Over the last year, we have been talking with robotics companies and operators in Silicon Valley and around the world. We have learned a few things about the challenges of operating robots at scale. This has mostly confirmed that, compared to the great advances in software and hardware components that are helping robots enter every industry, robot operations and infrastructure are still immature.

Another day, another Demo Day. Last week we had the privilege of being among a select group of startups to show the latest and greatest in the IoT world, ranging from photonics to wireless power transmission, at the latest Plug and Play Demo Day for Internet of Things. This was a big event, with many corporate partners and investors in attendance.

In the last couple of years, it seems that robots have jumped from science fiction to reality and are on their way to becoming commonplace. This process continues to accelerate, driven by macro-economic trends such as labor shortage and advancements in technology.

But as I like to say, it usually takes years of preparation to become an overnight sensation. In the case of robotics, it has taken decades of contributions from people around the world, from scientists to entrepreneurs and investors.

Few things are more devastating for a startup than to be working on the wrong problem. That’s why we spent time early on, before we had even formed our company or written the first line of code, to make sure we were working on a real problem that has a significant impact for a large number of people. We met with dozens of people across the robotics landscape to learn, asked lots of open-ended questions and listened carefully, honing our pattern-recognition.

It seems that every week there’s news about a new amazing application of robotics, from e-commerce, to growing food or building houses. While for many people this may seem to be something for the distant future, it is happening now and will continue to scale rapidly over the next couple of years.

This rapid acceleration results from a convergence of factors, including advances in sensors, deep learning and computer vision algorithms, chipsets that can handle AI tasks and software standards such as the Robot Operating System (ROS).

We’ve seen this before

At InOrbit we are driven to advance the positive impacts of robotics in the world. Our vision is that humans, robots and AI working together can drive radical improvements in productivity and solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. We believe that we can be a catalyst to innovation and allow robotics companies to focus on their special sauce.

InOrbit has been selected by the largest companies in Logistics and Supply Chain as one of the leading technologies to help drive automation at scale. From an initial set of 500 startups, 22 have been chosen by participating enterprises to be part of the Supply Chain Innovation program at Plug and Play.

The annual convention of leaders in robotics took place September 25-27 in Santa Clara, CA. RoboBusiness is the prime conference on the business of robotics, with world-class speakers and top exhibitors from around the world.

At InOrbit we chose RoboBusiness for our commercial launch. The interest far exceeded our expectations: the traffic at our booth was virtually non-stop, often with multiple conversations going on with members of our team at once.

The market for autonomous service robots is on the verge of a massive expansion. This has been largely driven by advancements in core technologies such as computer vision as well as lower cost of key hardware components and a standardized software stack.

Like we’ve seen with other technology waves such as cloud and mobile, venture capital is pouring into the robotics space, tripling in size from 2016 to 2017 and reaching +5B in 2017 by some estimates, which in turn is attracting more startups tackling an incredible variety of problems, from life-saving to mundane.

InOrbit, the platform for RobOps (DevOps for Robotics) is now generally available. After months of working closely with customers who joined our Early Access Program, we are ready to work with robotics companies that are growing their fleet of autonomous robots.