For the record, Evan Drumwright, CEO of Dextrous Robotics, does not think that robots will rise up one day and murder us all.
"My immediate response is, let's make it through the present crises in the United States before we worry about things far off in the future," he said.
Like it or not, he said, automation and robots are a part of life now. And, in any case, what robots can and cannot do boils down to how they are programmed.
Which brings us to Chopsticks, Dextrous Robotics' robot.
Chopsticks, named for its long, chopstick-like appendages, is programmed to move heavy objects in a constrained space, specifically unloading trucks, shipping containers, and railroad cars.
"Just unloading itself is such a huge deal," Drumwright said. "It's a gigantic, multibillion-dollar a year market. It's particularly relevant in the U.S., where we've been transitioning away from low-skilled jobs to high-skilled jobs over the past few decades. So, you see a number of companies in this area, in particular, that are desperate to fill these kinds of fully manual labor jobs."
Drumwright said that Chopsticks has garnered lots of interest, but he won't say exactly from whom.
"I can't actually tell you who we've been talking to here," he said. "But let's just say that Memphis is a logistics town. There is a lot of interest from companies that have to solve this task. And they all have to solve this task. It's not just third-party logistics companies — FedEx, UPS, Amazon. You've got a lot of smaller companies that have 20 dock bays. They're unloading trucks all day long."
Drumwright grew up in Memphis. He attended Germantown High School and then the University of Memphis. He got his Ph.D. in robotics from the University of Southern California.
"Every kid's dream is to have their own robot, to have something that is able to do things for them," he said.
He got Dextrous Robotics up and running in the Crosstown Concourse in September 2020. Six employees work in the Concourse, and he has other engineers working remotely.
Chopsticks weighs about 1,000 pounds and costs about $100,000 to make.
Drumwright said that raising money for Dextrous Robotics, which he cofounded with Sam Zapolsky, was pretty simple.
"We got one of the fastest raises in robotics in Silicon Valley," he said. "From start to finish, we raised funds within six weeks. We found really good partners in True Ventures and Pathbreaker Ventures, both of whom have investments in robotics already."
Drumwright said they raised millions of dollars.
He noted that Chopsticks is programmed to remove boxes from trucks, and that's it. He doesn't plan to try other applications for his technology.
"We have a vision about where we want to take the company," he said. "The reality is, to accomplish any kind of technical vision, you have to start off with one thing and do it well. So, that's what we've done. We focus on one thing for which we know that there's a market and for which we have expertise to solve that problem."
