The Frontier State of Robotics Innovation

Ira Jackson: Welcome to the Frontier State. I'm Ira Jackson and uh, introducing as well my colleague and collaborator at Harvard's Kennedy School, Mohsevar Rahmani, center for Business and Government, Tushar Kanade. Um, the Frontier State, which is a research project Tushar and uh, I have been leading for a year and a half now, uh, focuses on who's shaping the future of our economy and our society, um, who's doing what and how, uh, who are the innovators, what technologies are they pursuing, who's at the cutting edge, uh, and who are the pioneers doing things in new ways, uh, with new partners and with encouraging results? Uh, what impact are they having already? And what transformational outcomes are they likely to create in the future? We are truly delighted today to have one of those innovators and pioneers with us. Tom Ryden is the executive director of Mass Robotics. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Ryden: Hi, Ira. Great to be here.

Ira Jackson: Uh, we are just thrilled to have you. Robotics, as Tom will let us know, and as I'm sure many in the audience are aware, is a $50 billion industry globally growing to probably a hundred billion dollars. And it's at the cutting edge of shaping our future. So we're eager to learn more from Tom, who as I mentioned, uh, is the executive director now almost a decade long, uh, of Mass Robotics, which is, um, as I, is the largest independent robotics hub dedicated to accelerating robotics and AI innovation, companies commercialization and adoption. He's, uh, at the cutting edge of so many important technologies and he's doing that in a values driven way with a very innovative model. I was looking at your website earlier, tanam, and I saw that Mass Robotics has in the last few years alone received some 15 awards, including uh, RBI's, uh, review, which uh, honored you and for the Mass Robotics accelerator powered by the Mass Tech Collaborative, as the first public private accelerator of its kind in the world. I was also impressed that you have received recognition for the social good of an, of diversifying robotics, uh, its talent pool and developing a more inclusive workforce. So those two extremes, just incredible work that you're doing. Tom, thank you. Welcome. And tell us in your words, please, your story.

Tom Ryden: Well again, thanks. Thanks for having me. Um, I've been in the robotics industry for many years. Um, and uh, about as you said about 10 years ago, uh, I had sold, uh, my last company and was kind of taking some time off and some folks from within the industry, in the community, um, came up to me and said, hey, we're thinking of this nonprofit, this idea, like, what can we do to encourage the development and adoption of robotics. And at that time many years ago it was slow going in robotics, I will say. Um, and a lot of the technology that was developed locally here in Boston was uh, either being commercialized elsewhere or overseas. Um, uh, and we really wanted to see what we could do to encourage startups to really take hold of some of the ideas that are coming out of the universities, commercialize them, turn them into product and see if we can get them to market. Um, we formed this nonprofit to support the startups. Um, we've expanded our mission a little bit into supporting robotics, uh, as a whole, the community as a whole around uh, advocacy for proper rules and regulations and standards, things like that. Um, and then we also uh, started a STEM initiative. Um, part of this came out of the realization that as the industry grows there's not enough talent, um, first coming into the engineering side as a whole, science and engineering, but specifically in robotics, um, we're going to need more talented people to service, support and uh, get these robots out there. We started the ah, STEM initiative targeted for high school students. So we've really grown as an organization. We're excited to do this work.

Tushar Kanade: Great.

Ira Jackson: I'm not very technologically literate, just picking up and handing over to Tushar, um, just to say um, how blessed we are here in Boston, which has its own innovation ecosystem largely driven around Life Sciences and EDs and MEDs, to also have mass robotics. And I guess we've emerged in part because of your leadership and the catalytic role that mass robotics uh, has played in becoming a world class center of robotics innovation. I think we've got some 450 robotics companies linked to maybe 50 colleges and universities. And it's a real thing, even if it's not as well understood as some of the more visible uh, innovations taking place in our region.

Tom Ryden: Yeah, I think robotics still is an emerging technology. Uh, that being said, as you mentioned, there are many, many companies here from large established players like Amazon Robotics and iRobot and some of the other semiconductor handling equipment companies down to just an amazing array of startups all doing something in robotics and automation. So yeah, great.

Ira Jackson: Over to you Tushar.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. Um, thanks for the introduction Tom, that was wonderful. Uh, there are obviously a lot of different themes we'll cover today. Right, let's start with just the genesis of mass robotics. I know you spent a couple of sentences there explaining how it came about, but um, what would you think went into sort of forming this non profit versus what the market had already at the time? Uh, where do you Think some of the pain points existed back then in robotics. And how is mass robotics sort of solving some of those even today?

Tom Ryden: So the main pain points that we were focused on back then was, um, for anybody who's developing tough tech, uh, robotics being part of that, um, it takes longer to get to product. If you're a startup, right, you have to invest a significant amount of money. You're developing a tightly integrated system of hardware and software, um, you have mechanical actuation. All of these things make a complex product. Um, and we kind of as a society, we're more focused on software, um, as a whole. Right? And you can get a new software package out in a couple of months and test it and get beta results and refine it and be on your way. You can't really do that with hardware, um, and especially something like robotics. And so, um, we were looking to see what we could do to support startups specifically who needed that longer Runway. Um, so both help in providing them space and facilities where they could develop their products and introductions to customers and funders who can help them on their journey. Um, so it was really an idea back in 2016, um, we were lucky enough to have some really great advisors, both from within the industry, um, and from government and other agencies, uh, who said, hey, this is good, this is the things you should think about. Um, and we took all that input and created our first space back in 2017. At the time we had one startup who said, yeah, I'll join. Um, uh, which was great. Um, but, uh, we had done a survey, um, and got about 45 startups to say yes, this is an interesting idea. We could really use space like this. And they gave us some great feedback on what should we have in the space, where should the space be located and how can we provide services that would help them. Um, and then we opened up. Ah. And uh, we've been growing ever since. We now have just over almost 90 companies here, um, all doing something related to hardware and robotics.

Tushar Kanade: Wow, that's incredible. Actually, especially as it's grown over time. Um, this is pretty, pretty relevant to some of the frontier state research Iri and I have been involved in, which is around the ecosystem architecture. And uh, therefore the question there is twofold, right? Like what, what went into mass robotics, especially as you wanted to coordinate between academia, industry and government. And how do you sort of continue creating that cohesive robotics ecosystem? Especially because you have such a deep talent pool from various undergraduate and graduate programs, but also so many other adjacent, uh, companies.

Tom Ryden: Yeah, I think one of the Things you mentioned is really vitally important for us and we strongly believe to have a vibrant uh, innovation ecosystem around a technology like we do. Um, there are many key components, um, academia. We have really tight relationships with the universities in the area. Um, we are blessed to have I think over 36 robotics labs, ah, almost within walking distance of Mass Robotics at these different universities. Um, which means there's an amazing amount of products, ideas coming out, things being developed, talent, uh, as well, um, and so that, so it's important that we have great relationships with those uh, and stay in touch with the professors and understand what's coming out. But beyond that it's important to have uh, things like service providers and others who know how to help do the things, kind of the background work to get a startup going. And we have that in Boston. We have funders, we have uh, lawyers and accountants who understand the work of startups. But it's also important to have government support. And I think we're lucky to be in a state that offers that. Uh, so we do a lot of work with Mass Technology Collaborative and the Innovation Institute that's a quasi out of the state of Massachusetts. Um, they provide funding, they provide resources, connections. Um, and they're a great partner, uh, they help us, they help uh our startups. Um, and having all of these different components, um, as well as one area that's a little different than robotics is test facilities. We also have a lot of physical uh, test facilities in the area. So we have one of the world's largest, uh, netted facilities up uh, just north of Boston, uh, where people can fly their drones. Um it also you can fly your drone indoors and outdoors in that facility. So that's pretty unique. Great testing facility. Um, we have the New England Robotics Validation center up at UMass Lowell, another great facility for providing insight uh into the performance of your platforms. And there are many other sites and so the combination of all of these things makes this really dynamic innovation ecosystem.

Tushar Kanade: Fantastic. Fantastic. And that's actually pretty relevant. Right? Especially because of the tri sector coordination which is I guess where many of these challenges uh, become complex, uh, just to handle. Right. Especially in your position or position such as yours as an executive director of initiatives like these, uh, it becomes strenuous over time so to say to just ensure that the program successful year in, year out. And so also you know, making tangible goals and targets uh, which are otherwise easily missed by any individual piece of these different sectors.

Ira Jackson: Right.

Tushar Kanade: Whether it's government or whether it's a single institution, even as prestigious as mit Sorry, Ira, do you have a question?

Ira Jackson: You know, I mean, collaboration, even amongst higher educational institutions is, is an unnatural act. And here you are, Tom, orchestrating and sort of being the maestro between many different academic institutions, different levels of government, city government, state government, and then a plethora, a vast array of industrial consumers and users. So it really is, it may not be a new form of governance, but it's a new skill set to get an alignment where incentives are, are in order for Everybody to make 1 and 1 and 1 equals 7.

Tom Ryden: Right. I'll give you an example, ah, especially on the, on the academic side, um, and which just kind of highlights the value of the, of an independent organization like ourselves. Um, this is a couple of years ago, NASA, ah, had a couple invested in a couple of large humanoids. Ah, they were very expensive. Um, and uh, there was one at MIT and one at Northeastern, I believe. Um, we were lucky in New England to have two of these humanoids. Um, NASA wanted to take one back for all the research. Um, and so there was a discussion of, well, what do we do with this? And the professor at Northeastern came up with the idea of, well, let's put it at mass robotics, then we can all use it. We had it here for some time and, uh, MIT Northeastern and UMass Lowell had access to the robot. Um, and that's just one example of, I think, ways that you talk, as you mentioned. And, um, we can kind of bring one plus one plus one together to really expound on the successes here.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. Um, and that's a good segue to a couple of other questions right around humanoid robots overall. And we can get as technical here as you want us to. So you mentioned NASA's collaboration around humanoid robots. We've spoken earlier about how Tesla, or Figure AI have sort of tried to revolutionize humanoid robotics for this decade. How do you think this evolving at a very high level or very general level? And what are some of the first few use cases you see for humanoid robots, at least in terms of just the churn of startups that's gone through mass robotics?

Tom Ryden: Um, so humanoids is the hot topic in robotics today. We're here at the beginning of 2025 and it's, uh, if you just look at the investments last year in 2024, you'll recognize that a lot of the funding for robotics went into humanoids. Um, and there's excitement around it.

Ira Jackson: Is that what's called. I'm sorry, Tom, is that what's called cobots for those of us who aren't sophisticated?

Tom Ryden: No, okay, all right, that's a different thing. Yeah, we'll talk about cobots too. But humanoids is truly a robot that looks like a human. Right. Um, and they're usually bipedal, so two legged, uh, platforms. Um, and you know, people can uh, they talk about the benefits of humanoid because it is human like, therefore it should be able to do, go where humans go, do what humans do. Um, the problem is that they're also very complex, um, and therefore they tend to be expensive, relatively hard to control and so forth. Um, I think the money investment that is going into Humanoids is going to help all of the robotics industry as they make progress in these different areas. I'm not sure that humanoids will become widespread in terms of specifically their deployments. Um, a lot of times you can do it with a wheeled robot, um, and that has collaborative arms on it. You don't necessarily need a humanoid. Um, but I do think that the work being done, uh, especially around physical AI, um, and understanding having these robots understand their environment and being able to do tasks very efficiently and with very simple commands, that's um, going to really be helpful in the robotics industry as a whole.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. And this actually makes me go back to a movie from 26 years back. So pretty much everyone in my generation has not seen this as much as I would love them to. The Bicentennial man.

Tom Ryden: Right.

Tushar Kanade: Robin Williams, Sam Neill, uh, just for IRAs and everyone else's, uh, note that's the peak of at least one, kind of a peak of what a humanoid robot could do. But that's interesting and those are some interesting set of comments. How do you see this market evolving with a couple of these companies? Right. Like so Tesla believes it's primarily labor oriented in the warehouse and figure AI and others believe that. Sure. But maybe there are many more applications. How do you think this goals and what are some of the timelines? This is again us spending a little bit of time here over the next five, ten minutes of the podcast on what the research and development levels are for some technologies like this.

Tom Ryden: Um, so I'll kind of throw an example and I might get the date slightly wrong, but I think in 2016 Elon Musk said that self driving cars, full self driving, uh, would be in the next year. And I think he's pretty much said that every year since. Um, and so um, I think that there is a lot of talk about the deployment of humanoids. I think we're still a number of years away from that. Um, and there's a lot of reasons around that, um, I think the technology is developing very fast. Um, but there's also has to be the adoption by the end user in ways that make sense for them. And so a great example is safety cases. You need to build a safety case around, um, how humanoids function and operate next to people in a factory, let's say. Um, and that's still usually dependent on standards. There hasn't been standards around that yet. Um, ASTM and others are working on standards. Um, but I think there's a number of kind of building blocks that you're going to need to see completed before you see large scale deployments of these types of robots.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. And this is again another insight. Right, um, sorry, you're saying something. Nope, there's another insight that can be, you know, carved out from what he just said. Um, what are some of the lessons that you think, you know, members of the audience or just founders of builders of the next generation can learn from robotics companies of the present or robotics companies in a recent past? Like how difficult or different, if not difficult is it to build a robotics company versus companies in similar technology sectors?

Tom Ryden: Right.

Tushar Kanade: But not necessarily hardware. What, in your experience, have you seen some of the founders struggle a bit more in the last eight, nine years, ah, through mass robotics?

Tom Ryden: Yeah. I think one of the things that startups struggle with and that we try to help them with is this the process of iteration around. You know, you will build an alpha product and you'll get it out to customers and get feedback. But it's hard to do large scale alphas or betas with hardware, um, to manage that whole process. It's not like you can ship a ton of them if they start to fail, you got to take them all back and fix them. So you want to do this iteration process, but that means it's slow and you quite can't get the volume of feedback that you can maybe if you deploy a software package, um, making sure that you understand all of the different aspects of the hardware, uh, and the support that you're going to need to provide to those early users and make sure you're appropriately getting feedback. Um, we encourage our startups to talk to obviously as many customers as possible. Um, sometimes you'll see that our startup robots are cool. So that's almost a drawback because then we get a lot of people coming in going, I can do this really neat thing with a robot. And then we of course go, well, how many customers have you talked to? Right. Um, and then go out and talk to some more and go out in the field, we had a company that was doing an agricultural robotic, uh, product. And I asked him, I said, well, when was the last time you were actually on a farm? Like, and he gave me this look and I'm like, have you ever been on a farm? You're going to deploy something that farmers are going to have to use, right? So you need to get out there and really understand why they would use your technology, how it's going to help them and all the other things that go into supporting a high tech product on a farm. Um, and so that's one of the things we really encourage our startups and work with them is to talk to the customers, get out there, we try to bring potential customers in so that they can meet them, um, to gain on that experience.

Ira Jackson: Tom, I haven't been out to the farm, but I did visit you in Mass robotics and I was so impressed with how tactile and manual and physical the invention is. It's not only intellectual and conceptual, it's uh, what the Greeks called phronesis. It's, it's practical wisdom. And it seems to me that that's what you're describing with, with Tushar is an appreciation for intelligence, innovation, uh, technology, but also practical implications and how does it work and getting hands on to make sure that that alpha leads to a beta leads to real traction in the marketplace, that's going to solve a problem.

Tom Ryden: These are complex machines, so the user interface is critical. And now back to your earlier discussion about humanoids. This is an area that I think, uh, with a combination of generative AI will really allow robots to take hold in ways that we haven't seen in the past. When you can really communicate your intent to the robot and the robot understands that and can do that task. Right. If, uh and Ira had a chance to look into one of our labs, we have a lab that has uh, um, industrial arms, collaborative arms and traditional industrial arms. Um, and each one of those arms is controlled by a. We have all sorts of different vendors of arms and each vendor has their own pendant to control their arm. They're all different. Um, and you know that's, it's really hard to imagine the future. That is a way that factory workers could all use these things. They're not going to get educated on each one of these different pendants. But that's not going to happen in the future. You'll be able to tell the robot, you'll be able to say, hey, can you go pick up that part and put it in this slot and do that 50 times go, uh, right. And once you get into that level of communication with the robots, I think that's when you're going to see the adoption really take off.

Tushar Kanade: Yeah, totally. And you mentioned farming and agriculture. There's so many different kinds of automations but also robotic solutions, which is a key distinction that I guess some of our audience members would love to know. Because I remember in just um, a couple of years that I've seen a few startups approach some of us for investments or advice or just scaling, um, consulting services.

Tom Ryden: Right.

Tushar Kanade: There have been all sorts of products and solutions. There have been seeding robots, there have been crop harvesting robots and autonomous tractors on one end and then there are breeding robots and autonomous agricultural robots, but some sensor oriented solutions. So what do you think is the um, is the line, whether it's thin or not, between robotics and automation or is it one and the same for the layperson or is it meant to be different and distinct as you know, different subsectors within robotics start to emerge over the next five to 10 years?

Ira Jackson: Yeah. And beyond Amazon Warehouses or Tesla autonomous vehicles, what's the opportunity and implications and upside for robotics and AI in say medicine or surgery, uh, or other challenges that we face as a society?

Tom Ryden: Yeah. So I um, think to the first question. Uh, um, what makes a robot robot really is, ah, there are a couple of things that we look for when we look at companies to determine whether they're a robotic company. And it's the ability to essentially to sense and react. Right. And have onboard actuation or movement. So the ability to understand your environment and respond to your environment. Um, and so traditional automation has not had that chance. It doesn't reconfigure itself. But robots can really understand what has happened to them in their environment and do a task that might be different than the previous task based on that feedback. Um, I think in agriculture there's a lot of different areas where robotics can really take hold. One of the areas we're seeing a lot of work on is in weeding. Um, and it's interesting, there's many different approaches to it. Um, but um, there's a number of companies that have been funded to address this problem. Um, we are going to have a labor, we have a labor shortage. It's going to grow with a new administration, uh, for people who can, who want to spend their days out in the field weeding. It's backbreaking work. We can develop automation that can do that. I think it's just going to be really helpful in allowing us to Be more efficient in the food we produce and more effective, more environmentally friendly because we don't have to use the same level of pesticides. If you actually have robots, whether it's zapping or physically picking or tilling, um, it's, it's uh, a, it's a win across the board.

Tushar Kanade: Interesting. And how would you then sort of distinguish this further in healthcare? Right, because there are so many sub sectors in healthcare as well. Yeah, I remember interviewing, um, um, a fellow Harvard alum a few weeks ago from the medicine school, leading neurosurgeon, talking about brain computer interfaces. Now that uh, on one hand there is a lot of people talking about robotics and automation entering that field, uh, especially as you have more software advances through AI or without AI. On the other hand, there are people who say that the precision required and the decisions required have so many variables that only the human mind can sort of make those uh, decisions.

Tom Ryden: Right.

Tushar Kanade: Live, um, that may result in life or death. Now do you see some subsectors of healthcare now, regardless of regulatory hurdles, do you see some subsectors within healthcare still benefit from rapid advancement in robotics? Or do you think some of these are truly speaking the long term, not like the musk saying it's next year?

Tom Ryden: Um, I actually think on the, on the health care side there's some great, uh, near term wins with robotics. Um, part of that is, um, and you mentioned surgery. I think robotic surgery is a great example where a combination of a skilled surgeon and a robot that can assist, um, is going to really make the difference. So it's not just a fully autonomous robot doing that, um, and it's not just a surgeon doing it on its own, but just a combination where they can really use the tools and the surgeon can have the robot do certain tasks. That's really hard for the surgeon to do, but the surgeon can oversee that. Um, and I think that's one of the areas, um, the other area that robots are really moving quickly on is uh, assistive tech, what we call assistive tech. So uh, whether that's traditional wearables, so a robot that you wear like an exoskeleton, or whether it's AIDS to help the uh, elderly and infirm to get in and out of bed using um, tools. I think if you nursing is a great example. Just moving patients is so physically demanding on nurses. Um, and it's hard, it's complex. So can you have a robot help there? I, um, don't know if you'll ever have a robot do all of that. I'm not sure, people would be comfortable if a robot did that. But a combination with a, ah, nurse guiding, assisting and having a robot doing some of that quote, heavy lifting, I think that can really make a difference.

Ira Jackson: Maybe this is a pedestrian example, Tom, but when I visited with you, you allowed me to use a cursor. Um, and that cursor, when I went out of bounds, uh, provided resistance to me on the cursor. So I'm not a brain surgeon. I don't think you were entrusting me to do brain surgery. But I could imagine that that would be extremely helpful to a surgeon to know when he or she is going beyond the parameters of what the robot is telling them they should be. So again, maybe I'm conflating too many things.

Tom Ryden: Nope, nope. Uh, so what I was talking about is a device we have here that's a haptic feedback. Um, and so if you are teleoperating a robot so you're still in control, but you're moving a robot that is somewhere else in the world and that robot gives you feedback on how you're performing. Um, and it's sensory feedback. So it's actually telling you, look, you've driven into a wall or something and you get that feedback. Or if you're doing remote surgery, you know, you've, you've moved the blade in a spot that you're not supposed to. Um, having that instant feedback is really valuable. And I think that's another example of ways that this technology can move things forward.

Ira Jackson: And I assume, Tom, um, uh, it would be a given that there are enormous applications in the defense industry and for war fighting as well, right? For these sorts of.

Tom Ryden: Yeah, and I think that's one of the areas that has been early adopters of, of robots. Um, and we're going to continue to see that. I think if you look at like bomb disposal robots, which have been around for quite some time, um, and their ability to really allow an operator to be at a safe distance while

Ira Jackson: they

Tom Ryden: work on a device, um, that's just, it's life saving and so that's real value. Um, but I also think that the nature of war is changing. We're seeing that in the Ukraine and things and, and with drones and other technologies that's going to continue to evolve. It's um, an area that we don't get a lot of involvement in. We have a number of dual use companies here, so companies that do both DoD and commercial applications. Um, but it's ah, an interesting area that we're, you know, we want to make sure. The technology is used for good, so to speak.

Ira Jackson: Tushar, if you'll forgive the interruption, I know it's non sequiturous, but Tom mentioned drones and uh, I again was inspired by what mass robotics is doing with their drone academy. So Tom, would you just tell us a little bit about that? You know, one takeaway I had was you're involving young men in a, in a discipline which they wouldn't necessarily be attracted to STEM and engineering and, and physics and the like, but you're attracting them in droves in part because it's so tactile and, and, and it relates to their lives and things around this drone academy.

Tom Ryden: Yeah. So Ira mentioned drone academy that we offer. This is one of our STEM courses. It's offered over the summer. It's a week long course. Um, and the reason I love it is, uh, the students at the beginning of the week get a box of parts and it is literally a cardboard box with a bunch of parts. Um, and they're saying at the end of the week you are going to have built a drone and you can program it and fly it. And that's the goal. Um, and so they learn a lot of hands on tasks. They learn how to solder, um, they learn a little bit of 3D printing and some other things, CAD work. Um, and then they learn some basic programming with the objective of building this drone. And the great thing about it is they get to keep the drone at the end of the week. So they build it, they can program it, and then they can go home with it with the hope that they will continue to use it, um, and uh, explore different ways that they can continue their education in the field. Um, robots has a unique advantage of capturing people. It's one thing to write a piece of code that might add a spreadsheet cell to another spreadsheet cell, but it's another one to write code that makes a robot move across the floor. And that's when we see students eyes light up. We have another course where, um, they break into teams. They usually, it's about four to six students per team. They have a robot that has a gripper on it and they are tasked to make the most efficient way to go pick up an object and bring it back. Um, so it's not a really complex task, but it's also competitive. So they're competing against their friends. Ah, and they're trying to write code and they learn because they don't really understand how this robot operates until they start writing code and realize, oh, that's not turning it right. I need to adjust this variable. I need to do that. Um, and it's just loads of fun to watch, uh, them really get excited about writing code for the first time

Ira Jackson: to share just one other interruption before passing it back to you. Because I'm getting so excited listening to Tom again talking about involving young people and another program that you run, Tom, I believe is called, uh, Jump Jumpstart. Uh, fellowship. The Jumpstart Fellowship. And what impressed me so about that was that it's all young women involving stem. So could you just tell us a word or two about that? Because I found it so inspiring.

Tom Ryden: Yeah, that's actually our most successful program. Uh, Jumpstart's a longer program. It actually runs for six months. Um, and it is for rising high school juniors, uh, girls, um, and they, uh, come in every Saturday, um, and both school vacations for from, uh, January till May. And they learn both technical skills. So they get learned Cadillac. There's a lot of CAD training. There's, uh, there's some programming. Um, they learn how to 3D print. They learn how to use tools in our machine shop. Um, but there's also social skill side we. They learn LinkedIn and how to write a resume and all of that. Um, and the purpose is to get them so that they feel comfortable working in a tech environment. That's our mission for them. And so if they are successful in going to class for the entire time, they get paid a stipend, um, because these generally are students who would have had to work else to continue, whether they're schooling or whatever else. So we pay them to come to school, but more importantly is they get a job, an internship in a tech company, uh, for that summer, that following summer. Um, and the idea is to get them to feel like they belong. One of the things you'll find in robotics, and it's no different in any other industry, is there's a lot of acronyms and we use a lot of words that people like. If you've never been exposed to it, you just don't feel comfortable. Right. And we get them. You know, I say CAD all the time, and I'm assuming the audience knows what CAD is. Maybe not. A lot of our students have no idea what we're talking about when we start throwing things out like that Computer Aided Design and things. And so for us, um, that's what we get all excited about, is getting them comfortable and then getting them that internship so that they know this can be a choice for them going going forward. It may not Be they may choose to do something else, but at least they know oh, I could do that.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. This is a great um, set of uh, you know, overview of the programs run by Master Robotics. It takes me back to my high school as I was just graduating into one such program back in India. Uh, we were also taught something based in C, which was I guess one of the uh, I m mean pretty sure it still is one of the leading languages to learn for robotics. Right. At least the basics. And uh, I remember being in one of these camps myself at about 8, 16 or so. Uh, but uh, yeah, it's a great experience being there in that age trying uh, to just introduce yourself to something new, uh, which is also new in so many different dimensions. Right. Not just about, as you said, putting something and then not even seeing how it works other uh, than on a screen. So that's fantastic. And this um, I'm sure must be empowering an entire population of um, who would have otherwise been not robotics enthusiasts, but who would now consider at least careers which are robotics adjacent, if not core stem themselves. Let me also get us back to dual use since you mentioned dual use. Right. Um, defense tech is pretty incredible this past couple of years actually, but particularly 2024. I think it broke most records in terms of venture capital raised. So defense tech in the US alone raised I don't know, $3 billion or so, which beat the previous year which was $2.7 billion record. And I'm m sure like a bunch of companies, a handful of companies lead these, but how many of these do you think uh, then become relevant for the robotics of the next five years? As you see geopolitical conflicts dom many of our conversations and as we find ourselves in an era where we have the most number of conflicts in the world since the second World War. So how do you see robotics playing its role in getting us through a different layer altogether? Right. As opposed to creating um, simple innovations?

Tom Ryden: Well I think we need to be very aware of the rate of change of the technology and robotics specifically and how it can impact warfare. Um, and therefore we need to make those investments that you just talked about. Um, I will say that the military uh, is very challenging for startups. Um, the funding is very, your ability to get contracts or awards. It's very choppy. We um, had one company here that is uh, worked for almost two years, two and a half years to get a contract, um, that they were promised. Oh, this is going to be easy. You know, the army has all these faster ways to do contracting now OTAs and other things, and this is going to be much quicker. Um, and yet it still took a long time. And for a startup that's really hard. Um, and so they pivoted to doing more commercial work to smooth that out. And generally that's what most of the startups do is look for these, as I mentioned, dual use applications. Where can I take this technology and see success? Uh, in the commercial space as well. But I think that robots both in doing things like bomb disposal, inspections and things like that, uh, and then we all know what drones are capable of doing, that's going to continue to evolve. Um, the ability to do what swarm technology. So having multiple drones controlled by one individual, that's going to just force multiply. Um, and we're seeing a lot of development in those areas.

Tushar Kanade: Interesting, interesting. How do you tackle dual use overall? So like, you know, on one hand it's really fascinating as an emerging sector. Uh, I mean it was always there, but perhaps mostly driven by the military industrial complex. Right. Uh, how do you sort of allow for safe development of newer generations of robotics technologies while also encouraging startups to look at civilian markets. Right. More traditional commercial markets, as you said. Uh, do you pick sides depending on the technology or do you pick sides depending on the market potential?

Tom Ryden: Yeah, so we don't pick sides. Right. That's, that's not what we do. Um, what we try to do is expose the startups to as many opportunities as possible and allow them to work with the customers that make sense for them. Um, so we actually host, every year we host a couple of events with, uh, the military, the U.S. military. Um, we will generally pick a service and have them come in and talk about their challenges. Um, and so we've done, uh, I think most recent we did with the Marines. Oh, we did with dla. I'm sorry, Defense Logistics Agency. I think they were the last group that was in. Um, and so they talk about what are their specific challenges. Our startups talk about what they're working on and we try to see if there's a way that they can marry up and make sense for the startups to address some of the needs of the military. We do explain the challenges of working with military. Um, but there are a lot of new programs that help, whether it's like DIU and afworks and a number of these other organizations out of the Defense Department that help work with startups. Um, so I think for us it's really just exposing them to the opportunities and then letting them decide which path they go down.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. It's a related different question. At the same time it's been a year, exactly a year actually since I was in China. We were meeting with different levels of government and business. We instantly met with uh, who was the co founder of Y Combinator China, which is no longer Y Combinator China, but was at the time of inception a few years ago. And uh, we were discussing similar questions around, you know, how they promote, um, how the descendants of Y Combinator China now promote startup, innovation, defense innovation overall etc. How do you think robotics innovation has changed with the rise of China as a global power, both in manufacturing but also in general innovation? And how do you think that's evolved, particularly in defense or maybe any other sector that you may have more specific knowledge of. Right. Uh, within robotics is there any competitive advantage, uh, that's real and not um, you know, not just made up in most news cycles or are ah, the technological innovation curves pretty much similar for the US as it is for other countries like Germany or Japan or Korea?

Tom Ryden: I think, uh, um, well first if you look at the, there's some reports out and you may have looked at these like ifr, uh, International Federation of Robotics, um, produces a report on the installation of industrial robots and China leads by far. In fact US is way down, uh, relative to Korea, Japan, Singapore, other nations. Um, China is adopting robotics and that gives it an advantage. So not only can it develop but by having that customer base there you get to iterate, get that feedback and continue to develop. So we're seeing an amazing amount of development out of China in robotics in the last couple of years and that's going to only continue to uh, uh, grow I think. Um, I'll give you a specific example. Taking it back to humanoids. We talked about humanoids here we have arguably one of the most leading companies in the development of humanoids in Boston Dynamics just down the road. Um, and um, but there's a company out of China called Unitree that has a $10,000 human. Right, right. When you get to those prices it's really hard, right, to compete. Uh, and so I think in many respects China has a price advantage that we're going to have to continue to watch to see what can we do here locally to allow us to build and compete on those, on those uh, costs. I think that the US has some policies that are, that are uh, make sense for us in terms of buying. Um, there's ah, a, I think it's called blue for the drones to ensure that they are built here in the U.S. um, but we had a company, uh, that one of our startups competed for a program in that, uh, one of the large scale, um, replicate programs, which is one of the military programs trying to scale drone production. Um, and they were asked to put on a communications module that in the US cost $3,000. I can buy a complete drone from TGAI for $200 or $100. Right. And so it's hard to understand how we can be competitive unless we really invest heavily like the Chinese government has. And to that point, uh, many countries other than the US have a robotics, a national robotic strategy, uh, where they are trying to look at what investments make sense, where do they want to see the technology go? China has one, Singapore has one, US does not. And I think that's something that we could focus on here locally is to help us develop that kind of strategy to help guide them as they want to continue to be the leaders in this technology.

Tushar Kanade: Yeah, absolutely. So many insightful points there. Um, incidentally, even Australia has one and the US does not.

Tom Ryden: That's right. So just comparing the Australian one. It's good.

Tushar Kanade: Yeah, yeah, comparing even the scale. Right. Like Australia. The joke most people in India at least growing up used to make is I come from Bombay, of course, uh, which is one of the most populous cities in India. The joke was that, uh, just Bombay and it's adjacent city, just one more city with more populous than Australia. And the idea that you have, you know, uh, a country with that scale which is about 20, 20 or 25 million people having a national robotic strategy while the US does not. It's, it's startling considering so many of the innovations have birded right from here with Boston Dynamics and others leading the char. Right. Uh, but I'll also go back to what you said. It's also fascinating what you mentioned about the International Federation of Robotics. China is producing 300,000 or at least installing 300,000 robots each year, while uh, US has about 40,000. Uh, so already as you mentioned, the gap is widening and uh, with, with again geopolitical curbs, which I guess is this part of our podcast at this point. Right. Ah, resulting in more export bans or sort of more tariffs and impediments to free or uh, it's difficult to predict how innovation cycles will look like, uh, especially for countries without a, uh, significant manufacturing base, if you would agree. Uh, but moving on, um, let's talk a little bit about actually the local ecosystem. Now you mentioned Boston Dynamics. That's a good segue. Uh, what do you feel about Boston's Robotics ecosystem compared even to other regional or national robotics hubs, maybe the Bay Area, maybe elsewhere, if they are competitive enough, or even compared to global hubs other than China. How do you see Massachusetts, Boston, maybe other geographies in the US growing over the next five to 10 years?

Tom Ryden: Yeah, so, um, I do, I'm a believer the clustering, uh, the value of having clusters. And, um, we are lucky to have a very, very strong one here. Um, as I mentioned, you know, close to 500, uh, companies within the greater Boston area that are doing something in robotics. That's just an amazing number of companies. Um, the benefits of that also are beyond just having the companies here, but having the talent, Having the talent that can move from one company to another and help other companies move along, uh, is really valuable. Boston's such a small area city. Just we're all connected. And that's what I love about this ecosystem is, you know, we almost, you know, even though there's a number of companies, they almost know each other. All know each other. Um, and I think that there are other areas within the US that are doing a great job. Pittsburgh has a good robotics cluster, of course, the Valley does. Valley's a little bit spread out, so it's a little bit harder to get that kind of tight knit that you see in Boston. But they're up and coming, uh, coming clusters like in Atlanta and in Austin, Texas and other areas. So I think that's good, that, that, that signals a good, uh, indication that, you know, we're putting the investments in and building up that robotics community. But, um, yeah, we are still far behind some of the other countries that, what they're doing.

Tushar Kanade: Interesting.

Ira Jackson: Go ahead.

Tushar Kanade: Let's talk a little bit more about talent development. Um, do you, you know, how does Mass Robotics leverage Boston's concentration of robotics talent? Are you satisfied with the concentration? Do you, do you think things that need to increase change a little bit? And what role do universities particularly play in your ecosystem, especially with the plethora of programs that, you know, Ira, and you were discussing earlier, um, how do you facilitate academic or industry collaborations? Are they as important as market growth or are they just complementary?

Tom Ryden: Either way, I think it's really important to have the talent.

Ira Jackson: Right.

Tom Ryden: You can't grow your startups without it. Um, so we run a career fair twice a year. Um, and, uh, so our next one is on May 1st, I believe. Um, and, um, we essentially bring in robotics companies that are hiring, uh, startups all the way to large scale. Um, and then we promote and recruit students and, uh, Other folks who are looking for new opportunities to come. And we usually get about 1200 applicants to come. And truthfully, we don't have that many jobs, so the lines are huge. I can send you pictures of where the people are at. Um, it shows that there's an interest in the field and that we have talent here, and that is great. Um, I think that we, um, want to encourage the development. I mean, we have. WPI was one of the first universities to have a robotics undergraduate program. Um, we have many different programs that are also working at community colleges and others. So it's the whole range that we need to work on workforce development. And I think we have. We're doing a good job here.

Tushar Kanade: Great.

Ira Jackson: Yeah. It seems to me, and I'm sure to Tushar as well, and to our many hundreds, if not thousands of listeners who are now benefiting from your wisdom, Tom, that you're doing very special things and innovative things and important things that, uh, we all can learn from and replicate and scale around the world. But it seems to me, and I may be naive, that you've created a kind of special sauce at Mass Robotics, uh, which if we could bottle and, um, spread, uh, around the world, we'd be better off because there's so much upside potential in leveraging robotics with AI to solve the social and economic challenges of the future, whether it's recovering from war in Ukraine and Gaza to poverty and farming and all the other issues. Um, so what you're doing is local, but it's global as well. Uh, it's really inspiring because it's driving technology and it's doing so with a mission and a purpose, uh, that, uh, leverages not only growth but, and job opportunity and commercialization, but social benefits. And it really is an impressive story. We're very grateful for your time and your leadership. And, um, I think we chose wisely, Tushar and I, in, uh, identifying you as an innovator for the future. Um, and we very much appreciate your participating in our Frontier State series.

Tom Ryden: Great. Well, thank you very much for having me. Obviously, I can talk forever on robotics, um, but I am glad to share some of what we're doing, uh, with your audience.

Tushar Kanade: Absolutely. And I think just to end, uh, on a couple of different notes, you know, as a final word from your end, uh, the first of these two. What would you say if you were to have another 75 years? What would change completely, uh, in robotics? How do you think this will go on? What are some of the advice as people try to enter the space today?

Tom Ryden: Um, so the advice I think is absolutely, I think robotics can have an impact. And back to what Ira mentioned a little bit, and what I think I'm most excited about is the startups I see that are doing things that can help our environment. We've, um, created such a mess in many respects in the world, um, that it's going to be hard for us to get out of that. And we have so many startups that are doing everything from. There's a company doing some really innovative stuff in metal recycling. Um, we have a company doing something that's like solar panel installation with robots to make that a cheaper alternative. I mean, I think there's a lot of ways that you're going to see robots in the future impact the world for good. And we're just so excited about that.

Tushar Kanade: Fantastic. Great. Thanks so much, John. Uh, this was fantastic. And we, um, would definitely love to host you again, hopefully diving into a different set of issues adjacent to robotics and, of course, how we look at the technologies of the future. Thank you so much.

Tom Ryden: Sounds good. Thank you.

Ira Jackson: Thank you. Leadership tomorrow.