INTERVIEW

JAMES: Oh yeah. Another week. On into September. College football starting soon. Well, at least the SEC is. If you are in the big 10, you are kind of out of luck. Out in California, tell you what. Are no football being played over there! 

ROB: Well, you could look at it differently. They could use their DVR and go back to YouTube and watch all the winning games. You could, in theory, have an undefeated season if you watched the right sequence of games by your choice. Just saying. 

JAMES: So, there are your suggestions for all of you over there in the big 10 countries. Jeremy, are you a big 10 guy? 

JEREMY: No. Well, I like football, but of course, my favorite college football team is of course Navy since that is where I went. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

JEREMY: They got their butts whooped last weekend, so… 

JAMES: Sorry to hear that. Well, I am a go Navy beat army kind of guy. 

JEREMY: Awesome. Great. You made the right choice. 

JAMES: Yeah. I was a Navy ROTC. I was in the Corps Cadets at Texas A&M and actually got to go to the Naval Academy when I was fish, a freshmen Cadet in Corps and competed in Monster Mash. 

JEREMY: Yeah. I remember that. 

JAMES: Did you do Monster Mash when you were there? 

JEREMY: I did not. No. 

JAMES: Yeah, it was a beat down. I still remember our time because I thought I was going to die. It was two hours and five minutes. So, they had a tournament there at the Naval Academy and the best team ended up playing us. They invited the Air Force Academy, but they decided not to show at the last minute. You got to love the Air Force guys. 

JEREMY: No surprise, right? 

JAMES: I think they had a golf game actually. 

JEREMY: Right. That is right. 

JAMES: Yeah, I think they a golf game. 

JEREMY: Picking out their office furniture probably. 

JAMES: Exactly. And the army could not navigate and find Annapolis. Now I am just kidding. I am just joking. All you army guys. Got to love the Navy. So, my dad was Navy. My granddad was Navy and I enjoyed my time as a Cadet for four years. Did not take a commission, but still, of course, love the United States Navy. World’s finest Navy. 

JEREMY: Yeah, I can geek out on robots, Navy, or nuclear power. You can make your choice. 

JAMES: Yeah. I had one buddy in my unit that went nuke. He ended up being on a submarine for four years and we did not hear from him. It was like… 

JEREMY: It is a very demanding job. That is for sure. And making it through that program’s a great accomplishment for people. 

JAMES: Yeah, it is. I mean, he was brilliant. He was from Muleshoe Texas. And he had red hair and pale white skin. We called him white lightning. Cause this guy, I mean, he looked kind of like… He was a little screw lose all the time, because of his hair. Wow. Red hair. And then we said, you are going to be great on the submarine. And he actually was. He is back in West Texas now though. Onward and upward, before we get back to our illustrious guest, Jeremy Searock, we are going to all kinds of fun. Talking about the Navy, talking about the army versus Navy. Talking about all kinds of topics there. And of course, robots. I would be remiss if I did not mention our illustrious cohost, Mr. Rob McKinney, the ConAppGuru himself. What is going on, Rob? How’s Atlanta? 

ROB: It is going well. We are actually starting to have that change in the weather again. When you look at our country, it is amazing to see that you have parts of the country, seeing the mid-east parts on fire. I talked to the Ironman the other day, they had snow in the mountains. I mean, it is crazy to think we have so many different ecosystems, and all these things changing constantly. 

JAMES: Yeah. It is a nutty week for sure. Temps here dropped 20 degrees. It is down in the 70’s right now in College Station, which is absurdly cool. 

ROB: Nice. 

JAMES: We are we are enjoying it. We know it is going to be back. The temperature of the surface of the sun. We know that is going to come back, but we are enjoying the cold front for now. And of course, if you are out in the Western part of the United States, our thoughts and prayers are with you. We know that there is a lot of fires raging all over for the West, and it has been a bit crazy. It looks like a scene out of Blade Runner over in San Francisco. So, it is crazy. So please stay safe, to protect your family and your loved ones and your property and everybody else. So please, please be safe. 

A reminder out there, never miss an episode by having every one of them sent straight to your email inbox, text ConTech to 66866. Not just the audio, you are getting our weekly emailer, our link to our show notes, and the articles we discussed. That is ConTech to 66866. Also remember you can text me at any time with questions, comments, suggestions. You can call this line, leave a voicemail. That is our Google voice line at (979) 473-9040 and we can play your stuff on the air. We can address your questions that come up. We get a lot of these questions. We will get a couple dozen of them when it comes close to our talk with the crew at the end of every month. So please feel free to text any questions or comments. 

And a reminder of our cause of the show, according to the CDC, construction occupations have the highest rate of suicide, as well as the highest number of suicides across all occupational groups. To combat these statistics, contractors, unions, associations, industry service providers, and project owners must work together to stand up for suicide prevention. The Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention is raising awareness about the risk of suicide within the construction industry and providing suicide prevention resources, and tools, to create a zero-suicide industry. Visit PreventConstructionsSuicide.com for more information. 

Before we get started with our guest interview, I spoke with David Francis, Chief Technology Officer of ICT Tracker about how they are using augmented reality for real-time progress tracking. A quick word from our sponsor of the show, David Francis, and ICT tracker now. 

INTERVIEW START 

JAMES: And we are here today with our illustrious friend, David Francis, the CTO over at ICT Tracker. I am just curious, tell me the origins of ICT Tracker and what problem you all set out to solve. 

DAVID: So, this started as just a conversation with my co-founding partner, Tim Duncan, and me. We were discussing technology and he wanted to do something with AR. He was just feeling, it was the future. We started talking about it some more and we said, what if we could use it to verify installation and assign installation status? So, the fact that you could look up, verify, it is there from an augmented reality view, but now we can change the status of it. And that’s really what kind of kicked this whole thing off two years ago. 

JAMES: So, what are the advantages of using AR to track percent complete in production? 

DAVID: The advantage we have over the other solutions you see out there is the fact that we are already starting with the data. We can also allow the user; they allow the verification elements in the model. So, they actually see what is in place and verify the installation at that point. And you have the user input. So, if I have conduit, I can have someone identify yes, the wire has been pulled into conduit. Plus, we are the only AR app that also allows the user to do what we call free flight modes. So, you can actually do a flyover in a 3D. 

JAMES: Yeah, so it really turns into a mobile model viewer at that point. 

DAVID: Exactly. So, we kind of give you the best of both worlds. 

INTERVIEW END  

JAMES: And we are back with our special guest, Jeremy Searock from Advanced Construction Robotics. That is the company that makes, you heard it, the TyBot. 

JEREMY: That is right. 

JAMES: Having all kinds of fun with robots. Before we talk about robots, before we talk about Tybots, before we talk about the next bot that you are building, let us talk about you for a minute. You have a neat background. You went to the United States Naval Academy literally almost the exact time… In fact, I missed seeing you there by one year. Cause I went and did Monster Mash in 1998. And you were there in 1999 as a plebe. But I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Naval Academy. There is no place like Annapolis, Maryland. 

JEREMY: True statement. It is a wonderful town. And the relationship between the midshipman and the town is just very unique. And there is also another college there. St. John’s College, which has a unique rivalry where we play croquet with them every spring. It is a really neat event that I highly recommend everyone go to attend once in their life. 

JAMES: That is awesome. Yeah. I mean, it is neat. Of course, there is a little tradition there that happens in the spring as well, where all the plebes and the freshmen get together and they try, they slather a giant monument with lard and then they try to climb it and then they have to get a cap on the top of it. What was that called again? 

JEREMY: It is called the Herndon Climb, which is a monument that kind of looks like, the Washington monument, but only about, I think it is about 24 feet tall. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

JEREMY: And that is the pinnacle event that says you are no longer a freshman. And for those who do not know, being a plebe, which is a freshman at the military academies means that you have a really tough life for the entire first year. So that event signifies the end. So, everybody is very excited about it and ready to move on to their next year. 

JAMES: Yeah. I remember I was a fish, that is what they called us at A&M. I was a fish in the Corps at A&M. And A&M was one of those unique places, kind of like the Citadel or VMI, that is not a military Academy, but it is a very similar lifestyle. You wear a uniform every day. You are in barracks. You have formation twice a day. It was fascinating. Cause I was rooming with a plebe and we were trading notes on all the hazing tactics that they could use against us. 

JEREMY: That is right. 

JAMES: It was like, did they do this to you? No, but they do this. And it was a great visit. 

JEREMY: You know say hazing, we did not get physically beat as you might expect. That is not allowed, but I mean the fundamental training you do that first year is that they give you so much extra work to do that you basically are overwhelmed and do not have enough time to accomplish everything. So, you have to learn how to react daily to sort of making good decisions, which truthfully is a lot of this work I have to do now in making good decisions in growing a startup from one person to hopefully a large company. 

JAMES: Yeah it is interesting how that all works. I mean starting JBKnowledge, my senior year in the Corps actually, was a pretty unique experience for me and was very stressful as you can imagine for many years. And my benchmark stress level was always my fish year. Cause I had almost no sleep. I had to memorize an overwhelming amount of stuff. It is fascinating. And I compared notes with plebes back then. You look at this amount of stuff you have to learn and remember by the end of the year, and you are like, I will never do that. And then you get to the end of the year and you did it. You are gone. Oh my gosh. Of course, you have very little sleep. You have an overwhelming amount of work. A ton of physical stress, emotional stress. And that is the whole point, right? 

JEREMY: The whole point. There is the book you know Grit. I do not know if you have you guys ever read the book Grit by Miss Duckworth, but that is what they teach you. The ability to go through difficult situations to achieve a long-term goal and make it through there successfully. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

JEREMY: You know, of course, Annapolis was one of it, but truthfully, getting to the submarine, learning nuclear power in one year, and qualifying to be the Officer of Deck on an operational submarine out at sea was even harder. And have I not had the Annapolis training; it would have been a lot more difficult. And truthfully, I rely hugely on that experience in running the company today, because there are lots of similar attributes in learning a lot of new information and keeping the team motivated to go towards a long-term goal. So, this idea of Grit is, I think a really awesome way to say it, and I highly recommend reading that book. 

JAMES: Sure. And today is September the 11th, the day we are recording this. And so, I want to please tell everybody out there that was impacted by this horrific day that we are thinking about you. I had just finished my time in the Cadet Corps. My buddies had just commissioned into the Navy. Because I was in a Navy unit. And so, I had 12 friends that were out as officers, as Butterbars, as we say, and since I was in the United States Navy when this happened, you were a sophomore junior. 

JEREMY: I was a junior at the time, and it was a crazy day. We ended up canceling classes and, we did not know if more attacks were coming. Of course, the Pentagon attack was all of 30 minutes away from Annapolis and had fighter aircraft flying over the top. Leadership gave us lots of speeches and the mood for us was somber, but we were primed and ready. Within a year for some of us to go and go to war. And it was somehow bringing me to it a lot more real, but we were all… I mean, that is why we came. We came to defend the country. We got attacked and we were ready to do our jobs and defend the country. I was a junior at the time, and we did not know on that day, whether we were going into a larger world war or what was going to happen. And, back in world war II, the junior class at the Naval Academy got commissioned a year earlier to support the war. So, as a junior, some of us were, well you know, maybe we are going a year earlier. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

JEREMY: So, lots of thoughts and emotions ran through that day. But at least the mood for us in my military experience was that we were all unified and excited to defend the country. 

JAMES: Sure. And the same thing happened at Texas A&M. The entire class of, I want to say it was 1941 or 1942 to just all left and joined the battle in world war II. There were a lot of discussions around the same topic at A&M when 911 happened. And of course, it ended up being, what the most protracted battle of US history, the most protracted war in U history, just because you are not fighting a single nation-state, right? It is very challenging; it changed the landscape of battle. I know it prepared you pretty well. And again, you actually ended up out on a nuclear submarine for several years at the USS Nevada, which I sure become a home away from home. Cause it is not like you get to go up that often, right? 

JEREMY: That is right. Yeah, we were on Ohio class submarine, which is the ballistic missile submarine and, we did nuclear deterrence patrols, of course during operation, enduring freedom. And we did our jobs and stayed out there and provided one leg of the nuclear deterrence. 

JAMES: Yeah. And you would stay under for protracted periods of times. 

JEREMY: That is right. I think by max, underway deployment was 92 days. So, the holistic financial submarines, we actually have two crews and a crew goes out and then we swap and then the submarine goes right back out. And then there are the fast attack submarines that stay with one crew and then they go on larger deployments and then come back for an inshore period and then go back out. So yeah, it was a great experience that is very unique. And I pull lots and lots of skills and basically experiences from that to apply to civilian life and building a business. 

JAMES: Sure. And you also went to another great institution. Carnegie Mellon, where you got a Masters in Robotics. So, talk to me about Carnegie Mellon and talk to me about that DARPA Research Fellow. Cause DARPA is super involved in robotics. At the time, either during your time as a DARPA Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon or afterward, DARPA was running a fascinating automated driving challenge. 

JEREMY: I call it the Grand Challenge. That is right. I mean those days at Carnegie Mellon, I was at the Robotics Institute, which is the first-ever robotics degree program created in the country. And for a long time, it was the only degree program. So, my degree is actually right in robotics, which, 15 years ago was I still not an industry, right? The government and military mostly funded research in that side of things, but that is a totally different landscape today. So, when we were there, I was on active duty in the military at the time. I did well with the Naval Academy, so they allowed me to go straight to graduate school after being commissioned. 

So, I was commissioned in my first full-time job in the military was to be a graduate student, at Carnegie Mellon, doing the robotics program. And because of that, I was able to shadow and be part of a DARPA’s mission and so I was funded through the DARPA projects they had at Carnegie Mellon. I actually worked on soccer robots. I was in the soccer robot lab, in which you have robots playing soccer against each other autonomously by themselves. And various different leagues went with that. I actually created a new league, which used bigger robots. They were based on the Segway platform, which of course recently went out of business. 

JAMES: Unfortunately. Can you believe that? I was really disappointed, man. I was like, I love the Segway. And the Segway robotics platform is pretty awesome. 

JEREMY: Yeah, the Segway robot mobility platform. And so, we actually, we basically that program, created that robot platform. So, we got the prototypes and we were, you know our job was to convert them into soccer players. So, my graduate program was doing all the hardware and electrical work to convert that into a soccer-playing robot and then writing all the software so that it can play soccer alongside humans. So, our mission was to, really for government research, human and robot collaboration in adversarial environments. Of course, the military being the ultimate goal, but soccer was made up of adversarial environment to develop the technology. But I was there during the grand challenges and, as you may know, or not know, most of the leadership of the autonomous vehicle companies today came out of those programs. A lot of them from Carnegie Mellon. 

And so, we were there at a time and it was very exciting. I think most of the students there at that time saw the potential that robotics had in the future, and all of us, I think fell in love with it. Obviously, I had my military obligations to do, and I was excited to do that experience, but I was very excited to get back into robotics because I knew then what’s happening now, which, we’re in the midst of a new industrial revolution where the old ways are being taken and added, unlimited brain power through robotics and artificial intelligence and brand-new methods and procedures and companies are being created around that. So, it is a very exciting time. 

JAMES: Yeah, it is. And it is interesting when you look at government programs, I am an ardent capitalist and certainly love the entire motivations that capitalism gives entrepreneurs. But you cannot be like an antigovernment capitalist because you have to recognize the role the government has played in spurring capitalism through these incubator programs. I was just part of a program that was involved… It was a national science foundation program for taking professors and researchers at universities and teaching them how to actually create a commercial entity and go through the discovery process. And it is called the I-CORE program. And it was fascinating to see them, really over a period of seven weeks, the researchers, go from knowing nothing about how to kickstart a company to some of them have legitimate businesses. And then you find out how many companies have come out of the I-CORE program, how many companies came out of the DARPA program. They certainly play a critical role in helping get people the basic tools they need to get started. It is amazing. Even just a few weeks or a few months, a period of time under a year, can transform these individuals into having the skills needed to go and build companies, right? 

JEREMY: I agree a 100% and that was what happened and all the money poured in by the government for autonomous vehicles that have created technology, but also just created the background resumes for these folks that went out and now created the autonomous car companies. 

JAMES: Yeah. And by the way, Segway is not completely defunct. I just want to point out. They just completed something really cool. Their Ninebot. They did a first-ever trans America, electric scooter ride. They wrote across America on their kick scooter. That is a long ride, but they did it. So, Segway still has some components that are working on, but unfortunately, the core Segway product is no more. I think you are going to see a lot of others out of the Ninebot platform, but not the big hulking Segway’s anymore. The dream that came and had, I guess, came in, was that the inventor of that, it did not exactly work out. People, people were… There ended up being some social issues with people wanting to ride Segway’s all the time. Rob, what you got, bud? 

ROB: Man, you are making me wonder. They should have gotten Mr. Tom Hanks in the right uniform and outfit riding that Segway, could have made for some great clips at certain parts of the country. I am just saying. 

JEREMY: True, you are right. 

JAMES: I was running, I was riding. 

ROB: Sorry. As soon as you said it, that vision just popped in my head. Like they had the wrong person riding that. It could have been a great publicity stunt, but I digress. Jeremy first, thank you so much for your service and dedication to the country. It is amazing to hear your story. I really appreciate what you did for everybody. 

JEREMY: Absolutely. It was a great experience and I was happy to do that. 

ROB: So, let us turn and talk a little bit about what you are doing now, specifically, we talked previously with your business partner, from the construction side about TyBot. We had a lot of interesting questions for him. One that I did not get to that I will be curious to hear your input is what has been one of the most unique locations you have tried to put the technology on out in the field because as you probably quickly figure it out, building bridges and where this robot’s trying to work, they are not exactly the flattest, smooth, even welcoming environments, shall we say? So, what would be the most unique place you have tried to use the tech? 

JEREMY: So, we have had TyBot out on bridge projects around the country. Mostly around the East coast right now. And I think the way to answer that is, is every bridge project is unique and different. There is sort of standard designs that the States put out, but every single bridge is pretty unique. So, that has been my experience, is that every time we go on a new project, we see new things. And the exciting part is that for the most part, the robot adjusts to it automatically. Because that is one of the key parts I think, talking from the robot side, there is always an education part where people have this idea of what robots are and what is robotics. And it is typically not what robots actually are because your education is from science fiction and from the movies you saw all over the past couple of decades and that is not quite what it is. 

So, I like to make the difference between automation and robotics. Automation typically, not all the time, but typically is blind. It is doing an arm going to the same place every time. So, if the environment’s changed or the weather changes or the design of the bridge changes, automation, in general, cannot adjust. So that is a big difference with robotics and artificial intelligence now is that robotics and artificial intelligence actually has what we call a closed-loop cycle, where it sees the environment, makes a decision about it, acts on it, and then sees the result of its action and then adjust again and again and again. And that typically happens 15 to 30 times a second. So, we have seen a lot of unique jobs and the robot for the most part has adjusted to those jobs without any work. But of course, we see new units’ unique environments. We always add that back into our system and of course, it is software. So that is just an easy software update and just like you get your updates on the iPhones, we can continue to update these products with new software. 

ROB: Interesting. So out of curiosity, from a buildability standpoint, for your technology to work out of the field, does it matter if the bridge is perfectly flat versus it is got an incline? You are probably not dealing with anything that is at a pitch, but does that even matter? 

JEREMY: No, actually our specifications are 12% grade and 12% super elevation. So that is actually the max bridge design least published in Pennsylvania. And so, yes. We are talking about large slopes and banks, just like a NASCAR racetrack that this can operate on. And Bryce. I think one of the misconceptions is people think this is remote controlled, or people think that before doing the work, you have to input data, right? There is no programming required by the customer in this robot. You do not put BIM in. You do not write the rebar schedule in there. You do not tell it where the rebar is. You do not tell it the elevation. It sees by itself with its camera system, identifies the rebar and identifies the intersection, creates its own internal map of multiple intersections, and decides what is the best one is to go to next and does it all by itself. So that means that it automatically adjusts for all these changes you are talking about of heights and elevations and crowns that are on bridges because we have obviously degrees of motion moving along the bridge, as well as like across the bridge as well as the tie module itself has two directions, including, up and down to the right spot to tie. 

ROB: Very interesting. 

JAMES: That is that is fascinating. Yeah. So, let us geek out for a second. Again, the TyBot is a rebar tying robot that works on bridges, right? 

JEREMY: Right. So, fundamentally TyBot is an autonomous rebar tying robot that we designed for horizontal applications. Not perfectly horizontal, but we are not going vertical. 

JAMES: Bridges and roads then. 

JEREMY: Yeah. So, bridges are the first market that we are going after because as you met with Stephen Muck, my partner last time, he builds bridges. So that was an easy first market to go to. But this robot, even in this current state applies to other environments. It can be used on large foundations slabs, basically, any large horizontal rebar mat that meets our specifications, we can go on. The point we designed this to operate on what is called screed rails, so a schedule 40 pipe that it runs on, that is always already used for concrete finishing machines, also uses the exact same rails that we purposely designed it to put on. So, for other applications that do not use that, we need to put the rails up. Well, we can rent the rails and, we have got a lot of interest in other markets such as precast and prefabrication plants, as well as doing roadways or large foundation slabs. 

JAMES: That was not a question though. I mean, how many roadways have you done? I mean, you have done a bunch of bridges, but how much roadway work has actually been done? 

JEREMY: We have only done bridgework so far. We got, I guess we are at eight machines that we have produced out in the lease fleet. And so, we have got plenty of work here on the bridge industries, but basically, we are now ready and going to start a push here to sort of getting this machine out into other reinforced concrete applications. So, we encourage your listeners to just contact us. We have a whole staff that can help work through their drawings and tell you guys, whether it works or not, and what is necessary to sort of to get it working. 

JAMES: Okay. Walk me through how this works. Let us go through the technical details of how this works. This is this running on, are you using C++, what base operating system is this running on? Whatever you can talk about. If you cannot talk about it, I totally respect that. 

JEREMY: That is right. So, it is a big black box that just works, right? So that is, I mean, so I will into get some details, right, but when it comes to the contractor itself. Yeah. I mean, it is a black box that just works. 

JAMES: Is it literally just a power button? Do they literally just set it up and walk up to it and make sure it is got the material? And obviously, it needs to tie. 

JEREMY: Yeah obviously they target two different ways. So, from the contractor’s perspective, it shows up on a truck and you can adjust the TyBot. We have middle gantry sections that sort of make the gross width wider to meet wider bridges, and then you can adjust to the exact width of the bridge. And then yeah, it is runned by a gasoline generator, all-electric powered through the generator. And once it is powered, the person operating, who is supervising the machine, you turn it into audio, and you say go. That is, it. That is all that is necessary for it to work. And of course, it is monitoring it and you got to continue to feed it wire and gasoline to keep it going by. 

JAMES: Yes. When you run out of wire, does it send you a text message and say, hey, give me more wire? Like, feed me, feed me CBOR! 

JEREMY: Yeah. So, it is pretty obvious there on the machine that you are out of wire, and that you should replace the wire. 

JAMES: Okay. It is obvious if you are there watching it, but it is not if you are not. So, can you run this at night, and will it notify you if it has an issue in the middle of the night? 

JEREMY: So, right now we call them a quality control technician because he is supervising the robot, not operating the robot, not telling it what to do, and we keep that person on site for safety reasons. It is safe, but I think when you introduce a new product to the industry, you want to make sure you understand that this is a safe product to be used. And so, the operator, we keep the quality control technician with the machine; and he replaces the wire. It also beeps at us and says it is ready to move on down the bridge, the length of the bridge. And we allow the quality control technicians to take a quick look and say, hey, is anybody in the way? And then it authorizes it to go forward. So of course, you can remove that, which we certainly can do, but in this stage, we want to be over in abundance and safety to make sure the industry understands this is safe to use. But could we do that? Yeah, of course, we could do that. 

JAMES: Because that would be a goal, right? To literally set it up at night, come back the next morning and have your rebar tied. Right? 

JEREMY: Yeah. So, it depends on the bridge things, but it is sort of say three or four hours of wire before you got to come back and replace the wire. 

JAMES: Yeah. Have you been talking about, or trying to automate the loading of wire? 

JEREMY: No, we have not because there is more bang for the buck to be done such as creating the new product. So, TyBot now is working well. It is out in the industry doing real work and it is reliable. So, we could obviously continue to do more work, to add more features onto it, or we could create a whole new product that makes a bigger leap forward. So, there is a lot of opportunity in the construction industry as you said in the intro to this podcast were in the past, there has been not a lot of investment or emphasis put on technology in the construction industry. So that is left for a large gap of improvements that can be made. So, our goal yes is to continue to improve TyBot, but it is to create our next product and to create our next product and continue to make large new robot products for as long as I can stand. Cause it is very exciting. And when you are making an autonomous robot, it is like your kid. You are building it. You are programming it. You are seeing it doing its baby steps. When it did its first tie at the early prototype stage, it was like a cheering section saying go, go, go. And so, it is developing. Autonomous robotics is exciting, comparatively to designing, I guess more traditional engineering systems. 

JAMES: Well, I just finished Ashlee Vance’s biography on Elon Musk, and I enjoyed it. But one thing that was very convicting that Musk said, in one of his interviews with the author, was that we are expanding the efforts of some of the most brilliant engineers in the world on trying to convince people to click on ads, right? I mean, he was referring specifically to online search and Google and there is an incredible amount of engineering, talent, and effort that goes into… Let us be honest in the big picture, meaningless, trivial pursuits of getting people to click on a button; or creating a game rather than solving a major engineering challenge. If we are going to colonize Mars, which I do not think is a crazy thing to say anymore. If we are going to colonize Mars, we are going to need robots that can tie rebar on Mars for us. Right? 

JEREMY: Yeah. I think robots in the future are going to happen in every single industry, not just construction. I see it as a new industrial revolution of which we are, say five or six years into already. And yeah. I think the public image of robots is going to quickly change and I think people will be excited about it because, in the end, it is going to make single people more productive, which allows them to move on to other pursuits that in the end, make the world better. Obviously, I chose to join the military for more reasons than just myself. I carry that same opinion towards developing technology and robots for the construction industry as is, you know, yeah, we are a business and we want to grow business and then this will be successful. 

But I also want to not have to have construction workers do work that destroys their body. Bending over and tying rebar for ten hours a day, six days a week for five months at a time is a real toll on the body, and this allows that person’s skillsets to be used in a better way. So, I do think that there is more than just a business growth perspective to building robots. Our real vision is simply to decrease the cost of infrastructure. Period. If you have robots to do it, things will become cheaper and, in the end, the cost to produce a bridge or to produce a roadway will be cheaper to the owners, which is typically the government, which then allows fewer taxes to be used for, to do this. So now that is a long progression to get to that point. But if you can imagine a whole crew of robots doing that, that is certainly an achievable goal. 

JAMES: Rob? 

ROB: We talked about the first robot. Now, out of curiosity, we talked a little bit. Do you have a second version or is it a completely different robot that prototype that you are working on for a different market? 

JEREMY: Oh, we actually have both. So, we have finished and, we are in the production of our second version of TyBot. Basic we took the original version; we have leased it to the industry. We have received all the feedback from that use in the real work environment. Done another engineering effort in updating the TyBot. And that is now done in production. In parallel, we have actually invented our second robot, which is already patented and in the throes of its final full-scale prototype. And that is an autonomous rebar lifting, carrying, and placing robot. So, it is the step before TyBot. So, it will actually hold 5,000-pound bundles of rebar, pick out single bars, and place them according to specification. All-day, every day, as much as you want. And then, of course, TyBot will follow right behind it and tie it. So, when it comes to the reinforced concrete process, right, reinforced concrete is basically, get the bundles, place them, tie them, and then pour the concrete. Well, so the robot 2, of the 3 major parts will now be capable through autonomous robotics. 

JAMES: So, you are building a bridge printer? 

JEREMY: That will be one way to look at it. 

JAMES: So, you said autonomous? 

JEREMY: That is right. 

JAMES: So, it rides in the same rails? 

JEREMY: It runs on the same rails. And of course, again, we are in the prototype stage and we hope to be having units available to rent and lease late next year, of course, and sort of really taking up pace in 2022. 

JAMES: You have the benefit of having an investor who owns a bridge company. 

JEREMY: That is right. That is a key point. I mean, that is a great point to make, right? So, as you can imagine, we are still not a large company. Our engineers and the team that is with me to do this are world-class. We know what we are doing. We have been working on autonomous robots for a very, very long time. One of our guys has been doing this for 30 years in autonomous robotics. So, we know what you are doing and so, being able to produce these things quickly is one of our attributes, right? We know what we can do, but with having my partner who was a heavy civil contractor, knowing and having essentially full access to that company to ask questions, when you are designing a new product, specifically an autonomous a robot, you need to be very smart about what you choose the robot to do and what you choose humans to do. 

Let me clarify. The goal is never for us to have a worksite where it is just robots. There will always be workers working alongside robots. They will be working together. And that is the best social decision. It is the best economic decision and it is the best technical decision. Cause there is a lot of things that are very, very easy for a human to do, but very, very difficult for a robot to do. And maybe being able to make that choice on what you choose to do from a technical perspective allows these products to be made a lot quicker than if you went for the bigger step. 

JAMES: Well Jeremy, we do not have a choice but to do this. If you look at the national infrastructure assessment on bridges and highways, it is ugly. We need more repairs and replacements of bridges and highways in this country than we have labor available. By far. It is not like a little bit. It is a lot. So, we are not talking about bridge workers being out of work. We are talking about being able to have a chance at catching up with the backlog of bridge replacements and repairs and eliminating the menial backbreaking work and having workers doing high value add tasks. 

JEREMY: You hit the nail on the coffin. That is absolutely correct. And that is essentially our statement. We did a lot of research. Obviously, my partner knew this for a long time. There are simply not enough workers to get the job done. The projected growth of the overall construction industry has a very aggressive growth pattern. And even, I have done a lot of talking with international construction companies. And even countries such as India who have a lot of people that can work in construction, their actual plan to grow their infrastructure and build still outstrips that labor force. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

JEREMY: So, there’s not enough labor. The productivity rate, if you actually look at the statistics that have been put out by McKinsey and other reputable, research organizations, the productivity rate of a construction worker compared to the productivity rate of the general US economy is bad. Not only bad but it is projected to go down over the next several years. So even if you had enough workers, the productivity rate could be a lot better. Why is that? Because you have said before, the amount of technology put into the industry over the past 50 years, has not been a lot. So, you are right. And that is why we are here, is to take a big leap forward through autonomous robots to meet the growing global demand. As you said, there is no choice. So, for me, the roboticists who love autonomous robotics, this was a perfect and great industry to sort of jump into. And I know there are other companies out there working on construction robots as well, but there is a lot of room for us to make a big impact in this industry. 

JAMES: So, what is the name of the next robot going to be? 

JEREMY: The name is IronBot. 

JAMES: Hmm. So, you have TyBot and IronBot. 

JEREMY: That is right. 

JAMES: Both from Advanced Construction Robotics, right? So that is the umbrella? 

JEREMY: That is right. That is our technical development entity to create all the software and designs. 

JAMES: So, the IronBot is going go for… So, let us walk through the future stage, because you are doing 2 of the 3 major steps. The 3rd step, of course, being the concrete right? 

JEREMY: In reinforced concrete, that would be the next thing. If we were to do that. 

JAMES: ConcBot. No, no, no… 

JEREMY: There are many names. I know. You do not want to tell names until you have got it trademarked, right? 

JAMES: CreteBot. 

JEREMY: CreteBot. 

JEREMY: So, let us walk through the process. A builder’s going to come in and put in all the support infrastructure, then they are going to put the rails in. So, they are actually… You are not building robots. They are going to pour all the support columns and beams and everything else. So, they are going to come in and they are going to put that in place, and they can put the rails on, and then they are going to put the robots on? I know I am grossly oversimplifying the process. 

JEREMY: That is right. I mean, there is obviously a standard flow of steps to build a bridge, and yeah, I mean, essentially the last step is between the beams, there are these pans and attachments to fit the beams, which is where the concrete gets held into. And then some rails go up and then you obviously flock in bundles of rebar, that are typically craned onto the bridge if it is over water or comes from the roadway. And you basically staged those bundles at the right location. If you cannot, then, IronBot is more than capable of carrying them. I mean, if you just tell me to think about the autonomous robot side of placing the rebar. Just the ability to drive a machine down there and pick up these bundles of rebar and move them out to the middle of the bridge that cannot be reached by crane because it is a large water crossing, is big. 

JAMES: Yeah. It is huge. 

JEREMY: Because otherwise, you got to have barges and cranes on barges over the middle of the water to do that. 

JAMES: So, I am not a bridge contractor, obviously. But I did stay in the Holiday Inn last night, so that makes no… 

JEREMY: Nice. 

JAMES: What I am excited about is the sheer amount of automation that you are bringing to a very, very, very… well a dangerous… Because workers have a high chance of getting injured, doing a lot of this work. And so, I think it is particularly exciting, the areas of bridge construction you chose to tackle between TyBot and IronBot, and what is really coming. Let us close out our conversation on this. Talking about return on investment. Right now, these units are both available for sale. Now when your partner came on 7 months ago, your partner came on and we talked about the price of buying one of these. It was around $800,000 if I remember correctly to buy a TyBot. But this fleet is really a lease fleet. People are leasing it. So, what does the ROI look like for them when they lease a TyBot versus having all this done manually? 

JEREMY: So, I mean, there are many ways to look at this and each contractor has different ways. One of the big differences is wage rates, right? So, wage rates between the South and non-union environments to New York city in such, the wage rates are drastically different, right? So, the return on investment or your savings changes on that wage rate. The higher the wage rate, the quicker you are saving money. So, we have done some detailed time studies on jobs that my partner has done, which came out to be… So, using TyBot versus not using TyBot for that job was a 34% savings in man-hours, and actually came out to be 34% in scheduled day savings. We have also had other jobs throughout the country. And basically, the reported savings are between 35 and 50% of man-hours and scheduled day savings. 

JAMES: Wow. 

JEREMY: So, of course, what the biggest savings are the scheduled days. If you can pull the whole project, the whole bridge project to the left, and just to finish the whole project two weeks earlier, you are talking two weeks of all the onsite rentals, all the crane rentals, all the staff you are keeping there. Say yours is a remote project. Everybody on per diem and all the whole crew there can go home 2 weeks earlier. It can add up very, very, very quickly. So, the key to this is, people still think of robots as science fiction. I am saying this is a real thing. And we literally take people who are interested in and do not know how they are going to save it. We step them through their specific project and tell them, well, this is how fast it goes. And this is how many intersections you have. So, we can compare very directly what their savings are per project. 

JAMES: That is awesome. I could keep going on this conversation for two more hours, talking about robots, computer vision, automation, because these are autonomous robots and this is important, this is not a robot with a human being holding a remote controller, controlling it the whole time. That is not what this is. It is literally, set it and observe. Not set it and control. And so, there is a big difference between a remote-controlled robot and an autonomous robot. So, I just want to point that out and give you some massive kudos for leading a team that has produced this. You are the Elon Musk of bridge robots. So, thank you for doing that. 

JEREMY: Wow. Thanks for that. 

JAMES: Let us be honest. Like 20 years ago, you would talk to a bridge contractor, a company owner, and say I am going to automate all the rebar tying, and they would have laughed at you. 10 years ago, they would have laughed at you. Like I imagine 90% of them would have said that will never happen in my lifetime. 

JEREMY: Yeah. And that is why I call this a revolution. And it started with autonomous cars in 2014, I believe. Or 2015. So, when Uber decided they wanted to make autonomous cars, they came to Pittsburgh and they came to my facility where I worked at Carnegie Mellon and hired away 40 people in one swoop. 

JAMES: Yup. 

JEREMY: And I was in the midst of that. And so that is what started it. And then of course, once a major OEM, which is Chevy acquired cruise automotive and started a third autonomous car effort. So, once major players in an industry segment, such as automotive decide that autonomous robotics is possible, and one player makes a big play at it, whether the other players, believe it or not, they are stuck. 

JAMES: Yep. 

JEREMY: Why? Because if it is true, and it really happens. It is not that they are going to lose market share. They are going to go completely out of business. It is a complete disruption. So autonomous robotics can completely disrupt industries because of how massive of a leap it is in productivity and safety and cost savings. So, it is just a very exciting time and I could not feel more privileged to meet my partner and more privileged to be my age at this time in the world where I actually get to be a front-row seat in bringing this new technology to an industry that has not seen it before. And that is rewarding. 

JAMES: It is awesome. I wish we had more time, but it is time to talk about our news. We just have 10 minutes for news. Before we jump into that, let us listen to the second half of the conversation we had with our sponsor David Francis, Chief Technology Officer of ICT tracker. 

INTERVIEW START 

JAMES: And I am back with David Francis CTO over at ICT tracker. Is this really easy to use in the field?  

DAVID: Because I come from construction, it had to be easy to use. It had to be easy to implement. We use iPads. So, we kept it simple at that. We have a very friendly user interface. It is easy for you guys to collect field data. I mean, it is just really doing a virtual highlighter. That is really all they are doing. And so, we have eliminated the dirty paper. We have streamlined the whole front of the installation tracking process. That was piece one to make it simple, to collect data so that people start doing it again, and now let us take that data and really make it work.  

JAMES: What data is available through your reports and how are construction companies putting that data to work for them?  

DAVID: So, we take our data from the model and we pull it out and we pull our database and we tie it back to model. So, we are tracking status on every single element in your model. With that option, you can generate what we call a CSV report. You export a CSV report. And we worked with the teams to build a Power BI report, so we have got standard power BI reports set up. And everyone has got their own little quirks on how they want it, so, we start with that. We work with them from that. We can also do visual status models. So, we can take that round trip back into Navis works. If you are a Revit user, we collect element ID, so you can bring it back into Revit for that. And then the other big piece we are working at by the end of this year is, we are trying to streamline that process, even more, is we are going to a cloud-based reporting system. So, we are limiting this whole CSV export, and getting you a BI that’s actually cloud-based. So, you will be able to look at it anywhere, anytime, anyhow.  

JAMES: Oh, so fully integrated cloud-based BI.  

DAVID: Exactly. We think that is really the future and just simplifies the whole process. You can still get the CSV reports if there are other things you want to do or your export/import, but just the whole mantra is real-time. We have a couple of customers that say they asked for reports and within 15 minutes they know what is going on at their job.  

JAMES: Yeah.  

DAVID: It used to take that long just to take it off on paper.  

JAMES: That is awesome. David, how can someone find out more information about ICT Tracker?  

DAVID: Our page is ICT.Tech and from there you can request a demo and we will get you set up and show you what we can do with your data and your information.  

JAMES: That is awesome. Well, thank you so much. It was great to have this conversation. I hope people go check it out at ICT.Tech.  

INTERVIEW END 

And now for a quick word on our news from Rob McKinney. You are opening with another robot that we are also excited about that our friend Jeremy here has actually talked to. So, tell me all about Hadrian X. 

ROB: Well, we have been keeping our eye on this and as new items come out, it is interesting to look at, but now since we have a quote expert on the show, these numbers, let us talk about it. So, Hadrian X completes its first building down in Australia. So, the article from Construction Junkie is saying, it started on September the 1st 2020, and it was the commercial building in Perth. So, Jeremy, let us say it was composed of a double brick cavity wall, 15 courses high, and the exterior was 4 courses high on the interior. Let me get down to the dates itself. So, the structural block wall took… It was completed by the robot a week later on September 8th and the robot was able to the lay block with those dimensions covering the 15”x 9”’ at a rate of 174 per hour at a top speed of 228 per hour. Now, James, I will go ahead and throw it out there for you and me. For us, that sounds like that’s pretty fast, but Jeremy you tell us. Is that fast for a robot? 

JEREMY: I am not an expert in the concrete block building construction, so the key metric would be, well what is that speed relative to, you know typical construction crew productivity, right? What is that factor growth? So, I do not know how that compares, but certainly sounds fast and I am certainly excited for another construction robot company to be making a robot to do work like this. 

ROB: Well, anyone that is listening to the show, if you are actually are laying block with humans, I am kind of curious. If we say the bar 174 x 228 per hour, are humans getting close to that? Cause I will be candid in my prior life of watching bricklaying, I am not sure humans are touching a 100 an hour. 

JAMES: Rob that is like a block laid every 15 to 18 seconds. And remember it is a continuous, nonstop effort. 

ROB: Correct. 

JEREMY: So that is the other way to look at it. We have that same discussion with folks tying rebar manually. Could a single person beat it over a one-minute period? Yeah, probably. 5 minutes? An hour? What about 8 hours? 10 hours? What about 10 hours, 6 days a week for 3 months? That is one of the powerful factors of what an autonomous robot is, you can run it all day every day if you want to and you will never keep up with the longevity of robot placing. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

ROB: Interesting on the consistency. All right. Well, my next one, James, we’ve kind of heard of this company before, but I am getting more and more interested. AI Training App Creates an Easy How-To Videos for On-the-Job Learning. And we have talked a little bit about the labor issue in our industry and one of the big factors around it is how do you bring in so many new bodies and train them and teach them. I mean I have been talking to the safety side of this, the quality side of this, you cannot just hand somebody a welding machine and tell him to get after it. How do you do that? So, this platform that is out DeepHow, is talking about taking your traditional videos, and it is like they are putting it all on steroids, James. If you can take a video and literally shoot it, let us say with a basic iPhone. But put it in a cloud environment. Now, this is definitely an interesting one. We were fans of AI, right? James. We know, we know a few. 

We know Vinnie, we have seen a lot of names. This one, for all you ladies out there, is named Stephanie. So, Stephanie is looking at these videos and trying to help organize them and do very different things. So, this is an article on Construction Junkie to check out too, is there is another player in the AI space, but this is for learning. And I have got to think, James, the next few years, there is going to be a big application. A big need to train lots of people very quickly, but thoroughly. We do not want to put that nice coastal DVD in from the 90’s. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

ROB: We want some kind of nice training program for safety and quality. What do you think? Is this a good way to go? 

JAMES: Yeah, sure. So, one of the really big challenges with doing any kind of video work is storing, indexing, making it searchable, breaking it up into logical pieces. We have video content to last till millennia, right? But no one can find it. And that is one of the brilliant things that YouTube did is it allowed people to upload random videos and then get them indexed, searchable, and easily accessible. So, my 10-year-old daughter is obsessed with YouTube and does crafting videos all day long. And she has learned how to build all kinds of things that she never would have otherwise because it is easy to search and find it and watch it. What DeepHow is doing, is it is actually splitting and indexing these videos. It is using a machine. By the way, thank you Construction Junkie for running this and Shane Hedmond as always for writing some great articles. 

STANLEY X is the incubator of the Stanley Black & Decker’s innovation hub, formed a partnership with DeepHow to expand the training. So, I want to mention that, but DeepHow is using some form of artificial intelligence to rip into the video. And they are using amateur video, right? There are no camera crews. They are just using stuff shot on a phone, and to index it, make it searchable, and to allow workers to film what they are doing, and then make it able to be found and watched in a way that makes sense, rather than having to do it like a professional crew and then make it, putting it in a portal and an intranet. And you are seeing this type of AI approach to video and other solutions like Smartvid.IO, where you can search and index and store and tag video automatically. The key just like with Jeremy’s solution is automation, right? The key is automation. We could take videos and upload them, and store them and write human-based tags on those videos for a couple of decades now. That is not the secret sauce. The secret sauce is that all they do is upload the video and then the rest is magic. So, there is some cool stuff here. Jeremy? 

JEREMY: That is right. Computer vision or machine vision is a common robotics application that could be applied to so many different things. And that is actually the first course I took at Carnegie Mellon was computer vision. That was day 1, course 1 was that class. 

JAMES: Yeah, that is awesome. What is the next Rob? 

ROB: Well, just for a quick snack to talk about, we have looked a little bit this year and talked about the future of construction. How things may be changed because of this COVID thing going on, but the king, and specifically the Burger King, has a vision for 2021. So, this was on Construction Dive, talking about their new mockup. They have two new designs for restaurants that they will start building next year. And they are all going to look a little different. Not as much inside space to eat, which you got to wonder anyway. How many people want to go to a fast-food restaurant, sit down and eat anyway, but it is changing this out where you have more drive-through service. You can use the app, or I am joking. Cause my favorite smoothie shop here in town A to Zinc, has what I call honk side service, where you literally order from your app and pull up to get the food and they bring it out to you, and you move on. I mean, James is almost like this is the modern version of the old school car hop, mixed in with a little bit of roller derby, but we have got a modern app going on. 

JAMES: Yeah. 

ROB: How quickly do you think other chains take this and replicate that model if they are successful? 

JAMES: Well, the longer that Coronavirus drags on, the more permanent behavioral change you are going to see out of business and consumers, right? Eventually, something becomes a habit. And that is what we are seeing now is we are seeing habit-forming activity were ordering and food delivery… I mean, heck half the people I see in the grocery store are the people that are actually from a shift or something, it is amazing. I mean, the amount of home delivery and then, it is going to change the face of architecture and that is why we are talking about it on TheConTechCrew, is that architects are going to have to respond to this and design completely different spaces that accommodate the new habits that are being formed right now through Coronavirus. So, it is a pretty drastic change. We have to move on, unfortunately. 

A big shout out to my friends over at COINS. If you have never heard of COINS, they are an ERP solution headquartered in the United Kingdom. Of course, they were founded in Albany, New York and they have a huge North American headquarters there in Albany where they do an annual event. They do have an event. They bounce between the UK and in the United States called the COINS Grand Challenge. If you have got an idea… I am a judge pretty much every year in the COINS Grand Challenge, and I will be taking part this year as well. And I just wanted to point out that our friends over at bimplus.co.uk, are covering two UK innovators that have been shortlisted by the COINS Grand Challenge. Hopefully, change the face of the planet. And so, you can go through and look at this. They are actually using AntBots. That is why I thought this was one of these was pretty interesting. 

It is a vision that blends additive manufacturing, biomimicry, and digital twinning by employing an army of reasonably sized ant inspired robots to 3D print our buildings. So, if you get a chance, go, and watch this. And it may seem absurd to say these things. We are going to have a bunch of ant size robots, 3D print buildings, but why not? Why not? So, go and check out this particular article, because it covers both the 3D printing ant robots, as well as a lot of other submissions that have been shortlisted, and yours truly will be taking part. And I am looking forward to checking all of these out. If you have an idea, go check out the COINS Grand Challenge. Of course, it is all virtual this year. We will be back in person next year we hope. 

And I want to cover a little bit of other news. This is just an Equipment Roundup on Bobcat’s Electric Future. And this is what I wanted to cover. This is from Equipment World that Bobcat actually has… This is really neat. You will be able to buy an electric Bobcat excavator from a company called Green Machine. And you guys say what’s green machine? It is the difference between a battery-powered machine and an all-electric machine, and they have a video of an electric Bobcat. And for those of you who enjoy driving Bobcat’s around and almost tipping yourself over course, that is usually what I am seeing people doing when they are in a Bobcat, is tipping a Bobcat over. But check it out. There is an interesting video on Bobcat’s electric excavator retrofit. So that is why I brought this up. Go check that out at Equipment World, of course, in our show notes. 

And I want to wrap the show-up today. A few weeks ago, I was talking about some issues with China around technology. And this week we are going to talk about Russia. Russian state hackers and that is right, they are state-sponsored technology hackers, are targeting both Biden and Trump’s campaigns. And this is a warning from Microsoft. This is interesting. Over a two-week period, last month, the group tried attacks on more than 6,900 accounts, belonging to 28 different organizations. This is a Russian state hacking group called the Fancy Bear. And they led the smash and leak attacks on the Democratic National Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency, they have been very, very busy. They compromised 500,000 routers out there on the internet. This is a really serious threat. 

Also, because it is state sponsored, meaning even if we do find out the individuals and who they are, if they live in Russia, they are being sponsored by the state. So, you are not going to get him extradited. They are going to; they are safe right there. So just check this out, because if you think that they are all working for one party or the other, they are attacking both sides of the selection. The goal appears to be just sowing chaos. And they are trying to load the system down and sow chaos into the democratic process and introduce doubt into any type. I think they believe that if they can introduce doubt into the validity of the elections, they will continue to sow chaos in America and weaken us politically and practically. 

And I think they might be right. That they actually can do that. I think that their interference in the last election has created an incredible amount of distractions to this country, being able to operate and focus on the ball. And so pretty interesting. If you outsource your software development to Russia or Ukraine, I want you to think about that for just a minute and contemplate what you are doing. There are state-sponsored groups in certain parts of the country that are making a concerted effort to really impact the United States economy and our election process. Warfare is not all physical. It is certainly digital. Jeremy. I know you; this has to be on your radar as a person who has served in the military? 

JEREMY: Of course, I mean, as maybe you already know, the military has this side of it to the information warfare. And we actually have lots of friends say a lot, but I have several good friends who are still on active duty and on the information warfare side of our defense strategy. And I got great faith in their ability to combat that. But yeah, absolutely. The internet realm and security side and software security side of things are important to every company and important to all government agencies and simply has to be at the forefront of that decision making on where resources go. You cannot ignore basically your security from the server and IT perspective. And we certainly have done our part to protect ourselves. 

JAMES: Sure. They would love nothing more than to come in and steal your IP. The Chinese and the Russian state-sponsored hackers would love to come and steal all the plans for TyBot and go replicate it in their country and produce it at scale, right? I mean, that is the reality. They have been conducting corporate espionage for decades. It is just a lot easier now with the internet-connected to everything that is in existence. So, it is something I think we just all need to be aware of in a digital world is we have to protect ourselves digitally. So that is a little FYI for all you listeners out in listener-land, protect yourself. Back to our guest. Jeremy, I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I really want to thank you for joining us today. 

JEREMY: Yeah. I had a great time. I enjoy talking to you guys and I am happy you guys are doing this podcast and getting this information out there. 

JAMES: Yeah. Awesome. And Rob McKinney, always good to see you, brother. 

ROB: Good to see you. Jeremy, thank you again for your service, and I will be interested to see how that new robot works out and lifting all that bar in place. 

JEREMY: I am excited so maybe we got to have you guys out a for a live demo. 

JAMES: Come on. 

ROB: All ConTech road trip. We are always up for that. 

JAMES: Yeah. Have a plane, will fly. I am a pilot. I will get on up there in Pittsburgh. I have flown into Pittsburgh before. 

JEREMY: Hey, listen, we have a small FBO that actually my partner runs a small private service out of, that’s only about five minutes from our test facility. So, you are set. 

JAMES: Okay. Well, tell me when and I will be there. Not a problem at all. I have flown into that airport before, so I would love to come visit. Hopefully, I will see you soon, Jeremy. And thank all of you out there for tuning in today to geek out episode 235. Our interview with Jeremy Searock with Advanced Construction Robotics. That is TyBot and IronBot. Please join us next week, episode 236, with Wendy Rogers from e-Sub. Wendy’s amazing. Longtime friend. I am super excited to have her on the show. To read all of our news stories, learn more about apps, workflows, and hardware, please subscribe to our newsletter at jbknowledge.com or subscribe to our podcasts by texting ConTech to 66866. Big thanks to Jim Greenlee, our Podcast Producer, Kara Dalton-Arro, our Creative Producer, and our Advertising Coordinator, Tish Thelen. To listen to this show, go to the show website TheConTechCrew.com. This is TheConTechCrew signing out. 

Until next time, enjoy the ride and geek out!