The Upside of Automation

RobotLAB’s Elad Inbar on how finding the right robot for the job can make life easier for businesses, workers, and customers

What parts of your job are a waste of your time? What could you do with the time you save not doing them? How might that boost productivity? If the answers to these questions have you dreaming of a better, more efficient business, then the next question is crucial. Can that be automated?

As automation in the form of AI and robotics works its way into practically any industry you can think of, the answer to the last question, more often than not, is yes. Elad Inbar, author of “Our Robotics Future” and the founder and CEO of RobotLAB, wants to help businesses with their automation journey so they can move on to those bigger and better things.

“Robots are not here to take our jobs; they are here to make our jobs more meaningful and revolutionize the way that we work, helping business owners operate more profitably,” Inbar says.

It’s the upside of automation.

Filling the Gaps

Robotic automation is not here to take people’s jobs away, Inbar stresses. It’s here to make those jobs easier by performing mundane, repetitive tasks and empowering humans to perform higher-value tasks. Inbar advises businesses looking to add robotic automation to prepare employees by emphasizing that they’re not being replaced.

“You’re overworked the way it is now,” he said. “You can’t complete all your tasks, and these types of technologies are here to help you.”

If necessary, RobotLAB – which supplies and services more than 50 types of robots – will pay union dues on behalf of a robot.

“It’s just a digital member of the union, to step in and basically help the union members that are most overworked and understaffed, and this is a situation that is everywhere,” he said.

For the most part, though, robots are going to work in industries that struggle to find enough staff. Cleaning and hospitality are the top use cases currently. The average age of a housekeeper in hotels and care facilities is 57, Inbar said, and as one generation ages out, there aren’t enough new workers to fill positions.

Robots can help their human counterparts improve service and drive up wages. For instance, a robot taking on tasks in a restaurant like running food and bussing tables, like they do at Kura Sushi locations, allows servers to be more attentive to customers and earn better tips.

Other common use cases are moving inventory in warehouses and delivery packages or food.

“In hotels, we have robots that can go out from the kitchen in the basement, find the elevator or call the elevator, send themselves up to the right floor, get out, find the room, and deliver food, extra towels, shampoos, or whatever the guest might want,” Inbar said.

Emerging Industries

Stepping up in complexity, robots are now being deployed in cooking, security, even firefighting work.

“They have very fast ramp-up,” Inbar said. “The use case is there, the value proposition is there, the ROI is there. The robots can deliver the value. We are in the final stages of proving that, and then from here the waterfall is pretty obvious.”

He thinks that by 2030, robot plumbers will be a reality. That would be welcome in an industry that is paced to face a shortage of more than 500,000 plumbers in the next couple of years.

“This is a trade that is disappearing. People are not studying it, and there is no new cohort of people” going into plumbing. As a result, it’s hard for people to get a plumber to their house or business quickly, and hourly rates are high.

“The higher the price is, the more need for innovation to step in and fill the gap,” Inbar said.

Robots are already helping plumbers maneuver in crawl spaces and pipes that humans have a difficult time getting access to. Inspection robots from SuperDroid find the sources of leaks and clogs, saving plumbers a great deal of time and aggravation.

On a larger scale, Pipebots is designing robots that walk through sewers, discover faulty pipes, and relay the exact location and nature of the fault to engineers. The human engineers can then do a spot repair at the fault site without having to dig up entire city blocks.

Sewer Robotics takes things a step further, setting the robots to the big jobs. The company got its start when two operators decided to equip a robot pipe crawler with a high-pressure water jet to clear root blockage from a sewer pipeline. Since then, Sewer Robotics has developed water cutter robots that have performed such tasks as removing nearly 40 feet of concrete clogging a pipe at Rangers’ Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland.

Even the most advanced of these still require human intervention. Inbar’s running bet with the RobotLAB team envisions a humanoid robot equipped with hands and software downloads that give it a knowledge of working with pipes, working independently to fix plumbing problems. Given the pace of technological gain, he might just cash in.

Keeping Things Running

The key for executives looking to add robotic automation to their operations is identifying a use case and finding the right tool for the job.

“Because there is no ‘best robot,’” he said. “There’s a best robot for that use case, and this is something very important to understand.”

The biggest concern for business adopting robotic automation is servicing. Can the robot competently perform the work being asked of it? If it breaks down, who will fix it?

Inbar likened the situation to the early automotive industry. Henry Ford not only revolutionized the assembly line for faster production, he popularized a system of dealerships nationwide where owners could take their cars for service.

“I live in Dallas. I will not buy a car from a guy up in Michigan knowing that I have to ship the car back for repairs if something goes wrong, or wait for a technician to come to me from Michigan.”

RobotLAB currently has 36 service locations around the country and strives to be within a 2- to 3-hour drive of any given customer. Its agreement with Hilton hotels states that a technician will be there on the same day or the next day to service robots.

With robotic automation capable of performing a wide variety of tasks with reliable servicing the questions for businesses then revolve around what they like to automate and what they could do if robots did the dirty work. The answers are the key to a solution that can get businesses firing on all cylinders.