Local Focus: Robots on Market Street? Kirkland Company on Cutting Edge

FEW PEOPLE in this area would be surprised to hear that Kirkland is home to experts in software or computers. But what about robots?

Indeed, for the past six years, CoroWare Technologies, located on Market Street in Kirkland, has been making robots for institutions around the world.

“When we started, we knew we’d do something with robotics,” said president and CEO Lloyd Spencer, a Woodinville resident with 23 years of computer and networking industry experience at companies such as eQuest, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

Spencer had left Microsoft in 2002 and was working for another company, but wanted to start a company where there was more employee ownership and he could apply the principles he’d learned at Microsoft: mobility, devices, services and software.

He met Dave Hyams, now CoroWare’s Chief Technology Officer, and they discussed their vision for a company. They wanted to ship products as well as provide professional services, and they wanted the security of multiple business units that could offset – and build upon – each other. They wanted to offer both hardware and software. They wanted to work with what they knew, which was computers, and move into an area with great potential: robotics.

They put these elements together: Computers, Robots, Hardware/Software, and launched CoroWare in 2004.

While starting out providing professional services for clients such as Microsoft, they began experimenting with robotics. Two years later, Vassar College was their first robotics customer, buying five robots for experimentation in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the robotics division has built more than 250 robots for customers in 26 countries.

CoroWare has a different approach to robot development than some of their competitors. While typically each robot is built from scratch, the core of all CoroBots are standard. However, within that standardized structure, they design their robots to be customized, using Robotics Operating System (ROS), an open access language. They include a PC onboard every unit, which makes each robot smart and autonomous. It also allows robots to be programmed and the central processing units switched – in essence, giving the robot a brain transplant.

This is ideal for researchers and software designers who want to develop software and then replicate the programming in other robots. Currently, the majority of their robotics customers are educational institutions including universities around the world. Two newer customers are planetariums in Chicago and New York.

The CoroBot Classic, their most popular robot model, is built with the PC exposed to allow easy access to researchers and students. Because the robots are built to be modified, the CoroWare team says modifications don’t void their warranty. They provide support to customers around the world to help them fix their robots, even if the problem is due to the customer’s own programming.

“We do a lot of customization on the robots,” said George Ferch, sales representative. “There are no robot stores, so they give us a list of requirements and we look at what we can do, what we can’t, and we go back with a specific proposal for a project. There are probably about 30 options.”

Those options vary from a wide range of cameras and sensors, to physical adaptations like arms to mount cameras and computer-related upgrades.

THE COROBOTS – both the Classic and a more rugged, enclosed CoroBot Explorer, which is designed to be exposed to the elements – are used by customers to gather data, test and write software and aid in educational programs.

“This wouldn’t be possible without the computers on board,” said Robotics Product Manager Andrew Zager. “These are cutting edge mother boards and processors. They are essentially high end, but mobile work stations. People think of iRobot, but those require a person to drive them. While you can do that with ours, the computer on board allows them to drive themselves and process data. Someone created software called ‘Follow You’ and the robot learned to recognize a certain person and it will follow that person.”

In war zones, this type of robotics can help decrease the number of troops put in harm’s way; for example, using robotics to transport supplies.

The team is optimistic about the future of robotics and the role ROS will have in propelling it into the mainstream. “It’s kind of like what Microsoft did with DOS,” said Zager. “Made it accessible… We feel that ROS is going to do the same thing.”

However, true to their vision, robotics is not CoroWare’s only focus. They continue to provide professional services, analytics, software development and more.

One of their products is a cloud video conferencing service that allows customers to connect with up to ten or more people for a video call. The service operates over standard broadband, so the product – CoroCall –provides a very affordable, business class service that allows participants to connect from wherever in the world they have Internet access and a device.

Not only is it a product they offer to customers, it’s a tool they say has changed the way they do business.

“We can get a lot done very quickly with a few people on the screen,” said Spencer, whose team of 30 employees includes people all over the country and abroad. “Just a few years ago, you needed to have an expensive Polycom system, so it was out of reach for small business. The robotics team has benefitted a lot. They can take the camera and zoom in to show details on the robots and collaborate to troubleshoot as a team or to help customers.”

While Spencer plans to grow in the future, he sees video conferencing as a key to their future growth. “We will add capacity here,” said Spencer, who relocated his company to Kirkland from Redmond and has enjoyed the affordability, variety of restaurants and accessible and friendly .

However, he doesn’t see most of the company’s growth happening in Kirkland. “We will mostly add capacity in the field and have people work from home. They can live where they want. It’s a new concept. But Coroware is a prototype of the company of the future.”

And with that growth, Spencer sees integration between the current business units. “Down the path, we want to be a robotics solutions integrator, tying in software and service solutions, rather than being a robotics manufacturer. We want to be delivering a lot of value for the customer.”