Robotics Clusters

This page explores the relative strengths of the leading robotics clusters–hopefully using data rather than opinions. If the data is incomplete or incorrect, please let me know.

Cluster Activities

New England Silicon Valley Western Pennsylvania Local Robotics Cluster http://masstlc.org/clusters/robotics.html http://www.svrobotics.org/ Informal Does Cluster Survey Yes No No AUVSI Chapter Yes http://www.auvsi.org/siliconvalley/Home/ http://www.auvsi.org/Pittsburgh/Home/ AUVSI Chapter Focus Aerospace and defense technical interchange; work on technical advisory committees for standards and regulations NASA, hobbyist UAS; relating The Valley to the wider unmanned systems community Community convening, working on starting a student robotic manipulation competition, improving business climate for robotics businesses in Allegheny region Meetup.com Test Meetup.com “Boston” Meetup.com “San Francisco” Meetup.com “Pittsburgh” Meet-up.com “Robot” 5 14 1 (An anime meet-up) Update: Pittsburgh has a real robotics meet-up, I started it. Meet-up.com “Hardware” 3 17 2 Other Community Support Maker Faire Homebrew Robotics Swissnex DIY Drones (Editor lives in Berkeley) Robot Launch Pad

Venture Capitalist Interest

Source: http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/03/01/venture-capital-vc-funding-robotics-2011

New England Silicon Valley Pittsburgh 2011 Venture Capital Funded Companies 4 4 2 Value of Deals ($M) 34.1 (18% of global) 95.1 (49% of global) 26.7 (14%) Counts Medorobotics as Boston, though it originated in Pittsburgh Does not count numerous “angel” funded companies in the same size range as VC deals This is $25M in growth capital for RedZone and a raise of $1.7M for Aethon

Incubation

This is based on my best efforts to find incubation resources through the clusters on-line presence, reports, Xconomy, etc. Tellingly, many of the incubators that do accept hardware do not feature this prominently on their website.

For more on hacker spaces try: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackerspaces

Federal Government Support

Please Criticize my methodology. I’m lazy, but I at least want to have facts and data about this. But it looks like Boston gets the prize for federal support. I’m open to adjusting the methodology to just look at basic research if someone has a good way to count consistently.

Gov. Investment (in Thousands of Dollars) Massachusetts California (Okay I admit it, SoCal is a big chunk) Pennsylvania (Similarly, includes Philly) “Robotic” FY2011 USAspending.gov $86,400 $16,500 $35,600 “Unmanned” FY2011 USAspending.gov $329 $33,700 $657 Total $86,729 $50,200 $36,257

Source: USASpending.gov FY2011

Robotic:

http://usaspending.gov/search?form_fields=%7B%22search_term%22%3A%22robotic%22%2C%22spending_cat%22%3A%5B%22g%22%2C%22c%22%5D%2C%22fyear%22%3A%5B%222011%22%5D%7D&sort_by=dollars&per_page=25

Unmanned:

http://usaspending.gov/search?form_fields=%7B%22search_term%22%3A%22unmanned%22%2C%22spending_cat%22%3A%5B%22c%22%2C%22g%22%5D%2C%22fyear%22%3A%5B%222011%22%5D%7D&sort_by=dollars&per_page=25

Public Companies and Workforce:

Company (1) Ticker Employees (2) Market Cap $M (3) % of Employees % of Market Cap Robotics Cluster Accuray NASDAQ:ARAY 1,100 463 20% 2% SV Adept NASDAQ:ADEP 183 43 3% 0% SV Aerovironment NASDAQ:AVAV 768 577 14% 2% SV Hansen NASDAQ:HNSN 174 135 3% 1% SV Intuitive Surgical NASDAQ:ISRG 1,924 21,840 36% 88% SV iRobot NASDAQ:IRBT 619 606 12% 2% BOS MAKO Surgical NASDAQ:MAKO 429 1,110 8% 4% Other Stereotaxis Inc. NASDAQ:STXS 171 13 3% 0% Other Total 5,368 24,787 100% 100% Silicon Valley 4,149 23,058 77% 93% SV Boston 619 606 12% 2% BOS Pittsburgh – – 0% 0% PGH Rest of U.S. 600 1,123 11% 5% Other Total 5,368 24,787 100% 100% Silicon Valley (without ISRG) 2,225 1,218 65% 41% SV Boston (without ISRG) 619 606 18% 21% BOS Pittsburgh (without ISRG) – – 0% 0% PGH Rest of U.S. (without ISRG) 600 1,123 17% 38% Other Total 3,444 2,947 100% 100% (1) Companies are U.S. public companies that have been identified by Frank Tobe’s or my own research as principally engaged in robotics (2) Employee Count as of Last 10-K Filing (3) Market Capitalization as of 6/24/2012

Sources: Everything-Robotic.com, Robotic Business Review, SEC EDGAR System, Google Finance Data retrieved 6/24/2012

Culture, State support, innovation pipeline, etc… looking for measurements

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