On this episode, I was joined by Aaron Campbell of Ohmnilabs. Aaron is the Strategic Partnerships Lead at Ohmnilabs where they have developed some robotics products with their flagship being their teleconference robot. We discuss their offerings, how the idea developed and what the future of their robotics offering might be.

Key Takeaways

• The main product for Ohmnilabs is their teleconferencing robot which is essentially a robot with a video screen and camera on top of it. Seems simple and maybe similar to just having a video conferencing setup in a conference room but where Ohmnilabs takes it to the next level is that the video conferencing becomes mobile and you can control it. The robot base is small but very nimble so that it can easily be navigated around an area with the video conferencing platform on top of it. You can see what the robot is seeing and your video will actually be displayed on the robot’s screen like you are the robot.
• I think this is really the next level because it gives you so much more flexibility in being able to really visualize something that is going on. When it comes to the supply chain it gives you an easy way to be in different buildings when needed without having to hop on a plane. A huge time savings and cost savings when you are looking at reducing the amount of travel needed. The Ohmnilabs robot is also a great tool for those teams that are remote and do not have a presence in certain buildings. For example, you may not have IT on-site and this gives them the ability to go check out something that is not working properly without having to go back and forth through emails asking what something looks like.
• The future of Ohmnilabs seems to be the autonomy of the robot. Currently, the robot needs to be controlled by the user but in the future, there is the opportunity for the robot to have scheduled paths. From my perspective, if this can be paired with some type of computer vision to detect when things are out of place you could essentially automate your GEMBA walks and your security rounds. Either way, I think this technology is getting us closer to having a better presence at all of our sites.

Listen to the episode below and check out the demo I got with the robot in the video.