humanoid is it was Rocky, Rocky Nice, nice, nice from Philly. So he's gonna be jacked and about six foot one boxing gloves on.
Perryn Olson:It's got a few different, it does a few different origin stories. We were trying to rename some of the robots from surgery because a lot of them are like GPK 32 or HK 15 model numbers roll off the tongue and they have some internal meetings for people and sometimes really just part numbers that they pull off something else and so we're in process reuse as we introduce robots or redesign and we're going to come up with the names that Stephen Cohen Rocky is kind of a quick neighbor had a lot in front of it with stuck and everyone else was causing the ruckus it's kind of weird you got to keep on humanoid Mike seems rocky here. This was about the rocky rocky that's kind of cool. We just refer to him as Rocky around the office
James Faulkner:Has Sly called you guys yet and said hey, this is not cool, guys.
Perryn Olson:Well, he's technically named after rock Rocky Mountain National Park.
James Faulkner:So yeah, sure.
Perryn Olson:We avoid copyright. Yeah,
James Faulkner:nice try.
Christian Hamm:You could have you could have, you could do some unreal commercialization of that once you bring it to market to have him on a job site. And then this thing like the frustration of the battle between them, oh,
James Faulkner:you get survivor with the rosin up my phone. I get that. All right. So
Perryn Olson:Steve, how tall is Rocky?
Steven Uecke:I'd say average height so so rocky doesn't have a head. So that's a that's an area for payloads. Right. So the shoulder level is similar to like a five foot nine five foot 10 person, an area and then you can put paper on for that?
Christian Hamm:An area for payload. So I would immediately when you said human Do it on a job site he thought had well i Well, what is this everyone does for the first thing that this makes sense based on what you just said. But the first visual I got because I'm thinking back to the days when I was a laborer on a job site, and it was hey, go grab a from that pallet over there go grab X amount of pieces of dimensional lumber, whatever happens to be well on the shoulder then there's a challenge of how many each guy can have and then somebody ends up getting hurt and somebody you get drops or whatever. But immediately I think of this thing walking over to a thing on his shoulder and walking across a jobsite, but if its head is there's no paint, like this thing could just be like, literally like anything you want on top of it and just trucking it across the jobsite.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, he won't be he can lift a lot. He's ready for that. But maybe Gen three. Yeah, no, no, that's you see on your website ahead is where we have a picture he's on if you go into robots, yeah. Features it's under humanoid
James Faulkner:humanoid. There it is. bipedal robot. Let's see. That's cool. Oh, and then okay.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, that's the proof of concept from last year. The last couple parts are getting wrapped up right now. So we were what four to six weeks. We should have some some new pictures of gin to cheese. Look at that. Yeah, he
James Faulkner:really he really doesn't have a head. Why don't I see ya. Why did I say he?
Perryn Olson:Because we need a rocky call me. So did you?
James Faulkner:How does he identifies my question?
Christian Hamm:It's a robot?
Perryn Olson:Yeah. We weren't supposed to open up right
James Faulkner:now. No, we're not. But it is interesting. So do you have any sort of a visie vest kind of situation
Perryn Olson:we did intentionally. So there's two purposes. That is we put them in coveralls. And for one it was this protect our IP because that was proof of concept. We didn't have skin on them, essentially. But also it was we wanted people to see him working. So that's one of the big things that it's super hard is we want to build robots at work. So we won't necessarily have the fanciest design. If you're gonna we're always gonna get beat by the tussles of the world.
Christian Hamm:Yeah. Hey,
James Faulkner:Dave, can you get this on the screen like this? Oh, yeah. Pretty cool.
Christian Hamm:But this, what's it's like anything? No, like you always alengka This, you look at an MVP of anything. I mean, it's not like you're gonna have this super polished, slick, sexy, whatever. But I mean, like, it's gen-1. If it's practical, and it's useful. I mean, especially when you talk about construction. Like, that's what people want on their projects. Right? This is going to price point, that's reasonable. Oh, and it's gonna do it needs to do with a winner all day long.
Perryn Olson:Yeah. And that's really what we're trying to work on is what's a strong deliverable that's affordable, can have that business case that you can get people out of harm's way. And one of the use cases we're talking to different people that we weren't really expecting was talking to a staffing companies like, we could use this for people that are in light duty. Yep. But you know, construction warehouses, things like that, that these people light duty mean, sit at home. But if they could operate a robot, we see for
James Faulkner:droid robots there on the left there, David? Yeah.
Perryn Olson:So that's a huge opportunity, or you go into these different offices, then we start to think, Okay, if it can be light duty, what about like somebody who's disabled? Somebody who's in a wheelchair? Yeah. Could they now work a blue collar job through a robot? Because if you go Google the top jobs for somebody who's in a wheelchair, it's a bunch of white collar jobs that sit at a desk? Well, that is really everyone can do. And most of them require college degrees or master's degrees. And so could you open up a whole opportunity for people that can't work but want to work? That this can open up? You know, they're they have other medical conditions that they have to live at home? It opens up a lot of other opportunities. That's not just replacing worker shortage that we've had in this industry for decades.
Christian Hamm:Yeah. I mean, well, sheesh, when we all we do is talk about labor shortage. I mean, that's, that's industry. Why are industry agnostic? Right? Yes. But like when we talk specifically about construction, like, Wow, talk about an incredible use case that you could introduce a workforce that would never have had the opportunity. Like, because whenever and this is the thing, whenever we talk about because we do a lot of promotion, and just for construction in general advocacy, right? And we always say like, you know, if you're, if you're able bodied, that you could go on a job that you should, it's a great experience as a young person to go and do that. But now, you could say, hey, and we keep talking about how more and more technology enters construction, that like more and more, I don't know, marketing person could be in construction. A tech person could be in construction. Anybody could now be in Construct. That is bizarre. That is wild to think about. But it's you guys could create a reality there.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, it's making things more accessible and a lot of different ways. And and putting people out of harm's way.
James Faulkner:Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, eliminating the three Ds that mean, or reducing the 3ds or not putting a human in front of the three Ds allows the anybody's to get involved, which is way back and it just opens up the top of the funnel for people.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, and there's other use cases of things that are distanced to move data center in the middle nowhere, either you got to pay somebody a lot of money to staff that data center just in case they gotta move a cord or something or you've got downtime for somebody to travel out there to get there, like an oil rig might not need every job as a full time employee 24/7, could you utilize a robot like this that could get around a oil rig, get around a data center that somebody could log in and work and do an hour's work? And then log off? And then go the next one? Or do the next like, it opens up a lot of different things. Have you started thinking and that's the other thing, but the human is it would be built for these kind of environments? Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Well, yeah, I mean, you put, I mean, over the last three years, a lot of travel was eliminated by doing things like this. Right. But there are some things that will always require a physical element that you know, you need to move something from here to there, like you said, a court or whatever, but yeah, remote inspection, all that kind of stuff, right. You're not gonna be able to get everything with a flyover. So to be able to fly Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they had Yeah, remote drone stuff for longest hour. Long now.
James Faulkner:But so underneath the overalls, Rocky has, what kind of like is the DeWalt battery? Still? You guys have most on it? What do you guys got going on there?
Christian Hamm:It's got one of those Iron Man.
James Faulkner:Yes. Yes. Like the red heartbeat. Certainly. Nuclear nuclear nuclear nucular efficient thing going on in the center.
Christian Hamm:adamantium Yeah, exactly. Bones. Yeah. Let's go.
James Faulkner:So what is what it yeah, what's what's, what is naked rocket look like?
Steven Uecke:That picture or that? So I'll just talk about V two. So v two is primarily aluminum, CNC machined aluminum. anodized. Black for the most part, so it's, you know, black unit. Waterproof. Let's see the the batteries are? Yeah, they're removable, interchangeable, but they're custom. So there are batteries in there. lithium, lithium type. We're using the first version, we'll be using it in the video processor for all the autonomy in the balance and walking and all that. Reinforcement learning for all the deep reinforcement learning for all the algorithms, learning how to walk and balance and react to, to unexpected situations.
James Faulkner:What is the connectivity in terms of network? And all that kind of stuff?
Steven Uecke:Yeah, so the default is Wi Fi. Okay, so the, you know, there'll be options for actually we've, we've tested all the way up to Starlink. Satellite, but 5g 4g, those sorts of things as well.
James Faulkner:Okay, how long the ropes is is rocky without Wi Fi? It's fine. He has okay. So yes, in light, your Wi Fi Wi Fi goes down. He's He's, he's still doing his doing his thing.
Steven Uecke:Yeah, yeah. Networking is just for, you know, data logging
James Faulkner:reporting view. And so there's a is there internal? Does he have an API?
Steven Uecke:Yeah. Okay. So it's, it's a fair, it's an open source API ecosystem. So the, you know, it's already available out. It's not something we developed, we're using, implementing it allows people to plug into it to do other things. Okay.
James Faulkner:so on. So he has a specific address. And then there's certain there's obviously authentication, then you guys have endpoints for the certain things that he's going to report to and then all the properties of those endpoints.
Steven Uecke:Right. Yeah. And it's pretty sweet running on it. Yeah, that's across all of our platforms, as well. So the groundhog has that as well. Right? It's a VPN for access. So you have to get secure access to that VPN, you can access unit.
James Faulkner:Pretty exciting, guys. Holy smokes. Jealous. Yeah.
Perryn Olson:That's one thing like see, I can see Stephens gonna be challenging because a lot of this technology is gonna lose social connectivity we're doing across all the platforms. Our goal now is to kind of take our, our most our best sellers, but also the ones that give us the most rain to kind of fill in all the gaps of the use cases. And every model will have a remote control version and an autonomous version, I say open that autonomous, will then build out the connectivity. And it was fun one day is the guys that were building, the robots were tested in Raleigh, and they're running it the groundhog on a Chicago construction site. Like couldn't see anything. There's nothing all he had was the robot. And he's running around and doing the testing and things like that. So the videos if you see our YouTube about the reality capture, but that was all done remotely. I gotta get inside just taking video and that was it. So
Christian Hamm:sweet. That's pretty cool. Yeah, backing up because I think we went kind of all the way to the end of the technology that you guys are making you're working on which is really good at doing that. So Oh, no, no, this isn't not talking about notes. I'm talking like that. Everything you guys are working on. Yeah. But backing up to the groundhog. And you mentioned, you know, like a competitor, like, I think dusty or something like that. That is something that we that's something we had talked about or that we had seen before. Because it's it's doing layout, I think or something like that. Yeah. Would you guys because the groundhogs doing reality capture? Do you have anything that's doing like, are you looking at? Could this thing be multi purposed? Could it be doing multiple different things so that it's not having idle time itself as a robot?
James Faulkner:Yeah, so swapping?
Perryn Olson:We're not gonna go after? Yeah, does he's got a pretty good use case. And HP I think, kind of in the market a couple years ago. So yeah, let's not go knock off, you know, start up. It's got a five year head start. And then a giant like HP? Yeah, sure. So but it's, we can definitely play nice with them. And we've actually, you know, we follow them on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, and things like that, and a lot of respect for what they're doing. They're more of a service model. Yeah. And we're more the hardware side. What, most robots kind of have a single purpose. That's one things people have to kind of get past that like that, Rosie from the Jetsons idea that can do everything, right. But as things grow, and it's it kind of grows and the platform's can develop the they definitely have more of a use case. All right, now, the groundhog is intended just to be that the reality capture for us?
Christian Hamm:Well, there's there's sure plenty of enough value in and of itself, right? Of course, so But no, that makes sense. I mean, some of you wouldn't even think about that. Our minds automatically go to this thing should be able to do everything.
Perryn Olson:Yeah. And then you start adding more features. Like if you've ever seen that, kind of the meme of like, you know, a Ferrari with a caterpillar arm on it, like it doesn't really fit well, like, it's the cost of half a million dollars, but still doesn't work. You gotta be careful not to Frankenstein too much. And so we've had a few people kind of use it for unintended uses, like one guy called the other day, and he's like, I want to go spy on my construction employees for like, robot can do that. But I don't think you're gonna have very good success. So we told him about the baseball bat and the other robot. And that's something we've, we've had a few people ask us, Hey, can you build us a virtual superintendent? Like, yes. But does that work with your company's culture? Does that work? Like how does that end up? So that's when, as we started learning more about like, different people's privacy rules, and someone, someone people worry about immigration, some were just worried about, I don't want my face on the camera, like, I get mobbed on social media, I choose not social media, I don't want to have a camera in my face at work. So that's where this idea of this autonomous can help a lot as well. It's just gonna be scheduled after hours, or you can just go on the weekends during the daylight. And so it's, it gives a lot of flexibility to people that they wouldn't have before. And it's really capture it's not hard for just a lot of times, it's just dull. Yeah. So it doesn't get done. It's that thing on the checklist that gets Oh, we'll do it tomorrow. We'll do it tomorrow. And it's been three months, and you've haven't done it.
Christian Hamm:Well, exactly. And in James kind of touched on a little bit when we first got into the whole groundhog conversation, but like he just said, it's a superintendent is spending 234 hours a week doing a dull thing. That's, it doesn't say something below someone's pay grade, but the low someone's value to the project, right? Like you want a superintendent one of the most important if not the most important person on a construction site, doing superintendent duties. Right.
Perryn Olson:When he first started talking, actually, we started with a remote control version of it for the current team. And it was just like, in our presence, like of constructions like you got to make it autonomous. If you're going to do the labor of placement. Yeah, we did find the remote control ones faster. And people want to do it because it's basically a really cool remote control car that can get the job done quick. But one of the issues we heard from our own superintendents was if I go walk a jobsite, it might take me 20 minutes to physically walk it but it didn't take me four hours to get back to my office. So if I'm walking around with a camera, guess what I'm not doing. And then I gotta remember where I left off. And like it just, it becomes a half day thing, if not more, so they usually push it down to like a project engineer or an intern. And then they then they lose some consistency or what they're trying to do and interns go on after the summer. And it's it's always kind of pushed down or pushed off. And now that we're starting to see more and more clients asking for this weekly scan. Right, I think that's where I think the you know, this is going to be helpful as this kind of just runs in the background.
Christian Hamm:Yeah, and kind of, as James was saying, with, you know, things that were static security cameras, static, whatever, you know, there's this component that gives an outside the client customer, whatever this view that they don't have to come and see, then you can start tying because those things like security cameras that are seeing people that are seeing product that are counting material that are doing whatever, these things have already tapped into the insurance side of the business to get people breaks and to have partnerships and all kinds of stuff. But when you get this kind of third factor is kind of completes the remote eyes on site. The source of truth for all your progress, you can definitely try that and see probably some significant savings and insurance when they start getting on that road, yeah,
Perryn Olson:well, and you think about rework and things like that, and that's what really, really captured can help prevent rework, but also does happen, you can kind of really go back in time. Yes, I mean, 10 years ago, you think about trying to do a timeline of, you know, open jobs, like when when did this trade go in when did this, whatever happened? Now, you can do that. And then even at the end, you can hand that over to the owner of the building, and say, you know, here's a week by week history of your building, and then they can pick it up and run with it and do what they want with it and their own reality capture software. And that's the other market we're seeing as we definitely design this as a progress monitoring tool for construction. But as we were talking people, cleaning the reality capture software companies that are still like, this can be huge. And facility managers, especially the big manufacturers, and things like that is that you only might only do an annual scans now. But they want to do quarterly, they want to do monthly scans, they want to be able to see the changes in their environment, or one of the use cases, we heard from manufacturers like I've got a really like high secure facility. If I need to let like one day the air conditioner, and I need I need five contractors come in my closet and go look around, I got a schedule that I get to go through the security claims on all these things like or I just stick them out and put it in there do the 360. And they they get everything including measurements. So it even helps with just limiting access to an extent Yeah.
Christian Hamm:Okay, well, this is I mean, this there's so there's so much there. And is there anything that you guys, I mean, that you can share with us that maybe we haven't talked about yet in terms of the robotic side of things? Or have we kind of gone from everything that is in that is commercial right now that people are currently using people do have these groundhogs on job sites and they're active? Yep, it's still fairly
Perryn Olson:new, we've only got a few out. But we tested on our own job sites from Mark, our sister company, that construction company that sort of started, it was an idea we've had for a while we're going to do reality capture, we found a kind of an easy way to do the remote control with some modifications, our current robot, but then, soon as we started, hey, can we bring this up, like you need to make it autonomous. So we kind of took a step back and start talking to more people that took more development. And so it's moving around, and we're starting to get it, we'll see more examples, we're actually supposed to be at a brewery tomorrow to get an example.
Steven Uecke:Yeah, the another thing I mentioned, was, or that convention is the I don't know what to say next version, but a, a different version of that, of the reality capture is using laser measurement on it. So you know, sometimes 360 photos or videos isn't enough, you know, if you want, and that's the case for that would be if you want the accuracy of measurement down to less than an inch or less than a couple inches. So you want 16th inch accuracy or for, you know, eighth inch accuracy or something like that. So right now, people are typically taking that around, there's been a few people that put it on a dog, but it's not an automated process, but they go around with the laser scanners, and then do a highly detailed scan with that. And then they take that back stitch that I mean, I'm sure you guys know all this stuff, as well, but stitch it back together and then bring that into CAD software to model it. And then they have their, you know, their as built conditions. And it's something that's not very scalable, there's a lot of manual work in that process. And so what we're doing is trying to automate what we're not trying to do it, we are automating that process, and and so that will be having a laser measurement device on the robot itself that is directly directly interacted with, from the robot, and then able to, you know, that's kind of the interesting thing, you take this thing that's, that's accurate, accurate to within one or two millimeters. But it doesn't know what it is. Right? You You have to stitch it together manually afterwards. And you said, why should why is that? And the answer is that you shouldn't have to and so we're taking that step out so that it can associate where it is to that same level of accuracy. And then also identifying, you know, the nice thing about buildings is there's a lot of regular geometry in there. And so identifying that geometry and then building essentially a you know, you can build a rough model on the fly with that. So if you have if you have a few points on a wall, you can you can model that wall. Now you can also go in and model every point on the wall. And then the use case of that is if you're trying to do quality control or you want to see the variations in the wall or you think it might be tilted or you know floor flatness, things like that, but giving people the option to do varying degrees of that. So if you we talked to people that are manage hundreds of properties in the US from their office in Europe. And they want to know where the walls are with an accuracy of an eighth of an inch. So two inches is not accurate enough, they need it to be more accurate. So then what they have to do is get a scan done every couple of years, what happens in between, they don't know exactly, because, you know, it's hard to manage all that with limited resources. But with this sort of a platform, if you just need to know where the walls are, you don't need a full, you know, 100 million points scan, right, you just need to be able to measure those walls. And there's laser measurement devices that people use every day on a jobsite very cheap technology where they you know, laser tape measure, it's very accurate. And so we're kind of trying to are we are putting those two things together into a product that's also affordable, of course, but but can kind of do that end to end process for people.
Christian Hamm:And maybe that that ties in more to the what else? What else could it do? You know, or whatever, if it's got a, it's got a lens on it, it's seeing things, well, then it can probably connected to software, then it can probably do measuring, you can probably do checks against, like you said, survey or completeness or compliance or something to that effect?
James Faulkner:Well, I mean, I think, you know, on the on the API side of things, they can also process differences too, from previous footage. I mean, I think that's obviously the comparison stuff. What have you, since you guys have been doing this? Have you had any comments from the cultural side of things? Oh, you guys are trying to like get rid of humans and all that, like, what's the narrative there? I mean, and how do you guys stick handle that from a progression.
Perryn Olson:Within this industry, we were such a worker shortage. Even in the laser scanning industry, there's a huge worker shortage in the knowledge barrier, like you talk to people, we've been working with the reality capture comp, network and can be at their conference. And there's just guys are flying all over the country, because there's a shortage of people. And you know, they're someone's like, I was listening to podcasts from one I was like, I feel bad taking people's money. And they're just paying me to do the same thing I can do here, but they're making me do it over there. And they gotta pay me extra all this money because of my time. And if I just had somebody there, and so, you know, there's definitely no need for those kinds of things. But a lot of our robots are still, there's some that can be fully automated, and they're generally taking those really dull tasks out, and most people don't want to do anyway, yeah. Or that dangerous scenario, we can't get back to those three days. But like the humanoid robot, it's, it is intended to be more of a telepresence robot to start and then do some of the simple animations with imagine like doing a screwdriver or something. It's a very repetitive motion that a robot could do easier and things like that. So we're not trying to completely remove people, we're just trying to put the work augmenting people and getting them in a safe place, or getting rid of adult stuff. And so it's we're not we don't see a fully autonomous world, the way the Sci Fi will. Yeah, it's trying to make it so.
James Faulkner:But there's also that green element, you're just saying him if you're flying people all over the place, he made jet fuel and you know, the people's time and all that's crazy stuff that's super inefficient. And because of that, yeah,
Perryn Olson:it's some of the robots gonna kind of go the other extreme from the human race. We have a very small compact robotics. It's behind Steven on his desk is yeah, what's that? Thanks. So we've got a crossface robot that just it's we built it for home inspector, and we've built hundreds of them. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Home inspectors, pest control plumbers, foundation repair, because you think about what's on our crawlspace can be every anything and everything. Trying to dig trenches, snakes, raccoons, we talked to one guy was doing a case study of the day and what's the craziest thing you found a crawlspace? He's like a homeless person. Yep. Wow. Yeah. I said the kind of been living there for years. Why do so?
James Faulkner:No, he's not homeless. If that's the case.
Perryn Olson:It sounds very cramped.
James Faulkner:Yeah, exactly.
Perryn Olson:So it's um, you know, it's a deep dream. And you see these homeless factors that are getting a little older and a little noose around in the chests are the waste that they will say and they don't fit in some of these some some crawl spaces. Really, you can't fit any human you can fit a kid in Yeah, but somebody just who wants to crawl on their stomach and dirt and with animals and animal wastes and things like that. So you can think of on the other end is, you know, we've had some home inspectors like I'd be out of a job if I didn't have this robot. Yeah, that's, you know, so you're, you're extending the career of somebody who maybe in their 50s they shouldn't be retiring just because they can't crawl on a crawlspace like that. That's a big part of their job in their market.
James Faulkner:Did you guys see that? There's the footage I think on the Joe Rogan podcast of that he was that cobalt mine out and somewhere in Africa. Did you see that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, cuz it's all these it was 1000s of people like in these horrible and you know, all conditions. I mean, these little rope, I mean, they're they're doing the same thing. It's just that little pick. And then pulling stuff out, it seems like such a perfect thing for something autonomous to be doing.
Perryn Olson:Yeah, mining is now starting to really invest in technology that batteries and the need for different minerals mining is starting to take off again. Yeah. And they're trying to be safe. The standards of change. So we're reality capture is that we could use a robot. And that's actually one of the use cases for laser scanning, because they're looking for safety. They're looking for progress, the structural integrity, things like that. So you need more than a 360. Camera
Christian Hamm:suite? Well, in a lot of ways, we'll go ahead, Stephen.
Steven Uecke:Oh, I was just going to jump back on the labor comment as well, that the replacing of the job. So if you look at it, from a crew level, the easiest sell to a somebody writing a check is I can reduce my crew size. So inherently, that means somebody's losing their job on that crew. But if you look at the industry as a whole, yes, somebody may lose their job at that particular crew, but they can move to a different crew in the company or a different crew and a different company. Because there's plenty, you know, art, like parents said, You're augmenting the not necessarily a individual worker, but you're augmenting the industry so that you can do more work with the same amount of people. Yeah, I think it's also a good time in history to do this. Because we have a huge knowledge gap in workers that the people that a lot of times know what they're doing, and are very experienced. And then you have people coming into the industry, maybe that are much, much less experienced. And there's a pretty big gap between them. And so being able to allow those people to, to focus on the more knowledge based aspects where they have, I mean, because there's a lot that goes on a construction site, that's amazing that buildings even go up. Because there's so much, there's so much that happens that you have to know that you can have people focusing on different aspects of construction, rather than some of the things that can be automated. So So yeah, it is a sticky topic, obviously. And yes, there will be a shifting, you know, maybe more of a shifting of labor as we go forward.
Christian Hamm:Yeah. I mean, that's, that's pretty well said. It's a complementary piece that just makes construction overall more productive.
James Faulkner:There's, there's an example that I think we've talked about on the podcast before, but and it's totally not related to construction, but it is related in terms of what you were just saying, Steve is that is my daughter, and I went to get a burrito at this burrito place, and walk in there. And a girl behind the counter is like, there's no one else in this place. Like, so what do you want? Which one of these? And then we're like, Okay, well, we'll both want this. What do you want on it? Blah, blah, blah, do you want sour cream? Like there's, I didn't enjoy this, I didn't enjoy this. The person working didn't enjoy this. My daughter didn't enjoy this, the product ended up not being that great because it was no passion at all. So this is a perfect example. We're all humans are in the wrong place at the wrong time to do the wrong thing, because no one wants that job anymore. Yeah, like we're over it. You know, why isn't a robot rolling this thing up? They can do it consistently better on or off? You try to roll a burrito, but there is a kind of an art to it. It's not that easy. Right? So and she sucked at it. So it's like, you know, I end up with this crappy burrito. It goes all over the place. So I think that, you know, see what you're saying is that, yeah, it might be replacing the burrito. Set a burrito Easter, I guess that's what that's whatever that person is. Is is no one wants that job. So who cares if it's gone? Right, like, move on and like go to school and get something else?
Perryn Olson:Yeah, every industry has its kind of jobs that nobody wants. We got friends over at ally robotics that have these fixed arm robots. And one of the big use cases they have is fry cook. Yeah, it's it's you stand in one spot. And you do fries all day. And it's a very basic rinse and repeat process. But it's dangerous because of the grease. Yeah, yeah. So they're working on just basically have a stationary arm next to it. And they've got kind of a rig that they've developed. And they're rolling this out. And it's it's a great use case, because it's the hardest. Like, they can stop almost every physician but nobody wants to do the product code.
James Faulkner:Remember flippy you remember that thing? To flip the burgers? And that's like your humanoid because the reason I think everyone's looking at this Well, why would they make an arm? Why don't they just make something this the burgers frying this way or just fries on both sides? It's like, but it's because all kitchens were designed for humans. I guess that's why right.
Perryn Olson:There's a lot of use cases for that. And this one does take a little retrofitting of the kitchen. But yeah, it's uh, it makes sense because the fry, the fry station doesn't move. Right. So most of our robots we mobile robots, so it's we're not doing the fixed arms. That's all we're friends with Tom, we don't really compete with each other.
James Faulkner:Gotcha. Cool. All right.
Christian Hamm:Well, hey, gentlemen, before we tidy up our conversation with a little rapid fire questions for both of you, both of you can answer them. As Rocky had to answer Yeah. And Rocky can answer do you can answer? Do you guys want to leave our audience? Anyone that's going to listen, maybe even people in your business or potential customers of yours that you'd want to leave them with just about Super Droid about robotics and construction in general, just a little nugget that you would like to leave everybody with?
Perryn Olson:I like to just kind of look at those things that are the dangerous the dollar that the dirty like just what are the things like just there's got to be a better way. And in sometimes it isn't, like you were saying earlier, the flip the burger, you don't need a humanoid robot to flip a burger, you just need something to move. And maybe it's a conveyor belt, maybe it's something different. So just having a different viewpoint of Rex and Supergirl, we have this idea of continuous improvements, questions status quo and just look at things differently. And it's just there's sometimes you just kind of like, I don't know what the answer is. But there's got to be a better way. And I love those kinds of requests from our website, we get these, like, here's our problem. Here's the huge detailed scenario. And like, we have no idea how to solve it. And our engineers like here, when they like, within seconds, they know because they've seen it yet. It's a different industry, it's a different field. So don't necessarily say I need this robot to do this thing. It's something there's something here that can be fixed. And I think a robot might fix it. And then let's let's explore to explore the options.
Christian Hamm:Well said, Stephen,
Steven Uecke:yeah, I would, I would, I would I would leave is robotic solutions are more affordable, or can be more affordable than people might think a lot of people see price tags from some of the big players and but I would encourage people to reach out to us, we can usually come up with something that if the market of the demand is big enough, then you know, we can come up with a solution to the problem that is very, you know, adds more value than it takes.
Perryn Olson:In we don't can't always say who they are. But actually, our biggest market for custom bots is construction, we have NDAs almost all of them, so we don't talk about them. But it's it's it's been one of those industries, it's done very well is one thing that was very appealing when we were looking at acquisitions looking at their customer list for like, GC contractor kinda like it was, oh, we know these names. And then we get in, we're like, we can't talk about any of them. It's Yeah,
Christian Hamm:well, we've got loads of GCS and owner developers and contractors that are listening to this that are our customers with site Max. But we'll put a bunch of stuff in the show notes for links and everything like that. And we'll chat about it. There's best way to get in contact with you guys as well. What about following your stuff? Where should people follow your stuff?
Perryn Olson:YouTube is probably the most fun place to follow us. We've ton of videos dating back 1516 years even. And then Facebook, LinkedIn. pick which one is better, we try to keep custom content and in each one, but we do share across all of them. So those are the kind of the three and then our websites definitely the resource for everything as well. So perfect to see all the examples, the gap, the photo galleries, things like that.
Christian Hamm:Okay, well, we'll throw those links down there as well. Okay, for both for both of you guys. I gotta go through these three of them. You just go back and forth. Hopefully you didn't get too much of a look at these. So it was good top of your head. But what if you didn't read them? Nice. Okay, well, you guys are already doing you guys are already doing some pretty crazy stuff. But this question of what is something that you do that others would think is insane. And this could be like you personally what is something you do that others would think is insane?
Perryn Olson:Can I answer for Stephe? Just about everything even has his way of thinking that a lot of people and it's usually just a few years ahead of us. But I know when like when I announced the people like friends in the industry that other ABC marketers like you guys bought a robot. It's really late what you bought a robot company like so Steve and things are very different. And so it's fun to work with him as this this visionary mindset of things. Sometimes you gotta catch up to him now.
Christian Hamm:No doubt. All right, Steven, let's let's hear you get to defend yourself or do you acknowledge that that's I concur
Steven Uecke:with Mike and I know it's rapid fire. Is this personal or
Christian Hamm:personal? Yeah. For personal Yeah. What is something you do that people think is insane? I
Steven Uecke:I wake surf. I don't know if that's considered insane. A lot of people say oh, you know, it's kind of surprising, I guess. Can you spin?
Christian Hamm:Can you do 360? Yeah. On the wake.
Unknown:I can try it. Yes, I do. Not. We all
James Faulkner:try it Steven.
Christian Hamm:I try. I've tried it and I am no good at it. So I would say that if you can do it, that's pretty insane. That's awesome. It's the last 45 I struggle with
Perryn Olson:my insane things not as crazy Again, people think I'm here all the time. I work from home. I'm actually 1000 miles from headquarters receiving that and we homeschool too. So my wife handles the homeschooling but we're all home all day. And then we split up at night for like kids activities and stuff.
Christian Hamm:Well, that me Hey, there's more people that are doing that these days. Not terrible. I'm saying.
Perryn Olson:I used to get a few books when I tell people like wait, you're home all day with something?
James Faulkner:Yeah. No, we did that off camera. That's fine.
Christian Hamm:Oh, okay. Oh, guys, those are good. Okay, real quick. These next ones. If you guys weren't doing this, maybe even take it out of robotics and construction. But if you weren't doing what you're doing today, what would you be doing?
Perryn Olson:I'd love to be either a Pixar animator producer, Disney Imagineer. That's
Christian Hamm:very nice. Creativity Inc. one of my favorite books. So good,
Steven Uecke:I'd probably be doing something with aviation. I like seeing the world from above your maybe? I don't know, maybe in Astronautics. Yes.
Christian Hamm:I could see that. Here. Yeah. You probably you. Yeah. He's probably got your spare time.
James Faulkner:Yeah. Yeah. Once you nail that 360 You gotta hop into uh, yeah. Head to Mars.
Christian Hamm:Up on it. Yeah, that sounds. That's really cool. Okay, guys, last one. This is a construction podcast called the site visit, we always end with this one. What is your favorite or most memorable story from the job site?
Perryn Olson:As a construction marketer, job site visits are my favorite thing because you get the tangible and just meet the people. And I was trying to get one that you guys probably wouldn't heard. And so my I got introduced to this industry and the rest civil contractor did a lot of heavy highway. And I was doing a host site visit. Actually, I was working on an award for ABC. They're associated builder, contractor, excellent construction word for this interstate project. We're going after. And the project managers get me around in his truck. And he goes, let me show you the old school way how we test smoothness like they have convened and all this stuff for smooth this. He's like, I'm sure the old school literally takes us puts a couple of companies cupholder in his truck, pours the coffee almost to the brim and we start driving. Yeah, I'm like, You're kidding. He's like, this is how when I was growing up, and he was near retirement, and I was talking to him years ago. He's like, this is how the engineers had greater smoothness. I'm like, I've heard this if the coffee spilled. You got to redo it.
Christian Hamm:It's I mean, I've heard similar stories to that. And I don't doubt it. I don't doubt that that's how they would have gone through because That's insanely practical. Cool, cool. Steven.
Steven Uecke:Yeah, mine would be, I guess more philosophical. So working on a, because of his Blue Cross Blue Shield. building in Chicago, I think it was a 30 storey addition on top of the 30 storey building, so it's pretty big. And, you know, take you go through all the process through the existing building, and then up through the construction elevator, I was looking at the cooling tower on top of the building. And so you go through that whole process, it takes half hour or whatever you find to go there, you climb up on top of the cooling tower. And then I looked south and had probably the best view of any II that I've seen where you're looking down Millennium Park, Grant Park, the, you know, Buckingham fountains there and you know, all the different the Soldier Field, all the different things lined up there. And it was a, it was probably was the most memorable time on site that I've had probably just that views really stuck in it. I still think it's the best view in Chicago. So what, for me?
Christian Hamm:That's really cool. I mean, that's a pretty spectacular part of town there for sure. In Chicago.
James Faulkner:What was that restaurant went to in Chicago?
Christian Hamm:Oh, we we went Chicago. We went to Alinea. Oh yeah, that was crazy. Yeah, that was that was pretty wild.
James Faulkner:still paying for it.
Christian Hamm:But know that? It's funny, you know, whenever we ask that question, you get two different responses. You either get like a really, like it's an actual story from the job site or something like you just said, it's philosophical or invoke this emotion in somebody because there's something so unique about construction is nothing into something. And there's a lot of things that are, I mean, for lack of a better word, breathtaking as you're building a project, or you're surveying from a certain point, so that's really cool. And what you guys are doing is insane. Yeah, I concur. It really it really is, and we can't wait to follow the journey and we should probably do like down the road. A follow up episode just to see where Rocky's at and to see how SuperDroid, Rex and the two of you guys are doing.
Perryn Olson:We can even interview Rocky in a few months.
Christian Hamm:Love it.
Steven Uecke:That was great.
James Faulkner:All right, absolutely. Thanks for your time guys appreciate it guys. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystems.com/thesitevisit where you'll get Industry Insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and SiteMax the jobsite and construction management tool of choice for 1000's of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building!