PITTSBURGH — Looking out the window of the Boeing 737 this week after landing at Pittsburgh International Airport, gateway to one of the world’s top robotics hubs, it was hard not to see irony in an otherwise ordinary scene: two workers struggling to lift heavy luggage from a conveyor belt to a trailer on the tarmac.
Later, at the airport curb, the Uber app showed rates surging to $95 to $125 just to get into the city, as demand outstripped available drivers in a place where the ride-hailing company once attempted to pioneer autonomous vehicles.
The robots are here, but they’re not yet fully present in our lives. And suddenly, in many parts of the economy and society, they can’t show up quickly enough.
The pandemic and the U.S. labor shortage are starting to change the conversation about robotics and automation from threat to opportunity — from putting jobs at risk to filling critical gaps in the workforce.
“The biggest shift that has happened from 2018 to now is that we’ve literally run out of human beings to do the things that we need to do,” said roboticist Siddhartha “Sidd” Srinivasa, a professor at the University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering in Seattle who founded Carnegie Mellon University’s Personal Robotics Lab during his 18-year tenure in Pittsburgh.
That shift is giving a new spark to robotics engineers and entrepreneurs who have long aspired to change the world with their inventions and ideas.
“There’s a lot of work to be done. But so much of the conversation that society is having now relates to things that have been talked about in robotics for a long time,” said Matthew Johnson-Roberson, the new director of CMU’s storied Robotics Institute. “So I’m really excited about the future.”
Reflecting this trend, the number of robots sold in North America rose 28% in 2021, to 39,708 units, at a value of $2 billion, according to the Association for Advancing Automation. It was the strongest year ever for robot sales, beating the previous high set in 2017, the group said.
This underlying change is one of the key takeaways from my first few days back in Pittsburgh. GeekWire is reporting on robotics and AI over the next week in conjunction with the Cascadia Connect Robotics, Automation & AI conference, taking place May 2-4 in Pittsburgh. Seattle-based investment bank Cascadia Capital, organizer of the conference, is underwriting our independent reporting on the topic.
For me and a few other members of our team, it’s a long-awaited return to the city that hosted our GeekWire HQ2 project in February 2018. I’ve been serving as the advance scout this time, spending the past few days in Pittsburgh to better understand what has happened in the past four years.
Of course, a pandemic happened. But despite the global and local economic upheaval, a new report from the Pittsburgh Robotics Network shows more than 100 companies and organizations developing robotics and automation technologies in the region, up from 80 about a year ago.
Especially in areas such as e-commerce and logistics, the pandemic accelerated trends in the labor market that some major retailers and shipping companies had been anticipating for several years, said Joel Reed, executive director of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network.
“They were already starting to test new technologies, so they didn’t have to go through the feasibility testing phase when the pandemic hit,” Reed said. “And now it’s becoming an imperative for these companies to survive for them to have that level of automation, because they just can’t find the people.”
But it’s not just about backfilling roles once held by human workers. Robotic systems offer the potential to free people up for higher-level or more meaningful activities, said Henny Admoni, an assistant professor at CMU who directs the Human and Robot Partners (HARP) Lab.
Admoni cited the example of robotic technology helping people with disabilities to eat without the assistance of a human caregiver, giving both people an opportunity to eat together in a more natural social way.
“The shorthand for this is, let robots be robots,” she said. “Let robots take over the tasks that robots are best at. Don’t try to replace human interaction. Try to make it so that human interaction is more possible.”
In the meantime, examples of robotics companies addressing gaps in the workforce seem to be everywhere in Pittsburgh.
- Agility Robotics, which makes robots designed to work alongside humans in warehouses, announced a $150 million investment from Amazon and others last week. Headquartered in Corvalis, Ore., Agility is planning to grow its hub in Pittsburgh, where CEO Damion Shelton is based.
- Plus One Robotics, based in San Antonio, announced Wednesday that it plans to open an office in the Pittsburgh Innovation District in the city’s Oakland neighborhood, near CMU and the University of Pittsburgh. Plus One makes automation technology for robots in warehouses and distribution centers.
- Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation last week opened its new headquarters in a renovated building in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, part of what’s known locally as Robotics Row. Aurora, which went public last year, counts Amazon among its investors.
Elsewhere on Robotics Row, Aurora also occupies the former Uber Advanced Technologies building after acquiring the ride-hailing company’s self-driving car unit in December 2020.
Self-driving vehicles can still be spotted navigating the streets of Pittsburgh, but based on my experience over the past few days, it’s not as common to see them as it was in 2018.
This week I’ve primarily spotted a handful of self-driving cars from Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based company backed by investors including by Ford and VW.
Apart from the distinctive sensors and markings on self-driving vehicles, they stand out because they go the speed limit, and no more.
Labor shortages aside, concerns about robots and jobs persist. One of the Uber drivers I rode with this week said he enjoys giving the middle finger to the self-driving vehicles that he sees on the streets — joking that he’s happy the autonomous systems aren’t yet able to recognize or respond to the gesture.
[Editor’s Note: We’ll have more from our conversations with Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Joel Reed, Henny Admoni, Sidd Srinivasa, and others in the days ahead.]
