4.5.23-AI-Vecna-Robotics

MATTHEW CHEREWKA: Awesome. Well, thank you, everybody. My name is Matthew Cherewka. I'm Director of Product Marketing at Vecna Robotics. So I lead go to market. Vecna was founded by MIT alumni who worked on the Mars Rover project. We're based right outside of Boston. We're in a growth stage, just raised a series C last year and we are focused on warehouse automation and logistics automation here. And so, if this will work for me, here we go.

And so I think-- We've been working on this boring problem for a while. I think a lot of people really realized how bad this was during the height of COVID, right? But global supply chains are just in absolute turmoil right now. You've got growth of e-commerce, you know, events like the invasion of Ukraine and shutdowns in China were crippling global supply chains. And in the meantime, as other speakers have mentioned, we're facing real labor shortages here in warehousing and manufacturing. And so people are turning more and more to automation.

And while it's early innings, we're seeing that the market's really getting ready to take off here. There's millions of manual forklifts out there in the world and only a few thousand are currently automated, but we're on a pretty rapid growth trajectory here and it's really exciting to witness and be a part of that. And so what Vecna is focused on is bringing, sort of, more flexible and adaptive autonomy to traditional warehouse automation.

So we take off the shelf forklifts and turn these into fully autonomous mobile robots with the ability to adapt to their environment and work across a variety of different use cases instead of being sort of these purpose built fixed automation systems that a lot of people are used to. So we've got a variety of different platforms, some focus more in the automotive manufacturing space, some more in the logistics and warehousing space. They're all designed to work alongside people and just kind of drop into your existing environments.

And our secret sauce is really the software that runs everything. And so, on the robot side, as I mentioned, the robots are going to be more adaptive than a traditional automated vehicle in a warehouse will be. They're able to dynamically adapt and adjust to their environment, drive around things that get in their way, reroute on the fly same way that you and I would as a human being. The data that we capture from that also applies to the fleet level and being able to optimize how we're executing work throughout the facilities and so each of those are tailor made solutions to clients.

And then finally, we're collecting all that data across every robot in the field. They're all connected to each other creating a data feedback loop to make them better over time. And then if they do get into situations they can't resolve on their own, we also have human in the loop teleoperation capabilities. So we run a 24/7 ops center where people will dial in, give the robot a hint and then it will get back up and running. We capture that event, pump it back into the system over time, and so you'll see the robots continue to get better and better at your site. And then we get better and better just across every robot in the field.

And so, we've got a number of different customers.

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I think this is a good case study of just showing, kind of, how we're taking existing manual workflows and adapting them based on--

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Looks like we should have muted this video here but I'll let it play for a little bit. But we are adapting manual workflows and bringing in this automation where it's working alongside people. We're automating the non-value work. This is a highly dynamic facility that's being retooled constantly for GM's new EV lines and our robots are able to adapt to all of those changes and we've been able to reduce the headcount that was previously performed in this job by over 50% and we're continuing to expand this solution across their facility for just other applications as well.

And so we are focused on warehousing and distribution, as well as manufacturing, so anybody in the automotive or consumer goods spaces, as well as retailers and logistics providers please feel free to come speak with us afterwards. Thank you.