UAS News Podcast — 2013-10-16
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
Music Welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications that are relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and as always let's say hello and welcome to our co-host Mr. Gene Robinson. Hello Patrick, how are you today and how are you doing in the UA world this week?
I'm doing good. Another sunny, beautiful day out here in California and good to be back in California. I was out at the D.A.R.C., the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference in New York City. That was interesting.
I haven't been to New York in a while. I did enjoy that. I took all my meals and was literally couldn't pass that up. It was more Italian food.
The conference was really good. You know, wide, let's say varied spectrum of interested parties. It was pretty good. Saw a lot of folks that have been on the pages of SUAS News, got to meet Trappy.
He's actually not a bad guy. He's not, I think some people have kind of got him tagged as some kind of total yee-haw. I'm not saying that he may not be or is, but he's a nice enough guy. Got to meet him, his attorneys, some of the other players that have been in the field for a while and been on the pages of SUAS News.
I wrote an article about it over there on the news site. I don't know if you got that. Did you get one?
Yep, I did. Yep. Every now and again, I turned one out. Me and the other 39 chimps turned one out.
But it was a good time. The protesters were really good. The grannies for peace came out. I guess it started to rain and they had to bring the drone in.
It's not an all weather capable mock-up of protesting. I'm going to keep that in mind. But it was pretty good. Got to meet with Anil.
Anil came in. Our man in Europe came in from Paris. He was there also. Some of the highlights of the show, I would definitely say, was the sense play.
They mapped the Matterhorn and that was really impressive. Over 300 million data points. Pretty darn impressive, for sure. That's a pretty big cloud.
That's pretty big. I thought that was pretty amazing. Got to meet Henri and then Colin was there for DJI. It was a whole gang.
It was pretty, as is the usual, go to these things and I'm pretty busy talking to folks. It was really good. I enjoyed that. A couple of other things going on.
You may have saw that on the news, the news site today. It looks like some more folks are getting some limited certification. Saw that. Yeah, the Nighthawk.
Again, it's another system used by the military. But I guess you got to start with what you know. Yeah, well, I believe they make a civilian version that's called the TacMav. I think maybe it was the other way around.
Maybe it's the TacMav that is the military use and it's the Nighthawk. This is civilian use. I think that's the way that goes. I'm not sure.
But like I said, I guess you got to stick with what you know. Anything else going on with you?
Last time I talked to you, you were going to be doing some flying for fire. Anything new in your home?
As you know, our little project with flying fires is attached to the government. Of course, you know exactly what the government has been doing for the last couple of weeks. So my flying has actually been curtailed a lot. I will say that.
But it's not to mention or not to think that we don't do anything more around here because for some reason, when I thought I was going to have time on my hands, there's even less. You know how that goes. We're actually putting together the – we're going to be training, starting our first training program for some of these goals for the Robata Supernova System, which you got to take a look at in Sacramento. There were some folks that were impressed enough to go with that.
And we will be doing our first normal training session for some folks this week for two days. Looking forward to that. And of course, you know, writing the syllabus and kind of customizing the training program around their missions has been a challenge. And of course, you know, Texas weather, I've always said it.
We only had two seasons, summer and not summer. Well, it's decided to be not summer this week, which is okay. I mean, it's cool. We're still short of weather and all that, but it's gotten a lot cooler and we're actually getting some rain.
So kind of holding our breath on that one. You know how the stress level goes up when you've got people flying in and you're supposed to be out and doing some flying your own self. So it's been kind of an exciting week. So we're looking forward to that.
Well, you know, I feel we're easy, Gene. Everybody be doing it. Yeah, this is true. Well, you know, and the government check-in deal kind of rolls us right into today's topic, which is robo-business.
And, you know, we've got to, we have to look elsewhere for income streams. And so we're going to get the lowdown today on the robo-business conference. And then we're going to bring our guests on here. They're the producers of this.
We have conference chairman Dan Tara and Richard Herb. Gentlemen, are you out there?
Yes, we are. Hey, Patrick. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm really looking forward. As soon as I got wind of the robo-business conference, I was like, I've got to go to this. But before we get into my personal take on what I've got to go to, maybe we could have you guys kind of introduce yourself.
And maybe Dan, could you introduce yourself to the audience, a little bio, and how you got into robotics? Sure, yes. So my name is Dan Tara, K-A-R-A. I'm the chief research officer of Myriad Research.
I'm an analyst consulting firm focused on robotics and intelligence systems and publish really here at the WestSite, which is a business and robotics website. I've been chairman of the robo-business event since 2004 when it was launched. I was originally in the analyst and research area, focused on IT, going back for a number of years, and just frankly got burned out, but it became more of the same. I kept seeing the same presentations.
And I've always been looking at the robotics industry and trying to determine if there was an opportunity for an events company, a research and advisory services firm, or a publishing firm. And for the most part, it was tied into either Miladero stuff, which was just coming along at that time, even after years of research, and then also the industrial robotics sector. But around 2003, I went to Japan
and Korea, traveled around the US, and realized that there would be new classes of robots, global intelligence systems as well, that could do a variety of other things as well, break through manipulation, and a whole new thing were happening.
And so I formed a company and then launched robo-business in 2004 and ran it in Boston and then been going back and forth to Boston and Pittsburgh for a number of years. And so I just took the capabilities that I had with other businesses in the IT space and just moved over to robotics and have been following it since that time, launching events, writing reports, analyzing the marketplace. And it's been great. Now it's out in Silicon Valley for 2013, and it should be a huge success.
We're looking forward to it. Well, right on. I've shared some of those parallels with you in 2004. Well, we'll get into that, but I'd like to bring Richard on.
And Richard, could you please do the thing, sir? Yeah, hey, Patrick, thanks. And just for your listeners, robo-business will be taking place October 23rd through the 25th at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and we are absolutely jacked to bring the program up to California. We've had a lot of great friends, colleagues, institutions, companies encourage us to bring the show out there.
So we finally have done it, and it looks like it was absolutely a great decision on our part. Thank you. I can't wait for next week. My background isn't nearly as exciting as Dan's, but I'm basically a business guy that's been kind of in technology his entire career of almost 30 years, 20 years on the enterprise side in the areas of manufacturing, procurement, quality systems management.
And for the last decade or so, I've been on the event management and media side of the business, but always technology-related, organizing events and voiceover IP, telecom, data center technologies, social media. And it was in 2009 at the end of the world back then, just a few short four or five years ago, I met CEO Ken Moise, who is the owner of VH Publishing, as well as the owner of Robotics Trends. I met him, he invited me to join the team. I thought it was an absolutely unique opportunity to do something in robotics, particularly a media company in robotics, right?
And made that choice almost four years ago and have not looked back, and it's been a wild ride and something that only gets more interesting with every passing day. Yeah, that's it. I would concur with that. And then the other thing I'm going to say is there's a couple of smart kids out here in Silicon Valley, and some of the stuff that these guys are working on, you're like, holy moly.
You guys probably have seen a little bit of that in your tenure. Now, I was going to ask when Allamong the Conference has been running, it's 2004, so it's been a little while. Someone's had a decade under its belt. Yeah.
How about some of the technology changes you've seen in that time? Has it just been mind-boggling?
What would you say? Well, this is Dan. I would say, yeah, absolutely. The event has changed to reflect that.
Not only the technology, but kind of what are the hot markets at that particular time. And so, the beginning, you have to realize in 2004, iRobot hadn't been published yet. The unmanned air vehicles were only used for surveillance. They hadn't been weaponized for the military.
There was industrial robots were almost exclusively limited to making in the automotive industry, making cars. And since that time, things have just changed greatly. I mean, you have a number of companies that have grown up with RoboVision. A lot of these companies get funded after the event or get purchased after the event or purchase other companies after the event.
Companies have gone public. Companies have been purchased. They purchased other types of companies. Software that used to cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars now, or commodity price in the functionality of the technology increases.
So, something like Microsoft and Air. Let's give a good example of that. And over time during the event, we've seen a number of large initiatives focus in on how the event changed. So, back in 2006, Microsoft's robotics studio was launched at the event.
Last year was the first public demonstration of the BASTA robot coming from Rethink Robotics out of Boston. A few other types of robotics designs were manufactured in small medium businesses. So, the event has trapped changes in the industry as well as changes in technology. It's often tracked where the money was.
So, initially it was a lot of new era focus, particularly during the war years. And now we've moved into industrial robotics and onto things such as small and air vehicles and other types of technology. So, it moves as the industry moves. But the overarching theme I think would be that technologies that were once complex and very, very expensive are now commodity priced and then being incorporated into a variety of different devices and targeting a variety of market places.
I would concur with that. It is pretty interesting how far robotics have come along. And I would say, we may not be at the personal robotics thing, but definitely the consumer market. I keep making the joke, you know, my mom has one of those Roombas and she loves it.
You know, she talks about how great Roomba is, turn it on, leave the house, vacuums the floor. I'm looking forward to more of that. I'm definitely looking forward to the automated cars. I think that's a no-brainer.
I've got my own car service right here and I don't even have to tip anyone or deal with a bad attitude. The tip's not big enough. I'm thinking, you know, when you stay someplace and I stayed at the Beverly Hilton, I don't think they thought the tips were big enough. I'm not making any movies lately.
So, you know, that's a no-brainer and I think that's going to be great. So, you know, that is interesting. You know, you kind of alluded to some of the businesses that were there. And it seems like there's going to be a wide spectrum, but, you know, maybe one of you or both of you could feel to, you know, what types of businesses are we going to see at Roomba Business?
Yeah. Okay, Dan, I'll jump on this one and you can follow up. But, Patrick, what we're seeing is all kinds of robotics automation enabling technology companies coming into Roomba Business from all over the world. I'll give you just a snapshot.
You get companies from Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Canada, China, Korea, India, Australia, and Japan. You know, what I term is a relatively small conference. So, this is purely, truly an international event taking place in Santa Clara. And if folks want to come in, they're going to meet amazing, amazing, brilliant, talented people from all over the world.
We've got more than 60 sponsoring companies. That's nearly double the number of companies sponsoring the event in Pittsburgh in 2012, which was up from Boston the year before. So, we're seeing a lot of growth around Roomba Business. And a lot of folks wonder what's happening with Roomba Business.
What does it fill in terms of the market? And if you look at why we're unique, when you think of the two kind of the kingpin organizations or associations, one being obviously AUBSI, love you guys, and you represent the government well. You provide all this amazing technology. It's just an amazing, full class organization.
On the other side, you've got RIA, which is the Robotics Industrial Association, really focused in manufacturing, mainly primarily the large-end enterprise automotive side. What Roomba Business has done is it's really kind of come in as sort of that commercial applications event that is really kind of blowing out in all areas, whether it be marine, aerial, land, unmanned systems, new industrial robotics, great new companies like Re-Think Dan mentioned, universal robots, all kinds of new gripper technologies, enabling technologies, new research platforms being launched.
So, it really does push in on what I call that commercial sector, which is a little bit right now. There isn't a lot of folks out there offering events in the space that we're offering right now. And it's not easy, but our show is growing. And I think it's what is being recognized internationally as a very unique business-focused conference in robotics, really focused primarily in commercial applications.
But come out, you'll see everyone from iRobot to Yaskawa, Motorman Robotics, 3D Robotics, Chris Anderson's company down in San Diego, focusing aerial field robotics for agriculture, amazing startups like Gratit to Willow Garage Spinoff's Unbounded Robotics, which would be launching a global business. Suitable Technologies will be there. They're doing some amazing stuff with their beam technology. Carnegie Mellon University will be there, Stanford Research Institute, as well as a number of the nonprofit organizations.
But we couldn't be happier with the number of participating companies, new product launches, and folks coming again from all over the world to showcase what they're doing. And do you think, I mean, I've noticed too that, and I'm going to try to preload the question, but do you think that there's an added excitement because it is in Silicon Valley with this year's global business?
Yeah, certainly. I mean, this is Dan. I mean, yeah, certainly. We haven't ever brought global business out to the valley.
There's a lot of interesting things going on there in terms of research coming out of the universities and other research institutions. Combine that with the huge VC marketplace and then a lot of other companies that provide enabling technologies, plus just purely robotics companies. So everything is there. And it's a population center between San Jose and San Francisco.
And that population center is populated with a huge number of people that would be interested in events like this. I mean, they're looking for the next investment or their next job or the next marketplace, and that's what this is. Right. I will say, you know, from what we did, the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo, and the place was just crawling with VC people.
And I think, Dan, you hit the nail on the head that people fly in from VC people fly in from all around the world to come to see what's happening in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, when it comes to new technologies. And on the other side of that, you've got people immigrating, coming here from all over the world with new ideas and softwares and hardwares and technologies. And it's really like a convergence of, blows me away. I go to different things or meetings or meet people, and I'm just smug.
I just can't even, I just, you know, it's like, wow, I didn't even think of that. So I think there was a little bit of excitement on that. Now, I was on the website, which I think I'm able to take this time to give. Does someone want to give out the website to the conference?
Sure. Yeah, the website is www.robobusinessoneword.com. All right, you should go to the site, the Robo Business site, check it out. I was over there.
So one thing that kind of stuck out to me or stood out was this pitchfire. And, you know, we were talking about the smart people coming here, we were talking about the VC people and the convergence of technology. Who would like to tell me about pitchfire?
Yeah, Patrick, pitchfire is really, it's new to Robo Business. It's very Silicon Valley based. And we're doing, we're putting pitchfire on in cooperation with Silicon Valley Robotics. Special thanks to Rich Mahoney over at SRI on her key to direct for Silicon Valley Robotics.
But this is really an amazing event. You know, Robo Business has traditionally been a B2B event, more established companies, products, solutions. Pitchfire is really focused on startups. And, you know, I don't have to tell you Silicon Valley, some are crawling in startups and folks thirsty for VC money.
So we built a program that's really going to focus in on about 20 emerging, very interesting, very viable startup companies and robotics across a host of applications. And we've got an amazing group of investors coming in, mention national group of investors, one from Germany, Robert Bosch, Venture Capital, one from France as well as one right here from the Valley. In addition to a whole audience full of people, we plan to pack a room with about 150 people and have about 18 to 20 of these companies make basically three to five minute pitches to this investment board.
And then we'll get feedback on something, you know, American Idol or something, you know, where they're going to provide a pitch and they're going to get real-time feedback from these investors in terms of the viability of the product, the prospects for it, you know, their opinion on how they can improve the pitch. And there will be a winner from this that will receive a number of different things, including a full conference pass to the two-day event as well as an opportunity to meet with basically an industry luminary and also get some personal guidance going forward for their business.
But really, really cool event. It is open basically, it's an open session. There's a separate ticket that people just want to come in for Pitchfire. It's a $50 pass.
Plus it includes a networking reception, open bar and food served to take part in this afternoon, evening event. So it's something very Silicon Valley driven, something we want to continue to build on. It's all about innovation and all about these bright new young ideas and talented people as well as the investment community and local business. Well, that was very exciting and I wish that I had some to pitch, but I'm not there yet.
Yeah, that's a great idea. I think if people, I mean if you're coming out here to this thing, that's definitely something to catch. If you want to be, I would say if you want to be blown away or impressed by what's going on out here, that would be definitely something to see. Now, I do want to let Gene, you know, I know you've been kind of listening quietly.
Gene, do you have anything you'd like to add, sir? Yeah, I do. You know, thinking about it and from the way the guys were talking about it, robotics is going to be as pervasive as we thought unmanned aircraft are going to be. As a matter of fact, it includes unmanned aircraft because they are essentially robots to different measures.
You talk about the cars. You talk about the personal robots, the Roombas and things like that. A robot is going to be ubiquitous here very, very shortly in my view. And this conference that you guys are putting on, I think it would appeal not only to the real technophile who is into the business and trying to, you know, make a career in the business, but also to the people who are interested in it as well just from a personal standpoint.
I mean, that's my kind of view of this whole thing. I'd like to go just to see what's out there and who's coming up with what because it just fascinates the heck out of me to think about what sort of personal robot could be in my home and, you know, literally in my lifetime. I could think of a lot of jobs for Man Friday the Robot. The car needs to be washed.
The lawn needs to be mowed. The windows need to be washed too. Get cracking. I don't know if it's distilled down to that level yet.
I mean, you know, we still have a lot of ground to cover with industrial robots. I did see an article not too long ago where they were like, oh, you know, danger, danger. You know, these, not even danger, well, Robinson, but the danger, these robots are going to be taking all of our jobs. But it goes back to there's a lot of monotonous jobs that I've done in my time that I just gladly hand off to a robot.
I've got to say one thing about that. I'm dating myself here, but I remember when computers started coming out very strong that they were going to just take over all these jobs and a computer was going to be doing our work and you know what they did, you know what a computer did. It made it harder. It made it take work jobs.
I respond to a whole new industry and that's exactly what robotics is going to do, Gene. And just, I'll give you a note, just some of the local companies in the valley, in the Bay Area that will be at RoboBusiness. Obviously, we had Chris Ermson coming in from Google talking about self-driving cars and their progress there and the timeframe for self-driving cars in our lifetime. SRI International, depth technology, suitable technologies, guys like Gravitt and a spinoff from SRI.
Neato Robotics will be there. Advanced Motion Controls, Tremble, Brain Corporation, Littler, largest employment law firm in the world. There's building a division around robotics and robots in the workforce, precise automation. I know I'm missing a bunch of them, but there are a ton of California-based robotics technology companies that are employers looking for people and they're growing and it's the spawning of a whole new industry.
Perhaps some people refer to it as the next major technological revolution to sweep through the valley. I agree with that completely. Yeah, I definitely see it growing, you know, and that's good that people will be looking to hire people. I'll bring my sandwich board looking for a gig here.
We'll work for bitcoins, man. No. It is, I mean, I'm excited about it. I have no trepidations about automation and robots in the future of my life.
And, you know, yes, the computer thing, I mean, I'm looking at a mess of paper right here on the desk. Remember, it's going to be all paperless. You know, obviously there's apprehension in new technologies. We see a lot of that in the unmanned flying thing.
But I think taking it as a whole, there's a lot of technologies we like, I mean, you know, and these things come on. So now you ran through some of the companies that are going to be attending and some of those refer to us. Some of them are even members of my Silicon Valley chapter of AUBSI. But let's talk about some of the keynote speakers.
Would one of you gentlemen like to field that one? Sure, I'll take that. This is Dan again. This is, if it is one of the strongest, it's the strongest list of keynotes that we've ever had for a global business event.
And they've come from both industry, academia, as well as sort of the analyst community and other areas. And that's across different vertical market segments. And that's the way we're buying global business with designs in the very beginning because, typically, these events are very slow-paced. You have mill and arrow guys, you have the general bunch of people, you have the academic folks.
Nobody talks to each other. So we set up the keynote so they would bring in a bunch of different types of people because in a lot of cases, this technology overlaps. And then the theme is, of course, business because if you don't, you're not able to make money out of it, you can't keep doing it. So I think that's the whole point.
So I'm actually giving a keynote, initial keynote, to kind of say, where are we right now and where is this whole thing going? But actually, some of these others are much bigger names. We have Heinrich Pritzkamp, who's the group chair at Georgia Institute of Technology. And he's going to be describing the National Robotics Roadmap that was released in 2013, which is an important document.
They had another one in 2009. Everybody talks about it, but nobody reads it. So actually, he's going to go in and say, here, we brought together government people, academic people, investment community, as well as the business community. We got 60 of them together.
We worked on this over a number of years. We've updated it, and here's where we believe the industry is going over the next five to ten years. All focused also on creating businesses and new marketplaces. So here, the best people in the world have benefited from this information and come to a conclusion, and here, they're just going to dump it out.
We have speaker Brandon Astow, who's going to be talking about big data, big agriculture. He's a development engineer at 3D Robotics. So how do you use unmanned aerial vehicles in conjunction with big data analytics to drive agriculture and make it more productive and efficient?
We have another keynote from Carnegie Mellon University, Senator Singh, who's going to-this title is, Is Keynote Life Drive Autonomously? And You Can Fly Autonomously, which basically describes what that's going to be about. We have speakers from AFON and El Camino Hospital talking about how they're using autonomous mobile robots in their hospitals to cut costs, improve efficiency and productivity to free up nurses. Another keynote, we have Chris Ehrman from Google about their self-drive, Google self-driving cars program.
And here's an interesting one. We have Yoki Matsusuka from Nest Labs, which actually makes a variety of home consumer electronic products. Her background is she's a PhD in robotics, I believe, in Carnegie Mellon and a Parser Award winner. So they brought her over to the elite of technology at Nest Labs.
You can see the intersections here now of smart devices and the Internet of Things with robotics. Rich mentioned that they have speakers from the Library of Mendelsohn, as Larry Mapp, who's going to be talking about robotics, clients and the law. Michael Bruning, he's the director of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization, as they will be library-grabbing someone from Australia. What Australia does in terms of, say, mining, he's the world.
And so he's going to be talking about the largest field robotics research center in the world and describing what they're doing. And then Hal O'Caraginian, he's the formerly the CEO of Evolution Robotics in Pasadena. They were purchased by a robot about a year and a half ago, I believe, even now the chief technology officer at iRobot, he did give the keynote on the disruptive force of robots in the home and beyond. So you're running from consumer robotics to very, very, with the iRobot speaker to high-end service robotics using the world's largest trucks.
They're now driven autonomously, dumping their loads into autonomous trains. The loads are actually using autonomous drills to drill out rocks and ore. That's the very largest thing. There are other types of consumer robotics, smart devices, self-driving cars, hospital work, autonomous aerial vehicles.
And then for the overarching keynote given by Heinrich and myself, a little bit of everything. And again, they all intersect with each other. The main thing, though, is how do you do this to create new businesses that drive your business and to build new marketplaces?
Excellent point because I've learned a lot too. I'm in a little bit of a silo, but I really, I think all of these technologies play together, and I also think that they play with commercial space flight, which is also in another silo. It's all that needs to be kind of brought together because until we look at that radiation deal in space, there's going to be lots of opportunity for robots to do exploration. But either consumer goods that you're talking about like the NEST people, for people that don't know what that is, they have the thermostat for that.
Tons of success stories where people are saving energy, save energy, save money, save the planet. And it's like the lotus flower, and it just keeps giving. So all of these types of things come into play with these efficiencies. But one other point you made was I think a lot of people overlook this, is the law and robotics and product liability.
You're releasing something if you're successful. If you're successful, you're releasing something into the business space, and a lot of people, I mean a lot of people, most of them are engineering and they are trying to solve a problem. And one of the problems they overlook is, hey, you know, even with the driver of the car, you let that out into the ecosystem here, and there's a mishap. Like I did notice there was a tuft of grass in one of the cars out there at Stanford.
You know, who's at fault if there's a mishap? Is it the automaker?
Is it the guy who wrote the code? Is it the operating system?
And there's I think a lot of room for these questions to be, let's say, examined even if not answered. So that's interesting that you guys would see that same, let's say, need and bring this guy out. Well, the one thing that differentiates robotics from, say, just software is it actually operates in a physical world. And that changes everything.
You can do enough damage with just software, but imagine there's people, animals, houses, properties, on and on and on, and that's what differentiates robotics. Actuation and then actuation, you know, we've got a real world, not a virtual world. Well, that's an interesting point because you've got a lot of people who will talk about how, you know, well, if software crashes, you reboot the computer. Well, you know, if it's a flying vehicle and the software crashes, going to be tough to reboot that one before it hits the ground.
Things like that. So and same with the cars or, you know, anything, even, you know, heaven forbid you had some sort of malfunction on a robot doing surgery. I wouldn't like that. Although even a robot doing surgery, I mean, I was talking to my doctor about it.
He said, oh, you know, I talk about it and, you know, I fly the actuators and I'm like, oh, my God, this is great, man. You know, come in and have parts taken out and be out the next day riding my bike and post the dishes on Facebook and my latte and my croissants, it's going to be great. All right. One other thing I wanted to hit on is, you know, I noticed that part of the event here is going to be the Mad Men cocktail party.
Any reason, specific reason for that or just fun? I'll take that one. Primarily fun, Patrick. You know, we thought we'd bring a little theme, a little magic to the event.
And let me just tell you, Global Business is a great event, but the networking receptions are absolutely the highlight, in my opinion, of the event. It is the networking that takes place. And Dan mentioned earlier about researchers, academics, government, technology providers. You see folks come together and actually, through discussion, can solve problems.
They've been working years to try to solve, but someone's already solved it. And there's a magic that takes place. You know, obviously, you've got hundreds of brilliant, brilliant people. And we're looking at about 600 attendees for Global Business Santa Clara.
But when you get that kind of brain power together and you get a few martinis in them and you get networking together, I'll tell you, there's two receptions, both on the show floor, one Wednesday evening and then one Thursday evening. Those will be the two highlights. Those are where relationships are built that last a lifetime. And you see the formation of an industry at its early stages.
It's really, really powerful to be there for that. Yeah, well, and I know, good. Oh, go ahead, sir. Well, I was just going to say the thing that sums it up for me, and this was an example of one of the early Global Business events, you actually had, I actually have someone from Lockheed Martin speaking to someone from Hasbro, speaking to an academic, speaking to a lawyer all around the cocktail reception, there's foodies, and then there's an investor.
That's what kind of show it is. All these barriers are broken down and the alcohol doesn't help, doesn't hurt at all as well. Everything gets done. It's really focused together.
Well, and I was going to hit on that earlier when that was mentioned. And for people, I go to a lot of conferences and symposiums and all the rest of that, and this one still sounds like it's at a size that is manageable. When you go to a conference that's got five, six, 10,000 people, really, really kind of hard to have meaningful sidebars or conversations with people. And this event sounds like it's still small enough where you, it's still intimate and you can have those sidebars.
And I know that was one of the things, even looking it over, that was kind of appealed to me is that I would actually be able to approach and talk to people. And like you said, that, I mean, really for me, that's where the rubber meets the road. You know, I want to be able to go there, get some business cards, make relationships. And that looks like that's going to be something that I can do there in my sandwich board.
So, you know, you have like a wide area of expertise and what would appeal to people from people that are getting started in this, even students and startups and venture capitalists and people who are very successful and have large businesses. You know, it sounds really exciting, but we're almost out of time. But before we get down to run the clock out, and I know we covered a lot of this territory, but is there anything else that I may have missed that we want to cover or we should make sure and tell the listeners about?
Patrick, I was just going to add that we don't advertise on our website, but we do have an engineering or a business professional pass to the expo in the networking reception. And I want to give out a promotional code for that. If anyone's listening, perhaps they can't afford a full conference program, but if they register at robobusiness.com using the promotional code RB13ENG, that will spit out a $75 pass for the event. And you're invited from 2 to 7 p.m.
on Thursday, the 24th of October, and that would include the Batman-Martini reception, the Cantonist reception. And for $75 to meet these folks from all over the world with these amazing technologies, I hope everyone takes advantage of that, that can't, you know, attend the full conference program. Well, that's cool. That's a nice plus for our listeners.
And, you know, go to the website again. It's www.robobusiness.com. Check it out. I mean, as soon as I checked it out, I was like, whoa, I got to go to this one.
This is going to be pretty good. I'm going to go down there. I'm really looking forward to this. You know, I can't wait to meet you guys in person, too.
I'll be looking for you. But before we close this out, Gene, anything else from you, sir?
I just wish I was a little closer to the venue there because I think it's going to be a fascinating show, too, as well. And, you know, if there is any measure by what you pulled off with the SUSBS Expo, the small business Expo, this one sounds going to be like it's much the same. And I tell you, I went to that one and I got to talk to everybody in the room. And that was so much better than the big shows, like you say.
But being able to make those contacts has just been absolutely fantastic for me. And I think you guys are going to have a good show. You keep it that way. And it's going to be top notch.
I've entered, yes, and you'll have a lot of the same, let's say, usual suspects at this show who are looking to get into technology and whatever else, so, you know, we've got to make it there. Well, gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for coming on the podcast and giving our listeners an overview of what the conference is going to be like. And I would also like to say thank you for giving out that special promotion. And I would like to let you guys, if there was anything in closing, Dan, did I miss anything you would like to say in closing?
Just, you know, we all share the same enthusiasm for robots. We've seen in the gadget press and on videos all these robots doing cool things. It really gets you very, very excited, as it should. But the main thing, the reason why they've been called global business is that if you want to go forward with this, if you're serious about it, you have to learn about the business side of the business.
And it doesn't take away from the enthusiasm or the coolness of the robots, but it's really more grounded so, in fact, you can go forward with this. And that's what the event is really all about, bringing all these people together and the way to promote the business aspects of robotics and make it fun and profitable. I like that, fun and profitable. Richard, in closing.
Yeah, Patrick, I think we've said it all. Again, robotics, robotics automation, intelligent systems, it is a global industry. Come on down to RoboBusiness and meet some of the brightest minds in the world hoping to shape a brand new industry. And robots ought to be cleared, they're to be embraced.
Be part of the movement. We'd love to meet you. Sounds good. Okay, this is perfect because we're just right out of time here.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming on. Thank you, Gene. And everyone listening, we'll see you next week. That's good.
Take care. Goodbye. Goodbye.