Clearpath, the parent company of OTTO Motors, had a blast attending 2019 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Montreal, Canada from May 20-24, 2019. Our CTO, Ryan Gariepy, also had the pleasure of serving as a keynote speaker.

What You'll Learn

The last decade has seen immense change in the field of commercial robotics. Autonomous cars and drones moved from being research projects tucked away in far corners of campuses to being household names. Venture capitalists have also taken notice, with over $5 billion US invested in robotics companies in 2018 alone. The near simultaneous rise of technologies like low cost sensing, GPUs, ROS, and high-performance power systems have allowed for entirely new robotics markets to become viable. Finally, phrases like 'AI', 'big data', and 'deep learning' have become like candy to management consultants and recruiters alike. Through all of this, it's tempting to throw caution to the wind and jump headlong into starting a robotics company. But how general can you really make a robotics company? Is your competitive advantage really what you think it is? Is it OK to even call yourself a 'robotics company'? In this talk, Ryan will share his perspective from spending over 10 years commercializing robotics technology, along with some of the winning strategies we have discovered and mistakes we have seen and made along the way.

Watch the full presentation below: