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S.D. Shows Potential to Become Robotics Hub

Finding improvised explosive devices. Performing delicate surgery. Picking strawberries. Robots have been tasked to do it all, with a deft touch.

San Diego’s inaugural RoboUniverse Conference & Expo showcased those uses and scores of others, and even touched on the idea of turning San Diego into a hub for the robotics industry. Albert Pisano, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, gave a talk on the topic at the event, held Dec. 14-16, at the San Diego Convention Center.

In the thick of the market are several San Diego companies. They include Carlsbad-based 5D Robotics, which showed video of wheeled, self-propelled robots traveling through a 30-acre village to make a map of it, or sniffing out improvised bombs in the roadway. Representatives of Qualcomm Inc. showed how engineers could apply its mobile phone chips to control robots, including small quadcopter drones. San Diego-based Brain Corp. talked up its Brain OS operating system.

A lot of capital is coming into the robot space, said Rick Dalton, managing director of Mooreland Partners, a Silicon Valley investment bank that works with technology companies. He looked ahead to a wave of mergers and acquisitions.

Companies outside of pure-play robotics companies are moving into the arena, and moving “aggressively,” Dalton said. They follow in the footsteps of Amazon.com Inc., which bought Kiva Systems Inc.’s warehouse robot business in 2012 for a reported $775 million.

Autonomous cars have the potential to be a very large market, Dalton said, and other markets are opening up to robots. Roughly 10 percent of laparoscopic surgeries can be done with robots, but it’s going to be 100 percent, the investment banker said.

Dalton also spoke of the Chinese government trying to stimulate its domestic robot market.

Drones and the Internet of things were two subcategories of robotics addressed by conference presenters. One section of the show floor was a caged area where people could try their hands at flying drones. There was an entire set of programs devoted to agricultural robots, which perform tasks in the field.

MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal gave a keynote speech on the new kind of household robot, and discussed her business, Jibo (pronounced GEE’-bo). The Jibo robot is sort of like the Siri robotic assistant on Apple Inc.’s smartphones and tablets, taken to the next level.

The $749 robot can offer appointment reminders in a conversational style, and can be directed to put a group or specific person in the frame of a camera, for example.

The Boston-area business tested market interest in Jibo by using an Indiegogo campaign, Breazeal said. The campaign got more than 7,400 supporters and raised $3.7 million.

Breazeal suggested that the future might not consist of 50,000 apps, each dedicated to a specific task, but a humanlike robot that handles many and various tasks.

Breazeal also shared research about robots connecting to people not only on the cognitive level but providing emotional support. She cited one experiment where people were better able to lose weight and keep it off when working with a robot that offered emotional support and encouragement. The experiment worked better than when people used paper logs or a conventional computer.

Jibo is shaped like a tabletop hat stand, with a headlike enclosure on top of a neck. The head holds the screen. Asked by an audience member whether Jibo might eventually include a robotic arm or other accessories, Breazeal said her company would probably leave that to third-party developers.

Also offering keynotes at the conference were Chris Anderson, CEO of drone-maker 3D Robotics (which has some operations in San Diego and Tijuana) and Charles Bergan, Qualcomm’s vice president of engineering.

Schunk, a German company with its U.S. headquarters in North Carolina, was on the trade floor showing off metallic mechanical hands at the ends of robotic arms. They ranged from five-fingered, humanlike hands to metal grippers that look more like pliers. The company bills itself as the world’s largest producer of end-of-arm tools for robots.

Subcontractors were also on the show floor. Representatives from Forecast 3D of Carlsbad showed off items produced through 3-D printing and similar technologies, including a prosthetic hand.

A short distance away was a San Diego startup called Inova Drone. CEO Chad Ammon manned the booth, showing off an eight-propeller helicopter optimized for emergency response. He shared space with San Diego-based Qelzal, which offers obstacle avoidance software.

The display interested 9-year-old Calramon Mabalot, who had his father in tow.

“How much do you weigh?” Ammon asked the fourth-grader. “This might be able to pick you up.” The machine Ammon was talking about is bigger than quadcopters marketed to the consumer, but Calramon was actually heavier than the copter’s 25-pound capacity.

Calramon was not the only school-age person drawn to the show. Which seemed appropriate, since it will be his generation that sees robotics develop to the extent they seem capable.

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