 Okay, welcome back everyone. Cube coverage of AWS Remars 2022. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, but Eric Fulmer, Vice President of Marketing at Boston Dynamics, famous for Spot. We all know we've seen the videos, zillion views, mega views all over the internet. The dog robotics is famous, rolls over, bounces up and down. I mean, how many TikTok videos are out there? Probably done. Oh, Spot is world famous at this point, right? So it's the dance videos and all the application videos that we have out there. Spot has become world famous. So Eric, thanks for joining us on theCUBE here at Remars. This show really is back, it's still a pandemic, it is there, but it's not a part of the reasons. Remars, reinforcements of security, and then reinvent the flagship show for AWS. But this show is different. It brings together a lot of disciplines, but it's converging in on what we see as the next general industrial space. It's a big poster child for that. So since space it's highly industrial, highly secure, machine learning's powering all the devices. You guys have been in this, I've been a leader in the robotics area. What's this show about? I mean, what's really happening here? If you're to boil the essence of the top story of what's happening here, what would it be? So the way that I look at this show is it really is a convergence of innovation. Like this is really just the cutting edge of the innovation that's really happening throughout robotics but throughout technology in general. And part of this cultural shift will be to adopt these types of technologies in our everyday life. And I think if you ask any technology specialist here or any innovator here or entrepreneur, they'll tell you that they want their technologies to become ubiquitous in society, right? I mean, that's really what everyone is sort of driving towards from the perspective of just- We've got some company behind us, look at this. Oh, there we go. All right, there's one of our spots. There's got one of those back there. All right, so starting throughout, get a little distracted by the beautiful thing there. So they're literally walking around and literally engulfing the show. So when I look at the show, that's what I see. I see the future of technology. Let's see if we can get a camera on our photo bomb here going on. We get a photo bomb action. It's just super exciting because it really humanizes it, makes you feel when it loves dogs. I mean, people have more empathy if you kicked spot than a human because there's so much empathy for just the innovation. But let's get into the innovation because the IoT tech scene has been slow. Cloud computing and Amazon Web Services, the leader, hyperscaler, they dominated the back office, you know, data centers, all the servers, digital transformation. Now that's coming to the edge where robotics is now in play. Space, material and handling, devices for helping people who are sick or in healthcare. So a whole surge of revolutionary or transitionary technologies coming. What's your take on that? So I think data has become the driving force behind technology innovation. And so robotics are an enabler for the data collection that is going to drive IoT and manufacturing 4.0 and other important edge related and futuristic technology innovations, right? So the driver of all of that is data. And so robots like Spot are collectors of data. And so instead of trying to retrofit a manufacturing plant with 30, 40, 50 year old equipment in some cases with IoT sensors and fixed sensors throughout the network, we're bringing the sensors to the equipment in the form of an agile mobile robot that brings that technology forward and is able to assess. So explain that a little slower for me. So the one method would be retrofitting all the devices or the hardware currently installed. Sure. Versus almost like having a mobile unit next to it. Kind of thing, or? Right, so I mean, if you're looking at antiquated equipment which is what most manufacturing plants are running off of it's not really practical or feasible to update them with fixed sensors. So sensors that specifically take measurements from that machine. So we enable Spot with a variety of sensors from audio sensors to listen for audio anomalies, thermal detectors to look for thermal hot spots in equipment or visual detectors where it's reading analog gauges, that sort of thing. So by doing that, we are bringing the sensors to the machines and to be able to walk anywhere where a human can walk throughout a manufacturing plant to inspect the equipment, take that reading and then, most importantly, upload that to the cloud, to the users who can apply some. It's a service dog. It really is and it serves data for the understanding of how that equipment is operating. This is big agility for the customer. Get that data, agile. Tell about the cost impact of that. Just alone, what the alternative would be versus, say, deploying that scenario. Because I'd imagine the time and cost would be huge. Well, if you think about how much manufacturing facilities put into the predictive maintenance and being able to forecast when their equipment needs maintenance, but also when pieces of equipment are going to fail. Unexpected downtime is one of the biggest money drains of any manufacturing facility. So the ability to be able to forecast and get some insight into when that equipment is starting to perform less than optimally and start to degrade, the ability to forecast that in advance is massive. Well, I think you just went on just in retrofit cost alone. Never mind the downside scenarios of manufacturing problems. All right, let's zoom out. You guys have been pioneers for a long time. What's changed in your mind now versus just a few years ago? I mean, look at even five, 10 years ago, the evolution, cost, and capability. What's changed the most? Yeah, I think the accessibility of robots has really changed and we're just on the beginning stages of that evolution. We really are. We're at the precipice right now of robots becoming much more ubiquitous in people's lives. And that's really our foundation as a company, is we really want to bring robots to mankind for the good of humanity, right? So if you think about taking humans out of harm's way or putting robots in situations where it's assessing damage for a building, for example, right? You're taking people out of that harm's way and really standardizing what you're able to do with technology. So we see it as really being on the very entry point of having not only robotics, but technology in general, to become much more prevalent in people's lives. I mean, 30 years ago, did you ever think that you would have the power of a supercomputer in your pocket, which also happens to allow you to talk to people, but it is so much more, right? So the power of a cell phone has changed our lives forever. It's going to be a phone, it's like, come on, what's going on? That's almost secondary at this point, it really is. So I mean, when you think about that transition, from I think we're at the cusp of that right now, we're at the beginning stages of it. It's really, it's an exciting time to be part of this, an entire industry. Before I get your views on integration and scale, because that's the next level we're seeing a lot of action and growth, talk about the use case. You mentioned a few of them, think people out of harm's way. What have you guys seen as use cases within Boston Dynamics, customer base, and or your partner network around use cases that either you knew would happen or ones that might have surprised you? Yeah, one of the biggest use cases for us right now is what we're demonstrating here at Remars, which is the ability to walk through a manufacturing plant and collect data off various pieces of equipment, whether that's a pump or a gauge or seeing whether a valve is open or closed. These are all simple mundane tasks that manufacturers are having difficulty finding people to be able to perform. So the ability for a robot to go over and do that and standardize that process is really valuable as companies are trying to collect that data in a consistent way. So that's one of the most prevalent use cases that we're seeing right now. And certainly also in cases where, you know, spot is going into buildings that have been structurally damaged or, you know, assessing situations where we don't want people to be in harm's way, you know. Bombscares or any kind of situation with police or, you know, threatening or dangerous situations. Sure, and fire departments as well. I mean, fire departments are becoming a huge, you know, a huge user of the robots themselves. Fire Department in New York recently just adopted some of our robots as well for that purpose, for search and rescue applications. Yeah, go in, go see what's in there, see what's around the corner. It gives a very tactical edge capability for, say, the firefighter or law enforcement. I see that, I see that military applications must be really insane. Sure, from a search and rescue perspective, absolutely. I mean, Spot helps you put eyes on situations that will allow a human to be operating at a safe distance. So it's really a great value for protecting human life and making sure that people stay out of harm's way. I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE and sharing your insight. One other question I'd like to ask if you don't mind is, you know, the one of the things I see next to your booth is your university piece, and then you see the Amazon, you know, material management, I don't know what to call it, but it's pretty impressive. And then I saw some of the demos on the keynotes, looking at the scale of synthetic data, just mind blowing what's going on in manufacturing. Amazon is pretty state of the art. I'm sure there are customer viewers already. But they look complex, these manufacturing sites. I mean, it looks like a maze. So how do you, I mean, I could see the consequences of something breaking to be catastrophic, because it's almost like it's so integrated. Is this where you guys see success and how do these manufacturers deal with this? What's the, is it like one big OS? Yeah, so the robots, because the robots are able to act independently, they can traverse difficult terrain and collect data on their own. And then what happens to that data afterwards is really up to the manufacturing. It can be delivered from the cloud and it can be delivered via the edge devices. And really that's where some of the exciting work is being done right now, because that's where data can scale and that's where robot deployments can scale as well. So you've got, instead of a single robot, now you have an operator deploying multiple robots, monitoring, controlling and assessing the data from multiple robots throughout a facility and it really helps to scale that investment. All right, final question for you, this is a personal question. Okay, I noticed the booth over there. And you have a lot of fan base. Spot's got a huge fan base. What are some of the crazy things that these nerd fans do? I mean, they have to get selfies with the spot. They want to, I jump over the fence. I see, don't touch the dog signs everywhere. The fan base is off the charts. What are the crazy things that people do to get either access to it, there's probably been probably some theft, probably attempts, or selfies, tell, share some funny stories. I'll say this, my team is responsible for fielding a lot of the inbound inquiries that we get, much of which comes from the entertainment industry. And as you've seen, Spot has been featured in some really prominent entertainment pieces. We were in that Super Bowl ad with Sam Adams. We were on Jimmy Kimmel right during the Super Bowl time period. So the amount of entertainment value, pitches, the amount of entertainment value is immeasurable. But the number of pitches that we turn down is staggering. And when you can think about how most companies would probably pull out all the stops to be able to execute half the things that we're just, from a time perspective, from a resource perspective, not always able to do. So Spot's an A-lister, I get that. Is there a B-lister now? I mean, that sounds like there's a market developing for Spot 2. Is there a Spot 2, the B-player come in, understudy? So I mean, Spot is always evolving. I think the physical statue that you see of Spot right now is where we're going to be in terms of the hardware. But we continue to move the robot forward. It becomes more and more advanced and more and more capable to do more and more things for people, so. All right, well, we'll roll some B-roll on this, on theCUBE. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate it. Lots of things here on theCUBE, famous for Spot. And then here at the show, packed here at Neymar, it's featuring robotics. It's a big feature hall. It's a set piece here in the show floor. And of course, theCUBE's covering it. Thanks for watching, more coverage. I'm John Furrier, host after this short break.