Robotics craze brings business to Acroname

By Eric Peterson

At the east Boulder headquarters of Acroname Inc., Steve Richards held out a book. Standing atop the tome was the Borfin, a cylindrical robot of his own creation. As Richards tilted the hardback in his hands, the Borfin compensated for the shift with amazingly astute reflexes, maintaining its equilibrium at the unlikeliest of angles.

Richards’ interest in robotics began with a childhood visit to the home of one of his father’s colleagues, a tinkerer extraordinaire who was involved in the engineering of the original artificial heart. “He had taken every one of his children’s Tonka Trucks, and they were all motorized. I think I walked out of that room a changed person. I said, ?I want to do this.’ “

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Since that day, Richards, now 34, has taken his love of robotics far beyond the first wooden automatons he built as a child. As an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, he built a prototype robot as an independent study project. After graduating and relocating to Nederland, Richards continued to milk his passion as he worked as a contract programmer for one acronym-monikered IT outfit after another (IAV, RSI, PTI and CTI). He built autonomous robots in his spare time.

“I’ve always done robotics as a hobby, so I always needed parts, and I always needed information,´ said Richards, Acroname’s founder and chief propeller-head. In 1994, he started a Web site (www.acroname.com) that sold hard-to-find parts and distributed information to like-minded hobbyists.

When his employer of the moment lost its stream of VC, Richards found himself with more spare time than usual. Six weeks before his first child was due, he dedicated himself to this Web site. (The tag was born as a result of the aforementioned alphabet soup of Richards’ onetime employers.) Things started to really gel soon thereafter. What was a hobby in 1994 has since

evolved into a real-world robotics business.

Today, Acroname has 10 employees. The business encompasses three areas: retail, design and conventions. “Really, the whole company is predicated on trying to make this stuff easier,” Richards explained. “I think that will push (robotics) further.

“People doing robotics are largely hobbyists,” he continued. “It’s sort of like the people who were building personal computers before you could go buy one.”

To this end, the shelves at Acroname’s office are crammed with all things robotic ? components, kits, books ? serving as a sort of Robots ?R’ Us for the company’s 5,000 customers. And while the majority of Acroname’s retail business is done via the Web (because of the scattered population of robotics enthusiasts), its brick-and-mortar location is open to the

public for perusal.

As Richards was finding himself in close contact with the robotics community and the problems thereof, he found himself in the unique position to offer solutions via component design, the second tier of Acroname’s three-pronged strategy. Thanks to the expertise,

inventory and contacts Acroname has cultivated through its retail operations, powerhouses like Chrysler, Briggs & Stratton and Intel’s toy division started calling for design solutions.

The company is also developing its own technology, the BrainStem, to interface between the programming languages of the day and the nuts and bolts of robotics. The first BrainStem module is expected to be available later this month.

“I feel like there’s this big gap between getting physical hardware to work and the high level programming languages that people know from their day job,” Richards said. “I always think of (the BrainStem) as the glue between these two worlds.”

Acroname also received heaps of publicity for the Palm Pilot Robot Kit, a product it originally developed for Carnegie Mellon University. The kit allows users to build a small, three-wheeled robot that uses a Palm as its brain. But instead of just looking at it as just another job for hire, Richards licensed the technology so he could sell it to the hobbyist market. Since unveiling it last November, Acroname has sold 350 of the products (at about $300 a pop), and Richards expects that number to triple in the next year.

Acroname’s third business direction involves organizing robotics conventions. Last year, the first Acroname Robotics Expo, meant as a friends and family event, attracted 150 onlookers. The 2001 expo, which took place last week in Boulder and was expected to attract about 2,000 participants, featured robotics luminaries as speakers, several workshops, a forum for industry vendors and competitions, including a robotic sumo tourney.

For 2002 and beyond, Richards said, “We’d like to become the world-class conference for autonomous robotics.” To this end, Acroname is setting its sights high, hoping to lure 10,000 attendees to its 2002 show, which will likely be held in Denver. “We have all the connections,” he said. “We sell to basically all of the people doing this stuff.”

With Acroname’s annual retail growth at 400 percent and its design services burgeoning, the company has outgrown its office every year since it was founded and currently is considering yet another relocation. One look at the crammed headquarters makes it obvious that the company is bursting at the seams.

Acroname’s growth begs the question: When will robots take that giant leap forward and become commonplace consumer items? “People need to become more comfortable (with robots),” Richards said, adding that a general-purpose robot, one that could, say, mop, vacuum and snow-blow, would help spark a critical mass in the market and bring costs down. “But I would be surprised if within three years there wasn’t some at McGuckin’s.”