What’s Next for Clearpath Robotics?

Now that Rockwell Automation’s acquisition of Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors is complete (at one thing like US $600 million, according to one source), it’s extra essential than ever to get no less than some understanding of what the long run holds for these iconic yellow-and-black analysis robots. And it’s not nearly their robots, both: Clearpath Robotics was one of many authentic champions of the Robot Operating System (ROS), and the corporate has offered a large quantity of assist to the ROS community over the previous decade.

On the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023) in Detroit earlier this month, we spoke with Clearpath Robotics cofounder Ryan Gariepy to get a greater sense of the place issues are headed for Clearpath Robotics.

Now that you’re a part of Rockwell, what’s staying the identical?

Ryan Gariepy: Each Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors are nonetheless very a lot in existence. We’re nonetheless working with our personal street maps, and Rockwell Automation has a want to maintain these manufacturers round. We plan to maintain the long-lasting Clearpath colours. Principally, we’re going to proceed enterprise as standard. As a lot as I respect folks’s concern, we do intend to proceed constructing this for the long-term.

“We’re now in a world the place one of many largest industrial automation corporations has determined that robotics is a strategic curiosity. We predict there will likely be quite a lot of issues that the robotics analysis group will likely be enthusiastic about.”
—Ryan Gariepy, Clearpath Robotics

What’s going to be totally different?

Gariepy: We anticipate with the ability to take bigger dangers, with extra of a long-term view on a few of our services and products. Rockwell additionally has established world scale in gross sales, deployment, assist, provide chain, the whole lot. It’ll actually permit us to focus way more on what we’re good at, reasonably than having to decide on between product growth and operations.

Rockwell at the moment does quite a lot of stuff which is peripheral to the robotics group. They’re a world chief in movement management, in sensing, in security—these are issues that might be of nice curiosity. I feel any long-time researcher will keep in mind the times when sensor producers didn’t even assist utilizing their sensors on robots, and also you needed to reverse-engineer these protocols your self. However we’re now in a world the place one of many largest industrial automation corporations has determined that robotics is a strategic curiosity. We predict there will likely be quite a lot of issues that the robotics analysis group will likely be enthusiastic about.

What about long-term assist for present Clearpath analysis robots?

Gariepy: If something, an organization like Rockwell provides us extra stability reasonably than much less stability. They’re used to supporting their merchandise for much longer than us—the oldest Huskies are arising on 12 or 13 years previous. Rockwell has merchandise which have been in the marketplace for 20 years that they’re nonetheless supporting, in order that they very a lot respect that. I do know that for lots of researchers, it looks as if Clearpath Robotics has been round perpetually, however we’ve solely been round for 14 years. Rockwell has been round for 120 years.

What about TurtleBot?

Gariepy: TurtleBot 5 can be a future street map dialogue, and that’s extra within the arms of Open Robotics than Clearpath Robotics. We do love the TurtleBot, we’re constructing as many TurtleBots as we presumably can, and we’ve got a long-term settlement with Open Robotics to proceed the TurtleBot partnership. That settlement continues.

How does Rockwell really feel about ROS?

Gariepy: Rockwell desires to work extra with ROS, and has undoubtedly been excited by the management that we’ve got with the ROS group. There are quite a lot of issues that we’ve been speaking about on methods to construct on this, however I can’t actually get into any particulars. Actually, it’s because there are such a lot of good concepts we’ve got, that even with this bigger firm, I don’t have the folks to tug the whole lot off proper now.

Once more, it wasn’t that a few years in the past once you couldn’t get an API for a manipulator arm in order that you might even use it, a lot much less have the producer of that arm assist ROS themselves. Issues have modified considerably, and now you will have an organization like Rockwell turning into very excited in regards to the potential within the ROS group.

Clearpath Robotics has in fact solely ever been one a part of the ROS group—an essential half, actually, however the continued success of ROS has (we hope) grown past what is perhaps occurring at anybody firm. It’s slightly worrisome that a number of different essential elements of the ROS group, together with Fetch Robotics and Open Robotics, have additionally been acquired comparatively not too long ago. So with all this in thoughts, we’ll be at ROSCon in New Orleans later this week to attempt to get a greater sense of how the group feels about the way forward for ROS.