Elad, Can you please share your personal journey with robotics from childhood to founding RobotLAB. How has the perception and utility of robots changed over the years?
I’ve loved robots since I was a child. I loved building them, programming them and inventing new creations, but for many years robots were “toys for geeks.” They needed soldering, understanding of electronics and in general, not for 99% of the people, so it stayed as a hobby. Even when I started my first company (MassiveImpact, which focused on optimizing ads on text messages for mobile operators) and moved to Taiwan for 7 years, I always visited the vibrant electronics markets on weekends, looking for developments in sensors, motors, controller boards etc.
Then a bit after the invention of the iPhone in 2007, I started seeing a new wave of what we call today “connected toys” in the markets in Taiwan. It was a tsunami of cars, drones, balls, and other smart objects that are smartphone-enabled. This brought me back to my old passion and showed me the market was finally ready for a robotics company, as all of these smartphone-connected toys can actually be programmed to do many other things. After all, apps on smartphones are just a programming interface.
I sold my shares in my company and started RobotLAB, focusing on introducing innovation into classrooms and bringing to life math, science and physics for students. We created lesson plans, curricula and everything teachers needed in order to teach these abstract concepts using robots. We couldn’t find everything teachers wanted, so we had to build some of the robots ourselves!
Back in 2007, there were no service, delivery or cleaning robots. It took a few more years for these products to mature and become reliable enough to where we are today, with a vast portfolio of robots that can do everything business owners need them to do.
In the past few years alone, we’ve seen the demand for these products skyrocket. We can’t keep up with the demand, with it coming from everywhere (around the country and beyond) and all at once. That’s why we decided to implement franchising in our business model, so we can have multiple RobotLAB teams in every metro area. My vision is to make sure that whenever a business owner needs a robot, they can find a RobotLAB team in their backyard to be there same-day to assist them.
Elad Inbar is the founder and CEO of RobotLAB, a unique company dedicated to making robots smart and useful in multiple industries, including education, hospitality, restaurants, hotels, assisted living facilities, etc. His current ventures in robotics and education have received wide publication and recognition in Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Tech Crunch, IEEE, NBC, Financial Times, Fast Company, CNET, San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets. He shares his experience as a keynote speaker in many events such as SxSW, National Restaurant Association, Florida Lodging and Restaurant Association, and TCEA, ACTE, FETC and many others. Elad also sits on the Forbes Technology Council. With parallel careers in academia and technology, Elad is uniquely qualified to bridge the cutting-edge robotics industry and the educational and retail markets.
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