Episode 27: Building Security Robots: a Hardware-as-a-Service Case Study

In this episode of Over the Air – IoT, Connected Devices, & the Journey, Ryan Prosser, CEO of Very is joined by Travis Deyle, Co-founder and CEO of Cobalt Robotics. They discuss how Cobalt employs a framework to deliver a much better service at a much lower cost to their customers. They also look at Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) and its long-term viability in terms of delivering business value and reimagining how hardware is distributed.

We Discuss:

• The implications of not understanding the market
• The importance of product-market fit
• Frameworks for creating hyper-growth and substantial solutions
• The challenges faced during the product discovery
• The importance of filling a gap in the market through solving for an effective articulation piece

Travis Deyle is an acclaimed scientist and technologist with a background in robotics, RFID, and sensing technologies, as well as academic publications. His start-up Cobalt Robotics uses a 5-foot tall mobile robot to offer safety, security, and operational effectiveness for major corporations. This robot performs tasks such as security patrols and safety observation tours (instead of human guards) for facility managers. Cobalt’s ultimate goal is to assist these major commercial clients in managing their real estate footprint from the comfort of their own homes.

Travis created some of the first wirelessly powered mobile robots capable of working in actual houses, including his own. He employed these robots to perform beneficial healthcare functions such as robot-mediated drug distribution and fetching and returning tagged objects, which were enabled by long-range radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags — an internet of things (IoT) technology.

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