Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:58:09 AM
"The Promise of Robotics"
Innova is betting its software will reanimate a disjointed industry.
Kevin Allen
Remember that amazing robot you were promised when you were a kid? You know, the one that would fold the laundry, clean the toilets, do your homework? On TV and in the movies, such machines have been with us for quite a while, from Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still to R2-D2 in Star Wars and T-800 in The Terminator. Along with flying cars and teleportation, it seemed just a matter of time before we all would have our own reliable robot.
So what happened? It's 2007. Where's my RoboButler?
There was a little problem. Turns out that real-life robots are, well, dumb. They can weld just fine and lift and push and even see and talk. They're great when it comes to chores that are monotonous, dirty or dangerous. But like many of us, they don't cope well with change.
"The nice thing about robots is they just don't break down mechanically," says Walt Weisel, CEO of Fort Myers-based Innova Robotics and Automation. However, "They suffer from brain problems."
It's Weisel's business to fix that. He's building a better robot brain.
"The brain of the robot is software. We don't particularly care what the robot can do. If you want motion, we can make it happen," he says.
His company has been operating in Fort Myers in one form or another since 1991, and so far it's a business still based largely on promise and optimism. Weisel estimates the company was more than $5.5 million in the red in 2006. Still, he remains convinced that Innova is on the verge of something big.
"This company is a gold mine for technology, employment and growth," he says.
industry has always been about selling the future, and there has always been something about seeing a machine perform lifelike tasks that sparks wonder. Weisel recalls the precise moment when he was seduced.
It was 1966. Joseph Engelberger, the acknowledged father of robotics, appeared on The Tonight Show with the Unimate, a small, one-armed robot.
With Engelberger at the controls, the Unimate picked up a golf club and sank a 10-foot putt, then popped the tab of a can of Budweiser and poured it into a glass. Next, the robot plucked up a baton and led The Tonight Show band. When the song ended, the Unimate snatched an accordion and smashed it to the stage floor, then raised its robot arm triumphantly. Johnny, Ed and the studio audience roared.
"The next day I quit my job and went to work for Joe Engelberger," Weisel says.
There was nothing, it seemed, that robots couldn't do to extend humans' reach.
Almost all industrial robots are mechanical arms with six axes of movement: The arm itself can rotate, move up and down and side-to-side. Its "wrist" can perform the same three motions. Those six movements can reproduce almost any human motion, and when a robotic arm is combined with other robots, the manipulative power is virtually endless, Weisel says. Even 30-year-old robot arms-and there are thousands of these in Detroit-can be retro-fitted with Innova software and controllers to work faster and smarter, he says.
Typically, a robot on an auto assembly line can perform one function-say, make a spot weld-per second. Innova technology can communicate 1,100 movements per second. It can enable a robot to draw a perfect line on a compound angle one-quarter of a hair thick.
But for all Weisel's innovation and optimism, Innova struggles financially. The company reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it incurred losses of $1.4 million in 2004 and nearly $1.9 million in 2005, when it claimed zero revenue. Its auditors reported that Innova will require additional working capital to develop its business until it either achieves enough revenue to generate sufficient cash flows from operations or obtains additional financing. The audit report concludes, "These conditions raise substantial doubt about Innova Holdings, Inc.'s ability to continue as a going concern."
For 2006, Innova reported revenue of $1.3 million, but still had a net loss of $5.6 million. Weisel blames the losses primarily on reinvestment into the company. From January through April of this year, stock traded at a high of $.33 and a low of $.13.
In a February 2007 recap of the company's performance in 2006, Weisel highlighted the fact that the company repaid more than $1 million in debt, completed the sale of the company's 10 percent secured convertible debentures, and accomplished a 1-for-10 reverse stock split. The moves, Weisel says, would allow Innova to invest in its core technology, explore new applications for its products and hire and retain key personnel.
In March, Innova announced a $3 million settlement of an intellectual properties infringement lawsuit. Weisel is counting on the company's patents. "The biggest asset any company has is its intellectual property," he says.
A huge challenge for Weisel is tapping into what he thinks is a huge aftermarket in robotics. This is particularly important in the automotive industry, where many of the robots are "brain dead," he says. Many are old, controlled by antiquated software. It's expensive to replace these machines and update their controls. Weisel offers his universal robot controller as a cheaper, more efficient and ultimately more profitable alternative.
For a while, Ford was convinced. In 2000, the automaker invested $3 million in Weisel's company and planned to retro-fit its aging robots with the company's new controllers. A Ford vice president joined Innova's board of directors. But before the first controller was delivered, Ford, along with the rest of the U.S. auto industry, saw its sales plummet after Sept. 11, 2001. The automaker cancelled its order. Unable to attract new investors in the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn, Weisel was forced to substantially shut down his operation in December of 2002.
The experience illustrates an uneasy fact of life in the robot business: It remains tied to the auto industry. After a record-setting year in 2005 for North American sales of robots, orders dropped 30 percent in 2006, according to the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), a trade group in Ann Arbor, Mich.
On the bright side, non-automotive sales of industrial robots accounted for 44 percent of total orders in 2006, compared with just 30 percent in 2005, a healthy trend for the industry. The trade group estimates that some 166,000 robots are now in use at U.S. factories.
"Our members understand that while the automotive industry has traditionally been and remains the largest customer for robotics, changes are occurring in the auto industry that may negatively impact future robot sales to automotive OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and their suppliers," executive vice president Donald A. Vincent said in an RIA report on industry results and trends for 2006. "Therefore, it becomes more important than ever to find new markets."
Walt Weisel is counting on it.
Since he founded Innova, Weisel has been working to redefine the industry. "We really don't care what's out there to control," Weisel says. "I can control a wheelchair as well as a robot. We based our business on a hunch that computers are going to get faster, smaller and more powerful. PCs are going to control the world."
Innova and its subsidiary businesses make robot brains using the same familiar, household technology and equipment on which these words are processed. "Everything we've done for 16 years has been based on Microsoft," Weisel says.
Back when Innova was still Robotic Workspace Technologies, Weisel introduced the world's first PC-based controller using commercially available, off-the-shelf hardware and software in the Microsoft Windows environment. The company spent $6 million and six years developing the system and holds patents for its Universal Robot Controller and RobotScript universal programming language. Because the technology is so familiar and accessible, Innova products can be adapted to control all things robotic.
Weisel leads the way to the crowded shop at the company's humble headquarters in a warehouse on Pine Ridge Road, where a technician tests the company's newest controller, equipped with the fastest Dell processor available on the market. The interface for the controller is a standard Windows desktop, and with a few clicks, the technician opens the robot controls. With a few flicks of a joystick, a six-foot robot arm comes eerily to life, moving at the operator's commands with the grace of a dancer.
Once the robot has been "taught" to perform a task-say, produce a series of spot welds-Innova's computer brain can have the robot duplicate the series of movements while keeping track of any malfunctions or interruptions. All of this on a computer screen that is as familiar as the one you'd use to check your e-mail.
Another strength of Innova's products is their universality, Weisel says. Not only can the software be used by robots of virtually any age and manufacturer, it's also easily transmitted over the Internet Weisel says.
"It's basically converting motion to software to worldwide communications," he says.
A recent, dramatic example of this long-distance control is the Hubble telescope. In 2006, Innova fulfilled a contract with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for a high-speed PC-based control system for use on space missions such as the one planned to adjust the Hubble telescope's flight path. The speed and power of the controller allow NASA engineers to accurately simulate conditions in space and plan the Hubble mission.
Weisel has focused on strategic alliances in areas as diverse as healthcare to unmanned flight to homeland security. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a longtime friend of Weisel, joined Innova's board of advisors last year. Ashcroft currently heads a Washington-based homeland security consulting firm, and Weisel sees the relationship as a valuable entrée into providing robots and controllers for port security and border surveillance.
In March, Innova announced its acquisition of Altronics Service Inc., a Port Charlotte company that produces devices used with automatic manufacturing equipment. That followed the May 2006 acquisition of CoroWare Technologies, headquartered on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. CoroWare was founded by Microsoft employees and works with Microsoft's Robotics Studio, which opened in June 2006 and represents the software giant's first major push into the field of robotics.
"Microsoft has a huge desire to get to the factory floor," says Weisel, who is a friend of Bill Gates. "They've had huge intentions but never made it."
There are some parallels between the current state of the art in robotics and the computer industry of 30 years ago.
"A handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use, and a fast-growing number of startup companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products," Microsoft's Gates wrote in Scientific American in December 2006. "But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when-or even if-this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world."
Walt Weisel is ready.
"Ninety percent of what you need to do is based on those six axes," Weisel says. "Our job is to show the customer how to cost-justify it."
Photo by Alex Stafford
http://gulfshorebusiness.com/Articles/2007/06/The-Promise-of-Robotics.asp
Innova is betting its software will reanimate a disjointed industry.
Kevin Allen
Remember that amazing robot you were promised when you were a kid? You know, the one that would fold the laundry, clean the toilets, do your homework? On TV and in the movies, such machines have been with us for quite a while, from Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still to R2-D2 in Star Wars and T-800 in The Terminator. Along with flying cars and teleportation, it seemed just a matter of time before we all would have our own reliable robot.
So what happened? It's 2007. Where's my RoboButler?
There was a little problem. Turns out that real-life robots are, well, dumb. They can weld just fine and lift and push and even see and talk. They're great when it comes to chores that are monotonous, dirty or dangerous. But like many of us, they don't cope well with change.
"The nice thing about robots is they just don't break down mechanically," says Walt Weisel, CEO of Fort Myers-based Innova Robotics and Automation. However, "They suffer from brain problems."
It's Weisel's business to fix that. He's building a better robot brain.
"The brain of the robot is software. We don't particularly care what the robot can do. If you want motion, we can make it happen," he says.
His company has been operating in Fort Myers in one form or another since 1991, and so far it's a business still based largely on promise and optimism. Weisel estimates the company was more than $5.5 million in the red in 2006. Still, he remains convinced that Innova is on the verge of something big.
"This company is a gold mine for technology, employment and growth," he says.
industry has always been about selling the future, and there has always been something about seeing a machine perform lifelike tasks that sparks wonder. Weisel recalls the precise moment when he was seduced.
It was 1966. Joseph Engelberger, the acknowledged father of robotics, appeared on The Tonight Show with the Unimate, a small, one-armed robot.
With Engelberger at the controls, the Unimate picked up a golf club and sank a 10-foot putt, then popped the tab of a can of Budweiser and poured it into a glass. Next, the robot plucked up a baton and led The Tonight Show band. When the song ended, the Unimate snatched an accordion and smashed it to the stage floor, then raised its robot arm triumphantly. Johnny, Ed and the studio audience roared.
"The next day I quit my job and went to work for Joe Engelberger," Weisel says.
There was nothing, it seemed, that robots couldn't do to extend humans' reach.
Almost all industrial robots are mechanical arms with six axes of movement: The arm itself can rotate, move up and down and side-to-side. Its "wrist" can perform the same three motions. Those six movements can reproduce almost any human motion, and when a robotic arm is combined with other robots, the manipulative power is virtually endless, Weisel says. Even 30-year-old robot arms-and there are thousands of these in Detroit-can be retro-fitted with Innova software and controllers to work faster and smarter, he says.
Typically, a robot on an auto assembly line can perform one function-say, make a spot weld-per second. Innova technology can communicate 1,100 movements per second. It can enable a robot to draw a perfect line on a compound angle one-quarter of a hair thick.
But for all Weisel's innovation and optimism, Innova struggles financially. The company reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it incurred losses of $1.4 million in 2004 and nearly $1.9 million in 2005, when it claimed zero revenue. Its auditors reported that Innova will require additional working capital to develop its business until it either achieves enough revenue to generate sufficient cash flows from operations or obtains additional financing. The audit report concludes, "These conditions raise substantial doubt about Innova Holdings, Inc.'s ability to continue as a going concern."
For 2006, Innova reported revenue of $1.3 million, but still had a net loss of $5.6 million. Weisel blames the losses primarily on reinvestment into the company. From January through April of this year, stock traded at a high of $.33 and a low of $.13.
In a February 2007 recap of the company's performance in 2006, Weisel highlighted the fact that the company repaid more than $1 million in debt, completed the sale of the company's 10 percent secured convertible debentures, and accomplished a 1-for-10 reverse stock split. The moves, Weisel says, would allow Innova to invest in its core technology, explore new applications for its products and hire and retain key personnel.
In March, Innova announced a $3 million settlement of an intellectual properties infringement lawsuit. Weisel is counting on the company's patents. "The biggest asset any company has is its intellectual property," he says.
A huge challenge for Weisel is tapping into what he thinks is a huge aftermarket in robotics. This is particularly important in the automotive industry, where many of the robots are "brain dead," he says. Many are old, controlled by antiquated software. It's expensive to replace these machines and update their controls. Weisel offers his universal robot controller as a cheaper, more efficient and ultimately more profitable alternative.
For a while, Ford was convinced. In 2000, the automaker invested $3 million in Weisel's company and planned to retro-fit its aging robots with the company's new controllers. A Ford vice president joined Innova's board of directors. But before the first controller was delivered, Ford, along with the rest of the U.S. auto industry, saw its sales plummet after Sept. 11, 2001. The automaker cancelled its order. Unable to attract new investors in the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn, Weisel was forced to substantially shut down his operation in December of 2002.
The experience illustrates an uneasy fact of life in the robot business: It remains tied to the auto industry. After a record-setting year in 2005 for North American sales of robots, orders dropped 30 percent in 2006, according to the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), a trade group in Ann Arbor, Mich.
On the bright side, non-automotive sales of industrial robots accounted for 44 percent of total orders in 2006, compared with just 30 percent in 2005, a healthy trend for the industry. The trade group estimates that some 166,000 robots are now in use at U.S. factories.
"Our members understand that while the automotive industry has traditionally been and remains the largest customer for robotics, changes are occurring in the auto industry that may negatively impact future robot sales to automotive OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and their suppliers," executive vice president Donald A. Vincent said in an RIA report on industry results and trends for 2006. "Therefore, it becomes more important than ever to find new markets."
Walt Weisel is counting on it.
Since he founded Innova, Weisel has been working to redefine the industry. "We really don't care what's out there to control," Weisel says. "I can control a wheelchair as well as a robot. We based our business on a hunch that computers are going to get faster, smaller and more powerful. PCs are going to control the world."
Innova and its subsidiary businesses make robot brains using the same familiar, household technology and equipment on which these words are processed. "Everything we've done for 16 years has been based on Microsoft," Weisel says.
Back when Innova was still Robotic Workspace Technologies, Weisel introduced the world's first PC-based controller using commercially available, off-the-shelf hardware and software in the Microsoft Windows environment. The company spent $6 million and six years developing the system and holds patents for its Universal Robot Controller and RobotScript universal programming language. Because the technology is so familiar and accessible, Innova products can be adapted to control all things robotic.
Weisel leads the way to the crowded shop at the company's humble headquarters in a warehouse on Pine Ridge Road, where a technician tests the company's newest controller, equipped with the fastest Dell processor available on the market. The interface for the controller is a standard Windows desktop, and with a few clicks, the technician opens the robot controls. With a few flicks of a joystick, a six-foot robot arm comes eerily to life, moving at the operator's commands with the grace of a dancer.
Once the robot has been "taught" to perform a task-say, produce a series of spot welds-Innova's computer brain can have the robot duplicate the series of movements while keeping track of any malfunctions or interruptions. All of this on a computer screen that is as familiar as the one you'd use to check your e-mail.
Another strength of Innova's products is their universality, Weisel says. Not only can the software be used by robots of virtually any age and manufacturer, it's also easily transmitted over the Internet Weisel says.
"It's basically converting motion to software to worldwide communications," he says.
A recent, dramatic example of this long-distance control is the Hubble telescope. In 2006, Innova fulfilled a contract with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for a high-speed PC-based control system for use on space missions such as the one planned to adjust the Hubble telescope's flight path. The speed and power of the controller allow NASA engineers to accurately simulate conditions in space and plan the Hubble mission.
Weisel has focused on strategic alliances in areas as diverse as healthcare to unmanned flight to homeland security. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a longtime friend of Weisel, joined Innova's board of advisors last year. Ashcroft currently heads a Washington-based homeland security consulting firm, and Weisel sees the relationship as a valuable entrée into providing robots and controllers for port security and border surveillance.
In March, Innova announced its acquisition of Altronics Service Inc., a Port Charlotte company that produces devices used with automatic manufacturing equipment. That followed the May 2006 acquisition of CoroWare Technologies, headquartered on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. CoroWare was founded by Microsoft employees and works with Microsoft's Robotics Studio, which opened in June 2006 and represents the software giant's first major push into the field of robotics.
"Microsoft has a huge desire to get to the factory floor," says Weisel, who is a friend of Bill Gates. "They've had huge intentions but never made it."
There are some parallels between the current state of the art in robotics and the computer industry of 30 years ago.
"A handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use, and a fast-growing number of startup companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products," Microsoft's Gates wrote in Scientific American in December 2006. "But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when-or even if-this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world."
Walt Weisel is ready.
"Ninety percent of what you need to do is based on those six axes," Weisel says. "Our job is to show the customer how to cost-justify it."
Photo by Alex Stafford
http://gulfshorebusiness.com/Articles/2007/06/The-Promise-of-Robotics.asp
Recent COWI News
Bantec Reports an Over 50 Percent Increase in Sales and Profits in Q1 2024 from Q1 2023 • BANT • Apr 25, 2024 10:00 AM
Cannabix's Breath Logix Alcohol Device Delivers Positive Impact to Private Monitoring Agency in Montana, USA • BLO • Apr 25, 2024 8:52 AM
Kona Gold Beverages, Inc. Announces Name Change to NuVibe, Inc. and Initiation of Ticker Symbol Application Process • KGKG • Apr 25, 2024 8:30 AM
Axis Technologies Group and Carbonis Forge Ahead with New Digital Carbon Credit Technology • AXTG • Apr 24, 2024 3:00 AM
North Bay Resources Announces Successful Equipment Test at Bishop Gold Mill, Inyo County, California • NBRI • Apr 23, 2024 9:41 AM
Epazz, Inc.: CryObo, Inc. solar Bitcoin operations will issue tokens • EPAZ • Apr 23, 2024 9:20 AM
