Kambria – Creating a New Paradigm in Launching an Open Innovation AI and Robotics Platform

The AI and Robotics economy is growing at a rapid pace. Since the first batch of vacuum robots hit the shelves of consumer electronics stores back in 2002 the consumer robotics industry has seen exponential growth. In 2016 the worldwide sales in consumer robotics reached $ 3.8 billion and is expected to grow to a total market capitalization of $ 13.8 billion in 2022.

While robotic toys, vacuum and lawn mowing robots were initially perceived as gimmicky products, we see that the industry is maturing. With the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), sometimes in the form of Machine Learning (ML), robots are now becoming: reliable educational devices, healthcare assistants, and even companions for the elderly.

With its success also come some challenges. Today’s innovation model, like the AI and Robotics industry, faces waste and inefficiencies. A lot of university research projects are left not fully utilized, while some of them could potentially have a real impact when further developed. Similarly, startups that go bust, might have a cool invention that goes down with the project. The answer to these challenges is to provide an open innovation platform that thrives on manufacturers, developers, companies and backers working together in a community-based ecosystem. Kambria is a project that is building an open innovation platform for the AI and Robotics industry.

What is Kambria all about?

Founded by the team behind robotics company OhmniLabs, Kambria is building the first open innovation blockchain platform for frontier technology. The platform would be similar to Linux and Android with the addition of software and hardware components.

Kambria will enable and incentivize collaborations in Research and Development (R&D), manufacturing, and commercialization of advanced technologies. They aim to solve the current industry issues with the help of blockchain technology and a crypto-economic incentive system.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are a great fit for the Kambria ecosystem as they provide the ability to enforce penalties and reward platform users with incentives. Kambria or Kambria International (official) is launching its own token based on the Ethereum ERC-20 standard, called KAT. The KAT token is the main token that will be used to pay for platform access, reward participation, and to align incentives to all stakeholders in the entire ecosystem.

Kambria International’s mission statement:

‘Kambria wants to accelerate the process of innovation, enabling faster, cheaper, and easier development and adoption of technologies’.

OhmniLabs

After its inception in 2015 the OhmniLabs team has designed, created and manufactured the Ohmni Telepresence Robot. This telepresence robot is called Ohmni and is priced very competitively compared to other telepresence robots. A telepresence robot is a robot that instantly gives you presence at a location while you yourself are at another location. Telepresence robots are ideal to be used by school children not being able to attend their classes, but do want to keep up with their curriculum.

As a competitor to Pepper, Turtlebot, Aibo and Nao, Ohmni aims to provide buyers with the highest quality telepresence robot for the least amount of money. They achieve this by streamlining an iterative design and using 3d-printing for the manufacturing of the robot.

Kambria’s main pillars

The Kambria Platform is comprised of 5 pillars:

– The K-DNA Codebase: The platform’s foundation is the Kambria Codebase or K-DNA. The Codebase contains all the information, software, firmware, hardware and AI needed to build a robot.

– The Manufacturing Alliance (KMA): The K-DNA will be supported by the manufacturing alliance, which allows people to prototype and manufacture the robots created with the help of the K-DNA.

– The innovation (bounty) marketplace: In the innovation marketplace, manufacturers can offer robotic parts in exchange for a bounty. Or interested parties can launch a crowdfunding campaign that runs on bounty tokens where developers manufacture a robot based on their demands.

– Legal Protection: The community will come together to protect the innovation platform in the Proof of Violation (PoV) standard. Besides legal protection, there will also be a fair use policy put in place that consists of terms and conditions for community members.

– Value capture: This feature will use KAT tokens to bring value to the platform so that the longevity can be guaranteed and the project is not dependent on donations. Various value points will be created. For instance, when a robot is manufactured, after the value point occurs the fee will be enforced and the collected KAT tokens will be disbursed to the manufacturer (largest part) and into the community reserve (small part).

Team and Investors

Dr. Thuc Vu (Co-founder), holds a PhD in computer science obtained at Stanford. His work mainly involves research on AI, game theory, tournament design and multi-agent systems. Thuc is a serial entrepreneur and has co-founded: Evolet Inc., Katango (acquired by Google), Tappy (acquired by Weeby.co), VietSeed Foundation, and OhmniLabs.

Jared Go (Co-founder), holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. Jared has an extensive experience in blockchain, AI, real-time graphics, VR, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. He was the CTO of Hobnob for over 10 years and also co-founded OhmniLabs.

Tingxi Tan (Co-founder), holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Calgary. Tingxi has experience in cloud computing, network infrastructure and distributed system design. He has worked as a cloud consultant at Red Melon; as a software engineer and engineering director at Hobnob Inc.; and co-founded Ohmnilabs.

Besides the three co-founders Kambria’s website also mentions the following six members as part of their leadership team. Below I have also provided a link to each member’s LinkedIn profile.

Prof. Manuela Veloso (AI and Robotics)

Dhana Pawar (Marketing)

Ned Semonite (Partnerships)

Prof. Tra Vu (Finance)

Dr. Minh Nguyen (Research)

Lien Cao (Vietnam operations)

Investors: Some of the industry’s most notable investors have showed their support to Kambria. #Hashed is a top Venture Capitalist firm based in South-Korea and has invested in projects like Icon, Bluzelle, TomoChain and Aelf. Other professional investors and industry giants that invested in Kambria, include Bitzantin, Dragon Capital and Alpha Blockchain.

Concluding remarks:

One of the best things about Kambria is the fact that they are sharing their knowledge about robotics with others to improve upon the entire robotics industry. Robotics and AI industry growth is important to the team and their intentions of sharing their knowledge and wisdom are admirable. As the co-founders of Kambria initially experienced issues in development at OhmniLabs and were lacking a community support system, they are now solving this problem through Kambria to ensure that other projects in the robotic and AI industry can move forward faster. Kambria is a project that is on my radar. I will be following it as part of their community.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended as investment advice. It is just my personal opinion about the Kambria project. You should always do your own research.

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