Enhancing Construction Operations with Robots, Steven Uecke & Perryn Olson from SuperDroids Robots

Unlock the secrets of cutting-edge robotics in construction as we catch up with Perryn and Steven, the masterminds behind the Groundhog robot. You'll discover how their field-testing journey over the past year has navigated both expected and unforeseen challenges, from live demonstrations to intricate shipping logistics. Learn how their robots transform construction sites by taking on roles that include progress monitoring and manual photo capturing, ensuring projects stay on track with unprecedented accuracy.

Peek into the groundbreaking reality capture technology that’s reshaping how progress is documented on massive construction projects. Imagine a fleet of autonomous robots that capture consistent photo records, enabling contractors to coordinate and hold subcontractors accountable seamlessly. These robots dynamically adapt to evolving construction sites making them an indispensable part of the modern construction crew.

Explore the revolutionary potential of robotics that promises to streamline production across various industries. Get a glimpse into the future where robots handle menial tasks, freeing skilled workers to tackle more complex activities and envision construction sites of 2030 where the balance of human ingenuity and robotic precision will redefine productivity and efficiency.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right. So, Perrin and Stephen, how are you guys doing? It's been like a year.

Speaker 2: 0:05

Yeah, it's been a year, All right.

Speaker 1: 0:08

You say that posthumously, Perrin.

Speaker 2: 0:15

There's growing pains as you change things and you're creating new things. There's always the growing pains of that, and one of the big things we've done last year is just field testing the groundhog that we were talking about. Last year we had a, had the robot built but it had not been field tested in the hundreds, maybe thousand hours that we've done now, and now it's been in the hands of a few potential customers the pilot.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Cool. And Steven, are you? Are you refreshed and or are you feeling the pressure of the future in the palm of your hands?

Speaker 3: 0:48

More of the pressure side, a lot of milestone or the major milestone coming up. So we're in the thick of it with the electronics.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast, leadership and perspective from construction with your host, james Baldwin.

Speaker 4: 1:10

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. You know you read all the books, you read the email, you read scaling up, you read good to great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum. We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them. Once I was on the job site for a while and actually we had a special concrete and I poured like a pretty finished patio out front of the site trailer upstairs. I was down at Dallas and a guy just 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' podcast. Own it, crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1: 2:00

I have to say, like even last episode, you know, as I say, it's like a year ago. I think it was like episode number 85. I was so excited to talk to you guys because I really do see a future of all this stuff. And you know, right now this is kind of like the Palm Pilot stage Before the iPhone came out. You know, it's people like what Hang on, I hold this thing in my hand and I put characters in this thing. So I mean, this is kind of where we're at now and you guys are at the forefront of this, doing all the really, really difficult work and, uh, you know, it's very admirable and I'm kind of jealous at the same time of the space you're in Cause it just seems like such greenfield and exciting and uh, you know everyone's gonna love what you're doing, so that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 2:47

So keep it up, guys. Yeah, yeah, keep the chin up, because it's pretty awesome what you guys are doing yeah, I was like.

Speaker 2: 2:54

One of the learning experiences we've been having lately is as we're now, in the past, super droids always build robots for a customer and like it was a custom robot and then if the customer didn't go and build that want to build that robotics company or need it, you know, buy the ip we then essentially add our website and start selling that product. So we always had that first customer in mind. Yeah, this one was a little different. Was we understand the construction industry? We, you know, just through steven's a structural engineer and I've been a construction marketer for two decades, so we know this space.

Speaker 2: 3:23

This is a grumbling. We've been hearing a lot about reality capture. So we actually put the investment up to do the R&D, but every customer we go to talk to, they're like, well, who's using it, who can I talk to? And it's like, ah, we don't have that. So we had to learn actually how to do the demos and how expensive a demo can be. When you're doing hardware and I, one of the hardest things is even do you go out and do it in person? Do you ship the robots? We've done a little both. We've done some where we've flown out, met people and left the robot behind and then it's how do you get it back?

Speaker 2: 3:51

Those are some of the interesting logistics that we've learned just in the last six months of how to do sales.

Speaker 1: 3:59

It's very different than what we've done in the past with SuperDroid. So why don't we just just for everybody? Let's just talk about the product line, for I mean, I've just had to take a cursory look at you know, I went and drilled down to construction specifically, because you do have some other applications as well. So the three that I saw on there was the Groundhog Pro, the original Groundhog and then the scissor lift one. What's that one called?

Speaker 2: 4:19

again, that's our PTW and it's an inspection robot that can raise up four or six feet depending on how big the scissor lift is. But we've also got a six-wheel drive, so three wheels on each side, material handling robot, a Rubbermaid cart, and put omnidirectional wheels on the bottom so it can crab walk. So now it just turns zero degrees. It literally goes left, right, forward, back and everywhere direction. We see a real opportunity for that with a lot of tradespeople, particularly electricians, and then even just kind of some of our robots that we've used in other places for home inspectors and plumbers. And more residential space is our confined space robots or crawl space robots is our GPK. We're seeing a lot of interest for that as well.

Speaker 1: 5:10

Wow, that's pretty cool. I've got to say, as I'm thinking of all this, which of the robots is the smallest form factor.

Speaker 2: 5:21

The smallest one is that GPK I left. It's made to go into a crawl space, so it's 18 by 14.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Don't quote me on that. 18 by 14 wow, that's pretty small. Yeah, that's just over the size of it's like a legal piece of paper yeah, it's about a shoebox, maybe a little bigger than a, you know wow, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So, and this is uh, is this lighting the entire area as well? Do you put lights on this, and with the camera as well?

Speaker 2: 5:46

Two LED lights mounted on the camera mount so as the camera moves up and down, the lights go up and down with it, and it was made years ago for crawlspace inspections. One of the things we've actually done that was actually the. I guess the grandfather of the Groundhog was when we first had a friend kind of ask hey, can you build me a reality capture robot. We literally built the mast with the 360 camera on top of the gpk. Look, remote control reality capture robot. Uh, and then the question okay, can you get rid of the human? I want to save more manpower.

Speaker 2: 6:17

So we did find that the remote control gpk with that reality capture configuration saved time, because one of the things that happened a lot in reality capture was you got to kind of hide from the photos, so you're not in the 360. That was a request that we're seeing and it was a lot more fun. It's a lot more fun to just drive around a small robot than walk around with a tripod, set it up, hide things like that. But that's what really started us on the path of the Groundhog a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So on the path of the groundhog a couple years ago. So specifically on the reality capture, can we just put a hypothesis situation together, or mostly just so people can contextualize this. So let's just say we have a large high-rise that's being built and then would this robot be deployed then during the workday, at the end of the workday, before or before and after, to basically have that progress? Is that essentially what the reality capture is for?

Speaker 2: 7:12

the main use case in construction is the progress monitoring. So most contractors they're trying to get to weekly like that's their. Their sweet spot is that we can get to weekly and see what everyone's doing every once a week. And some of their owners are requiring, like their clients are requiring, once a week and that's what their first kind of benchmark I mean. Then, as we're talking to people's like, well, if we can actually consistently schedule this robot, we could do it every other day or things like that.

Speaker 2: 7:37

But the ultimate goal is to get once a week and it varies. Some people want it to run in the middle of the day. Some, a lot of them, are actually asking more kind of that sunset time that you know the crews are starting to go off site because they start so early, or even weekends, things like that. So some companies are a little bit more concerned about privacy reasons, so they wanted to go when the trades aren't there. Okay, yeah, makes sense. They don't. They know they have the reality capture software that will blur the faces and things like that. So every contractor we've talked to has been a little different.

Speaker 3: 8:09

One note that I would say is that these contractors are already doing this. So they're walking around with a 360 camera, either on their hard hat or held, to take all these progress monitoring photos and they use it. The reason they're doing it is one for um, a record of what's being built over time. So if you capture photos of the entire building over time, you can kind of see and you know legal reasons but also coordination things you know was that installed in the right spot? Was, was it installed by this date? Things like that.

Speaker 3: 8:44

Also, subcontractor accountability. So somebody says, hey, we're doing work in this area and then you see the photo and, well, you know, maybe not quite, or we're held up by this, and is it true or is it not? So there's some accountability with that. But what we're, the biggest complaint they have and this is usually the VDC or the technology team the biggest complaint they have and this is usually the VDC or the technology team the biggest complaint they have from the field is not having time or interest to take those photos on a regular basis. So then the data is essentially corrupted by not being at even intervals or similar locations over time.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Right, so that makes sense. So you guys are already predetermining what those waypoints are of where they're taking that, right, so you? That's that makes sense. So you guys are already predetermining what those waypoints are of where they're taking that footage. So there's a consistent source every single time, right.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Right, so we, we don't as we do it. The operator would do that.

Speaker 2: 9:36

So, they set their waypoints. And one of the big things that that Steven's team has been doing on the field test and the engineering team was, as the robot goes out and does a new mission, it's actually remapping. We call it dynamic remapping, which is really different in robots and I don't think Steven's team takes enough credit for this, because most robots they don't know, they haven't worked on this they can only go wherever they've walked. They're literally counting their footsteps like a pedometer. Our robot is as it's going out and which is great for construction, as going out, it's seeing oh look, there's a new hallway. Oh look, there's a new room, it's you know things like that and all the operator has to do is add a new waypoint and now the robot can go there. It doesn't actually have to go there, it just has to be able to see it interesting you can see it on its map, then it can.

Speaker 2: 10:18

You can add a waypoint and then it can go there. So, as you're literally building the building, you're constructing that building and expanding the footprint. You can keep adding waypoints and start increasing where that robot's going.

Speaker 1: 10:31

So, steven, as you're, as you're working with the field crew who is responsible for deploying the robot um are. What's the feedback so far with them? Are they pretty excited when they're they unleash it each day?

Speaker 3: 10:45

Well, it's, yeah, I mean that's the feedback so far with them. Are they pretty excited when they unleash it each day? Well, yeah, I mean that's. The interesting thing is that the excitement is. It's kind of a hard thing to explain, but the response from everyone that has it out for the pilot is that it does what it's supposed to do, which is the best feedback you can get on autonomy. But it also is not super exciting because it's just does what it's supposed to do. You know, it's just going around taking photos and that's basically it. So so the feedback is positive. I wouldn't say it's exciting, though they, they are excited to see it walk around, you know, or to see it while they're walking around, you know, seeing it operate. But they, you know, it kind of becomes commonplace pretty quickly because it operates in a way that's not aggressive. It goes fairly slow relative to a human, so there's no concerns about hitting anyone. But it's not a super exciting scenario. It's just done its job.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Yeah, as far as the feedback. Really Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say that I would assume that it's similar to when you buy a Roomba for the first time and you're like, wow. And the reality is that all it did the first time you let it go. You're wow, this is cool, look, I don't have to sweep up.

Speaker 2: 12:09

and then the next day you're like that thing just sweeps up yeah you just kind of watch it go by, yeah, but when you kind of didn't, you forget what it's like, the vacuum, and so that's the kind of it happens very quickly. It's one of the things that were surprised was I had a company piloting it for two weeks and just in that two weeks they moved it from one job to another job and people are like, wait, where'd it go? Ah, interesting, we don't want to, we don't want to go back Like that's very good, you know they're like we just borrowed it, it's a, it's a test. No, we want it.

Speaker 2: 12:46

One of the things we learned in our field tests, though, in the conversations while we've been testing because we've been testing our standard version the first one we did was the pro was we needed a few more features, like the autonomous charging, like a Roomba station would be. But also the big difference was the field of vision. Our standard camera. It had a stereo camera, so left and right lens, and it can navigate that way, but it can only see about 2.5 meters in front, about 120 degrees. So then it works. But as you get into really big job sites, especially things like data centers or even parking garages that have just a lot of repetition, the field of view isn't big enough for the robot to actually see. This is something unique, so we put a lidar on it and that's where they expanded things. So now we're at 20 meters and 360 degrees and it opens up the world, the things. And since we generally talk in the vdc people, they totally understand the difference between a 360 and a um, a lidar interesting.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So with the um, so steven, are you? That's it. That's crazy when you say that you know the people. Once they're used to it they're like, hey, can I have that back? Um, yeah, is, is there any? Have you had any sort of cultural comments of people going, oh, that's going to replace us one day, or blah, blah, any of this kind of stuff? Do you? You get that?

Speaker 3: 14:06

No, not with this unit yet. I think it's because it's emphasis on yet field.

Speaker 3: 14:14

Yeah Well, I don't with this product. I don't think there ever will, because I think there's the. You know this is kind of like an office type of an initiative. You know, reality capture, just in general. I see, I want to be careful what I say about it. But if the field doesn't see any, probably doesn't see much value to capturing photos of their work. That makes sense. They're not afraid of it replacing their job at all, because if somebody is doing it it's usually the person that's being forced to do it. That makes sense. It's not their main role, that's being forced to do it.

Speaker 2: 14:45

That makes sense. It's not their main role. When we talk robots, the rule of thumb in robotics is it's good for dangerous dirty and dull. This is a dull, so they're not super excited like, look, I'm out of the line of fire now. It's just one of those things that they really don't want to do. And if you talk to a lot of people that have done that weekly part, the first week it's kind of fun to walk around with a camera. It's something different. Second week is a little boring and then after that they really don't want to do it. It's just such a chore and that's why it doesn't get done. It gets pushed down the to-do list and that's why they go from doing it weekly to monthly and then they struggle even with that. So no, to seem to have any complaints about it. They love the fact that essentially you can just go on autopilot. That's the goal.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Yeah, I like that the dirty, dangerous and dull that is. I mean, has this become kind of a mantra of like product development from you guys, or like what you're going to be focusing on?

Speaker 2: 15:39

Or product featured. The robotic industry is. Where robots are good for is those. We've actually one of the things.

Speaker 2: 15:45

As technology is advancing as well, we're adding the distant and in our conversations as we're building out newer robots, it's more telepresence robots.

Speaker 2: 15:53

So when we're even testing the groundhog, we had an engineer in Raleigh testing it on a construction job site in Chicago and he's operating it as if he was there. So that kind of work. And you translate that to a different robot like our humanoid that we're working on, that will have two arms and two hands and things like that. You could have someone sitting anywhere in the country or the world and they remote in. They can now do a job that's distant or they can do a job that's very dirty and it takes that worker out and the worker might be around the corner just in a safer area it's like in a ditch or something like that. Or, uh, we're even seeing some interest in cold storage. The worker can be on site but now they can have a desk job or remote control and operate the robot in and out of that cold storage instead of having them go in there personally uh, I I have to, um, just rewind for a second.

Speaker 1: 16:43

Was that a mistake when you said humanoid? No, okay, I think you had everyone at humanoid. So take us through this. Humanoid are we talking half a human? Are we talking half track, half wheels or full on trying to balance with feet?

Speaker 2: 16:58

Our plan is the two feet, because we have other robots in our portfolio. We know some people need a two-armed robot, but not necessarily a two-foot robot or a robot with two feet, so we can put it on different bases depending on the needs. And we think some people, as we're having these conversations, are already kind of asking us about oh, I don't really need it to go upstairs, I don't need to do that, I need something bigger, I need some storage, things like that. So that's where we're going is, but we want to make it a little bit more modular that you can pick out. What hand do you want to claw? Do you want more of a human-like hand?

Speaker 2: 17:33

There's different reasons, one of each. So, but yeah, the humanoid is where we can really make the biggest impact in construction, because we can really take that danger or that dirty out of some of these jobs. And one of the big differences what we're doing at Superdroid is our plan is to make it teleoperation, not trying to go full autonomy Right. That makes sense. So if they're a skilled worker, they can still use their skill, their expertise, they can still make decisions. In the same context, we also do a lot of work in law enforcement. There's still an officer on the other side of the robot, not a robot trying to make decisions.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Right. So, steven, I mean, how exciting is that for you? I mean, is this kind of what you, you guys, were envisioning when you're in your early days?

Speaker 3: 18:08

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a um, definitely a dream product to be working on and a dream time to be working on it as well. You know there's a lot of. When we first launched it, it was right before the Tesla product was debuted um, just last year I guess but since then there've been a lot of people that have entered the market with their own versions of it. But, yeah, it's definitely an exciting project to work on and I think for me, the exciting part is you can be talking about a product like that and people don't instantly dismiss you like they would have five years ago.

Speaker 1: 18:47

People can kind of understand, you know, based on the, the self-driving or the different things they're seeing, that, oh, maybe this is actually possible yeah, yeah, so, um, so, with these other, the human I mean is is that of that must be so capital of intensive to be in, is it? Is it I mean you're going against like the big guys, right?

Speaker 3: 19:11

smaller products where we are a cost competitive product. You know one tenth the cost or something, but this would be something that's more on par. I think the thing that we're doing that's different is using the same sort of modular systems as our other robots. It enables us to get to quantities sooner, so we don't have to do a 10,000 unit rollout in order to get the price point where we need it to be. We have other robots that we're selling that use a lot of the same components that we can already get the volume with a much less expensive robot.

Speaker 3: 20:00

So, for example, some of the motors in the humanoid are the same that are in our material handling robot. So, for example, some of the motors in the humanoid are the same that are in our material handling robot. So we already have six in there. So we're we don't have to sell two of the Rocky you know the humanoid product which we call Rocky. We don't have to sell two of those necessarily to get that economy scale. Or you know 200 of them. We also have other products that are using similar things. Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:27

And the engineering behind it too. You know Stephen's vision is to, you know, standardize all of our products, that we have essentially a different form factor with a remote control or tel operation and then an autonomous version. So that's very much how we're operating. So the improvements we're making on the Groundhog as an autonomous, compact robot is the same thing, same autonomy that we're using on the material handling, the same autonomy we can then move, grow into the human and they'll go back and forth. So it's allowing the customer to really find the right mobility base that they need, whether it's wheeled, tracked feet, things like that. And then what level? And then what? Essentially, what is the payload? What is the mission, where most robotic companies have one robot, maybe two, so everything they see is, you know, they got a hammer and everything's a nail.

Speaker 2: 21:14

Yeah, we've got a full toolkit and that's really our viewpoint, because we've been in business for so long and we built a reputation of building customer robots. They've been paid to do R&D for the last 23 years, versus a lot of these companies have been doing R&D for five, 10 years, pre-revenue and they have a lot of money that they've got to pay back. Essentially, as we're ready, we're making revenue now with the products we have now as we're working on this other stuff. So it's definitely been an investment, but it's not to the level of some of these others are trying to do. But some of them are trying to boil the ocean and we're trying to go a lot more specific and that's why we're coming out the gate with teleoperation, not full autonomy.

Speaker 1: 21:59

I've heard boil the ocean twice uh in the past two days from from a couple of people, so it's interesting I've heard it the second time today, the um.

Speaker 2: 22:05

So it's a comment steven and I use with each other often, because there are times that you know your, your brain goes high because a lot of our robots are very specific to what they use they're used for, but sometimes can be used in another industry very well. So we're sometimes looking at okay, how can we reposition the same robot with maybe a minimal or even no changes to a different industry? But sometimes something like the humanoid people are like what can we use for? And it's like there's hundreds of different options where it can be used for. So it's one of the challenges we've had is, as we plan our go-to-market strategy, what is that path of least resistance? Who can make the biggest impact? Who's the least tech adverse is one of the things we're looking at, and construction is actually one of those. That has the workforce issue, the safety concerns, but also it's becoming a very tech-centric industry. So it's a great industry for us to bring this into.

Speaker 1: 22:56

So it's a great industry for us to bring this into. So I'm just trying to think of. You know, I've seen Tesla's version two. Boston Dynamics has got Atlas. Is that the thing that?

Speaker 1: 23:07

does that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:15

And I saw another Chinese company, I believe that I saw it gets off flat off the floor, that one, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:18

So it gets off flat off the floor, that one, anyway.

Speaker 1: 23:24

But you know, as you say, that is kind of more the boil the ocean strategy, because they're trying to make it like a human, whereas I think you guys are saying what elements do humans have that people are used to in some kind of a torso, or maybe it's just like I need an extra hand, like I need an extra hand, I need a pair of eyes, um, and I need it to, or legs or track or whatever, to get from a to b, to give me those things when I need them, and maybe some intelligence of oh you know, this is this part of the job here I'm going to need.

Speaker 1: 23:47

I'm going to hand you these parts that are heavy. I, a human, couldn't hold them for five minutes because their muscles would fatigue stuff like that. So, to me, when I see the difference is that because the word humanoid almost seems to be like an advertisement to something close, whereas you don't actually need to really get there in construction, because I mean one day maybe when Tesla does it full on, and it's just like a kind of like a human. I don't know how far away that is from that feeling that way, but they're trying to do that for other reasons, whereas you guys are doing it strictly for productivity.

Speaker 3: 24:30

Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, the way we see it is. We have two most common payloads. One is a camera, so our inspection robots, our groundhog, the entire purpose of that is to carry a camera around. Yeah, the primary purpose of the humanoid, while it does have cameras on it, is the manipulation, so object manipulation or environment manipulation, which we do with our tactical units right now for the law enforcement industry. So it's only one arm there, but the you know. So basically, the humanoid is really just two end effectors that are carried around by whatever it is that works the best, I see.

Speaker 3: 25:12

So you know we call it a humanoid because it has two arms, and then the top version has two legs as well. But but yeah, our, our version doesn't have a head, you know, right, as every competitor does. Because we don't need a head, we can put the cameras wherever we want. Yeah, can we add a head? You know we're thinking. One of the payloads that might work well on top is a um lidar scanner or like a high-accuracy LiDAR scanner, because it's up high, has minimal obstructions, but we use that space for a payload as opposed to for required functionality.

Speaker 2: 25:49

There's even some industries, like we work with, some utility companies. We have to have gas sensors that can go different heights. They use the scissoror lift about your reference earlier. They'll have a gas sensor at one foot and then they'll lift it up and it'll spiral. Same thing with the humanoid. You could have a gas sensor at head level and you're detecting hazardous gases in the air, which could be very important, not just for utility but for construction. They're working in the sewers, things like that. They need to know these things quickly. You know, or somebody's got to go into the mine and as soon as that gas alarm goes off, they all have to evacuate. So you can.

Speaker 2: 26:25

That's where you can really use robots and the fact that they're not going to die out there. If they do, it's a robot, you know. It's not a person and, as much as you know, construction is still one of the higher fatality industries. Um, so it's. You know. We need to be able to fix a lot of that and we can do a lot of that by just putting a humanoid robot out there. Where a human, you need the two arms everything was built with two arms or two legs, things like that, or but we can do other things of mount the torso up to like a you know, a cherry picker for utility trucks or somebody who's installing high voltage wire. You need a human doing that kind of work.

Speaker 2: 27:02

I was talking to a demolition company the other day. They're taking down a water tower. They're literally at the top of a water tower, 162 feet in the air with a blowtorch. I wish we had that robot now. It would make so much savings. There's two people up there. One of the boats are one trying to help maneuver this giant metal, so it doesn't sentient beings, and you know everyone with their own, you know yeah, somebody getting killed exactly just being human.

Speaker 1: 27:43

But I'm sure at some point you know we'll be valuing these robots. There'll be a Me3 movement where I think there's going to be something, where you know there's.

Speaker 2: 27:54

There's always a concern and that's one reason we also do the collaboration, especially as we're talking construction and in police. You know police. We don't want an autonomous robot patrolling the streets, but if we could have like I was talking to a police chief a couple months ago and he's like you know how different or how dangerous it is to serve a warrant nowadays it used to be the old guy in the force would serve the warrant because it was safe. Yeah, nowadays, about one out of they show up with a gun at the door. So I would love to have a robot that would go to the door, even if the police officer is just around the corner or sitting at the office. Even they just roll a truck, let the robot walk out and knock on the door, scare the shit out of them and they can serve the papers. So if they get shot at, they get shot at.

Speaker 3: 28:34

Well, the other thing that we're seeing is that we're focused mostly on labor augmentation. So we would see, there's always going to be things that robots cannot do for all of time, because even if there aren't today, new tasks will arise that they cannot perform. But we see it as low-cost labor being an expansion of the workforce, and it's just a robotic expansion of the workforce that will allow us to build more buildings. So, or, you know, do whatever else, other industries. So people's roles will change over time, but there will still be jobs for them in in that industry.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Well, steven, you and I've also talked about. I mean, this actually opens up the world to people that are disabled. If you're wheelchair-bound, you're not going to get a job in construction in the field.

Speaker 1: 29:23

Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Or very few jobs. I can imagine that you could be in a wheelchair on a job site, but if you had a humanoid could you work from home or work in the office, even the job site trailer, and still operate a humanoid as if you were fully able. So there's definitely an opportunity there for that or people in remote just in remote rural areas to have a job in construction and be productive, because they'd be able to have that proxy, essentially with the robot.

Speaker 1: 29:52

So that video that was in the link there, did you guys? It was like 30 seconds, it was a short. Did you guys check it out? I'll just play it right now. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 30:04

Elon Musk might have just killed so many jobs in the construction industry. Tesla just released a video of the Gen 2 Tesla bot and it's crazy. This thing will be replacing laborer jobs, and probably welders, in the near future. It can already do simple tasks and they're constantly improving, I say in the next few years. Instead of trying to find more workers, they're just going to start adding more and more AI into the workforce. Why not? It's cheaper, easier and probably will work harder than most humans.

Speaker 1: 30:31

Elon, that was just audio. But just hearing that does that sound like hyperbole to you guys?

Speaker 3: 30:40

I couldn't hear it on this?

Speaker 1: 30:42

Oh, you didn't hear that, no, oh well, that was a fail. Hopefully, your robots are more reliable than I am on Google Meet here. Okay, well, essentially, I'll just give you the cold notes on what it was. So it was basically he said that so many construction jobs are going, or Elon Musk has killed all these construction jobs now because of this Tesla version 2, and it's going to replace. Forget about trying to find new people, just go and get more robots, is what it said. So, like, do you see that happening? Like to that scale? Like, let's just say where are we now? Let's say 2030. Like, do you see the construction industry looking like that?

Speaker 3: 31:43

there will be a lot of humanoids on the construction site in 2030.

Speaker 3: 31:45

There will also be a lot of skilled tradesmen on the construction site in 2030.

Speaker 3: 31:47

Because if you look at the thing, I mean I've had the privilege of doing many of the trades in construction, like soldering copper pipes and bending conduit and pulling wire and all these and they require a pretty high level of dexterity to do that, yeah, and awareness, like if you cut a copper pipe and if there's a little burr on the edge, it's not going to fit into the fitting Right. So you know, things like this will be extremely difficult for robots that are out in the field in a dynamic environment to replace and it's decades away from them being able to do those sorts of things. But I think they will, or I know that they will take some of those roles and make them more focused on those high skill tasks like that. So now the plumber doesn't have to pick up all of his fittings and, you know, get one ready for himself. You know he just is handed one. Or you know he doesn't have to go get his blow his torch and um, you know all those, all those little things that eat up time.

Speaker 2: 32:56

He can be more focused on the task that that his skills used for I mean not on theoid side, but even just the mundane stuff, the unskilled work and tasks that we're paying skilled laborers do. They're on the third story of a building and they need a tool. Now they have to walk down, get something out of the big container and walk back. One of the things we're talking about in some of these trades is about using that cart, because you have essentially a picker at the container and they're just sending a robot up with that and back and forth. So you can have an unskilled picker essentially there that can send materials back and forth, or a toolbox that can follow them and they'd have the tools they need and not have to worry about going back to the truck or the container, the job site, trailer, the big office. So it's more of those kinds of things is the next five years is probably a lot of the very unskilled things that we're asking skilled labor to do. Yeah, and steven's right, in decades ahead we'll get to that point.

Speaker 2: 33:52

But I mean, look at the stupid stuff ai is doing now. Like I post something linkedin. They're like I made an image the other day with you know, a woman with three arms. It's like shit. And ai, no, we don't. We don't have arms, but you're still gonna have that kind of stuff like it's just they're still. So you have to treat a robot now essentially is like just dumb. You know they're gonna follow an order the exact way you told it to and they're getting a little smarter that you can mix up the order, but things throw them off very easily. So that's where we're at now.

Speaker 1: 34:33

But in five years a lot of that will be smoothed out. But there's still going to be doing very menial tasks Like an excavator's got a seat, it's got the gears, steering wheel, all that kind of stuff. So all of that stuff is designed for a human. So it obviously makes sense to stuff something in there that is like a human, just so you don't have to totally retrofit the piece of equipment. That makes sense. But as we move forward with new equipment, it makes sense to not make it for a human. It's basically an augmented or sort of a new appendage, let's say, for one of your machines, yeah, yeah. So it just seems like when I picture construction in the future, what I see is I see a lot more specialized robots that don't look like humans.

Speaker 2: 35:13

Yes, yeah, the humanoid, because that's the environment we live in go upstairs. They open doors Like. One of the biggest issues with a dog robot is if it's going to go inspect the facility and there's a sensor, it's got to read five, six feet in the air. You can't read it, can't see it. Oh yeah, yeah, you know, because it's at eye level well.

Speaker 3: 35:33

The other thing to think about, though, is it's not just so the difference. Factories have done that. You know, they've automated majority of the tasks that are easy to automate, and they use industrial automation, robotic arms, or, you know, pneumatics and things like that. The thing about that, though, is that the environment's not changing at all. Yeah, in in construction, it is changing, and so you have to have something that, um, for a lot of these tasks that is somewhat similar to a human form factor, in order to maneuver a job site or in order to get to a job site. So a lot of, if you look at a construction site, a lot of the transportation is not using trailers and and things like that. There's people that are coming in, they're going to a different job, they're moving around, and they're usually in vehicles, so moving robots from site to site is also part of the equation.

Speaker 3: 36:28

Where a humanoid that's our thinking is that a humanoid, specifically one that looks like ours, where it's not super deep, it doesn't have some strange legs and things that can get into a car. The other side is, if you start thinking about what can this unit do, like, let's come up with a specialized robot that lifts conduit up or something. Maybe you have something that has just wheels and then, okay, well, it needs an arm. Well, does it need two arms in order to balance it? Okay, well, we're halfway to a humanoid at that point.

Speaker 3: 37:07

So what's the difference? Well, really there's no difference in it, but what we've seen is the economies of scale of the humanoid, which our products can. You know. We can spread that out across other products as well, but just the industry as a whole. The economies of scale of the humanoid, being a generalist sort of a platform, allows the price point to come down so that it can address more of the market, whereas if you get a specialized, let's say a anchor drilling machine from Hilti or something, you have probably multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for that machine. If you get a humanoid that climbs up a scaffolding, it's maybe $20,000 at some point. So it's hard to say exactly which way it will go. It's probably really a combination of both of them.

Speaker 2: 37:56

There's definitely two paths to go, and you can be the very highly specific that does one or two things. Or, as Stephen actually said, last year we were at RCN, the Reality Capture Network. He was on one of the panels about technology and robotics and, as he said very specifically, we're going to build more generic robots than programmed to be more specific, pass-based, and that's where the robotic integrators are moving now. They want to be as agnostic to their platforms. They want to train them to do very specific skills. So we love working with those kind of integrators because we can keep building robots and they can do extremely specific things for their niche or their clients and things like that if you, if you can turn a hardware problem into a software problem, it's going to be much cheaper to resolve and much quicker.

Speaker 1: 38:45

That's pretty cool. You guys, I got to tell you my mind is crunching and crunching and crunching because it's just so cool. It's so cool. All right, I know that you guys don't have a lot of time because I push the time. Sorry about that. Anything, you just want to just leave with everyone. That's exciting for them to come and check out Like new stuff on your website. What's going on? When are you guys launching the humanoid et cetera? Maybe just give us a little taster on that.

Speaker 3: 39:15

Yeah, I would say the. So our big milestone coming up is the completion of the new electronic subsystems throughout all of our primary platforms. So we've had to pull off of. The nice part about having a bunch of different products is that we can go between them. The downside is that we do have paying customers, so we have to build what they are buying at that moment. So it's a balance.

Speaker 3: 39:47

So we had to shift off of Rocky for the last several weeks to finish out the electronic subsystems which will go inside Rocky but are more down the line, more operational type of things. So the big milestone there is August and September getting those in a row across all the units and then we'll be able to start getting back into getting Rocky to walk and the dog and all those exciting things. But I think that the biggest takeaway is, as far as us as Superdroid, we are working on adding value, so our products cost less than the value that they add. And that's pretty unique in the robotics industry, where we are excited about the technology. That's where we spend most of our time. But technology is nothing without a use case that it can fulfill at a lower price point, right. So that's really what defines what we are working on, and so if people have ideas of that or have use cases, we are very happy to talk to them about it and to help figure it out with them Right on you guys.

Speaker 1: 40:54

Okay well, this has been a pleasure. Thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, I love it Amazing. Thanks for asking us Good work, you guys. I love it Amazing. Thanks for asking us.

Speaker 2: 41:03

Good work, you guys. I appreciate it. Maybe we can do an annual update.

Speaker 1: 41:05

Yeah, I love it. It's so good. It's a long way.

Speaker 2: 41:07

I mean, you weren't talking humanoids last year, so I think we teased it, but it was probably like a sentence or two, not half the conversation. So it's definitely come a long way. Steven just looked at it. He saw him look to the right. It's because he's looking at the humanoid. It's outside his office, is it all right? Well, steve's got the r&d team at him, so well, I can't wait for the.

Speaker 1: 41:27

Maybe a sneak peek once you're, uh, closer to the pre-launch. How about that? That'd be awesome, okay, okay, you guys, this has been a pleasure. Thank you very much thanks for sharing ciao guys.

Speaker 1: 41:55

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 sitemaxsystemscom slash, the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sightmax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.