We’ve said it here before, but it’s worth repeating – robots fail, and they fail more often than you think. When companies talk about the benefits of robotics, they tend to gloss over some of the downsides of autonomous systems, especially those that work in dynamic, changing and chaotic environments. Robots get stuck, they get lost, they break down … and occasionally they even catch fire or fall down an escalator.

At InOrbit, most of our time is spent thinking about robots and how to make them perform better. But part of that vision includes robots and humans working together – without the human factor, robots are just a collection of metal and plastic parts. We are starting a series of posts highlighting some of the outstanding humans on the InOrbit team, also known as InOrbiters. The posts will share details on some of the newest members to the team, what drove them to work here, and what they find most interesting about robotics and the development of the InOrbit platform.

A healthy organization is constantly evolving and growing. That’s why we are very pleased to share that our executive team at InOrbit is growing with the addition of Diego May as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

Diego has a track record of driving business growth. With a rich experience in sales, marketing and business development, and roles ranging from startup founder and board member to venture capitalist and driving sales/BD at public companies, Diego is the perfect complement to InOrbit’s founding team.

“The robotics industry is at an inflection point and InOrbit is uniquely positioned to be a catalyst for the current growth,” said Diego. “I am excited to join this amazing team to help realize the vision and create this new software category.”

InOrbit is a leading partner of the Qualcomm® Robotics Platform and a member of its Qualcomm Advantage Network. Qualcomm and InOrbit have integrated the next generation of AI-enabled, 5G-connected autonomous robots with a modern, distributed data platform that can maximize the potential of every robot. 

Robots operating in unstructured environments are bound to run into situations that require human intervention. Having the right incident management system is key to meeting service level agreements (SLAs) to help prevent robots from failing constantly.

With 2020 in the rear-view mirror, the world turns its focus to 2021 and the challenges of adapting to the new world created by last year’s global events.

To say 2020 was a challenging year for all of us would be like saying water is wet. Duh. Instead, we turn to some of our favorite films for inspiration to explain why challenges are good for people and companies.

Developing modern information technology solutions of any reasonable complexity will require that you integrate existing technologies at some point during the system creation process. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking to scale, you will face the decision of using an existing piece of software or building your own. The level of sophistication needed today can only be attained by building on top of other components, such as libraries, platforms or services. Just like in the old Western, experiences with these services can be good, bad, or ugly, depending on the providers you choose.

Even as InOrbit is building a platform to make it easier for robotics companies to focus on their own secret sauce, our software engineers have faced these decisions. In the course of our development, we have chosen services and components along the way. By choosing this path, we’ve also been able to add our own expertise, allowing us to augment those services to create a better platform for our customers.

Along the way, we’ve also had some mixed results that we’d like to share with you. We hope this lets you avoid some of the mistakes we made, as a way to help you speed up your own development process. 

And should you choose to use the InOrbit platform yourself, we expect to be held to the highest standard.