AI-Enabled Humanoid Robotics and the Future of ManufacturingAI-Enabled Humanoid Robotics and the Future of Manufacturing

AI-Enabled Humanoid Robotics and the Future of Manufacturing Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you , sir? 

Carman Pirie: I’m doing well. How are you doing? 

Jeff White: I’m doing great. 

Carman Pirie: Nice 

Jeff White: Technical issues getting into this recording, but otherwise we’re really good.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, good. But Jeff, now that you bring it up, see, the audience would not have known otherwise. 

Jeff White: Oh, I know. But they need to know the amount of love…

Carman Pirie: But I don’t know if you could hear the fire trucks and sirens that just were happening as well. But beyond the technology glitches, I think emergency services among others are out to get us right now. We’ll see if we can make it through. I’m excited for today’s podcast though. I really, I think today’s guest has an interesting way of talking about and marketing this intersection of robotics and AI, and I just wanna dive into that a bit. 

Jeff White: Feels very futuristic. I’m really stoked to begin unpacking some of this, so joining us today is David Kilzer. David is the founder and principal of Strategic Transformation Advisors. Welcome to The Kula Ring, David. 

David Kilzer: Thank you. It’s great to be here. 

Carman Pirie: David, it’s awesome to have you on the show. But then let’s jump right into it. I wanna know more about strategic transformation advisors. Can you just introduce our audience to what you’re up to a little bit, if you would. 

David Kilzer: Yeah. SDA is a relatively young firm. We founded with a group of principals that are maybe not all as longhaired as or long in the tooth as I am. I’ve been doing automation for some 50 years, frankly.

But never having as much fun as today. But the other partners that are with me have been former C-Suite executives, and so we bring a wide variety of different viewpoints and expertise to the challenges of our clients. Myself focusing mostly on the technical others on SIOP challenges others on CEO level visioning and strategy mapping. So we’ve been able to help a lot of clients in a diverse set of challenges that are brought by the changing technology and business environment that we all live in today. 

Jeff White: Tell us a bit about your own background and how you ended up where you are today.

David Kilzer: I’m basically a North Dakota farm kid. I grew up in North Dakota on a farm. And as such I had to do a lot of invention to keep my dad’s old farm equipment running. Then I fell in love with mechanics and automation at that point in time. Took that on and got a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Launched a career in automation with General Electric Company. I went on to add an MBA to that to get a little bit broader business perspective but able to use that the native interest in the skills that I’ve gotten on experiential and technical level to create a consulting firm right now that is really helping clients anticipate the needs, react to and position their firms for emerging technologies. 

Carman Pirie: David, that’s a fascinating background. I love the farm kid story. ’cause even looking at and tackling the challenge of automation, I guess looking at the opportunity of automation as well, for a very long time. I guess if you had to summarize… Because, industry 4.0 and these types of terms as it relates obviously to automation, that’s all not new. But if you had to summarize what’s this shift that we’re currently living through or that you are seeing in terms of how we’re talking about automation today? How we’re thinking about it versus maybe how we were 10 years ago or five years ago?

David Kilzer: If I can take my license there and go back a little further. Based on my experience, when I started doing automation relay logic was implemented with relays. And I took from there and I’ve lived through the conversion to the common pc. I was actually working as a senior manager in a digital corporation when the T-C-P-I-P protocol merged with packet switching. The collision of those two technologies gave us the internet. And like all of us on this call, we were there when the global positioning systems merged with mobile computing to give us the smartphone. And we’ve seen the impact on people, on business. But I tell you what we’re looking at right now, which is the convergence of artificial intelligence with advanced humanoid robotics that is gonna dwarf every one of those prior conversions. So, it is a frightening and exciting change that we’re looking at right now. And it’s gonna touch every part of human lives. Not just our business, but our personal lives. I’m approaching it with a lot of experience that the equipment would be very optimistic. At the same time, very clear-eyed that we’re gonna go through some really uncomfortable, somewhat dystopian transitions. I think there’s a valley that we have to transit, but on the other side of the valley I align with those that see what’s been euphemistically called sustainable abundance for humankind.

It’s gonna be a rocky path. But it’s one that’s tremendously exciting. ’cause what we can see in terms of the impact and humidity of humanity when we do the work, do make the successful transitions. And so I am just excited to be here at this point in time in humanity’s history. And I’m anxious to use my half century of experience to contribute to the successful transition so that’s what I am aiming at personally and professionally. 

Carman Pirie: That’s fascinating, David. I just, you know when you put it like that and as clear eyed as one can be about where it’s going. Of course we must recognize the massive degree of uncertainty associated with predicting the exact way in which all of this evolves. So how do you go about thinking about what makes an organization prepared or ready to navigate this transformation? I’m assuming that this must be part of your work. Is it just, what does it take to be ready to take advantage of this or to even begin to think about it?

David Kilzer: Change management has been a part of my professional repertoire. Any automation that I’ve either put in a firm that I work for or one of my client firms has hindered its success and we’ll continue to hinge on a human component. So being able to see the change from their perspective in terms of those people that are gonna be touching it, using it every day, and helping them make the transition to see what the possibilities and what the contributions to their firm and their personal lives are, what was going to be…

It doesn’t sound like technology. But it is absolutely a prerequisite for technology success that equipping people for that, that change and that transition is a prerequisite for success. No matter how well I do the technology design or how well it’s implemented by the suppliers, if it is not accepted and embraced by the staff that is going to employ it, it will not succeed.

Carman Pirie: So the readiness is fundamentally a human question not a technology one.

David Kilzer: At the beginning and at the end. Absolutely. And through the middle, if you ignore the human element, you will not succeed. If you think that the technology will be self-supporting and provide the business results that you seek on its own, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Jeff White: We’ve been seeing the use of robotics and automation in factories and other environments like that for producing everything that we use, in the world today. But there’s something different, most of those robots do not look human. So we’re talking here about this notion of humanoid robotics and kind of introducing that and, for so many people, sci-fi and movies and things haven’t necessarily prepared us for where we truly are today, but I think it colors people’s perspective of what they expect from humanoid robotics. What do you think it is that’s different about that from, welding robots and other things that we might see on the factory floor? 

David Kilzer: That’s why it’s… we preface it with AI enabled humanoid robotics. In the end, the humanoid robot itself is a machine and has machine advantages and limitations. You equip that with AI. And what is AI? AI is an available bandwidth to perceive and decode what is perceived and make projections and decisions based on what is perceived. And that is dramatically different than typical programming of a welding robot where you have to describe the welding path in a 3D space and give that to a machine that has servo motors and feedback transducers that move that welding head along that path. And if you need to make a change, you go back to the base core and you have to redesign a new path and maybe a different feed, maybe a different setting amperage or type of rod or wire. And that slowness really impedes business.

Where in the area of, the coming area of humanoid robots, where you have AI’s ability to do a lot of the discernment in extraction directly, rather than going through that long human loop of going back through the, describing the Cartesian coordinates and typing. Or putting them into a system, have it adapt in real time. It is going to hugely impact product quality, speed to market for change and quality of the actual product produced. It’s a different universe in a lot of ways, in many ways, and it’s the AI enabling component that really makes the machine different. 

There’s another dimension that’s gonna be really critical as you point out, the humanoid nature of these is because they’re intended to be used in a lot of different settings, not just industrial settings that we’ve been talking about if they are other commercial settings and the residential settings and what that’s gonna result in numbers instead of hundreds or thousands of units, we’re talking millions and in some projections, billions of these machines. And that’s gonna affect two dimensions. One of the dimensions is capability. There’s a new company called Open Mind that introduced OM1, which is the world’s first open source robot operating system. And what that will do is allow a robot in your kitchen to learn new sushi rolling skills from a robot in Osaka overnight. It’s truly a hive mind. So that ability and restriction that we talked about just a second ago about making a change, that goes away because if it’s work learned in one place, it’s learned in every place. And so that’s gonna dramatically expand the capabilities and once the capability, the utility of it is seen and expanded, and that’s going to achieve that volume, the billions numbers, and that’s gonna drive the cost through the floor compared to existing automation tools, suites.

Carman Pirie: And that can’t, you can’t help but picture then of course, if we’re living in a world that has millions to billions of these units in existence, that means that as humans, we’ve gotten a lot more comfortable than we are today living with them, haven’t we? We will have all experienced it, at least in some way shape or form. If that’s the case, and therefore how we begin to imagine it even changes like how we imagine the future use of them.

David Kilzer: When automobiles were introduced, they were very much a curiosity on that street that was clogged with horses and horse manure. And then within a decade they, the famous pictures that are shown out there. All of a sudden the horse drawn carriage was the curiosity. And humans are adaptable. I don’t know if any of you have had the opportunity to ride in a Waymo vehicle or the Tesla cyber cab down in Austin there really small implementation, but Waymo has been around in here, in Phoenix area for a lot of years, and it’s a real weird feeling the first time that you get inside of a Waymo.

No driver in a car, and a car takes off and drives you to your destination. And I tell you, that weird feeling lasts about five minutes. All of a sudden, I was on my phone, checking email. I was fiddling with the music controls to find some music that I liked. Instead of what Waymo guessed when I got in the car, and, I’m very comfortable. In fact, I enjoy the Waymo vehicles more than I do other forms of transportation because it is very predictable. And it allows me to do the email or the doom scrolling, if you will.

That transportation mode is different from others. The point there is human adaptability, as you correctly pointed out, that once we become exposed to this technology, we’re going to have a different perspective on it. We’re gonna lose that fear that’s baked into us from exposure to movies like Terminator and really realize that at a gut level, that is truly science fiction and that the reality is much different. And just as getting into a Waymo you, what you anticipate and the reality are really quite different.

Jeff White: David, how do you think about helping people prepare for this? Like, how are you coming at that when you talk about a bot a car or a self-driven car, like a Waymo or something like that, that’s one step for people. But how do you help them see the whole path that you’ve seen, with the next generation? AI powered humanoid robots. Like what are you telling people to expect and how to be prepared for it? 

David Kilzer: A couple of different points are important there. One, is to help them envision what the alternatives are, alternative paths and the end points of those paths, there is no end point. The type of neighborhood that those paths transit, so you work with them, you try to develop that envisioning and you find something that builds to that path that helps them to achieve their business and personal goals. Again we’re a consulting firm focused on the business side. So we’ll model that, we’ll show them, what are the likely outcomes in terms of market penetration available, gross margins and net income streams. Model it in that way. And then we will start building alternate means to achieve the optimum path that they can select through that envisioning. And once we get a clear enough picture of what the optimum path would look like. We’ll start to look at what are the physical assets and the human assets and the data assets that are required to start transiting that path. And then, this path is painted far enough in the future that we have to step back from that and say, how do we transition from here to there?

The laying out in achievable risk, managed digestible steps. And that means you have to take action near term. You can’t wait for that ultimate tool to suddenly appear at your doorstep and then flip the switch and make it run. It doesn’t work that way. You have to build the human capital and business infrastructure really to effectively utilize these tools. And then you have to make investments near term that are underachieving in terms of what those are, but build a framework for that. And that’s where we develop something called the humanoid readiness Quotient. Where we encourage our clients to measure their plans against that humanoid readiness quotient to make sure that they’re not caught in a what I call a cul-de-sac of comfort, which is picking up the proven low risk, what they’ve done in the past, and just replicating that or extending from that, that can lead you to a place that is extremely confining and constrained on a number of different dimensions and lacks that foundational element to implement the humanoid robotics, that AI enabled humanoid robot when it becomes available to them. So they have to make that transition, prepare for that transition too, to make that transition quickly. The penalty for not doing that can be extreme. Right now in a Gartner’s projection, I think for a human AI enabled humanoid robot, it’s cost of operation in a 2030 range is eight bucks an hour. Now, if your workforce, typical industrial workforce is fully loaded, is ya know. 40 bucks an hour for distribution, up to well over a hundred dollars an hour in manufacture. How are you gonna compete with someone else who has an effective $8 an hour labor load? You’re not, so not equipping your company to make that transition and make it effectively is retiring from the marketplace as a company, I think.

Carman Pirie: David, it sounds as though in some way, when we talk about 2030, I think it’s important for people just to put a little lens of reality on it. Like kids, it’s 2026, this isn’t far away. Like it’s a university undergraduate degree and all of a sudden we’re in 2030 kind of thing. And it does sound as though you’re advocating engineering in almost a degree of flexibility and future adaptability into the present systems and how they’re operating, how they’re manufacturing, how they’re doing what they do, so that they could be ready for those revolutions, frankly, when they happen. Am I picking up what you’re putting down? Am I summarizing elementary? I’m just curious. 

David Kilzer: I was just gonna say thank you, Carman, that, Yeah. It just fed back to me that says I’ve been somewhat effective at communicating what my thoughts are on that. 

Carman Pirie: Oh, cool. Awesome. That was, look, I’m just trying to, this notion of a humanoid readiness quotient to me, the marketer in me frankly, wants to steal that. And I think the marketers listening to this show should steal it. Not that they should steal it through the lens of measuring humanoid readiness, but it’s a very interesting and ownable way of measuring something that’s quite complex and new. And I think an awful lot of marketers find themselves in that space about how they do it, part of their job as a marketer is to be a bit of a sense maker, and that’s what it feels to me that humanoid readiness quotient does is it gives you a way of talking about a complex set in series of variables. Would that be accurate? 

David Kilzer: That’s accurate. The other dimension that I’d like to add is a little… On my part, a large dose of humility in terms of finding a framework that will help me eliminate my biases and my narrowed visions from my personal set of experiences and equip me to effectively evaluate what the business community at large is learning on and on a day-to-day basis. Then, we’re trying to design that quotient. So it’s adaptable and it evolves as the technology and human experience and business experience adapts and evolves. 

Carman Pirie: I’m often fond of saying, anybody that’s worked at Kula Partners will affirm, I say the words, the person that frames the debate wins the debate.

And in my way of looking at this humanoid readiness quotient, it’s a way of framing, a way of talking about something. And if you are the one framing it, then chances are you can drive towards a successful outcome that you envision whatever success is as you’ve defined it. So I think it’s just a really cool idea and I think it’s something that people can really learn from.

David Kilzer: Yeah. Thank you. And we’ve got it there and some of it. The elements are very technical, when you discuss automation options that you have to implement as a bridge to the future, you can do that by testing something called an API. Does it have an API? Is it a rest, API? So, there’s clear paths and ways to measure a particular option that isn’t all subjective. 

Jeff White: It sounds like you’re also pushing towards, you talked earlier about an open sourced OS for robots and you’re talking about APIs. When we as software people think about creating new things, we’re often thinking about how do we interoperate between all of these different platforms and the API, of course is the mechanism for doing that and certainly hold up the platforms that are API forward or API first as those that kind of get it and are interested in making something that operates with other things.

So that’s certainly to me, if we’re talking about this notion of deeply integrated, AI powered robotics the ability to work with that is going to be paramount. 

David Kilzer: Absolutely. And one of the things that I think companies miss, even when we talk about that in, in the technology and structure more than anything that an API provides is that’s the heart and the circulatory system that works inside of a company.

But the life force. The blood that flows because of that machinery is the data that exists inside of a company, which is often vastly under underestimated. In turn, people get enamored with a robot ’cause they can touch it and feel it and see it, but the data structures inside of the company are more critical in a sense that all of those other machines don’t work. All those other approaches, no matter how well they’re implemented, cannot succeed without available accurate data that is reliably mapped to whatever, the company’s evolving into what the market situation is. What their customer feedback is providing them is that data flow is really the lifeblood. So it very much has to be addressed holistically. I think different companies are heading in different directions and starting at different points. There is no one size fits all prescriptive path. It is an exciting journey that is differentiated for every customer, every client. And that’s the heart of the marketing and sales efforts is getting involved with your client, understanding what their needs are, being able to understand what you offer them and articulate the benefits from what you offer in terms of what their needs are and position that against them.

So that part of companies, the B2B marketers that are going there, have to have that full suite available to them. There’s never really gonna be a successful AI sales person or marketeer. It’s gonna be human. The AI can weigh risks. But it takes a human to really look at the justice of a situation and take all those dependent and independent elements and put them into a coherent whole.

So yeah, AI will extend the capabilities. Expand the capabilities, not only of the technical arms in a manufacturing distribution center, but also to B2B marketers in terms of understanding what their customer and needs are. And there’s a lot of learning that has to be done at the same time in terms of what the suite of solutions that their company brings to bear against those.

And helping articulate the fit. That product-market fit enables them to really move their prospective customers, from a prospect to a customer. That’s part of the solution as well. Until that’s really articulated well enough that the client organization can understand the business benefits. You’re not gonna get the money to fund it. But when you put those business spends together in a way that can be directly applicable to what their customer sees as their needs for, to achieve their goals and objectives, the ball starts moving forward rapidly at that point.

More rapidly than it did with New England yesterday. 

Carman Pirie: Now people will know when we recorded this, at the very least. But yes and everybody loves to make fun of New England. My goodness. And David just, I appreciate you saying that there’s no one size fits all. Everybody’s starting from a different place, so I’m setting you up to ask you a bit of a one size fits all answer to this question. I’m just curious, if you had to say the one thing that manufacturing executives need to get their heads around that they don’t understand about this revolution that’s coming. If you had to pinpoint something about it, whether it’s the pace of play or pace of change or the type of change. I’d just be curious what you would try to do, if you could just reach through the podcast and shake them awake, what would you shake them awake to? 

David Kilzer: I mentioned that I have this long history in automation, so I very much value my experiences and what I have seen work. And what I’ve seen underachieve, and I have to put that aside and put that humble hat on saying this new technology is merging at a pace unseen in my lifetime. When is the last time we’ve ever seen trillions of dollars being vested in a very narrow range of technologies? It’s unprecedented. So we have to say, yeah, we’ve got valuable experience in our lifetimes, but we gotta be open to the possibility of some really dramatically different options available to US solutions, formulations that will yield the success that we seek. And when I do that I wake up every day excited about the potential. Humble and excited, which means I better get the work of learning and expanding my knowledge base and talking to additional people like yourselves and getting all these different perspectives involved and knowing that what I have is valuable, but it’s certainly not the end game. It’s not complete anywhere near itself. We gotta listen to the voices of our experience. But we have to add to that, the combined knowledge that is coming at a pace that is breathtaking. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, that’s incredible advice to end on. I think that the notion that your experience, however valuable, may not actually have equipped you for what’s coming next, that this new technology may not be playing by those old rules.

And not to over overestimate how much you know about what’s coming next based upon what you knew about before. It is just a very, appropriate note of caution to end this show. And thank you so much David, for sharing your experience with us. It’s been lovely to have you on the show.

David Kilzer: Thank you. I really enjoyed the opportunity to speak with yourselves and your audiences. And if I might, my TEDx talk on AI enabled humanoid robotics, it was just published over the weekend. So if you search for my name at TEDx Unity Park in Greenville, South Carolina you could pick up additional viewpoints there.

Carman Pirie: Very cool. We’ll do our best to link that up with us in this show notes actually. So please check the show notes folks for a link to that. And thanks again David. A pleasure. 

David Kilzer: Thank you. 

Jeff White: Great to have you on the show.