After taking more than 20 missions to map the sea floor near the Titanic, Humatics founder and MIT professor David Mindell saw the future of robotics and started the company in 2015 to create the next generation of location technology. That technology has since come to fruition and in this episode of the Manufacturing Matters podcast, TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll speaks with Ron Rinaldi, Humatics’ Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development, to learn more about it. Rinaldi explains the next-generation RFID spatial intelligence solution, and discusses key applications, the ease of integration, how it enables human-robot collaboration, and much more!

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:07] Hi, everybody. My name is Jimmy Carroll. I’m the vice president of operations at Tech B2B Marketing. I’m here live on site in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Humanics headquarters. And I’m joined by Ron Rinaldi. Ron, thanks very much for taking the time.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:00:18] Thanks for having me.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:19] Ron, please tell us a little bit about about your company and what you do there.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:00:23] Sure. Humanics actually was founded in 2015 by an MIT professor by the name of David Mindell. And if you’ve had the opportunity to watch the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, especially at about 2 or 3 in the morning, you see those those great ships with discovering the Titanic with Bob Ballard. David had the opportunity to do 20 to 25 missions with Bob, and his role on the the ship was to map those seabed floors with sonar. And from that, he had the vision of what was coming in robotics and in let’s call it digital awareness. And so the company was created in 2015 to create the next generation of location technology as it relates to real time data feeds into disparate systems.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:01:10] So so how did it I mean, you kind of told me how it started, but were there certain applications in mind when when it began in 2015?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:01:17] There were actually so so the name Humanics is Human and robotics combined. So the vision was to enable that, that digital awareness for collaboration between human and robotics right from the get go. And if you think about it, in 2015, robotic arms and armour and the like were still maturing. So it was quite the quite the, the advanced look forward for someone like David to see where this was coming, because today what we’re seeing is an incredible need for industrial grade location information that has a level of, let’s call it robustness for industrial environments. So to give you an example, what I mean by that is if you think about a vision system today that are excellent at picking things up and looking at a part coming down on conveyor belt, but really when you start thinking about human and robotics collaborating and robotics and robotics collaborating, they need to be aware of where they are in relationship to each other in real time. And that piece where light changes, where people have different clothing colors, where the smoke or smog, that’s more difficult for the traditional systems. So having that foresight was a was a pretty impressive feat. So when you talk.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:02:34] About things like when people’s clothes change and and the term that you guys use, I think is spatial intelligence, is that right? That’s right. What does that look like in operation? So if somebody if somebody gets too close to a robot or something, how does your product intervene?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:02:47] So so humanics is a core technology is not a safety system. What we are is a very precise location system. And so what we would do, let’s say, for example, we’re on an automotive production line and there’s a robotic arm that now is sitting working next to the humans, the the robotic arm is going to be fully aware of the products in which are moving through that space and we can direct it to that that product as it’s moving so it can take the action that the, for example, the arm needs. Now in the example I’m using, if the humans are in that space, well, they may come in with a bright yellow jacket or really red hair or the light may change during the day. Or maybe they’re there is smoke in the environment. Radiofrequency is is much less sensitive to those than, for example, the vision system. So if, for example, you have a robotic arm that’s doing that in the environment, you leverage the safety system of the robotic arm. However, if you decide you want to have the robot and the human collaborate, all you would need to do is just put a sensor on the human. And now the robotic arm knows where the human is before the safety system is even needed. So there’s things like that that allow collaboration and literally working together in that industrial space.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:04:02] Okay. Yeah. So so you mentioned Radiofrequency. Is that I was going to ask about the underlying technology. How does can you talk a little bit about that?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:04:09] Yeah, absolutely. So, so we are actually the patent holder and the inventors on the underlying technology. We actually have developed a very high frequency chip that will actually be able to send and receive the the location data. And it’s done through multiple frequencies that allows us then through geometry, really to figure out where a transponder, which is what will put on different assets to determine where it is with very high precision, very high repeatability. And so our system will be able to tell, for example, range precision with less than 250 microns. And as you combine multiple sensors together to create a pose on a rigid body, we’ll be able to give you sub millimeter precision as you’re in the work zone that you’re trying to direct the robotics to take action.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:04:58] That’s interesting. So how does how does your technology get integrated into a new or existing system?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:05:04] It’s a great question. He. Maddox has taken a really unique approach, and a lot of this is predicated on what we’re seeing with Industry 4.0. All of our location data, which is being streamed in real time, is actually available via a restful API. So as long as and it’s over UDP, so as long as, let’s call it a robotic arm or an EMR or a PLC, you basically are just going to need to subscribe to the data stream and you’ll be able to ingest it concurrently into multiple systems. So it is a very, very open system which which is what enables us to work with different robotic vendors concurrently.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:05:43] Which is a very good thing, right? Because robotics adoption is growing.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:05:48] Absolutely.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:05:48] If you look at numbers from the International Federation of Robotics and A3, the Association for Advancing Automation, all these figures say robot adoption is growing. So how does your how does your technology enhance robotic applications?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:06:02] That’s a it’s really a fantastic question. Again, so if you can imagine the next generation and we’ll talk about industrial right now, although we do a little work in gaming, we do a lot of work in medical. But if you think about industrial as an example, today, robotic arms are you’ll often see them in subassembly and they’ll be picking parts from a bin or they’ll be pinned to a particular section of the the environment. Well, the next generation is to start putting robotic arms into work zones that are dynamic, that can actually be part of things in motion, other things in motion that it can interact with. So a chassis that’s coming by that then needs to be the parts need to be bolted into it or an engine and a transmission are coming together, whatever it may be. But all of those right now don’t see a fair amount of automation because of the fact that you need to have a processing speed of the location of what’s happening. That’s quite rapid. And because our data is so lightweight, but we can turn it into highly valuable data, we enable a different level of applications now to be used in motion, even with things like putting a robotic arm on an Amr and even having the work product itself move.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:07:17] But they are aware of each other and they can actually interact. So it’s a whole different level of efficiency and enabling humans and robotics to collaborate. And let me give you an example of that. If you can imagine in that same industrial environment, if a human gets into a vehicle and are assembling a part of the vehicle today, they have to manually bring tools in or even the pardon. Well, if the robotic system is always aware of where the human is, it can actually hand the heavier pieces to the human in the car or even place them in the car, let the human do the work with the robotic system. So instead of just being core safety, safety will always remain a very high priority. But now it’s collaboration. So the big promise of robotics is to work together with humans, and that’s something that is coming. And these applications are something that we are we’re able to enable.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:08:07] That’s great. So on the topic of applications, what are what are either some applications where you’ve seen your product deployed successfully or some where you think it could add a lot of value?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:08:17] Yes. Yes, great question. We’ve seen we’ve seen the products deployed in the industrial environment where we have in motion talking, for example, of of different parts to a vehicle chassis. We do work in the automotive aircraft manufacturing where especially when we get into large scale military aircraft, where you need to have awareness of robotic arms with very high value parts. Sure. We’ve been doing work in medical, in robotic medical industry. We’ve also been doing work in the gaming industry. So if you can imagine if one of our our greatest strengths is range precision and that’s less than 250 microns, and you combine that with a vision system, when the vision system, it’s let’s call it the the part that it can use the most assistance with is precision on range. Well, bring those two together and then you’ve got the ability to really have the human as they’re interacting with the the system, the the gaming system have very high precision in all the different elements that need to feed into what is the human really doing in relationship to the game. So, so that’s a really exciting part.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:09:26] Yeah. Yeah. So there’s obviously a lot of different types of applications. I don’t know if this is a stretch, but has it ever been deployed or could it be deployed in in robotic surgery?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:09:37] In fact, we’re working with one of the the world’s largest robotic surgery companies right now. Okay. And so if you can imagine in with radio frequency, it has a a more tolerant capability of seeing through things. And what I mean by that is it can see through surgical curtains. If there’s if there’s things that are occurring during a surgery that. Will obscure some of the let’s call it the the the surgical room splatter and things along those lines. We can work in those environments so we can help the robotic system really understand where the patient is and where the other assets are within that surgical environment. I’ll even take it a step farther. Imagine if you’re putting a radiofrequency technology on the tip of a surgical tool, and now you have the ability to understand where the human surgeon is actually using that surgical tool to guide them, for example. And how deep do they put a screw into a bone? Where did they drill the hole? And is it is it are they not going to, let’s say, go beyond that, that level of precision they need so they won’t damage the patient? All of those things are part of what we’re working on right now with the radiofrequency technology. So the way we envision it, we focus on providing very high fidelity location data and we have the ability to work with many different types of applications. But what we focused on initially is working in the environments that can can leverage technology quite quickly, which is why we started with industrial and now why we’re expanding out into into medical and others.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:11:21] Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. How does how does it compare to alternatives? The product itself.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:11:27] So one of the big differentiators is really the what we’re talking about earlier is its ability to really be leveraged in environments that are less than ideal. And so we don’t we don’t look at it as we’re going to go in and just replace all the vision systems or replace the laser systems. Actually, we look at it as there’s going to be a place for all of these technologies. And frankly, I think there’s a great opportunity for them to really work together. So if you can imagine, for example, a seventh axis on a maybe we’re a robotic arm is interacting with a product on a conveyor belt. Well, if you imagine less than 250 microns of range precision, that can then be combined with a vision system that’s picking parts off of a belt. It’s a great combination of the two. Right? So so I would encourage you, if you’re thinking about Microlocation, there’s incredible use cases for it, but it can be combined with other technologies to create the best of breed. And so that’s that’s part of the way that I would encourage people to think about micro-location and the different use cases and ways it can be used.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:12:34] Yeah. One of those, one of those use cases I saw on your website is train positioning. Right. What how does it work there and what are the what are the benefits that it delivers to subway systems or.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:12:44] Absolutely. So we have we have the Micro-location technology, which is what I’ve been referring to with the robotic control. And then we have our ultra wideband technology, which is designed for the rail industry and the mobility industry. And what that does is, is you put that technology on a train. We’ve done a tremendous amount of work in enabling that positional data to be very highly valuable to those train systems. How do you increase performance? How do you know where it is when it goes into a tunnel, know how do you transition it from a GPS into a tunnel so that the system knows where the train is so you can get maximum performance, where you know where there’s potentially a maintenance issue. And there’s a lot of applications that can be built on top of this data to really change the user experience and the cost profile and the profitability profile or really not profitability for for the rail industry. But but really efficiency profile for for the metros and the like. So it is a next level of highly efficient location data that can be expanded to many different use cases.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:13:49] Yeah, certainly sounds like it. To hone it in a little bit, you know, on the podcast where manufacturing matters. So in the context of manufacturing, what do you what are you most excited about not only in the space, but in terms of how your product can help maybe open the doors to new applications as as manufacturing processes grow and evolve?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:14:07] Absolutely. Well, in a large part and this is, I think, one of the prime tenants, we’re very open system. So as manufacturing continues to mature and as we start looking at, let’s call it, industrial spaces that want to ebb and flow based on the demand by by putting micro-location into the equation, you no longer have to, let’s call it hard set up those manufacturing environments. So by making the robotics aware of the environmental, the infrastructure, if it needs to change, if you need to add five, six, seven, ten robotic arms because you’re getting near a holiday season and you want them to be able to interact with the environmentals, all of that becomes dynamic, for example, right? Because the the programmatically you don’t have to hard program the robotic arm to be in one physical spot. They can actually move around in the space. So as a space grows as it changes its. It’s very rapid to respond to that. That’s a great opportunity for the way that manufacturing is looking to go toward industry 4.0 and beyond. We’re an enabler of that. We’re an enabler of the human and robotics now really beginning to collaborate and work together. So as we think about the humans in a in a manufacturing facility, one of the things that comes with what everyone’s dealing with today is there’s a lack of labor, but you want to leverage the highly valuable labor to be able to do the more valuable jobs and then let the robots come in the robotic arms and the like to assist those people. And that’s a big part of what we’re enabling as well. So how do you get the maximum efficiency? By using robotics, but to support the the human that’s highly valuable in the manufacturing process and that will really begin to expose a different class of applications to make production, let’s say, higher quality, to maybe have more throughput to increase profitability. All of those things come with nature of applications that this technology enables.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:16:06] Yeah. And it’s not. Yeah, exactly. I’m glad you touched on that, right? Because robots aren’t so much displacing humans. They’re allowing them to add value in different parts of the plant floor and removing them from those dull, dirty, dangerous. Absolutely.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:16:18] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:16:21] Let’s see, Ron, talk to me a little bit about partnerships. I’ve seen some announced recently in the news and like so many other vendors in the in the, let’s say, automation, community partnerships are very important. What do those look like for you?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:16:33] We’re very excited to have a number of partnerships. We do a lot of work with universal robots. We do work with Kuka. We are engaging with Mitsubishi and Yaskawa, all of which have a tremendous footprint in the industrial markets, in the surgical markets. And what we’re doing is we’re enabling that. The class of applications we were talking about earlier were enabling those, for example, those robotic arms to start participating in applications that that previously they weren’t being put into place for. So it’s opening up and it has the potential to open up many new markets to really expand the automation within a lot of these very large scale companies that are looking to bring in the next generation of robotics to handle tasks like we were just talking about where we want to get the humans to a more valuable part of the manufacturing process, or we need them to work together to avoid fatigue or potential hurting a human. And so we’re enabling those we’re excited to be working with with our partners on that. All of the folks I mentioned are excellent, excellent partners and they’ve got great technology. And by feeding our data directly into their control systems, we do facilitate that real time control with that that sub millimeter precision. And that has proven quite valuable for for the applications we’ve worked on with them.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:17:52] Very cool. So I’ve kind of already asked you about this maybe twice, but you mentioned how partnerships will maybe open the door to new markets, new applications. Are there any others that you haven’t mentioned that you think you know, the combination of of your technology and robotics and vision systems can open up in the future?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:18:10] There are. It’s endless, frankly. And so so I’ll give you an example. Let’s think about let’s think about the the aircraft market, the drone market. Just very simple, right? So as as our technology continues to mature and enhance, if you think about a precise landing or an in motion landing with the with the drone and you need to get it to a very specific spot. It’s a great use case for for geomatics technology. Right. As as we really continue to grow in the robustness think about mining you know think about the the robotic control that can happen with mining to do something as simple as having an automated rock, crushing something like that can be applied to humanity. So there are markets that and again, the way that we look at it, there are markets that we’re not actively pursuing. But as the technology becomes more pervasive, I think what we’ll find is this will be applied to many, many different types of industries and use cases. And because of the openness of what we do, we can welcome that with open arms. Very cool. Yeah.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:19:15] Anything else, Ron, that I haven’t asked about that you want to mention? You guys are excited about 20, 23 or beyond or have you kind of covered everything?

Ron Ranaldi: [00:19:23] I think we’re extremely excited about the next five years, next ten years in this market. I think what we’re seeing is, especially in robotics, is a three was sharing in at the event is you know there’s an incredible place for automation in the marketplace and the growth will be tremendous. We’re excited to be part of that. I think we’re excited to support that and be a great partner for for the companies that we are working with and the ones that we haven’t engaged with yet because we do we do see that growth coming and we do see the ability to really enhance the way that the market as a whole. Humans as a whole, the way that robotics really become part of a very safe and efficient way to bring manufacturing, to bring surgery, to bring gaming to a different level. And we’re fully expecting that and we’re very excited to be part of it.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:20:18] Yeah, totally. I mean, at the E3 event that you mentioned, the business forum Alan had during his annual Global Economic Outlook said there is a minor recession coming in during that period. Automation will help keep the economy afloat. So, you know, the industrial world’s reliance on automation has been growing and growing and will continue to grow. So your your ability to kind of enhance and augment existing and new systems will be will be fascinating to watch over the coming years. So so Ron, I thank you so much for for letting us come here and visit and for taking the time to talk with me. Everybody, once again, my name is Jimmy Carroll. I’m the vice president of operations at Tech B2B Marketing. This is the Manufacturing Matters podcast. Ron, once again, thank you.

Ron Ranaldi: [00:21:00] Thank you, Jimmy.