Would you like a robot companion or a konpanion?

Naming a robot company or product takes skill especially in Search, SEO and ESL

I am a total sucker for robot pets/cushions. I have a Qoobo on my couch. At Robosoft in 2022, I also met Alexander Colle, the designer/developer of Maah aka Konpanion. Konpanion was supported by the Edinburgh University Superlab research laboratory and in 2023 won a main Scottish Edge award of £80K. 

Integrating elegant design with artificial intelligence, Boroboscot – trading as Konpanion – is pioneering a unique direction for domestic robotics and creating an entirely new species of alternative pets. Maah is the only robot in the market using a cover entirely made of a fabric, bringing smart technology to life in the form of an artificial pet.  

We’re on a mission to bring companion robots into homes everywhere. We believe that Maah is the perfect blend of form and function, acting both as a stylish piece of interior design and a beloved pet.

Our robots are crafted using cutting-edge textile development methods, rather than traditional rigid plastic exteriors. This collection highlights our ambition to create another model of development for companion robots. where aesthetics meets sustainability and craft.

Powered by a newly-developed AI architecture capable of learning and meaningful expressions (artificial emotions) through body language and sound, Maah beautifully utilizes concepts relating to human empathy. Unlike robots that offer poor attempts at conversation, Maah plays with your senses and bonds with you through more natural, non-verbal communication

The Naming of Robots

Is what I did my master’s thesis on, however that was in 2010-2011 so I didn’t grapple with the commercial realities of choosing a name that can be remembered and spelt correctly, and not autocorrected to “did you mean companion?” all the time. This is a topic worth having someone with Search and SEO expertize advising you on.

And consider also what your product name means or sounds like to people who speak languages other than English. There are many stories of Fortune 500 companies having to pull a poorly named product eg. the Inc article below from Geoffrey James.

When you're globalizing a brand, it's always a good idea to check whether your name, logo, or tag line means something different in the regions where you're expanding. Here are the 20 worst examples that neglected this crucial marketing step:

1. Braniff International translated a slogan touting its finely upholstered seats "Fly in Leather" into Spanish as "Fly Naked."

2. Clairol launched a curling iron called "Mist Stick" in Germany even though "mist" is German slang for manure.

3. Coca-Cola's brand name, when first marketed in China, was sometimes translated as "Bite The Wax Tadpole."

4. Colgate launched toothpaste in France named "Cue" without realizing that it's also the name of a French pornographic magazine.

5. Coors translated its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it is a colloquial term for having diarrhea.

6. Electrolux at one time marketed its vacuum cleaners in the U.S. with the tag line: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

7. Ford blundered when marketing the Pinto in Brazil because the term in Brazilian Portuguese means "tiny male genitals."

8. Frank Perdue's tag line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," got translated into Spanish as "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."

9. Gerber marketed baby food in Africa with a cute baby on the label without knowing that, in Ethiopia, for example, products usually have pictures on the label of what's inside since many consumers can't read.

10. Ikea products were marketed in Thailand with Swedish names that in the Thai language mean "sex" and "getting to third base."

11. KFC made Chinese consumers a bit apprehensive when "finger licking good" was translated as "eat your fingers off."

12. Mercedes-Benz entered the Chinese market under the brand name "Bensi," which means "rush to die."

13. Nike had to recall thousands of products when a decoration intended to resemble fire on the back of the shoes resembled the Arabic word for Allah.

14. Panasonic launched a Web-ready PC with a Woody Woodpecker theme using the slogan "Touch Woody: The Internet Pecker."

15. Parker Pen, when expanding into Mexico, mistranslated "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" into "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

16. Paxam, an Iranian consumer goods company, markets laundry soap using the Farsi word for "snow," resulting in packages labeled "Barf Soap."

17. Pepsi's slogan "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" was debuted in China as "Pepsi Brings You Back from the Grave."

18. Puffs marketed its tissues under that brand name in Germany even though "puff" is German slang for a brothel.

19. The American Dairy Association replicated its "Got Milk?" campaign in Spanish-speaking countries where it was translated into "Are You Lactating?"

20. Vicks introduced its cough drops into the German market without realizing that the German pronunciation of "v" is "f" making "Vicks" slang for sexual intercourse.

BTW, you may have noticed that the most famous translation blunder--Chevy "Nova" translated into Spanish as "Won't Go"--isn't on the list. It's an urban myth.

Beauty Industry Insights

And to follow on from last week, here are some more facts/figures about the beauty industry. Investors have poured $8 billion into beauty, skin care and hair care startups since 2018, according to PitchBook, and beauty brands have been resilient compared to other consumer startups that struggled once the e-commerce slowdown started in late 2021. Many were able to find customers cheaply using TikTok marketing and celebrity promotion, and then build on that popularity by expanding into stores like Sephora.

The Takeaway from The Information

• At least five beauty startups have hired bankers to explore sales
• Potential acquirers remain cautious after 2021 dealmaking frenzy
• Companies are prioritizing smaller acquisitions of less than $1 billion

Opportunities

Apply for the CDL program here

The application deadline is Friday, July 26 2024

Apply for Camp Cleantech here

An event for cleantech startups to connect with partners who can help you scale. From NREL Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center - August 12-14 Denver, Colorado

Nominations Open for Coolest Thing Made in California

Go to CoolestThingCalifornia.com to nominate your California-made product for the 2nd annual Coolest Thing Made in California Contest hosted by CMTA.

The Solar Prize Round 8 Now Open!

The latest round of the Solar Prize is now open. More than $4.2 million will be distributed to competitors over this three-phase competition designed to catalyze innovations in U.S. solar hardware and software technologies with the capability to be commercialized in 3 to 5 years. Learn more about the launch of the Solar Prize Round 8!

Kuka Medical Robotics Challenge 2.0

The KUKA Innovation Award 2025 primarily targets the interaction of robotic systems with humans in the medical environment and robots being part of future medical applications. Participants from academia, research and industry are encouraged to present system concepts that can lead to, or are already on the edge to, commercialization. Deadline for application June 28

2024 Los Angeles IEEE RO-MAN Design Challenge

The goal of the robot design competition of the 33rd RO-MAN is to provide a platform for researchers and students from a diverse background to demonstrate their vision of interactive robotics, and inspire their peers on how human-centered intelligence could augment human-robot interaction. Each team’s initial submission should be a 2-4 page pictorial, following the call template open format. Deadline extended to June 27

AI and Open Government Data Assets Request for Information

The U.S. Department of Commerce is committed to advancing transparency, innovation, and the responsible use and dissemination of public data assets, including for use by data-driven AI technologies. To this end, we are pleased to issue this Request for Information (RFI) to seek valuable insights from industry experts, researchers, civil society organizations, and other members of the public on the development of AI-ready open data assets and data dissemination standards.

IEEE Entrepreneurship Impact Award applications are OPEN

https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/2024-announcing_impact_award/…

$2000 USD HONORARIUM

Do you know a person/team who significantly impacts the engineering-driven entrepreneurial ecosystem?

SUBMIT NOMINATIONS OR SELF APPLY

https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/impact_award/

Very Useful Stuff

If you are a (VC, PE, Grant) funded startup looking to drive pipeline, conduct customer discovery, find of the voice of the customer, or a mixture of these - our team is just the right mixture of nimble and structured.

I’ve seen Fulcrum Sales and Marketing deliver a full pipeline of qualified customers to SBIR startups embarking on fundraising. And they do it affordably. They’re a startup secret weapon and superpower. :)

A New (and Better) Approach to Measuring LLMs’ Intelligence Has Arrived

From The Information ….

LMSYS, an organization that benchmarks LLMs, released findings last month on how the performance of LLMs changed between normal queries and harder ones that require more reasoning capabilities. LMSYS uses “Elo rankings,” a measure of relative performance—so you’d expect the performance metrics to remain the same in both cases. 

Instead, it found that many models—including Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro, Cohere's Command R+ and Meta Platforms' Llama 3—saw a marked decline in performance when moving from normal to hard prompts. OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus were among the few that maintained their performance. Check out the bottom of their blog post here for examples of these “hard” questions, like coding problems.

The decline in performance from so many LLMs could be a sign that LLMs still aren’t very good at complex reasoning today, said Ion Stoica, a Berkeley computer science professor who also runs LMSYS, noting that OpenAI and Anthropic might have developed special techniques to give models some of those skills. (Stoica is also a cofounder of AI startup Anyscale and enterprise software firm Databricks).

Robot News

The Start of a Journey to Deliver the Last 50 Feet - VIODI.com

OpenVLA is an open source generalist robotics model - VentureBeat

Researchers introduce OpenVLA, an open-source generalist AI model for robotics tasks - Silicon Angle

NATO targets AI, robots and space tech in $1.1 billion fund - Reuters

Robots could become much better learners thanks to ground-breaking method devised by Dyson-backed research — removing traditional complexities in teaching robots how to perform tasks will make them even more human - TechRadar

Swallow this robot: Endiatx’s tiny pill examines your body with cameras, sensors - VentureBeat

GrayMatter raises $45M Series B to ease robot programming for manufacturers - The Robot Report

Robot Mimics Human Sense of Touch to Better Sort Through Litter - GoodNewsNetwork

Robotaxis Escape Local Regulation in California - Government Technology

Public servants uneasy as government ‘spy’ robot prowls federal offices - CBC

At China expo, AI robots take center stage - Xinhua

German robotics industry faces stiff competition from China, VDMA says - Reuters

Autonomous kitchen developer Circus to roll out 5,400 robots across Beijing - The Robot Report

Serve Robotics Appoints Euan Abraham as Chief Hardware and Manufacturing Officer - PRNewswire

Kraken Robotics Receives $2.2 Million Order for Subsea Batteries - GlobeNewswire

Robot discovers oldest deep-sea Bronze Age shipwreck 1.1 miles underwater - Interesting Engineering

Here’s the Most Buglike Robot Bug Yet: It can take off, hover, land, crawl and even flip itself over - IEEE Spectrum

A portable inflatable soft wearable robot to assist the shoulder during industrial work - ScienceRobotics

Robot lawn mowers - the next big frontier for smart homes - Tom’s Guide

Weekends Are Mine Again, Lawn Looks Great: How Robot Lawn Mowers Changes My Life - CNET

Tired with your robot? Why not EAT it? - Hackaday

AutoStore’s New Robot Factory Makes Supply Chains Safer - Supply Chain

Love, Sex and Robots with Alexander Colle Tiny Little Victories

On this week's episode, Alexander Colle virtually drops in from Scotland to chat about the world of robots for a candid conversation about human-robot interaction and some serious robot topics like can you love a robot? And how can you make a human-centric robot, and what in the world is up with those robots in Westworld? But we are in good hands because Alexander is a French roboticist and entrepreneur who has worked on several companion robots with a new pillow robot called Maah in the works. He is currently tucked away in Scotland, getting his Ph.D. from the Edinburgh Center for Robotics in Robotics, focusing on aesthetics and robots. Alexander is passionately focused on developing robots to improve society with a unique design approach.

Check out this very cool project that focused on frailty and healthcare. Find out everything you need to know about this robotic pillow at Konpanion. Alexander's consultancy with his incredible creative partners who just sit around all day focusing on robotics and aesthetics at We Are Pocco. And Alexander's US client working on automation and mining (remember all the copper talk?)

Robot Events

I’m also going to…

• SF Deep Tech Week - starts Saturday June 22

• Fast Takeoff - Sunday June 23

• Las Vegas Robotics Meetup - June 27 (maybe in person, maybe next month)

• Defense Industrial Base Hackathon - June 28

• SVR Startup Accelerator - 10.30am - 12.30pm Tuesday July 2nd

  Speakers on IP and manufacturing/scaling with China and without

SEMICON West + FLEX is just around the corner! Join thousands of attendees from July 9-11, 2024 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. 

Don't miss one of the industry's most anticipated event where visionary leaders, insightful programs, groundbreaking technologies, and unparalleled networking opportunities await. 

Advance Rates End June 30—Save Up to $140 Today

REGISTER NOW

And some more robotics conferences:

• AIM 2024 Boston MA 14 July - 18 July

• RSS Delft NL July 15-19

• EMBC Orlando FL July 15-19

• Humanoid Robotics Festival Lima Peru Aug 14-15-16

• CASE 2024 Puglia Italy 28 Aug - 1 Sep 2024

• BioRob Heidelberg DE 1 Sep-Sep 4

• Commercial UAV Expo : Sep 03 - Sep 05, 2024 . Las Vegas, United States of America

• CLAWAR 2024 Kaiserslauten DE Sep 4 - Sep 6

• Actuate Summit : Sep 18, 2024 . San Francisco, United States of America

• ICRA@40 Rotterdam NL 23 Sep - 26 Sep

• ANTS (Swarm robotics) 2024 : Oct 09 - Oct 11, 2024 . Konstanz, Germany

• IROS 2024 AbuDhabi 14 Oct - 18 Oct

• FabTech Orlando 15 Oct -17 Oct

• ROSCon Odense DK 21 Oct - 23 Oct

• CORL Munich DE 6 Nov - 9 Nov

• IEEE Future of Telepresence Pasadena CA 16 Nov - 17 Nov

• Humanoids 2024 Nancy FR 26 Nov - 28 Nov

• ProMat : Mar 17 - Mar 20, 2025 . Chicago, United States of America

• ICRA 2025 Atlanta Georgia 17 May - 23 May 2025

One more thing…

Are you organizing a robotics conference? Contact us to discuss IEEE RAS Industry Activities, eg. The Manufacturing Checklist Workshop.

The latest IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine is out, including the Industry Activities Board column “What does the hype about humanoids really mean?”

Eager Robot Vacuum Pushes Cat Under Armchair - Laughing Squid

A creamsicle cat named Indy, who previously learned how to walk on a treadmill, found himself considered to be a pile of dirt by an eager robot vacuum that pushed him firmly under an armchair as it was cleaning the room. Needless to say, Indy’s humans were amused.

Indy was peacefully relaxing on the floor unaware of the fact that the evil robot spotted him as a big pile of dirt and decided to sweep him. But the dirt was being difficult so the robot then decided to just push him under the couch…