Scaling Robotics

Building World-Class Product in Robotics | Nick Akiona, Principal Engineer & Architect @ Aescape | Scaling Robotics Episode 9

Field Ops is Criminally Underrated | Matthew Lee, Field Engineering @ Scythe Robotics + Aurora | Scaling Robotics Episode 10

In Episode 10, we speak with Matthew Lee, who has spent the last decade running field operations and sustainment at three autonomy companies: Aurora (on-road autonomous trucks), Phantom Auto (teleoperated forklifts), and most recently Scythe Robotics (autonomous commercial lawnmowers, deployed across 20+ states). Before robotics, he spent two decades in automotive repair, working his way up from technician to service manager. I believe that field engineering is the most criminally underrated function in running and scaling a fleet of robots. Matthew has spent his whole career on that side of the problem, and has watched companies live or die (like Phantom Auto) based on how seriously they took it. We get into why sustainment is the function most robotics startups underinvest in, and how Phantom Auto's failure to iterate on hardware in the field helped sink the company. Why field ops works on a totally different timescale than engineering. And how to build a real support stack from tier one all the way up to your developers, including who you should hire for each tier and what data you need to surface when a customer calls in. There are also a few tidbits on how to run your software deployments and canary releases. Enjoy this one, it's a top to bottom analysis of how to run field ops from someone who's experienced the struggle first hand. 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 - Miru Blog (including episode transcripts): https://www.mirurobotics.com/blog - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1xr38bFEhk7MSf8UvmPUBo?si=761aeb03b4464fd1&nd=1&dlsi=fa48d636a0f74df6 - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-robotics/id1857724488 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00:04) – Introduction (00:01:09) – Overview of Autonomy Use Cases (00:03:50) – What Is Field Ops in a Robotics Company (00:05:52) – Why Sustainment Is Critical (00:07:59) – Building a Support System from First Call to Resolution (00:14:05) – Tier Two Support and Escalation (00:20:11) – The Tier Two Agent Profile (00:24:52) – Feeding Field Data Back to Product and Engineering (00:30:49) – Canary Releases and Software Rollouts (00:34:22) – Networking Challenges in Field Deployments (00:38:41) – The John Henry Problem: Operator Adoption (00:42:49) – Advice for Scaling Your First Fleet (00:45:23) – Closing and Where to Find Matthew

The Software Playbook for a 2,000 Robot Fleet | Cem Ersoz, Director of Robotics Software @ Simbe Robotics | Scaling Robotics Episode 8

This Episode In Episode 8, we speak with Cem Ersoz, Director of Robotics Software at Simbe Robotics. Simbe builds Tally, an autonomous retail robot that scans millions of shelves per week, giving retailers real-time visibility into product availability, out-of-stocks, and shelf accuracy. With thousands of Tallys deployed across major retailers in more than 10 countries, operating daily alongside untrained store employees across grocery, club, farm supply, and home improvement, Simbe runs one of the largest commercial Physical AI fleets in the world.We discuss what actually changes when your fleet crosses key thresholds. At a certain scale, you can no longer SSH into a robot to fix it, and that forces a complete rethink of how you build. We get into the difference between 95% autonomous and truly autonomous, why improving 9s of reliability is so hard, and how Simbe ships software to thousands of robots they can never directly touch.Plus, why A/B testing a robot fleet isn't like optimizing a SaaS funnel. There are things that no dashboards can capture, such as whether people actually feel comfortable around a robot moving faster through the store. We also get into what a truly representative canary rollout looks like at this scale, and what Cem learned when hardware he had trusted for years finally failed on robot number 2,000.Timestamps(0:04 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=4s]) Introduction (1:32 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=92s]) Fleet Scale and Deployment (3:57 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=237s]) Lessons from Operating Alongside Humans (6:56 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=416s]) Building Software for Thousands of Robots (10:55 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=655s]) Testing, Deployment, and Reliability (13:58 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=838s]) A/B Testing in Robotics vs. SaaS (17:06 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=1026s]) Supporting Legacy Hardware (22:20 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=1340s]) AI Coding Tools in Robotics (25:28 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=1528s]) Staged Rollouts and Canary Deployments (29:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=1770s]) The Hundred Megabit Cable Story (34:10 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=2050s]) Building Workarounds into Everything (36:11 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=2171s]) Hardest Moments in Scaling (39:49 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=2389s]) What Makes a Great Robotics Engineer (43:21 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYiZANXlWI&t=2601s]) Closing Additional Resources * Simbe is hiring [https://www.simberobotics.com/about/work-at-simbe] * Brought to you by Miru [https://www.mirurobotics.com/], RobotOps Infra for Scaling Teams:

The RaaS Playbook for 100+ Factories | Saman Farid, Co-founder & CEO @ Formic | Scaling Robotics Episode 7

This Episode In Episode 7, we speak with Saman Farid, Co-founder and CEO of Formic [https://formic.co/]. Formic is a Robots as a Service (RaaS) company that owns, deploys, and manages robot fleets inside U.S. manufacturing facilities, with robots actively running in production across more than 100 factories and on track to become the largest independent robot fleet in the country. Before founding Formic, Saman co-founded Comet Labs [https://cometlabs.io/], an AI-focused VC fund that backed 40+ robotics and automation companies, then joined Baidu Ventures [https://www.baidu-venture.com/about/] to help run their $600M global AI fund. He's sat on the boards of more than 30 robotics companies, and what he saw from that vantage point is what convinced him to stop investing and start building. We discuss how to align incentives with the RaaS model, how Formic built the three infrastructure pillars — software, operations, and financial — needed to make long-term RaaS, and why pre-deployment scoping is the most underrated part of a successful rollout. Plus, Saman's take on why so many robotics companies get trapped in proof-of-concept purgatory, and what American companies need to learn from China's robotics ecosystem, a question he's uniquely qualified to answer, having grown up in Beijing and spent years investing across both markets. Timestamps (0:06) Introduction (3:25) Why Robots as a Service (7:12) Building the Infrastructure for RaaS (13:26) The Deployment Playbook (18:16) The Importance of Pre-Work and Battle Scars (20:22) 24/7 Support and Monitoring (26:12) Advice for Scaling Your First Fleet (29:17) Why Companies Get Stuck in Proof of Concept Purgatory (33:57) Lessons from China's Robotics Ecosystem (37:52) Closing Advice

Scaling Indoor-Outdoor Delivery Robots | Ritukar Vijay, CEO @ Ottonomy | Scaling Robotics Ep 6

In Episode 6, we speak with Ritukar Vijay [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritukarvijay/], Co-founder and CEO of Ottonomy [https://ottonomy.io/]. Ottonomy builds autonomous indoor-outdoor delivery robots for enterprises across healthcare, logistics, aerospace, and more. Before founding Ottonomy, Ritukar spent 16 years in autonomy, leading BMW's L4 self-driving program at Aptiv and building everything from defense UGVs to warehousing robots, with 57+ patents to his name. We discuss why robot ops is really customer ops and most teams get the framing wrong, how Ottonomy templatized infrastructure integrations like elevators and access doors to avoid the custom-engineering trap at every new site, and Ritukar's take that the industry overfits on the robot when the real scaling unlock is the orchestration layer that sits above it. Plus, why he thinks teleoperated robots will hit a wall at scale and full autonomy from day one is the only viable path for enterprise deployments. Timestamps (0:04) Introduction (1:20) What Ottonomy Does (2:53) Healthcare Use Cases (5:37) What Feels Different About Robotics Today (8:01) Educating Customers and the Buyer Process (10:05) Deployment Blockers and Infrastructure Integration (14:36) Shifting from Product Focus to Solution Focus (19:07) Scaling Operations and Robot Ops (23:14) Metrics and Tracking Performance (25:55) Incident Lifecycle and Resolution (27:39) Scaling the Human-to-Robot Ratio (29:50) Indoor-Outdoor Differentiation and Building for the Future (35:09) Advice for Founders and Closing