Task-Based Robots for Contractors to Solve the Labor Crisis in Construction with Shamoon Siddiqui

0:01 [SPEAKER_01]: On this week's show, Human Robotics with Shamoon City from Human Friendly Robotics. [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, Shamoon, how are you, buddy? [SPEAKER_00]: Doing well. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me on big fan. [SPEAKER_00]: What am I supposed to say big fan? [SPEAKER_00]: Long time listen.

0:26 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the old one. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see old line. [SPEAKER_01]: Well now now you're going to have to get rid of that line. [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's going to get to say you are now a guest for rediving because this is going to be a lot of fun. [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. [SPEAKER_01]: I said robotics twice already.

0:38 [SPEAKER_01]: He's got a robotics sign behind his head. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to have fun. [SPEAKER_01]: But you guys know the deal. [SPEAKER_01]: We're back on YouTube. [SPEAKER_01]: Check us out youtube.com 4 slash at the contact crew. [SPEAKER_01]: And just [SPEAKER_01]: You're liking everything's growing there, so I appreciate you.

0:53 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, so Shimon, we're back. [SPEAKER_01]: Introduce yourself to everybody listening in. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so hey, everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: Shimon is a deity from Human Friendly Robotics. [SPEAKER_00]: We're based here in Central Jersey. [SPEAKER_00]: Human Friendly Robotics is building robots for construction with most challenging problems.

1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a line of robots the first of which is a floor-tiling robot. [SPEAKER_00]: So, of course, we named it Tyler. [SPEAKER_00]: We're working on one that does electrical wire pulling called Sparky, and we are working on another one that does cut-outs of prefabricated panels for modular construction, which we don't have a great name for yet if someone's got one.

1:29 [SPEAKER_00]: You can get in touch with me. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm all yours. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's great. [SPEAKER_01]: And we had a little fun playing on the humanoid robotics versus human robotics. [SPEAKER_01]: So let's dive back. [SPEAKER_01]: How did you before we get into all of that and what you guys are actually up to and doing and building?

1:42 [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get to this point where tackling building robots in general was a thing you wanted to do? [SPEAKER_01]: So you can let people know a little bit about you. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a few years back, like a lot of people, I got pretty deep in the humanoid rabbit hole. [SPEAKER_00]: We're hearing about the optimists and the unitary and the figure and it was all going to be super exciting.

2:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So I kept telling deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and then I had to do some laundry. [SPEAKER_00]: My wife asked me to do a load, so I brought it down, lugging this big basket that weighs out in a 20-girty pounds, however much laundry weighs. [SPEAKER_00]: Bending down, putting in the machine, doing all these things.

2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like this task one bit. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just because my wife is telling me to do it, but my body's really bad at every step of the equation. [SPEAKER_00]: From picking it up, to bending over, to putting it down, to picking up a sock, to putting in the machine truck. [SPEAKER_00]: bring it back up to stairs and yet every humanoid robot company is advertising laundry is a breakthrough feature.

2:35 [SPEAKER_00]: If laundry is the killer app of robotics, why is it emulating the worst form designed for work ever? [SPEAKER_00]: So, that led me to go strictly the other way. [SPEAKER_00]: hating humanoids with the passion, not humans with humanoids, and I thought while the most successful robots that we all kind of know about are the room-book class of robots, and then the invisible robots that we don't see, but it existed for 40 years in factories and warehouses.

2:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They're boring, they do one thing, they do it well, and that's when we delved deeper and deeper into construction. [SPEAKER_00]: So, let's more get to you. [SPEAKER_00]: We, well, let's get to you. [SPEAKER_01]: You and I had this conversation when I first started doing robotics talks, I actually got [SPEAKER_01]: picked to go to Autodesk University to kick off their sort of innovation stage.

3:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I'd call it like a sort of a TEDx type stage and I was leading out the group of robotics people and I got to them and I'm like, you guys do realize like minds of Joe. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to make fun of humanoid robots and like there's so many things out there like drywalls the size it is because that's as far as I can go.

3:36 [SPEAKER_01]: CMU weighs what it weighs because that's all a human can carry it's like why would you design and spend time designing something this inefficient to do anything and also paddocks expensive like you know my favorite one was I showed atlas like doing a jump off of scaffolding [SPEAKER_01]: the toolkit.

3:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that that's there's no ROI in that one is the way better way to solve that problem. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, like, maybe a cart that follows you around with everything you need that you can call over to you. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like, and that's when I started digging in.

4:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So you just said that a lot of the world has been designed for humans. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the pitch of the humanoid companies and followers that, oh, yeah, can adapt to anything. [SPEAKER_00]: And we're looking into marginal construction. [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of it is framing off site.

4:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The reason that's done that way in people are hesitant to move away from that is because two by four is something that a human can carry. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you take that limitation restriction out, you can think a lot faster about what module construction would look like. [SPEAKER_00]: Because machines can carry heavier things than a person, but a guy can carry two by four and a shoulder.

4:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the limitation. [SPEAKER_00]: You can get two or three or four, two by fours, and that's the bottleneck. [SPEAKER_00]: So designing for that just it bottles the mind. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's why, you know, you looked at exactly what you said. [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's an arm like looking thing on an assembly line for cars.

5:01 [SPEAKER_01]: It's all the Amazon warehouses. [SPEAKER_01]: They have their own set of robots that look like a giant rhomba that can carry. [SPEAKER_01]: those stacks of stuff around and move them around and it's so funny too because like a humanoid robot's going to need so much connectivity, so much instruction, so much feedback.

5:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Those ones in the Amazon and others, they're run by QR codes that they roll over. [SPEAKER_01]: The QR code tells them where they're going and adjusts them. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a lot of snappy, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a lot of reality. [SPEAKER_01]: So you have won out there in the world.

5:33 [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get from, okay, I'm gonna look at construction, I'm gonna get to this thing called Tyler. [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get there? [SPEAKER_00]: So I was doing the market study and the market analysis and your Tam and your song and all that stuff and had a few different ideas and the issue with the most the other ideas is looking at global.

5:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So roofing for example here in the north east we've got a lot of shingle roots for residential out in California maybe some Spanish tile and commercials a whole different game altogether. [SPEAKER_00]: Same to with Pete here in the US we generally have drywall whereas in maybe in Europe they've got more stone or masonry or plaster.

6:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: Flooring is literally universal. [SPEAKER_00]: It could be a hospital in Mozambique or the Burj Khalifa. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be titled, Floored, Broccoli with different materializing, but the same thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And from a robot perspective, it's difficult because it's uncontrolled conditions, but the work is the same.

6:20 [SPEAKER_00]: If you can lay two tiles, you can lay 20. [SPEAKER_00]: If you can do 20, you can do 200. [SPEAKER_00]: So the challenge isn't laying 2,000 square feet. [SPEAKER_00]: It's laying 2 square feet. [SPEAKER_01]: I like that minimizing the challenge down to something [SPEAKER_01]: you can bite off and start working.

6:36 [SPEAKER_00]: What I've learned talking to floor Tyler's and contractors and owners and potentially even higher up the stream depending where you go, we've talked to a few manufacturers this week as well. [SPEAKER_00]: It's brutal and punishing on the back, the knees, the hips, everything. [SPEAKER_00]: The thing that we're trying to extract is floor towers and traits people in general have a lot of expertise that is valuable and cannot be replaced and that's what I think the job site should demand your expertise not your back in your knees.

7:04 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we should clip that as you know it's your expertise not your back in your knees because consistently that's where this works and I love the there's these niche robotics and I think yours is truly a robot I'm going to be a little. [SPEAKER_01]: harsh on some of the others and I think it's great that they call themselves robots because it gets people to pay attention to it.

7:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So they're like the mule that's out there from construction robotics. [SPEAKER_01]: In my opinion, it's not really a robot, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a really well-built hand lift. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's an assisted piece. [SPEAKER_01]: It's awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: Double the CMU size because you can move it.

7:37 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to move the equipment so much. [SPEAKER_01]: So incredible there. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is, and again, it's taking the, it doesn't make it the fastest mace in any faster, but if the end of the day, they don't hurt as bad, they bodies are in better shape and they've produced it more, maybe a little bit more, but honestly they can continue to produce, we can reduce, you know, time off, etc.

8:01 [SPEAKER_01]: for injury and repetitive injuries, one of the biggest problems. [SPEAKER_00]: So talk to you a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: I get the sense that you actually do care about the working man. [SPEAKER_00]: I do as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So protecting them, their bodies, their health is important.

8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But let's pretend we were callous. [SPEAKER_00]: We didn't care. [SPEAKER_00]: We were very Machiavellian and calculating it was just ROI numbers. [SPEAKER_00]: Even then, it makes sense to protect them because people are not entering the trade. [SPEAKER_00]: They just aren't. [SPEAKER_00]: The numbers, depending on which ones you're reading, how you read them, for every 10 to retire one enters.

8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to be completely selfish and cold-hearted about it, we should save their backs so they could work longer. [SPEAKER_00]: Now if you want to be a human about it, we should save their backs because they deserve to have save backs. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would agree with you. [SPEAKER_01]: I think some of the statistics that are even out of date now, we're 500,000 plus short across all the trade.

8:46 [SPEAKER_01]: So let's say, macavailingly you take over tiling and tiling's just not a thing people do anymore. [SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of other trades that still need to be done to everybody who just threw something on us. [SPEAKER_01]: We're not saying that, you know, I think we just saw this the robotics team from Dualta, right?

9:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, listen. [SPEAKER_01]: drilling holes in concrete is not anybody's craftsmanship and so I'm wondering too about that okay see you have a robot that lays tile but anybody who's been in the tile business knows there's a lot of interesting corners and other how are you handling [SPEAKER_01]: that part.

9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So that is where your expertise as a tradesman comes into play and that's the part we're intentionally not doing. [SPEAKER_00]: A, from a simply mechanical repeatability perspective, it's not easy and b, it's one to two percent of the floor plan. [SPEAKER_00]: So we would rather do the 95, 98% of the field work, where you're just on your hands and knees the whole time, and let you do the precision stuff.

9:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Let you calculate, if I cut this tile of this much, I'm going to waste. [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever that is, you still are needed and important, and it's more, at least from the people I was smoking to, Satisfy. [SPEAKER_00]: We all get a certain amount of Satisfy action from our job, a well-done cut around a column.

10:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen tile setters that are over the moon if the cuts perfectly circular. [SPEAKER_00]: Like this is, it's prifel. [SPEAKER_00]: They don't really take pride in, I got down 50 tiles on the floor today. [SPEAKER_00]: They deprive, rather jump, that individual thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's funny too because we've tried to gamify and you've seen people, you know, try to make them want to compete with one or another.

10:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, in the end, it's not that you went home when you did, you know, I laid 500 individual pieces of tile today. [SPEAKER_01]: You're right. [SPEAKER_01]: They talk about, look at how clean we did that column. [SPEAKER_01]: Look at how difficult that corner was and how good we made it look.

10:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And I ain't get up and making sure, you know, like, I hate to say this, but I had this once, like, I ain't the tile and doing it correctly so that it's not, if you lay the wrong tile in one line, it look, the lines look like they're moving. [SPEAKER_01]: That's why you staggered tile, like, something I did not know until you've seen it done wrong.

10:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Once you've seen it done wrong, you're, it hurts your eyes. [SPEAKER_00]: You never walk in somebody's house and notice how bad the age [SPEAKER_01]: If once you get your thing to wood flooring, I've got it in this apartment that I know of, that's horribly done, that needs a whole lot of work from the person maybe that owned it before, then we could just try it out all you want.

11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: You'd use telling me what kind of flooring you want, we'll redo. [SPEAKER_00]: I got a good name for when we make that robot. [SPEAKER_00]: If Tyler does tile, what do we call a robot that does would think about it? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I would call it Woody. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_00]: If we can't have the puns, we're not doing the bot.

11:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The half a million worker shortage, which itself is outdated, when people say you're coming for our jobs. [SPEAKER_00]: I say half jokingly, but half truthfully, [SPEAKER_00]: We have to backfill half a million workers before we take one job. [SPEAKER_00]: So even if that were our Machiavellian, just horribly ill-intentioned corporate goal, we're so far away from that being reality that it's not an actual threat of any magnitude.

11:52 [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not. [SPEAKER_01]: And in a lot of Steve, I mean, I talked to my son about this, like, making the trades available to this next generation. [SPEAKER_01]: There's always going to be a few kids out there, a few people out there in the world. [SPEAKER_01]: They like it and dirty. [SPEAKER_01]: They like being out there and like those kinds of hard things.

12:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're always going to have lots of that work. [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of this next generation of kids that will want to be crafts people, they're going to want to operate tools like this. [SPEAKER_01]: That's going to keep them interested. [SPEAKER_01]: And then they can spend time with that.

12:20 [SPEAKER_01]: experience Tyler that's like, hey, look, making this corner is going to be really hard. [SPEAKER_01]: Getting this column right is going to be really hard. [SPEAKER_01]: You get the robot going over there where it's, you know, just set it and forget it. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get over here and let me teach you how to do this.

12:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And then they're not busted in their back all day. [SPEAKER_01]: They're learning a cool art form that then at the end, they're into and you've drawn the [SPEAKER_00]: In construction the number one reason someone chooses a job is you would guess money compensation right generally number two is surprising what's the number two reason people rank for it keeping a job starting a job.

12:57 [SPEAKER_01]: What would you guess I think it's impact, but I don't know how you would say that because I know it's what generationally has changed it's how much impact they have. [SPEAKER_00]: So at least for this generation, specifically in the physical work, it's the ability to learn. [SPEAKER_00]: You attack new tools, new paradigms, because if you are a career, forget about tile setting.

13:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds selfish for me to talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a career framer or a mason or something else, I mean, sure, if you're learning a new trick, a new thing, every so often, but as you spend a decade or two, you're learning less and less. [SPEAKER_00]: We are trees creatures.

13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: We love novelty. [SPEAKER_00]: It's why we left the oceans in the first place. [SPEAKER_01]: true. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where also I know this next generation and I know myself cares about renewables and doing things smarter. [SPEAKER_01]: And so that is the other thing that robotics can do is they're extraordinarily efficient.

13:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you can focus on whatever else it might be. [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, are you trying new materials? [SPEAKER_01]: Are you making sure that, you know, what you're using is recyclable or using the [SPEAKER_00]: So that's exactly it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's this dichotomy, this Yen and Yang.

14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: You have people, and not just people in the trades, but all of us, you me included, that are kind of set in our ways and we don't want to change the way we do things. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, we want novelty and we want to learn the newest tool, the newest gadget, the newest website.

14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where I think that not just selfishly us, but this whole breed of construction robotics is bridging. [SPEAKER_00]: Because we're still letting you do the things you want to do in the trade and taking away stuff you don't, while giving you new tools and toys and paradigms to think about.

14:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm pivoting us a little bit here and moving us into a new space here a little bit but what was so awesome and I'll be honest it's the reason I was like you got to come on the show talk about your office and what this place looks like right now and maybe we'll talk about how the thought process and the sort of weather magic happened.

14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So it is intentionally chaotic. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want a single person here that doesn't want to be here. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want someone here that needs too much hand holding. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want someone here that's afraid to break something. [SPEAKER_00]: We break something every few days, whether it's a Jetsin or a metal shaft, something is breaking all the time.

15:09 [SPEAKER_00]: From the inside looking out, when you're here, the energy is so intense because it's all the standard stuff you'd expect from Rotary and Pupa helping each other, but also a lot of people and myself included fully acknowledging that we don't know the next step and we're figuring it out. [SPEAKER_00]: So we've got all sorts of sayings and quotes and quips that we're having a little task for that we're living by.

15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And the one that gets repeated the most is action generates information. [SPEAKER_00]: You can sit there and think about a problem, you can talk about it, you can just do something and solve it, and figure out what didn't work, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the other one is fail fast to succeed quickly.

15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Because there is this whole like fail fast idea, but I think they don't connect it to what you just said. [SPEAKER_01]: So talk about how you make that one go to action, because I think too many people don't understand it, especially in construction, because we can't fail on construction projects.

15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But what does that mean to you? [SPEAKER_00]: So, case and point, literally yesterday and today, we're starting to figure out how to get a lubrication thing on wire, because you have to lubricate wire for going through a conduit. [SPEAKER_00]: There's 400 different ways to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you get on Apache, BT, Google, they all have a different solution.

16:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And we did it. [SPEAKER_00]: We spent hours searching for different solutions and debating them. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we just wrote one of my guys. [SPEAKER_00]: He just said, I'm going to cut open this bottle. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to see if I could use a piston and push it through.

16:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's do that. [SPEAKER_00]: You did a work, maybe we won't. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll file a y'all. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see now in the next hour or two when he's done with it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the real world. [SPEAKER_00]: So when it comes to napkin and construction, I think that's the, if you want to call it the moat or the defensive ability, it's not that our robot can lay tile, or that it can do it better or faster or slower than a human.

16:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the metric you want to use is. [SPEAKER_00]: The thing that we're really optimizing for is how to do it infinitely variable conditions. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because if you did get the tile setting machine or some other companies robot in some way, your site was not pristine and it bailed.

16:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Now what? [SPEAKER_00]: Like you intentionally did not get a crew of six guys because you have the robot coming into tomorrow. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the actual problem of solving. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not solving for the tiling problem. [SPEAKER_00]: We're solving for that problem. [SPEAKER_00]: Reliability in unknown cases.

17:04 [SPEAKER_01]: it's a completely wicked environment. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, construction always will be a wicked environment. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to look the same day after day and the robots that are going to have to be trusted are going to have to be able to deal with that. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're some of the earliest hurdles you didn't see come.

17:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I love this by the way on the for the sparkies out there. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure a few of you guys are going to be sending messages to It's a shimoon about how do you get the lubricant on those wires. [SPEAKER_00]: Please tell me the the biggest I guess mindset shift that I had coming from software and technology in different stars before [SPEAKER_00]: Everything in the physical hardware space takes way longer than you would want it to.

17:40 [SPEAKER_00]: A, because if it's code, even before the GPTR of writing code or the cloud code, you could do something right away and see if the button is now read or the API now works or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_00]: But here we don't know if this loop thing will work until we actually design the piston, make the piston, use the piston, we have no idea.

17:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And that could be hours, it could be days, and if it's wrong, we have to go back to the drawing board and that's why we're [SPEAKER_00]: really big on fail fast. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's fail in hours, minutes of possible, and not days and weeks. [SPEAKER_01]: It's super important too, because you don't just have to build it once.

18:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, okay, so if he goes and figures out the cut that bottle open, you put the piston on it, you get it figured it out. [SPEAKER_01]: Now you got a mass producer. [SPEAKER_00]: And now we have to go back to the first part, all the edge cases where the thing doesn't work, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's plastic, what if it warps, what if it depends, what if it's hot, what if it's cold, what if the lubricants empty the person put a little [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to the other surprise, and this is maybe, you know, possibly a detriment, but I view as a benefit is me not having floor-tiling experience per se.

18:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of assumptions that turn out to be highly unrealistic. [SPEAKER_00]: Just, you look at a tile, you don't realize that there are no two tiles on the planet that are identical. [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of size and tolerance down to the millimeter and sub-millimeter, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because these things chip, and they're manufactured differently.

18:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And you just don't think about that. [SPEAKER_00]: but coming from robotics or an engineer standpoint, we would like them to be the exact same, and they're not. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was learning to adapt. [SPEAKER_00]: Now there's rectified tiles that are better and so on and so forth, but my assumption was, yeah, it's perfect tiles.

19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a computer code, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's just what I want it to be. [SPEAKER_00]: To real world does not that. [SPEAKER_01]: No, and that's, I mean, think about it. [SPEAKER_01]: The tiling companies, the manufacturers, they have a tolerance level in there. [SPEAKER_01]: That tolerance means there's variants, [SPEAKER_01]: somebody has to handle that.

19:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is now you and my job. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, Tyler's job. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to do it, but yeah, Tyler will have to take care of that. [SPEAKER_01]: And I can appreciate that you don't have Tyler experience and that you can be open about that. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think there is this misnomer that [SPEAKER_01]: Especially in construction.

19:46 [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, well, you have to be a construction expert. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, that's actually not true and shouldn't be true, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You need those experts around and learning from them and understanding sort of a not having the world. [SPEAKER_01]: That's as the way we've always done it view point is who's going to bring you?

20:05 [SPEAKER_01]: This comes from Disney, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Disney's whole thing is [SPEAKER_01]: don't fill your room with people who are experts in it all. [SPEAKER_01]: You won't get anywhere with it because you won't get any new ideas. [SPEAKER_01]: You bring in, you know, I'm a big Duncan Wardle, everybody knows that.

20:18 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he brought in the chef. [SPEAKER_01]: to one when they were trying to open one in China and she's the one who designed a different house and came up with the distinctly Disney uniquely Chinese like you don't get that creativity if you're an expert in all honesty so there's this level of creative mix unique.

20:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think that it's true, like, what did Jeff Bezos know about selling books? [SPEAKER_00]: He was not in the book selling business. [SPEAKER_00]: He had no industry experience in publishing and retail and all that. [SPEAKER_00]: He was a weren't a friend of investment, Mike, because it's far removed from books that he could possibly be.

20:52 [SPEAKER_00]: What did Elon know about cars or rockets for that matter? [SPEAKER_00]: If they ought to have a look at it, because if you're from the inside, looking out, you're just going to be the same way. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and interesting too, because, you know, go to the Bezos one, like Barnes and Noble was killing it at the time.

21:05 [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't believe this thing could be anything different that you must buy books in person. [SPEAKER_01]: And who knew this guy who, by the way, wasn't that big into books? [SPEAKER_01]: was going to just destroy that and change that market, the interesting thing is if we do this right with robotics and the way you're going about it, you're partnering with tiling companies.

21:28 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the difference here, right, is that they will be a part of their own evolution. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not disruption if it's an evolution of how it's done. [SPEAKER_01]: It's disruption as a buy product. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's going to be an evolution because we have a lot to learn.

21:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be transparent about that. [SPEAKER_00]: We have to keep talking to people doing jobs, doing deployments, but also the industry needs time to adapt. [SPEAKER_00]: How do you bid a project? [SPEAKER_00]: That changes. [SPEAKER_00]: So, if you were to bid a 20,000 square foot school, you've got your rules of thumb, you've got your metrics, you've got your numbers that you've used historically.

21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Even if everything we say is true and works and works perfectly, how do you begin to bid around that? [SPEAKER_00]: If there's no way, there's no concept. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's no RS means for robotic installation of tile, etc. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that we're coming into that we're talking to people that are doing larger jobs and public jobs.

22:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, yeah, but how do I bid this out? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, that's good. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good question. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm being the math on that. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the workflow and the tools are just not there because the owner of the company's not the one doing the bid, it's someone in the chain.

22:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So it very much is a workflow adoption problem, less of a technological adoption [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it'll be it's one of those things too. [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's where in the beginning you're going to have to bid it at the old way do it the new way and figure it out. [SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully that it just means you're way more efficient and you're making more money till everybody figures out you're doing with the robot, but You know, that is too.

22:51 [SPEAKER_01]: By the way, at some point, there is a commoditization of what we do in construction and we have to be okay with that. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not You know, this shirt is of a nice fabric brand new. [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't get any cheaper, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot cheaper to manufacture these days than it used to be, but I'm still paying for it.

23:09 [SPEAKER_01]: So like there's a moment in which it is when it is this is how we do it, but we're here to make money. [SPEAKER_01]: That's a totally different one because there's a single innovation curve in construction that needs to go away. [SPEAKER_01]: Like if I can do something differently this time and I save a bunch of money, that's what you expect me to charge you is to get rid of my own profit.

23:29 [SPEAKER_01]: No, at some point, this is just what the service costs deal with it. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what the good point, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So we are in early talks with a couple of the unions, because that's always going to be a big part of this. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the unions we're speaking with, they said, yeah, we actually accept an innovation, right?

23:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Gone are the days where people are against the 7-inch brush versus the 5-inch brush because it's whatever Forbes and Fassar. [SPEAKER_00]: And we're working with them to get the Department of Labor certification, so they could be a union [SPEAKER_00]: that outputs five times a person and gets paid four times as much, right?

24:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It's still in net win. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're not driving that salary to zero. [SPEAKER_00]: The goal and work with them is to drive that salary up. [SPEAKER_01]: The product more increased the productivity of the person and pay them more. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow. [SPEAKER_01]: We're getting more and we're paying more.

24:16 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a unique. [SPEAKER_00]: approach win right because the client pays a little bit less the guy gets paid a little bit more the gc keeps his profit on top it's going to be a long cycle to promise labor and all that but once we're there it's going to be massive [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, once you're there you're there.

24:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So, all right, we're getting close and I don't want to leave this out there because I know I've got a huge electrical group listening and you're getting sparky role and But you had some asks you need some info. [SPEAKER_01]: We already talked about the lubricant issue. [SPEAKER_00]: What else is going on?

24:49 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you want those Sparkies, listen in into to do here? [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my ask. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll tell you what Sparking is robot system. [SPEAKER_00]: There's two one and each end, one for the polar one for the feeder, and it intelligently drives the wire through the conduit.

25:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything down from a 12 gauge to 500. [SPEAKER_00]: It's real. [SPEAKER_00]: Innovation isn't so much the pulling. [SPEAKER_00]: There's the green lead of South wire. [SPEAKER_00]: There's other companies. [SPEAKER_00]: They make tuggers and pullers and feeders. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the safety.

25:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the matching. [SPEAKER_00]: If there's a kink in the line, we detected before we just rip through wire. [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas an existing tool, the one on someone's watching and knows the doing has to rip to the wire. [SPEAKER_00]: So my ask for you guys is what would it take for you to be convinced that the safety part matters?

25:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a good one. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'll be honest, that's not something for me, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I've been around electrical a long time. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not something we have a big conversation about ripping wire. [SPEAKER_01]: What is the safety issue with ripping wire for somebody else listening?

25:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I go, oh, that doesn't sound good, but I know it going in. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have the big fat wires, the 500's, the 300's right there, the thick wires, their inch inch and a half diameter of pure copper, could weigh two, three, four pounds of foot. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you have to push through a conduit, Isaac Newton did his all-big disservice by inventing gravity, because if it's got to go up, it gets a lot heavier.

26:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it's got to go up a hundred feet, it gets a lot heavier. [SPEAKER_00]: And without any tooling whatsoever, it's a guy, or a series of guys, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to break your back fast and then you [SPEAKER_00]: basically a winch. [SPEAKER_00]: These winches are unreasonably powerful, which is good because they have to be to pull this wire.

26:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you get in the way, they're not forgiving. [SPEAKER_00]: If something breaks and snaps, they're not forgiving. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk to you in an interesting other day. [SPEAKER_00]: He said, on one of these machines, a pulley just fell off as it's one to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And what woodsing by those had missing invite inches when there's injuries in that space It's on injuries of a towel.

26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Great. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why if you're not doing it correctly There's the repetitive stress injury to your body But if something goes wrong, it's catastrophic now on the flip side if a wire pulled those bad You know your sparkies will correct me, but you don't recover the wire you scrap the wire [SPEAKER_00]: That's hundreds of dollars of why thousands of dollars of wire if it's a long run that can't be reused because it's got to mangle the inside conduit or the pull was too much or too little.

27:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The current state of the art in that industry is a walkie-talkie. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the bar. [SPEAKER_00]: The bar is not perfection. [SPEAKER_00]: It's better than hey Jim slow down on the other end. [SPEAKER_01]: And so basically what Sparky's years doing is you got one pull and one push it.

27:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're communicating with each other. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the real time matching down to 10 times a second, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So before there's a problem, if let's say on the feeding end, because it's pulling off the spool, there's a kink in the spool. [SPEAKER_00]: We know that.

27:40 [SPEAKER_00]: We can stop, we can slow down, we can alert the person. [SPEAKER_00]: Say, hey, we have an issue here, let's fix it. [SPEAKER_00]: It can turn a 10-man crew down to a two-man crew. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, electricians, they are hard to get commercial electricians even more so. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I didn't know the magnitude before, [SPEAKER_00]: Like a lot, maybe if you think about it, but when you start actually talking to people and it's I'm talking to you They're building out in Alaska.

28:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have people in Alaska and they have even fewer trades people in Alaska They've even fewer qualified electricians in Alaska So they're flying people out there just to work. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the numbers that I was told was unskilled trades Let's say it helped her John $400,000 a year in out life for that person [SPEAKER_00]: So I used to go to the skill, so it's not a cost saving thing.

28:26 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't exist thing. [SPEAKER_01]: You can pay a million a year, but you're still not going to get enough of them, because it's just not there. [SPEAKER_01]: And you're absolutely right. [SPEAKER_01]: And the electricians in general, because of the rise in the amount of scope. [SPEAKER_01]: And what is now electrified in any facility, a data center, a hospital, an industrial manufacturing, everything is electrified.

28:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so that scope is huge and there's fewer fuel and same than we said, even if I'm wrong today and there's enough electricians, they will not be tomorrow now and you're not wrong and the safety aspect is huge along with You're talking about safety and predictability and more than anything, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: just thinking about it now, any pool that goes bad and granted I knew pools went bad and cause schedule issues, but now realizing that it could cause an injury and it causes waste for the material itself, but then it also causes the biggest waste we have, which is time is money in a data center and anything we're dealing with.

29:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have that and so predictably when you're talking about planning and scheduling, you now have a higher level of confidence in completing those polls in a repeatable amount of time. [SPEAKER_01]: And oh by the way, let's say over time, these polls are not [SPEAKER_01]: coming out to what we thought.

29:56 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of human excuses for why things don't turn out the way they turn out. [SPEAKER_01]: When you're using a robot, they're giving you all that data. [SPEAKER_01]: Now you have the data and to be honest, you can just say, listen, the reality is, this is just how long these polls take and there's no refuting it.

30:14 [SPEAKER_01]: So here you go. [SPEAKER_01]: Here's your RS means on the time for the schedule. [SPEAKER_00]: That's actually great point because when you ask a tile setter or an electrician, how many of these square feet can dare linear feet, you will get 200 answers out of 20 electricians. [SPEAKER_00]: They've all got, well, it depends on us and that but once we've got data, this is what it takes.

30:32 [SPEAKER_00]: This is it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not good or bad. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not fast or slow. [SPEAKER_00]: It is. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's irrefutable and it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I guess the estimated problem because right now when the guys do in the bid rule thumb, however many square feet per day, however many dodge per square foot, but reality rarely matches rule of thumbs.

30:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And their tar profitability depends on it matching. [SPEAKER_01]: It never matches rule of thumbs. [SPEAKER_01]: And listen, humans have good days and bad days. [SPEAKER_01]: We all do robots do not. [SPEAKER_01]: They have days. [SPEAKER_00]: Honey, now we do have good days and bad days.

31:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you're a tile starter electrician, a Mason, a frame or a carpenter, whatever you might be, our one is [SPEAKER_01]: There's a absolute natural drop in productivity over time. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just the way it is. [SPEAKER_00]: I was at this site in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

31:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was putting down some carpet on myself. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not skilled. [SPEAKER_00]: I do not know what I'm doing. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, you know, it was from me to understand better how it all works. [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't real, so we can just rip it right back up. [SPEAKER_00]: I need to nine tiles into it.

31:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I can just beat in that. [SPEAKER_00]: I just need this to be over. [SPEAKER_00]: After nine tiles, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's nine 36 square feet. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, I can't, my knees are cracking. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought to myself, I'm smart guy. [SPEAKER_00]: I can figure out how to do this efficiently.

31:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Nope. [SPEAKER_00]: Nope. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a craft to it, man, we just want to save them and let them be a little bit more productive over time. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and really it comes down to I think the knee adoption will happen slowly and then all once because we will reach a tipping point.

31:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm probably wrong in the numbers, but I think I read somewhere around 2030 or 2030 one or two. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be three million short in the trades. [SPEAKER_00]: So even if the number is up, the magnitude is not. [SPEAKER_01]: No, no. [SPEAKER_01]: The magnitude is there.

32:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're headed for a cliff, man. [SPEAKER_01]: We just are. [SPEAKER_01]: And we know it. [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, that's why you don't have all the time in the world, but you have some time right now. [SPEAKER_01]: And so figuring these really powerful robotic assisted devices, a robotic assistance.

32:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever term we want to call them is awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: Listen, Shaman, I could talk to you forever. [SPEAKER_01]: People are definitely going to want to come figure out more about you. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell people where to go hook up with you and, hey, before we get all the way there, I got to say thanks to Shepherd for connecting us.

32:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He was the linked in myster to get us to start talking. [SPEAKER_01]: So, huge thanks to Shepherd on your team. [SPEAKER_01]: Let people know where they can go find out a little bit more about you, a little bit more about human-friendly robotics. [SPEAKER_00]: So the website is humanfriendly.bot, which is enough.

32:57 [SPEAKER_00]: You can find me on LinkedIn. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure we have a Twitter. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not very active on our Twitter or Instagram or anything. [SPEAKER_00]: But the best ways are just get to the website. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got our phone number. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got our little email dressing contact form.

33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: We're sitting up on LinkedIn. [SPEAKER_00]: Usually pretty responsive. [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, I do reshepers. [SPEAKER_00]: Awesome with partnerships. [SPEAKER_00]: So you've shout out to him for connecting us. [SPEAKER_01]: and thank you for tuning in to Data. [SPEAKER_01]: Geek out for our interview with Shimon Siddiqui.

33:21 [SPEAKER_01]: To read all our new stories, learn more about our guests and to listen to this show, visit theConTechCruit.com. [SPEAKER_01]: This is TheConTechCruit signing out. [SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, enjoy the ride and Geek out.