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Tobin Fisher

Co-Founder & CEO

Vantage Robotics

play_circle_outline Vantage Robotics background and evolution in drone industry over 11 years

play_circle_outline Importance of hardware, software, and user-centered design in drone innovation

play_circle_outline Industrial design aesthetics and functionality in drone development

play_circle_outline Focus on miniaturization and reducing payload size for future drone advancements

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Tobin Fisher, Vantage Robotics

Tobin Fisher

Co-Founder & CEO Vantage Robotics

Exploring Innovations in Robotics and AI with Tobin Fisher of Vantage Robotics

Tobin Fisher, Chief Executive Officer of Vantage Robotics, joins theCUBE to discuss advancements in drone technology at the New York Stock Exchange Wired Robotics and AI Media Week. Fisher's insights delve into the evolution of drones from consumer gadgets to vital commercial and military tools, emphasizing Vantage Robotics' pioneering work with trusted drones for the United States Department of Defense and Federal Aviation Administration-certificated commercial drones.
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What has been the progression of your company in the drone industry over the past 11 years? add

What are the key factors driving innovation in the development of flying robotics technology? add

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Tobin Fisher, Vantage Robotics

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>> Welcome back everyone to theCube. We are live here in our New York Stock Exchange studio. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube, part of the NYSE and the NYSE Wired community, bringing all theCube action here as part of the robotics and AI leaders. We're here with Tobin Fisher, CEO of Vantage Robotics. Tobin, great to see you, friend of theCube and Bill Tai and Brian Bauman was just here. He says hello. Thanks for coming on.

Tobin Fisher

>> Thank you so much for having me.

>> So robotics is hot. Nvidia was pumping it up big time at their event with the AI side, but in the mainstream, you're starting to see the factories and the physical side of the world. You guys are in the middle with your products and solution in Silicon Valley. Let's set the table, give us some context, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing and then we can go from there.

Tobin Fisher

>> So it is an exciting time. We have been making drones for 11 years now, and it's been really exciting to see how the industry has progressed. We first started out in consumer and one of the few companies back in that day to actually ship the product they said they were going to make, which I can tell you it was a whole lot harder than we expected, but we managed to get it done. And then we transitioned to commercial when we got the first broad waiver with the FAA and CNN for commercial flight over people. And then subsequent to that, got some very large contracts with the DOD and the timing of that was fortuitous and that it was during that time that two things happened. One is a lot of the western world recognized that drones were useful as well as that it might not be wise to depend on potential adversaries for supply of those drugs. And so this idea of a trusted drone emerged, which was a really great need for us ultimately to fill with some very demanding customers.

>> Talk about the drone market right now because you're seeing a lot of efficiencies and with robotics, the intelligence is in there. Take us through some of the key things and moments that happened for you. You mentioned the FAA. What was it like? What were some of those requirements and how big of a hurdle is it to get scoped into that kind of clearance, or I guess it's clearance, it's certification? And is there commercial sales being done now or is it mostly DOD kind of military based?

Tobin Fisher

>> I see the market as having a lot of analogies to say the computer industry in the late eighties, in that we're still in the very early days of figuring out the full impact that drones can have. But we're seeing utility and real broad use across so many different arenas, ranging from inspections to first responders to obviously in Ukraine. They've had a massive impact and really become a siding factor on the battlefield. And I'd say put really broadly, I see it as sort of the next step for Moore's Law to connect with the physical world. And it is a path ultimately to insight and to use the power of compute for insight as it pertains to the physical world.

>> On the eighties reference, I love that Moore's law reference. I mean, it was such massive hardware innovation and then that also enabled the software to run faster. So you had more capabilities in software. What are you seeing for the vision now in your market with drones? Is the Moore's Law equivalent on the hardware and software together? What specifically is the driver around that? Is it form factors? Is it semiconductors? What's the big needle moving dynamic?

Tobin Fisher

>> Our thesis has been that both hardware and software matter and are critical and they matter more than just the processor that you run. This is a flying piece of robotics that has to resist gravity quite effectively in order to work. And so it's a combination of very brass tacks, mechanical engineering, hardware innovation. But then that also is combined with all the advancements in microelectronics coming from the cell phone industry, which has been extremely impactful as well as advancements in compute and AI and perception to take advantage of what you can ultimately do with those very sophisticated sensors sitting where you want them in three-dimensional space.

>> What's the secret sauce of your robotics? Is it software? Can you share the secret sauce of what makes you guys unique?

Tobin Fisher

>> We were one of the first companies to start making our own cameras and start making our own flight controllers and really innovate at the lowest level on what's possible in drones. And I think that has really set us apart within this space in that we have the ability to innovate for our customers and meaningfully advance the state-of-the-art against their needs. And I would say another piece of that that seems like it should be obvious but has really set us apart, is this idea of user-centered design. So I trained under David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, both working at IDEO as well as grad school at Stanford. And it really got an appreciation for the power of something very obvious, but just listening to your customers and developing a team capable of meeting their needs. In the robotics space, that's non-trivial. The needs are often very complex and involve solving a lot of different problems in order to do things like make a drone that can see in the dark or fly silently, they're non-trivial challenges. But I think we've differentiated ourselves and we come at it with a relatively open mind of solving important problems and meaningful problems, but not necessarily just taking a PhD thesis we had and trying to deliver it to the world.

>> I love that David Kelly referenced and IDEO, of course, living in Palo Alto for 25 years saw the history, the industrial design combined with some of the state-of-the-art kind of software, really interesting. And you think about drones, there's a lot of tech in there, but the design side, it's aerodynamic, it's like a plane, right? So you have to bring in that industrial kind of design vibe and form factor. Can you share your thoughts and vision around how you guys are thinking around the industrial design of the unit as well as the tech that enables it? What's the relationship? Is there a connection between how you guys are thinking about... I mean, it does fly, so there's aerodynamics, right? There's physics involved. Can you share your thoughts on that? Because I think that's super interesting.

Tobin Fisher

>> Great question. Well, it's evolved with our customers. So design really is ultimately in service of customers needs. And when we were in the consumer space and we were designing a drone and tend to be used in social settings, the design was really all around making it non-threatening. And it is something that people would be comfortable seeing in the air, a birthday party or settings like that. And then as we evolved and started working with new customers, those design needs changed. So I've got with me here, two of our drones, this is Vesper. This is the drone of choice for preeminent law enforcement agencies, both federal and local level, as well as DOD and international allies. And a lot of this design is really around the ability to see and observe without being detected. I get a lot of people ask me, "Oh, were you part of those drones in New Jersey?" And my response to them is, "If we were there, you wouldn't have known about it."

>> That's awesome. Great comment. No, I think that's cool. I mean, look at that design there. It's beautiful. You mentioned in the eighties, I can't help but think about the old PCs, these big chunking metal boxes. Then the Mac came out. You're like a flying Macintosh, right? You guys must think of it that way because it's elegance on the design side, but at the same time, there are form factor for cameras and other instrumentation. Walk us through that. What's it like when you design that? Is that part of the thinking more surface area for capabilities while not looking like a big honking box flying through the air? I mean, some of the early drones, they're heavy, ugly. Actually people want great design, but I mean they're drones. Tell us your thoughts on that. What's your reaction to that? How do you guys think about the elegance of drones? Is it just aesthetics and function or both?

Tobin Fisher

>> Well, part of what makes the space so fun and challenging and exciting and ultimately full of opportunity is how many different needs there are that need to be met in a drone. So you have, as you mentioned, aerodynamics challenges. There are statics and vibrations challenges. There are all sorts of electronics challenges, thermal challenges, RF challenges, optics challenges, control challenges, AI, and they all can be traded off against each other. And one of the things that I'm really proud of that we've done advantage is understand all those different challenges well enough to see how we can make the right trade-offs to make something that ultimately advances state-of-the-art and makes it the best in the world against the needs for our customers.

>> Go ahead, finish. Go ahead.

Tobin Fisher

>> And I'd say with regard to specifically the aesthetics of industrial design, what we find is that even as we've transitioned from consumer to customers who you don't really think of as valuing industrial design the same way, they still... The look of the product as part of how they judge it, they assess its effectiveness, its worthiness. And so making something that is cohesive and speaks the end customer matters just as much. It's a different language.

>> So I got to ask you because I'm curious, I mean a lot of graduates coming out, whether they're mechanical engineers or computer science or whatever, what's the discipline that you guys look for when you're hiring and hiring people to be on the engineering side? Is there an archetype or is there a role? I mean, I could see mechanical engineers who can code be a great fit because it's mechanical. So I can see software because you got to figure out the namespace, if you will, quotes,because there's a lot of coordinates to synchronize around all kinds of dimensions of tech. Is it just pure physics? Share your vision on the kind of people that excel here.

Tobin Fisher

>> We hire a wide range of engineers, so who have a team of software engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, quality, operations. The two things that I look for are initiative and curiosity. And I think that's really what is needed beyond the basic skills. And the thing that as a company that we really strive to maintain simultaneously is this combination of humility, recognizing that we're working on really hard problems, they're extremely complicated. Our current idea isn't necessarily the best idea. There's always room for improvement as well as audacity of saying, well, why not? It's never been done before. Why can't we be the first? And so it's those qualities I definitely look for people on the team, is that willingness both to recognize that they need help but have shortcomings and that we're capable of doing amazing things and it's worth trying and taking risks and sometimes failing in order to get there.

>> Tobin, I got to ask you the question because it's robotics and AI week here at NYSC. I'll be back in Palo Alto next week in our studio there. So I have to ask you, what is your vision on the robotics side of it? Obviously there's a lot of hype up and down the stack, whether it's the semis to some of the opportunities that it brings. What is your vision as it unfolds for your company? How do you see the robotics evolution? What's that next level flywheel? Moore's law kicks in more, innovation is going to come. What are the key innovation signals do you see? And what are you going to seize in the opportunity ahead?

Tobin Fisher

>> It's a transition on what the product can do and the value they can offer. And right now our primary product is video and situational awareness, and it's controlled by an operator who often is controlling five degrees of freedom simultaneously using our ground control station here. And it's very effective at that. Where we're moving and where we're advancing the product is ultimately what we want to deliver is insight in response to an indication of operator intent. So I refer to that as intent level control, where the operator says anything from, tell me how many tanks there are within a five-mile radius and show them on a map. Wake me up if I were at risk of being attacked for our DOD customers. For our law enforcement customers, is this house safe to enter? And those higher level questions are where we want to get to on the tree in order to minimize the distraction and the training required for the operators.

>> I love that whole tactical edge because it applies to the military as well as civilian commercial. A lot of things happening. I guess final, final question, so I got you here. Is there payload thresholds where drones change the nature of the payload they're carrying? Obviously I can see my mom just thinking out loud, like military want to move some supplies to the front lines or move equipment around. Amazon has that big dream of sending packages via drones. Is that too high of a bar? Is that happening? What's the level of the drone kind of tiering? I mean, the one you showed was beautiful. I can see that one being used for certain use cases. Are the use cases for the higher payloads coming and where are they in the progress?

Tobin Fisher

>> So there's a lot of interesting opportunities for higher payloads, for sure, for moving people, for moving packages. Although the focus that we've had has really been the other end, what we've seen is that the drone industry has followed a familiar pattern of destructive technology where smaller, less expensive, sometimes even less capable products replace the larger ones. That started with going from the Global Hawk to the Predators to the ScanEagles, to the Quadrotors like Vesper. And we see the next step is really actually not bigger, but smaller. So this is our nano drone trace. This is 160 gram drone that has the capabilities of your average 1.5 kilogram drone. And ultimately, we see that as it's sort of consistent to go back to the PC metaphor of look at the impact that cell phones have had on the compute industry and the expansiveness of having something you can have with you all the time and is lower cost. And so we see that very much for drones, that there's expansiveness in small, actually reducing the payload size, and that varies very much by customer. For law enforcement, small's ability to go inside and outside, it's less expensive. It's safe for military customers. The scope of reconnaissance for inspections customers, it's the ability to fit into small spaces. But ultimately our focus has really been around miniaturization and reducing the size of the payload.

>> That's awesome. Going against the grain, if Andy Grover were alive, he'd love you. Smaller, faster, cheaper. You mentioned Moore's Law. Hey, that's the innovation. Tobin, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your insight. Thanks for sharing with us. And again, thanks for coming in remotely.

Tobin Fisher

>> It's a pleasure. Thank you so much, John.

>> Thanks so much. All right. I'm John Furrier, here at the NYSC Live streaming. It's Robotics Week and AI Leaders Week, here as part of theCUBE and the NYSC new Wired community, an open network of leaders and experts sharing their knowledge. Of course, we're bringing it to you in real time. We're going to get smaller, faster, and cheaper. It's free, so content's free. Thanks for watching theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. See you next time.