Podcast
Accelerating Automation: Solid-3D & Claudiu Tanasescu Transform Warehouses & Manufacturing Facilities
On this episode of UrbanEBB, Claudiu Tanasescu, the CEO of Solid 3D, shares his entrepreneurial journey and the innovative robotics solutions his company is bringing to the logistics industry. Join us as we explore the future of warehouse automation, the integration of AI and robotics, and the importance of sustainability in business operations. Discover how Solid 3D is revolutionizing warehouse operations and shaping the future of logistics with its cutting-edge technology. Learn more about the exciting opportunities in robotics and the impact it will have on the workforce and the way we do business. Solid 3-D is based in out of The Curiosity Lab of Peachtree Corners where we shot our video podcast with host Rico Figliolini
Resources:
Solid 3D Website: https://www.solid-3d.com/
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:12 – Claudiu Tanasescu, the CEO of Solid 3D
00:03:52 – Pivoting to Robotics for Warehouse Automation
00:06:35 – Robotic Solutions for Industry Challenges
00:08:46 – Automating Warehouse Navigation Solutions
00:11:05 – Warehouse Efficiency and Robot Precision
00:13:54 – Revolutionizing E-Commerce with Robotics Services
00:18:39 – Warehouse Automation and AI in the Industry
00:21:45 – Robotic Automation in Logistics and Beyond
00:23:58 – Chat GPT and Robotics: The Future of Human-Machine Interaction
00:25:50 – AI and Sustainability in Modern Technology Development
00:29:07 – Sustainability and Robotics in Business Future
00:31:23 – Robotics Innovations in Construction Industry
00:33:00 – Creating a Hub for Robotics Innovation in Georgia
Podcast Transcript:
Rico Figliolini 0:00:01
Hi, everyone. This is UrbanEBB, and I’m your host, Rico Figliolini, here in the city of Peachtree Corners, actually the podcast room of Curiosity Lab. And I have a great guest here visiting from Amsterdam for a German based company. And this is Claudiu Tanasescu. Just want to make sure I pronounce your name. And he’s CEO of Solid 3D. He’s actually visiting this week in March for a trade show that’s one of the biggest trade shows. I think it’s called Modex 2024. So he was sharing some insight from there and working with partners there in that show. So appreciate you giving us some time.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:00:42
Thank you so much. Good to be here.
Rico Figliolini 0:00:43
Yeah, you have a great company, and Curiosity Lab is always a great fostering place to host and base companies out of here in the US.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:00:52
We were extremely lucky to find Curiosity Lab, to be honest and extremely happy with our location here and the environment and the connections and networking that we can build up here are pretty good.
Rico Figliolini 0:01:03
Excellent. Cool. So tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your company, and then we’ll dive right into what your company does.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:01:10
Sure. So, yeah, my name is Claudiu Tanasescu. I’m based out of the Netherlands. As you said you would call it, a serial entrepreneur. I built two more companies, software companies, before. The last one was in the cinema software. We built software that is able to forecast and schedule movies in a theater. And that was pretty cool, as you can imagine. You have to understand what the movie is about. Actors, directors, production budget. But then we would look at the weather and the holidays in that location and forecast based on that.
Rico Figliolini 0:01:46
Terrific logistics almost in a different way.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:01:49
Almost logistics in a different way. So I sold that company in 2020, and then through a connection from university, I came across solid three D. And now for three years, I became an investor, and I’m the CEO of the company. Very exciting times for the company and for the industry in general. Robotics is a hot topic right now, particularly with industry 4.0 and the challenges of manufacturing in China. COVID came and pandemic brought a lot of attention into understanding how can we insource, how can we bring the manufacturing back to Europe and the US and reduce the dependency in China? And that created a significant opportunity on the robotics side. So that’s how we engage in the robotics with solid three D. And I’m happy to say that three years later, we found a very strong product and we found a very strong industry, which is the logistic industry to explore with our products and services.
Rico Figliolini 0:02:54
I was going to say when you took over the company, it was a little different path they were on, but then you as CEO brought it to a different place.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:03:02
That’s absolutely right. So my two co founders, they were both very technical, both with PhD in computer vision. So they were working on a computer vision product for controlling robots. Essentially our motto at that time was we make robots. See, because robots were. If you think about robots in the manufacturing world particularly, they’re pretty blind. They just go and grab a thing and put it somewhere there, expecting that that object is there. If it’s not there, then there’s the conflict, right? So that’s where computer vision comes in and essentially detects that object and tells the robot, hey, it’s not there, it’s 5 left, go there and pick that from there. And they were pretty advanced with that product in there. But then when we did a comprehensive market analysis, we slowly started to understand that it’s a very complex market with a lot of competition and a lot of big players in there that made it very difficult for a startup to compete. So very early on we decided, okay, can we pivot towards robotics, this emerging field that’s coming up where everybody’s talking about automation, and particularly in the logistics and warehousing field, there was a gap combined with two thousand and twenty s, two thousand and twenty one. With the labor force shortage, it really created an accelerated wind in the back of all these companies that were looking into automating their warehouse operations.
Rico Figliolini 0:04:34
So how did you actually find. That’s almost like a needle in a haystack for me. How did you actually find that that was a need for that?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:04:43
That’s a great question, and as it always happens in life, same with the cinema industry. I wasn’t planning on going into the cinema industry, but I just met someone that, his father was a university professor writing an academic paper on demand driven movie scheduling, and they were looking for an IT company to implement it, and that’s how we ended up in the cinema industry. Similarly, in warehouse, we were just going about our computer vision challenges and understanding how we can attack the market. And in fact, one that is now the biggest customer of ours was looking to understand how can they enhance their operations and reach out to one of the manufacturers of the laser tracker technologies that we currently use in our products to say, I want to buy a laser tracker from you. And the guys were like, okay, we can sell it, but do you know how to operate it? And they were like, no, we don’t know, hey, here is a partner that can operate the laser tracker for you. And they introduced us to that warehouse automation manufacturer and, yeah, the rest is history. We started working together. We understand their business needs, we understand their challenges, and we essentially custom build a robot to attack those challenges.
Rico Figliolini 0:06:01
Opportunity comes, and if you’re not there to accept that opportunity, and you were there, so that was great.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:06:07
We were there. We were open for that. We were looking to pivot. It was almost like being at the right time, at the right place for sure to have that opportunity.
Rico Figliolini 0:06:18
And that’s helped you expand actually even further then, because other relationships, other companies doing somewhat similar to, like, for example, Amazon and robotics and some of these other companies.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:06:28
Right? Exactly right. Because once we start looking more carefully to the industry, we understand that it’s not just the problem of this company, it’s actually an industry wide problem. Right. So all of a sudden, the opportunity for us became clear that we can go from a customer robot for this company to a robot that we can make it as a product and that we can then serve other customers as well.
Rico Figliolini 0:06:53
So Claudia was showing me a few things, and it’s amazing to me, I mean, anyone that understands business and employment and the lack of being able to find help, even though supposedly it’s out there, no one wants to work, maybe, or they’re doing other things. A place like an Amazon warehouse that needs product moved and shipped around within the warehouse is using your. So, you know, you’re not, company’s not helping put people unemployed, but your company is actually making more efficient for these companies that are not just warehousing things, warehousing products, but becoming a shipping center or logistics center for these products.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:07:33
Absolutely.
Rico Figliolini 0:07:34
So tell us a little bit about that in Amazon’s case.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:07:39
When I say maybe, the general public, when they hear robotics and robotics taking over jobs, it’s a very common theme, right? They think that robotics is going to take over jobs. But when you come to think about what we are doing, we’re putting down on the floor some stickers. They have to be put around at a foot from each other and not one, not 1000, 10,000, 20,000 of those, right. In a warehouse. Now imagine if you are a workforce, if you are a worker and you have to go and bend on your knees every foot to put that down with high accuracy. It’s not a job you want to have, right. It’s a job you want to move on from. And that’s where robotics is in my mind. The list is bringing those advantages in taking over that very tedious and very tiring work.
Rico Figliolini 0:08:30
Very tedious, for sure. And it has to be accurate.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:08:34
And it has to be accurate, right. That’s a very strong argument. I mentioned my previous companies, but in my entrepreneurial experience, I’ve never had a much easier sales pitch. Because you go to these companies on the trade show, you just mentioned modex, and you see them and they say, oh, I see your robots are using QR codes on the floor for navigation. How do you put those codes on the floor? And then they start sharing the pain. Yeah, I have to send my engineers down there, and they hate it because they have to be on their knees all the time. Right. And I have these computer trained, highly trained engineers that have to do that work on the floor because I cannot entrust it to temp workers or any other unskilled labor because they have to be very accurate. So when I tell them that I have an automated solution for that, I have a robot for that, their eyes open like that, they really understand that this is something that can help them immediately.
Rico Figliolini 0:09:28
So let me ask you this, because what comes to mind right now, Don, is you have a warehouse 100,000 sqft. So it’s probably more than 10,000 or 20,000 stickers that have to go.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:09:38
Correct.
Rico Figliolini 0:09:39
Have to go really accurate. Really correct. Things change and move in the warehouse. Does that ever happen where you have to shift? Sometimes where you have to because of expansion or other things come into play. And how fast can your company, solid 3D, meet that? I know you use encoding, AI and stuff, but how fast can you deliver?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:10:03
Yeah, that’s a good question. And indeed, the reality of the field is that they design the warehouse to the best of their abilities, but obviously economic environments change and then they have to change. Typically when that happens with our customers, what they want is they want to expand, usually, right? And they want to add more of those codes on the floor so that their robots can travel further away. Or they design a new pickup station over there and they need to get the robots in there. So that’s when they call on us and we come in with our robots and our technology and we do it for them. Within a day, we’re done.
Rico Figliolini 0:10:37
The way you showed me on that video was like these scalable storage units, Rex, and the robot goes underneath it, lifts it and then moves it based on the stickers on the ground.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:10:47
That’s correct.
Rico Figliolini 0:10:49
So when things inventory changes, when other things change, stickers can stay there, but the data code may change somewhere in the background.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:10:58
Absolutely. So stickers are there. What usually changes is that whatever it’s loaded on that rack can change, right? So changing inventory and changing the layout is two different things that in such particular case. And for example, Amazon is a great example of how they are able to leverage the whole space, right? Like the whole warehouse is completely from day one designed to accommodate for that and then anticipate any sort of further growth in there by just adding another rack, another robot on the same grid, on the same code.
Rico Figliolini 0:11:35
So whether it’s a fraction of an inch or a fraction of a centimeter, you’re actually meeting that demand to be able to get the most efficient use out of that piece of property, out of that floor space.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:11:48
Just to give you a little bit of perspective about the accuracy level that we’re able to achieve with the robot, our system, right, robot and laser combined are able to place anything in that 100,000 square foot warehouse within a 1 mm precision, right? So within a hair pin kind of precision anywhere on that. And that’s extremely powerful.
Rico Figliolini 0:12:15
I think the things I was reading over the last couple of years of Amazon warehouse, just because they’re the biggest thing on there, right? I mean, there’s Walmart, there’s other types of warehouses, Ikea and stuff. But the fact that the efficiency of being able to pack products within a space is one of the biggest things that they were looking at. And plus, in a normal warehouse, you have sections, right? This is where the shades are, this is where the lamps are. But in an Amazon warehouse, heck, it’s not like that, right? Products are mixed in. The system knows how to get what it needs to where it’s going. And part of that is you, right?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:12:52
Absolutely. And I always give people the sort of visual example of what really happens the moment you press that buy button on the Amazon website, right? Like the second you finish that purchase and you confirm your order, that order arrives at a nearby distribution center, they call it, and one robot is already on its way picking up one of those wrecks with your product in it, and it brings it to a human operator. It’s called a pickup station. That human operator would grab it from the wreck and put it on another conveyor belt that sends it down to packaging, and it’s on its way to you.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:29
This is why you can order at 07:00 a.m. And get by 11:00 a.m.. Sometimes.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:13:33
That’s for sure. It’s an extremely efficient system, and it’s all revolutionizing the way we do online ecommerce.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:44
So when companies use your equipment are they buying it to use or is it temporary projects project by project?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:13:52
Yeah. So our business model is really providing services to those companies. We do not sell the robots.
Rico Figliolini 0:13:58
Okay.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:13:59
We come in with our robots, our technology, and our people on site, and we do the work for the customer. And then we take our equipment and leave and go to the next customer. Right. So it’s a lot of traveling because we are all over the can. We’re just doing a project right now in Nevada and another project in New Jersey. Right. So all over the US. And we travel on site. We stay there to do the job. A job would take anywhere between three days to maybe three weeks. Okay. And then we travel to the next one and so on.
Rico Figliolini 0:14:34
Do you stay there long enough to troubleshoot and do the things that need to be adjusted?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:14:39
We do that as well. We do quality control of all the work that we do to make sure that before we depart that our codes are precisely positioned. But what we typically do, and maybe just to walk you through a little bit of a day in a life of a robot operator, we call them, the one that take the robot over there is they arrive on site, and the very first thing that we do for that customer is we try to get a sense of the building. Amazon is in a lucky position that they purposely build their buildings. Right. So, you know, when you get there, it’s a new building, it’s built to specs. It’s perfect. But a lot of other of our customers, they sell to maybe small businesses, maybe larger businesses that already have the warehouse and have been using it in a sort of manual mode until now. And now it’s the first time they’re automating it. So when you arrive on a building, the first thing you do is you measure the building to understand. And we have equipment and technology that we can actually tell you. This column in the middle of the building is 10 mm off from where it was in the cat file when you designed the building. Right. So we tell them all that information. We call that Ses versus s planned. We give them that information to the customer so that they can choose to decide, okay, I’m going to move the grid a little bit to the right, because otherwise my robots will be colliding with that column. So we do all that work for them that services is a very strong added value to our customers. Then we lay down the codes, and then we do the QC on the codes, and then they bring their own robots and run it over the codes as well, and QC again, control again the codes.
Rico Figliolini 0:16:22
So when you’re doing this, the thing that comes to mind, because I’ve been in enough warehouses, and you’re right, these older warehouses and stuff, there could be seams and concrete. There could be areas where it’s up and down a little bit. Does that affect what you’re doing then?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:16:36
Luckily, the end robots that will run that warehouse, which is our customers, essentially, they have very strict requirements as to how the floor needs to be. So before we arrive on site, that floor has already been prepared for that. So it’s been sanded down, it’s been covered, all these things. Because not only our robots will have a challenge with that, but also their robots will have a challenge with us. It’s on their project checklist to do before we even start work there.
Rico Figliolini 0:17:08
So it’s safe to say most of your, all your clients at this point are warehouse type clients.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:17:15
Most of our customers are indeed warehouse type customers. They provide services. Know you mentioned Walmart. Walmart. We did projects for Walmart. Essentially, we’re actually doing one project here in Atlanta for Sam’s. And there’s a lot of industries, from retail to e commerce to even clothing manufacturers. We’ve done a project in San Francisco for a semiconductor company. Right. Like anything that can be stored in a shelf and needs to be moved can benefit from their automation.
Rico Figliolini 0:17:53
Do you have particular industries that you all work in? I mean, you did mention Walmart and Sam’s club and stuff, but it’s very.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:18:01
Interesting because I was at Modex at the trade show. As you walk the trade show and you see boots around and you see the visitors in there. And I just read a LinkedIn post that said models had 40,000 visitors this year, which is pretty big. You read people’s labels and you see, oh, this is Tesla engineering team looking for the automation solution. Then I see Home Depot guys looking for something. And then I go there and I see Nike looking for something. So it seems to be the whole spectrum of industries that have the same requirements. I have a warehouse, and I need to automate it. I need to retrieve products in and out very fast so that my production and my manufacturing can run smoothly.
Rico Figliolini 0:18:48
When you were at the show, you were telling me that I asked if you had a booth there, but now you have clients there, so you’re visiting their booths, their exhibition place, and answering questions and helping them. Clients, I guess, yeah.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:19:02
So it was very enlightening to be there to see those customers, the customers that we serve. Right. Having their boots fully, fully occupied the whole time during the show. Right. I barely managed to get a few minutes with each one of them because they’re in constant conversations with their customers. And I think I saw a gardener study that said that the warehouse automation is poised to do three times over the revenue in the next three years. Right. So it’s going to grow from about $2 billion right now to about $7 billion in 2025.
Rico Figliolini 0:19:37
So you guys are in a great position.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:19:39
I think I was encouraged at the show to have the conversation with our customers, and they’re all telling me, hey, we have this project line up, this project lineup, and we’re talking to this partner. And I know that every single project of theirs will end up with us as well, because we are the first to be on site.
Rico Figliolini 0:19:56
Do you find. So everyone’s talking about AI, and to some degree, there’s some AI involved here, whether it’s generative or language based. It’s a whole gamut of AIs. That’s just one.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:20:07
Absolutely.
Rico Figliolini 0:20:09
Do you see your company using more of that in what you’re doing?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:20:14
We actually do use quite a lot of AI already in our robots. Just to give you an example, when we approach a site, a warehouse, there are columns I mentioned earlier, but there might be other obstacles on the way. And we use computer vision and AI to determine what is the best path for the robot to navigate. And that’s already a very basic usage of AI nowadays. I visited this company at a trade show called Agility Robotics that does those humanoid robots that are able to pick up things and take them over there and walk on two legs. Pretty impressive, right? But also the spectrum of AI applications in the logistic world, it’s just mind blowing, right? Like anything from unloading a truck, like you have a robot that will essentially coming into the 18 wheeler and be able to grab the packages by itself and ship them down a conveyor belt.
Rico Figliolini 0:21:17
I can see a big tractor trailer with having these codes embedded on the floor bed of the trucks.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:21:23
Luckily, you don’t have to do that. They use computer vision for that. They find out where they are. And if you think of it, Nathan Wheeler, it’s a very compact space.
Rico Figliolini 0:21:32
Yes.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:21:33
And you just see flashes from time to time as the robot is reading the space, and then it knows, okay, I have a box over there. I’m going to go as a vacuum grabber that grabs it and puts it back on the conveyor belt to be shipped out of the truck.
Rico Figliolini 0:21:48
I could see this working even in military applications when they talk about logistics of military equipment and supplies and stuff and keeping track which is probably one of the biggest problems they have.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:22:00
Absolutely. So another very strong spectrum of that is called robot pickers. Right. And it’s essentially, imagine a tray of products coming down the product line and you need to take them from the belt and put them nicely orderly in a box for shipping, right. Like, can be anything from candies to pharmaceutical to whatever. And then this robot is able to take a picture of the product, then know exactly where it is, grab it and put it exactly in the slot in the transport case that you want to have it. Right. So it’s this kind of combination of computer vision, artificial intelligence and robotics that is going to change the way a lot of things operate.
Rico Figliolini 0:22:44
So this is a bit of science fiction coming true, if you will. Right. Near future stuff. Do you see challenges ahead, though, in the next three or four years in the business world that you’re in? Challenges that you can address, maybe.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:22:59
I think there are two types, probably, of challenges that I see. One is, how do you make sure that you get the men and machine working together, right. I mentioned to you earlier, there are warehouses where no human comes in, right? The robots move with five meter per second. They will run over you if you go in there, right? And you want to have that because you want to have that level of efficiencies, but you also want to have the flexibility of having a human change things on demand. So that collaboration of man and machine working together, I think we’re getting there, but we’re still a little bit far away from that. The way they solve it today is that they slow the robots down because they do extra, extra careful when humans are around. But I think as the computer visions become much more powerful, you can then interact faster. And I think also to that point, chat GBT has been a revolutionary technology I cannot even comprehend. There’s been only one year on the market. But that combination of chat GBT, like power with a robot, can you imagine it would change the world? I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Yesterday, a demo popped up on Twitter from a company called Figma, I believe it’s called that they combine a chat GPT with a robot and you can actually talk to the. I mean, in the demo they were saying, what do you see towards the robot? And the robot was like, I see a table with an apple on it, and I see you standing next to the table. The robot can understand that. And then the guy says to the robot, I’m hungry. And the robot is able to grab the apple from there and offer it to him. In a very natural motion.
Rico Figliolini 0:24:46
I haven’t seen that.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:24:47
And that has not been pre programmed in any way. Right. It’s that human language barrier that so far, computers have not been able to overcome that. Now, with Chachimiti alike and large language models, it’s going to be less of that, of a barrier.
Rico Figliolini 0:25:05
It’s interesting how we are going away from coding. People won’t eventually need to know Sysql or any of the other coding. It’s just all be plain language based coding.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:25:18
Absolutely. I mean, the things that Tesla are doing in this field, it’s just on self driving cars, right? It’s unbelievable. I don’t know if you’re following that, but they’ve been working on this problem for probably about ten years right now. In the last year alone, they’ve been removing code that they wrote because they don’t want to write code anymore. Instead, they serve millions and millions of minutes of video to the machine. And the machine learns from seeing other drivers drive. Right. So you don’t have to write code to say to the machine, stop at the stop sign. It will learn from 100,000 videos of cars stopping at the stop sign that it has to stop at the stop sign.
Rico Figliolini 0:25:59
Yes. That makes more sense. It’s like almost like a child learning.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:26:02
Exactly. It’s very human like learning in training those models. In training those neurons, electronic neurons. If you want to learn like a child and then apply the same rules that you are doing, right, that’s what the child does. He looks at you, you brush your teeth in the evening. I need to do the same.
Rico Figliolini 0:26:24
If anyone has kids, they know that you can’t just teach them something. Say you do it this way because they pick up all your bad habits.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:26:32
Absolutely. Please unlearn that. Unlearn that.
Rico Figliolini 0:26:38
So it’s just amazing how fast things are going.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:26:42
So you mentioned coding because that triggered me. Because you mentioned coding. Nowadays, it’s actually going to. The world is going to a place. The technology world is going to a place where you don’t need to code anymore. You just need to have enough data to support knowledge and the computer will learn it.
Rico Figliolini 0:27:01
As long as you have a Nvidia chip, it might work. Great point. And in your particular industry, like all these industries, right, I mean, it’s a matter of AI will be in there and will be used in a whole different way that we don’t even know about today.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:27:19
Absolutely.
Rico Figliolini 0:27:19
Right.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:27:20
And then I think another area where we want to invest a little bit more time is in making everything more sustainable. Right? Like we’re in the world of ecommerce. We’re in a world where you expect your package to be here in the same day. How do we do that in a way that doesn’t impact the environment, doesn’t impact the planet? And there’s been a lot of talks, actually, the show, the Madak show, was the UPS president of supply chain and logistics from UPS, which is actually based in Atlanta.
Rico Figliolini 0:27:51
Yes.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:27:52
And he talked about how UPS is actually doubling down on the efforts to become much more sustainable, going for electric vehicles in their fleet, trying to optimize all their route and trafficking to make sure that you do less miles and all these kind of things. And I think I feel that responsibility also with us to make sure that we build products that help in that direction as well.
Rico Figliolini 0:28:17
Interestingly enough, I think sustainability, when it was first introduced some years ago and people saying, yeah, you need save energy, you need to do this, wasn’t being picked up as fast. It became a political thing. But now, like you’re pointing out, UPS is doing all that and it’s money driven because that’s the essentially. I mean, sustainability is a money driven aspect at this point. You don’t want to spend the money on energy to drive thousands of know, or even energy in your warehouse to be able to burn the lamps, if you will. Too long maybe, or something.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:28:55
Absolutely right. So it totally makes economic impact and economic sense for companies to be more sustainable. Being a European, there’s a lot of regulations in Europe, much more than here in the US in respect to sustainability. So companies are pushed from both sides. Right. Economic side and regulatory side. And I think it pays off. Right. Like, just from everyday business to running your whole supply chain. Makes sense for a company to invest in that.
Rico Figliolini 0:29:28
What do you see as the future for yourself, for this company beyond? Because sometimes companies like Instagram and other companies, they start one way, which this company did at one point, and you shifted it successfully to a different path. But as you’re doing it, sometimes you realize, well, I can do a little bit more here. I can do something that we can take this further. Have you seen that? Do you see that curve coming, that horizon?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:29:52
Yeah, I think we’re pretty set on the robotic side. I think we’re extremely lucky to have started on this. I wouldn’t say at the beginning of the robotic revolution because I think a lot of people will contradict me there. But at the beginning of a significant expansion in, let’s say, the western side of the world. Right, the US, Europe, same, mostly driven. As I mentioned earlier, by supply chain problems with China and others, where you want to have the manufacturing in, and then you need robots to be able to do that. So we’re pretty set on the robotic side. The question is, what other business applications can we do with our technology? Right. And we are in the high precision positioning field. And with that, we can see a lot of other business use cases for you. Just to give you one example is in the construction industry, right? Like in the construction industry, you lay down the floor and then you have to mark, where do you want to put the drywall? Where do you want to put the electrics, where do you want to put that? And today there’s somebody that needs to come in with some sort of measuring tape or some sort of measuring device to mark that in there. We can have our robot drive around there and print on the floor those things. Wow. So it becomes like a printer, a mobile printer on the floor of a high precision instructions about how to construct drywalls, for example.
Rico Figliolini 0:31:18
I didn’t even think about that. That’s phenomenal. I mean, you could do that in an apartment complex with 200 units.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:31:23
Exactly right. And every single floor, you have to map it in a different way. So that’s another opportunity where I believe we can enter in the coming years. We’re very focused right now on logistics. So this is just a little bit of brainstorming going forward as to where the opportunities.
Rico Figliolini 0:31:41
Yeah, for sure. I mean, a company growing needs to be able to know what other products they can put out there and stuff. And I can see that robots finish on the first floor. It moves to the elevator, it goes up the next floor, it just comes back out and does the second floor. So I can see that all working out.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:31:57
And there are robotics in the construction industry. There’s a lot of companies already being active in there. Right. So we just had here in the qst lab yesterday one of those companies called rug robotics that build robots for the construction industry. There’s actually another partner over here in the Curiosity Lab. It’s called Skymule. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. They build a robot dog that is able to tide in the rebars. Yeah.
Rico Figliolini 0:32:24
So it can work on another Curiosity Lab based company.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:32:28
Exactly right. I started this interview saying that we’re extremely pleased with Curiosity Lab because of this environment. Right. It’s an environment of creativity and innovation in the robotic fields, and that’s where we want to be positioned as well.
Rico Figliolini 0:32:42
You can’t do this remotely.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:32:44
You cannot. And maybe just on that to was two days ago, I was invited at the Georgia Aquarium by a group that is affiliated with Georgia Tech, and they just launched a non for profit initiative called Robot Georgia. It’s maybe something that will be interesting for you as well to interview them. They want to build sort of an environment to stimulate the robotic field in Georgia and Atlanta.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:15
That’s an excellent idea.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:33:16
It’s really an excellent idea, and I’m happy to be part of that and try to contribute in that respect.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:22
Excellent. We’ve been speaking to Claudiu Tanasescu.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:33:26
Very good.
Rico Figliolini 0:33:27
Tanasescu, this is Rico Figliolini. The name’s just as long italian heritage, but born here in the states. This has been a great conversation. I loved finding out more about your company and where you all are going. Anything else you want to share or website that we should know about? I’ll have some of the stuff in the show notes, but feel free.
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:33:48
No, definitely. I think we have seen some great opportunities ahead of us, and we plan on expanding into the Atlanta area. So we’re always on the lookout for great talent. Right. So if you have a passion for robotics, if you’d like to learn more about how we can automate the warehouse solutions in the know, please reach out to us. We’re always on the lookout for great people.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:10
Are you taking interns?
Claudiu Tanasescu 0:34:13
Absolutely. Yeah.
Rico Figliolini 0:34:14 Okay, cool. All right. Thank you again. I appreciate your time with us. Thank you so much and thanks, everyon
