Interviewee
Scott Peters is the President and Co-Founder of Construction Robotics, a manufacturing company based in Victor, NY. He has held various roles in engineering and management across a range of industries over the past 15 years.
Transcript
Elisa Muñoz: Welcome to the podcast.
Scott Peters: Thank you. Thank you. Very much honored for being here and excited to talk with you today.
Elisa Muñoz: So why don't we start this interview by allowing yourself to introduce our audience, maybe share a little bit about your background.
Scott Peters: I am one of the co-founders, as you mentioned, of Construction Robotics, currently CEO, and it's been a super interesting wild ride. I never imagined I'd be developing robots for the construction industry looking back at my career, but it's been a lot of fun. I started actually as a chemical engineer a number of years ago and got into doing my master's thesis on, you know, groundwater science and modeling and stuff like that. But I got into manufacturing engineering in my early days, started my career with Intel and then was with general motors and so got more and more into manufacturing engineering automation, and then starting to get into robotics.
And as I started to really understand the potential for robotics and the impact on manufacturing and how we were leveraging automation to, to help efficiencies and safety on the manufacturing floor was about the time that I got introduced into the construction industry, found my business partner, who was a long time experienced veteran of the construction industry. And, you know, he, I think, introduced it in a very interesting, unique way. Talked about the labor challenges, talked about many of the problems they had with construction and were related to, you know, labor planning, coordination and, and talked about the ways they were trying to address that.
But, ultimately at the time when we started to think about this, there weren't really a whole lot of people looking at robots for construction. So we decided that was the direction we wanted to take and started down the path. So, and it's been an interesting one, a lot of, a lot of great stories to tell, but I'm super excited about where we are and where we're going.
Elisa Muñoz: Okay. Really interesting. And what was the first idea you pitched?
Scott Peters: Yeah, early days we brainstormed a lot of different ways that we could help impact the construction industry. And at the end of the day, you know, our focus was on labor and safety, how we can improve labor and be more efficient, but then help people be safer. You know, at the end of the day, it's people that are building buildings and, and so we want to help out there. And so we looked at how we could use robots to take very highly repetitive tasks. And in one of the first tasks we focused on was brick lane, right. You know, bricks, they're, they're relatively small and you put a lot of them together to make big walls.
And you know, here we are, we're in Rochester, New York and here in upstate New York, there's some great examples of some huge campuses with, with brick buildings on them. You know, Eastman Kodak has a lot of bricks and RIT and, you know, the University of Rochester. And so a lot of these places have these huge brick buildings. And so there was this great example and understanding of how you take these small components and they're just assembled together to build and facade these, these big beautiful buildings. And, and so we, we said, you know, we, we really focused on this idea of, of using robots to take the repetition and the onset, you know, in the monotony, out of it and let the Mason focus on the craft, let them focus on the finished product, the artwork, and let them really engage in, in next generation technology.
So they could attract new people in the industry and extend the careers of the people that were currently there. So that was the original idea of the Brookline robot. And, we launched it back in 2000, I think 14 was the first commercial job that we were on in 2013, 14 timeframe, first commercial job that we were on with our early prototypes and, you know, come a long way since then.
Elisa Muñoz: Well, that's, it has been a long road, I will say. And, and how did you and your co-founder come up with the idea? I don't know how big your team was at that point.
Scott Peters: Yeah, so early days it was a pretty small team. I think that the, the idea around Sam, you know, there was a few years in the making, you know, we worked with a number of universities and different groups to help augment our team, but we were pretty small at the time, a lot of different concepts for how Sam was, was going to be deployed. And actually the first version of Sam, the first prototype we built that laid some of the very first bricks on a commercial job site here in Victor, New York was, was ultimately very different looking than the commercial version.
And that's kinda how it goes. We built a prototype, learned a lot and, and then, you know, continued to evolve it from there. And, now we're expanding into many other products and areas.
Elisa Muñoz: When you first started, were you scared of what people could say about robots replacing human labor?
Scott Peters: That was a huge conversation for us for, for a lot of years. And I think our philosophy has always been that it's about how do we help augment and support the workforce? You know, our vision has never been to have an autonomous workforce, at least not anytime in the near future. And we know the buildings are built and need to continue to be built by people. But we also know that there's, there's ways that we can increase efficiency and safety of those people. So, I think in the early days, yeah, we were, there was a lot of anxiety about how to get the labor force to really embrace new technology. And I think we learned a lot about it, a lot about it by working very closely with the trade, with the unions, we got a lot of feedback, not all of it was positive in early days.
And I think as we really listened to them and tried to engage the workforce, we learned a lot about how to continue to evolve SAM and, and robotics, but then also it really informed the decisions about some of the new products that we've come out with, you know, such as the mule and the lift assist revolution that we're driving and really how that can, that can embrace the labor force and support them on the way to more autonomy in the future and more robotics in the future.
You gotta be nimble. You gotta be flexible. Because at the end of the day, the team that you create, the team that you're around, that's really everything. Just keep marching forward and, and be flexible along the way, because change is going to happen.
Elisa Muñoz: Talking about challenges, what would you say that it was the biggest technical or that it has been the biggest technical challenge that you have ever managed to solve?
Scott Peters: Yeah, there've been a lot of them. And I would say when we look at the challenges that we face, there's really technical challenges, which I'll touch on. And then, and then there's change management and change management in any new industry is an absolute hurdle. And so I think that because we were one of the first companies, robotics in the construction industry, we were, you know, we were breaking the ice and in a lot of ways, you know, us and a few other leaders out there where we're really trying to drive change and educate the industry about the value of robotics and not to be fearful of change with robotics and more advanced equipment, but really to be open to it, to embrace it and to see the benefits that it can provide to you and your company. So that's a big challenge is change management.
But on the technical side, you know, when we started down the road with SAM, there was a lot of robotic technologies and equipment for inside factories, for environments where they're bolted to the concrete floor, where, you know, you control your inputs, you control your outputs, you've got trained operators working on it on it every day. And so we had to tackle problems right from the beginning about how are we going to deal with, you know, this robot on a moving scaffold, how are you going to deal with the fact that you're constantly, you know, you're going from one job to one wall to another, and then one job to another.
And so the environment that you're setting up in every single day is changing many times throughout that day. It's also changing a lot of times. So you've got all this variation you're trying to deal with. And so the robotic system needs simple ways to set up and needs to be smart. It needs to function outdoors. It needs to be in these dirty dusty environments. And a lot of the core technology, we started down that path to support all of that advancement. Wasn't really there. So we were starting from scratch in many ways. And so it's exciting for us to see the advancements in the industry with vision, with LIDAR, with other technologies that are starting to open up the ability to do more and more external robotics in, in these difficult environments. So there's some big technical hurdles.
Elisa Muñoz: Did you find any procurement challenges during the pandemic?
Scott Peters: There are definitely some procurement challenges, you know, supply chain, we've got to be nimble and quick, you know, we've, there's a lot of electronic components that go into our equipment that, that we needed to change course on and engineer around because they weren't alone no longer available. Just like I think everyone is dealing with. There were very real challenges. You know, you had price increases with steel and many other things that you had to manage as well for your customers. So no question that those were, those were some big challenges, but I think that, you know, we were fortunate that we were able to navigate around those.
And we were also fortunate that I think the construction industry remains strong and our value proposition also remains strong. And, and really throughout the last couple of years, we've seen tremendous growth. And one of the big drivers was, you know, because we took the heavy lifting out of, out of the installation, masonry, we were able to partner with material suppliers to actually change how they design materials. And so over the last couple of years, the number of available oversized material, you know, this idea of this like a standard group block, excuse me, in construction in the U S is 16 inches long, and it weighs about 30, 40 pounds.
And then you got, you know, that's eight inches deep, and then you have 12 inch block that are about 50 pounds, and those are great for using with a mule. But what we started to do is work with the manufacturers to produce larger materials. So these 32 inch long block, which now weigh about 75 to a hundred pounds, well, it's very difficult to lay by hand, but the benefit is if you use the meal, you double your productivity, you're able to achieve more, you bid more projects, you can be more economical and pitting, probably more profitable for the, for the contractors. And so as that started to take off right around 2000, 19, 2020, we were fortunate that, that, you know, that kind of shifted the industry has driven a lot of positive change for us, and then just, you know, manage the supply chain on the back end, where we've been able to, to be, to see very strong growth for our company over the last few years.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs starting on this path?
Scott Peters: That's a great question. I think that looking back, there's so many, so many lessons learned over the years. I think that, you know, when you start out on the path, you know, when I wrote the first business plan, I think the vision that we had was, was, was very different from where we are today. And that's okay. You know, inevitably, it's going to change. You gotta be nimble. You gotta be flexible. But at the end of the day, the team that you create, the team that you're around, I mean, that's, that's really everything. And so, you know, pick a great team and, and I think just keep marching forward and, and be flexible along the way, because change is going to happen. But that's a good thing.
Elisa Muñoz: Well, thank you so much, Scott, for taking the time to share your experiences with us!
Scott Peters: Yeah, no, thank you for the opportunity. It was great talking with you.
