The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I don’t see this happening in the food preparation domain as much as I see it happening in cleaning services. Lawn mowing is a good example, because it is a repetitive and physically exerting function. Those are good application areas. If I were thinking about consumer applications, what other applications would I be looking at in terms of launching a product to market that could be remotely as successful as Roomba? >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I think the way to think about it is from different societies, where there is a lot more use of services and a lot more domestic help. In American society that help is there, but probably in the more affluent class of society and not as penetrated into the broad mass of society. If you look at lawn mowing, for example, I could see a parallel of the Roomba technology.

>>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: If you look at today’s robots, what would the market penetration look like? Are we still mostly in the area of industrial and manufacturing applications? How much have consumer applications taken off?

RM: First off, robotics is a very broad technology. There were talks about robotic kiosks at the airport that were handling the check-in for people bringing their bags. It was the first time I ever heard anyone refer to a kiosk as a robotic kiosk. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 1)

Rich Mahoney is the director of robotics engineering at SRI. He has more than 20 years of experience in the development and research of robotics. He holds a BS and an MS from Drexel University in Pennsylvania and a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge, England. In this interview he talks about current developments in the robotics industry and potential uses of robotics in our daily lives as well as the future of this fascinating field.

 Sramana Mitra: Rich, let’s start with a bit of context. Give us an overview of where you think robotics sits today.

Rich Mahoney: This is my 25th year in robotics. I started in 1988 as a graduate student, and robotics itself emerged in the 1960s as a manufacturing technology in Boston and Silicon Valley, where the first demonstrations of industrial robotics were gaining traction. >>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: OpsViz, Palo Alto, California

OpsViz provides infrastructure source of truth as a service for technology companies. With its flexible back-end and connectors to commonly used open-source tools, OpsViz ‘snaps in’ the architecture of its customers to ‘collect and clean’ the infrastructure data and analyze it. What sets OpsViz apart is that its founder Gülin Yilmaz managed to validate the business and pricing models and has a confident customer base to draw upon.

>>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Vishnu Bhat, VP and Head of Cloud Services at Infosys (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Through this there is a whole operational infrastructure – a reporting, monitoring and IT management infrastructure – that is required. What is your approach to that?

Vishnu Bhat: The cloud ecosystem harbors a productized solution. When we approach our enterprise clients, we predominantly offer service and solution value together. Let’s get back to the example of the client for whom we built the cloud ecosystem and are managing it for them. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Vishnu Bhat, VP and Head of Cloud Services at Infosys (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: We have been hearing about hybrid, public and private cloud for a while. We talked with all sorts of thought keaders in this space. We would like to hear some insights.

Vishnu Bhat: Let me give you a view of our evolution in the space of what we call ecosystems for enterprises and enterprise integration. What makes our approach unique in today’s setup? When we look at a hybrid ecosystem, for example, it poses a significant challenge for enterprises. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Vishnu Bhat, VP and Head of Cloud Services at Infosys (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I would like to spend some time on three of your clients. Explain some interesting trends and applications of cloud computing you are seeing.

Vishnu Bhat: We have seen the interest in cloud computing and the setting up of an ecosystem around it. It started out with retail initially, but we are now seeing that it is happening across the globe. >>>