The Robot Report Podcast
00:02:58 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:02:58] S0: Yep. So we'll see... Again, one day doesn't mean anything. Right? So it's... It is... We... We've talked about this IPO at length. So, you know, we'll wrap it up here, but we'll we'll obviously continue to track it. Right? We'll we'll watch the stock performance over the next several months. But again, the the most important thing, like we've mentioned a number of times, is it's now being a publicly traded company, they do have to release their financials every three months. Right? So we'll start to get some insight into, are they growing their deployments? Are they growing their revenue? Agility claims, they have, think it's $300,000,000 in back orders for the new digit five. So, you know, we'll we'll start to see. We'll we'll start to see if they can actually deliver on that. And it's a monumental challenge for not only them, but for any industrial humanoid company in The US to make the economics work, for deploying these things at scale. But, it was a good first day for agility. I think there's no denying that, but, we'll we'll continue to to to to follow that. Did you buy in? [00:03:57] S1: I didn't buy in, not yet, but we'll we'll have to see. You know? I think the good news is I drive by Salem now every time I go up to visit my kids in Portland. So I keep I keep asking them, you know, for for a visit to to the Robot FAB. So I hope here in the next six months, I'll get a chance to to stop by Robot FAB and, also peek under the hood a bit and see those systems being built in person. Awesome.
00:03:57 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:03:57] S1: I didn't buy in, not yet, but we'll we'll have to see. You know? I think the good news is I drive by Salem now every time I go up to visit my kids in Portland. So I keep I keep asking them, you know, for for a visit to to the Robot FAB. So I hope here in the next six months, I'll get a chance to to stop by Robot FAB and, also peek under the hood a bit and see those systems being built in person. Awesome. [00:04:22] S0: So we'll... Again, later on in a few minutes here, we'll we'll recap some of the other news stories of the week, and we'll also play a conversation with Aaron Nathan, CEO of Point One Navigation a little bit later on in the show. But, Mike, why don't you preview what that conversation is about? [00:04:36] S1: Yeah. As we're gonna learn, Point One Navigation delivers accurate location information for outdoor robotics and and autonomous vehicles of of all type. And Aaron is gonna introduce us to their technology, and we're gonna learn how Point One Nav, you know, helps those outdoor robotics remain localized with centimeter accuracy. So very important if you're doing something outdoors.
00:04:59 · Steve Crowe
[00:04:59] S0: Yeah. Awesome. So we'll we'll play that a little bit later on in the show. We do wanna plug, of course, our next upcoming event, Robot Summit Boston, which takes place June second and third, twenty twenty seven at the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston. We're going to have over 5,000 people there, over two fifty exhibitors on the show floor. We're talking all things commercial robotics development. Again, a lot of the technical decisions that go into building and designing a robot is what this show is all about. This is, I think, the eighth time that we're gonna do this show, which is crazy to think about. So the call for speakers is now open. We'll link to that in the show notes. You can also go to roboticssummit.com. We're already getting flooded with submissions. So if you wanna be considered for this, make sure you get your session proposal in as soon as possible. The deadline is gonna be late December. We're still finishing finalizing the exact deadline, but it's going be late December. But if you want to be considered for one of the breakout talks or maybe a keynote, something like that, make sure you fill out a session proposal ASAP. We're still looking for sponsors, speakers, partners, all the rest of it. So go to roboticssummit.com to learn more, or you can reach out to any one of us here at The Robot Report. Again, Robot Summit Boston. Coming to the Hynes Convention Center, June second and third twenty twenty seven. We'll obviously continue to, talk about that event as it gets closer.
00:06:17 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:06:17] S1: So tell me tell me about the Hynes Center. I've never been there. Obviously, we've... Every event we've done has been at the the big convention center downtown. The Hynes is is located where? [00:06:25] S0: Yeah. So it's it's it's in downtown. It's not too far from, Fenway Park, actually. So but we were at the venue yesterday visiting it. So yes, it's a huge space. So we have a lot of cool opportunities to do different things, bring in different types of robotic systems and demos and networking opportunities. So a new venue for us, but it's gonna be bigger and better than ever. So looking forward to that. [00:06:45] S1: Cool. Yep. [00:06:46] S0: Onto the news of the week and we have you covered with all the latest news and information with our network of websites, including The Robot Report and Automated Warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletters, for both those brands so you never miss a beat. Alright. We met... We mentioned this, in in the show open and obviously, maybe the biggest story of the year, Mike. I think it's it's it's not overblowing it or overstating the importance of Chinese regulators blocking SoftBank's $5,400,000,000 acquisition of ABB Robot. This was first reported by the Financial Times. We have confirmed it with ABB that they are indeed, that the sale is on on pause. So you can check out the story by Brianna Wesseling on the Robot Report, but, pretty massive story here.
00:06:46 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:06:46] S0: Onto the news of the week and we have you covered with all the latest news and information with our network of websites, including The Robot Report and Automated Warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletters, for both those brands so you never miss a beat. Alright. We met... We mentioned this, in in the show open and obviously, maybe the biggest story of the year, Mike. I think it's it's it's not overblowing it or overstating the importance of Chinese regulators blocking SoftBank's $5,400,000,000 acquisition of ABB Robot. This was first reported by the Financial Times. We have confirmed it with ABB that they are indeed, that the sale is on on pause. So you can check out the story by Brianna Wesseling on the Robot Report, but, pretty massive story here. [00:07:37] S1: Yeah, it's been more than a year since ABB announced it signed the agreement to sell the division to the SoftBank Group for, as you stated, five point three seven five billion dollars. And it seems that China's Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review, that's a lot of words, has prohibited, you know, the acquisition in the country.
00:07:37 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:07:37] S1: Yeah, it's been more than a year since ABB announced it signed the agreement to sell the division to the SoftBank Group for, as you stated, five point three seven five billion dollars. And it seems that China's Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review, that's a lot of words, has prohibited, you know, the acquisition in the country. [00:08:00] S0: Yeah. And I don't really understand... I mean, I I think I do. Right? I I think I understand why this was happening. I'm not sure I buy the reason that, everybody is sharing around the news here. I guess the concern... China is concerned about robotics data being transferred overseas and used by, I guess, SoftBank in this case to train its AI models. So obviously, SoftBank is a Japanese company. ABB does a ton of work in China. It's significantly grown its business in China. But I think what I don't understand is, you know, ABB is already an overseas company, right? ABB is a Swiss company, is that right? So what's stopping them from taking the data that they're already capturing from these deployments in China and using that to train their AI models already? You know, Again, I understand SoftBank is is a different company in a in a Japanese company, and there's political things between China and Japan forever. But the same problem already exists. Right? ABB can already transfer a lot of the data that it's capturing.