In this episode Doctor Awesome is joined by Greg Lynn, CEO of Piaggio Fast Forward Robotics to discuss advancements in consumer robotics. Join them as Lynn shares his vision for robotics that integrate seamlessly into daily life through intuitive design. Learn how design can impact robotics and help enhance our lives today and in the future!

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The Future of Design and Robotics – A Conversation with Greg Lynn

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Futurist Society podcast. And today I have Greg Lynn, CEO of Piaggio Fast Forward Robotics. And as you guys know, I love robotics. So today, as always, we’re going to be talking in the present, talking about the future. So thank you so much for joining us, Greg, I really appreciate having you here. I know you’re a big time traveler and you came all the way to Boston to speak, and we really appreciate having you.

Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing with Piaggio Fast Forward Robotics, and also what you feel like robotics is going to be like in the future.

Sure. Well, it’s great to be here.Thank you. I love your podcast, and I’m looking forward to this conversation.

So, Piaggio Fast Forward is a US company, but it’s funded by a company that makes Vespa scooters and motorcycles. They’re very dedicated to making people’s lives better, to making people feel excited about riding a Vespa wherever it is that they live and being outdoors and active. And so we’re a robotics company that was founded with that legacy supporting us. And because of that, we’re a robotics company that thinks about daily life and people differently than, frankly, any other robotics company in the world I’m aware of.

Improving Mobility and Quality of Life

So we started in Boston, and we started with a very wide open brief to just think about the future, to consider mobility, and to be improving the quality of life of people, whether consumers or workers. So that’s really kind of the nature of our company. It’s in our DNA.

Yeah, it’s a very noble cause. How do you feel like that’s going to look like for those of us who really want robotics to happen yesterday, but we really are just dipping our toes into the whole robotics industry right now? What do you think that’s going to look like for my kids? For your kids? And, you know, are we going to have the kind of Jetsons type of lifestyle where you have a humanoid robot, or is it going to be something more like Star Wars, where you have droids? What is it going to look like, in your opinion?

Yep. So, you know, kind of job one for us was to not get caught in… let’s say, vacuuming, which is great. When we started seven years ago, you would talk to people, and everybody was talking about pain points, like vacuuming is a pain point. And so you build a robot vacuum. But do people have a relationship with their vacuums? I mean, they’re successful, they’re interesting. Like your dogs and cats like to play with them, but you don’t really have an emotional connection with your vacuum. Does it really affect the quality of your life? Sure, it eliminates vacuuming, but we were thinking a little broader, let’s say.

So our vision of what our kids will have is they’re going to have machines that know them, that behave like them, that understand the environment the way they do. I don’t believe they’ll be their new friends. I hope not. But when you walk through a door with one, we want it to understand what a door is, to be polite and to know how to go through the door, and to just be intuitive and behave like a person behaves.

Yeah. Not to slam into the room like Kramer from Seinfeld. Have a little bit of decorum with your robots, right?

Yep. So whatever the form factor of our machine and whatever the jobs of our machines are, we want our robots to be in the real world, working with people, moving around with them, and just being not… companions is a term that I am not super excited about… but just kind of helping them out and augmenting them.

We’re one of the only companies that has consumer robots in practically every state in the United States. We put them in a box, we send them to whoever buys them, and we tell them, take them to the farmers market, take them to your kid’s soccer games, take them to work, take them shopping, go use them out in the world. And they’re safe, they’re reliable. And, more or less, they’re not causing a lot of problems, they’re actually helping people be more active and connected in their neighborhoods.

So what are your robots doing right now, and what do you hope that they will do in ten years?

Sure. So our focus, because of the investment and the brief, was to think about mobility. And so our robots move things. So we have consumer robots that come in two sizes, one kind of the size of a backpack, one the size of two grocery bags. And those can go in buildings outdoors in the rain. The small one easily fits in your car if you want to take it on a trip. The other one is for walking around in your neighborhood. We’re just helping people carry stuff.

The reason we’re doing that is because we learned that in the US, people take three and a half car trips a day, according to the census. Two of those are back and forth to work. Only a few people could actually walk to work, but we do have some customers who do that. The other one and a half trips is running errands. Those errand runs are under 2 miles, totally walkable. And when you ask people, like, if you and your kid want to go to sports practice, would you rather take a bus, take an Uber, drive a car, take a train, or walk outside? Number one answer is always walk outside. Like, how would you like to spend your time with the kid in the backseat, locked in a car seat or walking? So we try to give that option to people. And that’s why we have these two different payloads, so people can just replace these local car trips with walking around in their neighborhoods.

And all kinds of people get the benefit of that. Whether it’s people that are aging and can’t carry the things, but also don’t have as much contact with their neighborhood. Give a person a robot, and suddenly everybody wants to talk to them. Everybody wants to know what’s going on. And you can also be part of the future, rather than some person that’s just there for wisdom. You can actually be a person who’s an innovator, who’s like, showing a way to be in the world with technology. Those are some of our favorite customers. We have a bunch of them that are like that.

You can actually be a person who’s an innovator, who’s showing a way to be in the world with technology

It also goes down to kids. Kids, they have a different relationship to technology, and it’s primarily screen based. And when you give a kid something that doesn’t involve having to experience a screen but walk around, it also is a really great thing. So we’re kind of looking to be a very high tech product, but with a very low knowledge in order to use it.

Yeah, I think even just like, the idea of being almost like a pack animal to allow yourself to walk unencumbered, is such a luxury that I think that people would pay for and are paying for based on your business model. I mean, you saw me bringing all this podcasting equipment, and it was like, you know, I was back in the 1800s working with the coal mines with this thing on my back. And to have the ability to walk just as nature intended without holding anything, I think that would be really interesting.

What do you guys feel like is the natural progression for that? Do you think that, you know, in ten years, everybody’s going to have one of your products that is just using this rather than using a backpack? Or, if you’re going to sports equipment, like hockey is big in the northeast, having that big hockey bag that you’re lugging around or rather a robot is going to be doing that?

Absolutely. In terms of where we see things going, we focus first on consumers and really kind of learned about how people move around the different environments. But about a third of our customers, we found out, were businesses doing exactly what you were saying. Like photographers, how am I going to carry this stuff? Or people doing activations for sports drinks and stuff like that. And so our consumer product wasn’t really satisfying them. So we have a thing that’s like a cart that we call kilo, which is much more for businesses.

We’re looking at very consumer facing businesses like hospitality and retail, and people will see those robots more because the scale of the deployments will be bigger, but also they’ll get used 8-12 hours a day. Whereas a consumer robot might get used, like an hour and a half a day. So people will see more of them as they go to a hotel, as they go on a shopping spree, as they go even to restaurants and things. And you see meals getting taken from the kitchen out to the curb for curbside pickup… we have a lot of customers that are using our consumer robots for that. And we launched this kilo product in six weeks. And so people start to see them out there more.

But fundamentally, having robots accompany people around and help them be more productive doesn’t just involve carrying things. There are other things that could be done, but we’re not really starting with some super precise task and saying, like, we’re going to replace the jobs people don’t want to do. Which is what every other robot company does. And we just want to have robots interacting with people in the real world.

I love that because I think that that’s the big fear, right? Is that this amorphous unknown of how is this going to take away my livelihood? How is this going to take away my job? And I look at it more such that it’s going to be human augmentation so that we can get back to the things that we like to do.

Like, I remember in school, I hated carrying around a heavy backpack. It would be nice to have a robot to carry it around. Even going for a trip to the grocery store, you take one bag too many, then it becomes like a forearm workout. Right? And so having the ability to have a robot do that, I think, would be really interesting.

The naysayers that are in your life, because I feel like a certain amount of people that have this fear, what do you say to them? I say that stuff to them. But what do you say to the people that are in your own life about technology and its negative effects? specifically when it comes to robotics.

What you find is when it’s a hypothetical conversation, it’s always difficult to get everybody to understand. I will say that now… we’ve had robots out in the world for not quite four years… I have never seen someone with the first contact not just be smiling ear to ear. Because a robot that pairs with them, that moves like them… and you open a door and it waits and it goes through the door, and then you go through the door, and it keeps following you… It’s just like old pure magic.

We want our robots to be in the real world.

People, whether or not it impacts their life and it’s for them, everybody is curious and somewhat astonished to see a machine that moves like they move and that understands what they’re doing. And we use this term pedestrian etiquette, but it behaves with the etiquette of a human. We don’t put googly eyes on it. And, I mean, we have sounds, but we don’t try to personify it as your friend or something. It’s a robot. It’s just a little container, but it really does understand the built environment and how we move around with each other. We’ve even done behaviors where as you’re walking with the robot and someone’s going to come cross between you, you know that moment where you’re jumping back and forth, wondering who’s going to…

Sidestep. Yeah.

We even do that better than people do, but with the same behavior a person does. We either accelerate and cross ahead or we slow down and duck behind. But all of that stuff, I mean, for us, it’s important for the person that’s moving around with it, but it’s more important for the bystanders because they look and they say, oh, this isn’t some clunky delivery robot on the sidewalk struggling. This robot is with that person. And I understand they’re walking together, and I understand that it gets out of the way when somebody is going to cross between them. And that kind of thing, I think, is what is going to get people excited about robotics.

That’s awesome. Yeah. I’m personally really excited about it. I look at it more that I’m excited about a humanoid robot that’s going to be able to take over the tasks of everyday living that I’m just not interested in, laundry, washing dishes, that kind of stuff. But the more that I see non-humanoid robots like your company, the more that I realize that’s probably where we’re going to go first. But how do you feel about that?

Well, I’m a big humanoid robot sympathizer.And, I mean, maybe to get a little bit nerdy about kind of what we really are…

I love a little bit nerdy.

All right. So, I mean, we’re very proud of our robots, like the mechanical engineering, the sensing, the perception, all that stuff. We’re very proud of all that. But fundamentally, we’re a software company with a giant database of how people move.

Most companies came from self-driving automobiles and said, how do we take that approach to moving around the world and just not hit anything? So, like, the whole world is obstacles, and you just don’t want to hit anything, and you want to get from point a to point b. We started with a very, very different approach.

We have a lab, and we record at a very high sub-millimeter accuracy how people walk around. How comfortable a person is if you’re 0.6 meters away or 0.7 meters away, and how that changes when you speed up and when you slow down. How close you like to walk with somebody next to you and how much room you give when somebody’s walking by you. So all of that information about how people move.

First of all, we couldn’t find it anywhere. Like Carnegie Mellon, University of Singapore, they have the biggest databases in the world.

On cars, right?

No, of human movement, of motion-captured human movement. But when you look at them, like, less than a percent involves two people in the scene. It’s all things like picking up a coffee cup or lifting something and setting it on a table. It’s all kind of human motion. It’s tasks. None of it is people moving around in the world.

So we’ve spent six years constantly building a database and using AI and a lot of very sophisticated data analysis techniques to turn that into algorithms. And so we also, we’re doing edge computing on our robots, meaning we’re connected to the cloud when we can or need to be, but they’re doing all the processing themselves, and they’re doing it in a very lightweight way. We’re talking about $3,000 robots. So they’re not carrying around a whole trunk load of processing.

We understand fundamentals about how people move and that’s a really unique approach to thinking about the world, because we start with people, we focus on how people move, and then we let the people do some of that work. Navigating.

We also are, especially with the business robots, we’re able to have a person record a path. And by recording it, if you are walking back and forth between two points and there’s no doors in the way, you can record that path up to, like, half a kilometer and then just play it back, and the robot will just go on its own. And if there’s an obstacle, it’ll avoid the obstacle the same way it would if it was walking with you. So we have autonomy, but it’s an autonomy that can be trained by anybody.

Wow.

In five minutes, you could be programming a robot.

Interesting.

Whereas most other approaches, you have some super administrator, and the robots are either in a cage or out of a cage, and there’s a big barrier to entry. We can deploy for a small business or something like that in no time.

The Importance of Design in Robotics

Wow, interesting. I want to just take a little bit of a left turn and talk about just robotic design, because I know your background is in design… especially the Vespa heritage that you have. When I think about some of the most iconic designs of vehicles, I think about the Vespas. For those of you guys who didn’t catch the first part, Vespa is a big contributor to your company. And so they have this DNA that I feel like has a really strong design background.

Talk to us a little bit about robotic design, because I feel like all I see right now is very rudimentary. You’re either a droid, you’re either a robot that is very similar to human, and they do look science fiction, but there’s so many different variations of it and kind of like what your approach is when it comes to design.

So, I mean, as a designer, I would say whether it’s automobiles or clothing or whatever, there’s affordable, there’s premium, and there’s luxury. Okay? We try to be a premium design product, meaning people that use our product, we want them to be proud owners of it. We want it to add to their kind of lifestyle. And even when it comes to color, we really think about how a person’s going to feel with our robots.

We don’t do it from the point of view of it’s your friend. Like, it’s not your friend replacement. Like, Facebook takes care of enough… We just want to be like all the other products in your life, you know, whether it’s what phone you buy or what clothes you wear or, you know, whatever it might be.

Design is motion.

So we always have three colors. We have a color that attracts attention, we have a color that’s refined, and we have a color that’s just work. And the robots themselves, I think they’re adorable, but they’re not cute, and they’re not trying to get attention. They tend to be very round, because in a crowd, you don’t want a thing with corners. Our robots are way less than a Labrador retriever so if one of them was to bump against you, something like that, it’s a nice, round, smooth, slippery shape for moving around in the world. So it’s not like a suitcase or a box.

Everything, design wise is… the shape and the color and all that matters… but for us, design is motion. It’s the shape about how it fits through doorways and drives over door thresholds and stuff like that. It’s that we have a robot that can accelerate and decelerate with a person. So the only reason we self balance is because we have to throw the weight forward and back in order to take off as quickly as a person does and to stop as quickly as a person does. So we’re not like a cooler on wheels or something like that. That’s going to be an obstacle.

When we were small, meaning like 20 people, everybody in the company got a copy of a book by Chuck Jones, who’s the animator that did Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. And he had a saying that the character is in the motion. So if you think about Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote, the first thing to think about is how they move. And so really, the first thing for us is how the robots move and how they express movement and just communicate very clearly what they do.

They have lighting. When we did sounds, we actually collaborated with Berkeley College music to design 13 sounds for us. So everything we do is very thoughtfully considered in terms of design.

That’s very, I feel like, coming from a place of a craftsman, coming from a place of an expert, coming from the place of a real thought leader. But from a layman’s perspective, I think when we’re talking about robots, they all are kind of going in towards this science fiction kind of look. And then just if we were to talk about all of the different possibilities, like, you could have steampunk robots, you could have robots that look exactly like humans, right? Like, what they’re trying to do in some of these consumer electronic shows.

What do you think is going to be the best for us? What do you think is the most likely outcome that we’re going to see in ten years?

Yeah. So if I could be arrogant enough to say it, I’ve always been involved in cutting edge design, never futuristic design.

You know when somebody says something’s classic, like a classic chair.

Yeah.

You know, a classic chair from the sixties, like an Eames chair, was bent plywood that came from the aerospace industry, it was new kinds of textiles, it was ergonomic form that was contemporary. So these are just robots that hopefully will be classics for 2020. And we just make them contemporary. We don’t try to make them out of science fiction film or steampunk, they’re not styled like that. They’re styled like elegant, contemporary products. Refined, durable, tough, all that stuff. But, you know, hopefully they just look like every other thing that’s in the contemporary design world.

Yeah, I mean, that’s what I hope for. But I just feel like the whole industry is going… even like Roomba, for example, it looks like a science fiction piece of equipment, right? I mean, even the Tesla robot… which I think is one of the better designed robots, I think the Optimus looks really smooth, really sleek… but it stepped off of 2050, like a space odyssey.

So I like that kind of aesthetic that you’re talking about. When I had initially heard about your company and I thought, this DNA from Vespa, I’ve always been a fan. I feel like a Vespa from the 1960s is like a work of art. And so I know that’s in your DNA.

In your opinion, what is the reason why we’re going in this direction as opposed to that direction? Is it just because of the nature of robotics or is it just because there’s not enough designers that are in the robotics field and it’s primarily an engineering driven field?

Yes, that’s it.

So you think it is the latter?

Yeah, it’s because design… and I’m not saying design needs to make all the decisions, but design needs to be at the table before you even start thinking about it.

100%. That’s why the iPhone is so classic.

Any successful company today has a designer at the table. Maybe not driving the decisions, but listening and having an impact all the way through. And look, I mean, I think just to all of my colleagues, you need to think about design early, and that involves every aspect of a product.

I mean, we realized with us that designers needed to be in all the early meetings. Although all of the engineers would say, we’re not ready yet, we don’t need design yet. Let us come up with the package or whatever you want to call it, and then the designers can come put like a plastic skin on. And that’s when you just get into trouble, because then the designers also, they don’t have anything to work off of. Because designers are problem solvers. They’re not just aestheticians that make things look pretty, or friendly or whatever it might be like. We try to never have those conversations, like, what’s it going to look like?

The design is already happening all the way, whether it’s an app or lighting or sound, all that. We also follow design all the way through the user experience. I mean, frankly, you know, we had to go to Google when it mapped our headquarters and convince them we were a robotics company and not a design company. It’s because we had Piaggio in our name.

Yeah.

But we do really think about design, but not like just shape and color. We really think about it as how is a person going to interact with it, how’s it going to make them feel, and how is it going to behave in a way that they’re going to appreciate it? For us, that’s kind of job one.

Mainstream Adoption of Consumer Robotics 

Yeah. I wanted to talk about this because I feel like if there is not good design, then it won’t be universally utilized. And if it’s not universally utilized, it’s always going to become kind of fringe. You know, it’s not really something that people enjoy. Like, I think that the iPhone shifted our idea of consumer electronics because it started from the design up. And now everything tries to look like the iPhone. You know, even like a laptop from a third party manufacturer will try to look like an iMac.

That’s something that I hope that people are doing with consumer robotics, because I do want it to succeed. I want it to be a societal shift from using manual labor and really having more human to human interactions. I think that’s a utopian society that I would envision, but I think what a lot of people worry about is the fact that this is just going to become a novelty and fizzle out. And I don’t think that that’s going to happen. I think there’s too much momentum with it. But I would want to know your thoughts. Like, what do you think is going to be the real push for us to have robotics in every level of our life?

Well, I mean, what you’re asking also is a little bit about how things get adopted. And it’s just a fact that walking around with a robot is an unusual thing to do. And we hear this from our customers, and we hear this from people that will never be our customers, that they just say, like, it just pulls way too much attention to me to walk around with it.

Exactly.

And I just feel strange, or it’s an unusual experience, or I’m not that person or whatever it might be. You know, maybe same thing, I had one of those giant cell phones, like the Wall street image and you look kind of like a jerk. I mean, it looked weird.

Yeah.

Sure, it was a status symbol, but it didn’t really work. So normalizing being with a machine and having people notice that you’re the first one they’ve seen with that, that’s a problem we try to solve.

How are you trying to solve it?

Well, we try to solve it with the pedestrian etiquette side. So we just want to make sure that it’s a good citizen. We try not to make it into, like, a dog or your little friend or your sidekick or something like that. So we don’t personify it, which I will say seems to be the popular approach.

Obviously, I think our approach to just making it look more like something from today and more normal could work. But I mean, maybe having it talk and make noises, you know, and chirp and stuff like that, that would also work.

Yeah, no, I think that’s an interesting strategy. Like, I think that’s what prompted Roomba to be so popular. It was just kind of out of sight, out of mind, even when it came out. You know, initially, when I first saw it, I thought it was a little bit obtrusive, but now I have one. It’s not really that big of a deal. It’s widespread. And I think that that’s how they were able to broaden their market, because it’s not so in your face.

When you have a consumer robot like yours, it kind of has to have a different set of rules. But I do like the fact that you’re trying to make it a little bit more like today, rather than something that’s a little bit more science fictiony.

One of the greatest moments was… you use an app to manage stuff like charge level through the speaker or stuff like that, but we don’t want you to need to use a phone while you’re walking around… all your interactions used to be with two buttons, and we managed to get it down to one button. And I thought, this is amazing. Like, let’s not have a lot of feature creep, and let’s not design this for engineers. It’s designed for people.

What do you mean by feature creep?

Well, just when somebody says, what about all of these edge case uses? What about somebody wanting to customize all this? Should we put a touchpad on there so we can have browsing happening on the robot? It’s just too easy to have everybody brainstorming so many features on a product that actually nothing works.

So we’re much more about what’s essential, what’s meaningful. Let’s just get rid of all the extraneous stuff. A lot of that stuff you can do with the app if you want to customize things. But on the robot, there’s, you know, it does a few things really well, and I think that makes it less intimidating for people.

I mean, literally, it’s like a cake pan.You take the top off the box, plug it in, and once you’ve plugged it in for ten minutes and the battery is set. You unplug it, you touch a button, it rolls out of the box, and you’re walking around. That’s all it takes.

If you want to go deeper, you can go deeper with the app. But I think that’s also a big thing. It’s just not too much, not too many extraneous features and just not always calling attention to try to solve problems. Like, it doesn’t make it more normal to have it do a lot of silly things to be cute. That works, like, maybe once or twice, but after a hundred times… That’s the big risk with a lot of products, I think, is they’re great when they’re first out of the box, and then people don’t integrate them into their life.

Yeah. And I hope that people do integrate things into their life, especially robotics and new technology, just in general. And I always wondered, what is the key behavior or the key effect that you need to make sure of that consumer adoption? I think that that’s something that I look forward to, when we have a lot of these things that are just available to us, as opposed to just being kind of the edge cases that we were talking about.

Yeah, well, I think robots, they’re a big thing. It’s a big deal.

I think so, too.

We’re taking from the historical playbook an approach where we want consumer adoption because that’s where you’re going to have the most impact. We started with the consumer robot to understand what it needs to do. As I said, businesses started buying them. So now we’re focusing towards business products, but for places like hotels. So maybe you go on vacation and you see them and then you say, you know, I could have one of these.

So the same way the personal computer went, the same way the cell phone went, the same way a lot of these technologies that were very disruptive and very unusual started first as a consumer product, then as a business product, and then back to mass adoption. That’s what we’re doing. And so we think when people see them… if they go to a shopping center, if they go to a hotel, if they go for healthcare… they’re going to see our robots and they’ll see them working with people and moving around with people, and then they’ll discover, hey, they also have a consumer version of this that’s less expensive and smaller. So that’s where we’re going as a company, and that’s our business rollout.

That’s cool. Well, I mean, honestly, the best of luck. I want to talk more with you, but we’re getting close to the end of our time, and I did want to ask one question before I get into the three questions that I ask all my guests.

So, last question, one of the things that you kind of highlighted was the fact that you don’t think that this model of robot is going to be like your friend. And I had another person on the podcast that was in childhood education, and they were saying that they truly believe that the toys or the educational materials of the future are going to form relationships with your kids more significant than some of your human relationships. Do you think that’s true? Or do you think that these things will still be kind of tools that we use?

Well, it’s a fact. I mean, if you look at the time on screen that kids are spending and the toys and games they’re interacting with and how screen based they are, it’s just a fact. And we want to be higher tech than a lot of things, but we want to encourage physical experience and physical life. And honestly, you know, your kid will probably make friends with this robot the same way they would with a bicycle or something like that.

So maybe I’m old school about how technology can play a role in life. But we’ve really consciously said, let’s have this be about being out in the world. Also, not an indoor robot. They work indoors, but that’s not for your house, it’s for your neighborhood. So I think you’re absolutely right, and we’re trying to be an alternative to these screen based experiences.

That’s awesome. No, I think that you guys are going to be more prevalent in society than these kind of best friend type of robots. There’s a robot out there that I’m debating whether I should buy for my three year old daughter. It’s called Moxie, it interacts with her, and I’m like, is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? But yours, there’s all upside. I could totally see the difference. I just wonder if, you know, you being on the cutting edge in robotics, if you have a particular opinion on which direction it’s going to go.

And honestly, I hope that if it does provide a better human experience than I can offer her… I look at human beings as plants. Like, if I can’t provide the right amount of fertilizer, the right amount of water, the right amount of sunlight, then I hope that they do get that from other sources, whether it’s from me or from their robot friend or anything like that.

But certainly, I do think that having the ability to carry things, just like we’ve been doing for literally centuries, like we have used animals for a certain amount of time, now we’re on combustion engines. The next obvious step is consumer robotics. So all the best of luck to you guys.

I do want to pick your brain now with my three general questions that I ask all of my guests, because, you know, it’s so interesting to see where you guys are coming from and also to see what you see for the future outside of your own field.

So the first question I always ask is, what do you gain your inspiration from? Because it obviously required a lot of different imagination to create the product that you have created right now. Personally, a lot of my inspiration comes from science fiction, like we talked about. You know, I look to utopian science fiction as kind of like the barometer for where we’re going as a species. And I wonder, where do you get your inspiration from with all the different ideas that you’re kind of putting out into the world?

Well, so I think my inspiration has really flipped. I used to spend all my time as a designer and architect getting my inspiration from technology. Now, I get my inspiration from how cities are being developed. Like, how people are pedestrianizing, how light mobility is such a thing. They’re a little bit flashing in the pan a lot, so I’m not sure… but like scooter sharing and one wheel riding and all these things. I get a lot of inspiration from cities and people living in places which have all the attributes of a city, but aren’t cities. Like the suburbs now. A lot of them aren’t like suburbs anymore. They’re actually like little, tiny villages.

And so urbanism and mobility and the way people are choosing to make life choices, that’s really where I get inspired, and it kind of drives everything else I do. So, I started from making the built environment and getting excited about technology. Now I’m making technology, but getting more excited about changes in the built environment.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. I think urbanism in general is so awesome and so interesting. As a species, we are tending to flop towards cities, and they have become the centers of population distribution. The way that we’re thinking about cities these days, and especially in the light of new technology, like what you’re providing, it’s just really interesting to watch as a third party observer. So I totally get that.

And with COVID everybody really paid a lot of attention and rediscovered their local stuff.You know, because you couldn’t get everything from the big box store, you couldn’t get it delivered, and everybody was relying on local. And I think that local lifestyle salsa, it’s really exciting.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I’m thankful to live in Cambridge, where it’s very pedestrian, very localized. I can see a lot of the benefits of the technology that you’re talking about, because I feel like it’s geared towards areas like this. It’s an awesome response.

Second question is, where do you see robotics in ten years? Like, specifically when it comes to, you know, you, Greg, are waking up in the morning. How does it affect your daily life? And what do you hope that it gets to you in ten years?

Well, so let’s take this term cobot, because it’s going to be cobots. So we’ve been very curious about the term, because really what a cobot is, is a robot that you can let out of a cage that’s not going to hurt you.

I think that we are going to have robots out in the world, not just getting out of the cage and interacting, but actually robots out i the world. And so right now we’ve got home robots, which I think the vacuum is the best example. We’ve got logistics, warehouse and factory robots. Okay. Robots are going to be ahead of the real world. There’s some on the sidewalks, around delivering food. That’s interesting.

A cobot is a robot that you can let out of a cage that’s not going to hurt you.

I think ten years from now, you’re going to see a person you interact with at a business and they’re going to have some machine that’s a robot that’s helping them do their job. I do not think you’re going to go shopping for a pair of shoes and interact with a humanoid robot that’s going to help you with the shoes. I do think there’s going to be a robot maybe in that shoe store that’s bringing you the size you might want.

So I think that replacing people with robots, I know everybody worries about, I think that’s happened in factories and warehouses. I think it’s not going to happen in ten years. But I do think you’re going to see machines that are as smart as robots that are going to be moving around doing work, and they’re going to be helping people out. And I think you’re going to see everyday people walking around with robots that are helping them do different jobs.

Interesting. I hope you’re right. That seems like a future that I want to live in.

The Jetsons. Everything is Jetsons.

I hope so. I mean, if I can get a robot that can do my laundry. Oh, chef’s kiss! I cannot wait for that day.

Last question… we talked a lot about robotics today, you’re obviously on the cutting edge of that… what, other than robotics, are you really excited about that’s coming down the pipeline? Like, for me, other than medicine and biotechnology, when I’m reading, you know, robotics is what I am interested in. What about for you? What is the stuff that you’re interested in opposed to your actual field of interest?

I’ve really put the most emphasis on my life and having friends and colleagues that are in all kinds of interesting industries. My younger brother recommended I read a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. I don’t know if you have run across it.

No.

I was talking to him about the show The Bear, and he said, oh, it’s all based on this Unreasonable Hospitality book. It’s a really great book about how to interact with people and provide magic. And after reading it and talking to people, they’re like, oh, yeah our CEO made the whole company read that.

I think the world of food and taking care of people is changing a lot because so much stuff just gets thrown over your gate in a box from Amazon or Target or whatever. When you go out and interact with people, there’s a different opportunity for a different kind of… like, I know what kind of coffee you want. I know something about you. I’m going to surprise you with something, and I’ve got something here I’d like to show you that might get you excited.
I see a change in culture that I think is very interesting that’s happening that way, and it’s happening around people’s hobbies and people’s passions and interests, and they’re becoming more and more important. And so I really like to track that. And it gets me, you know, in a new relationship with all the products in my life.

Yeah.

I really order less stuff from Amazon and I go to the local camera shop and talk about how to try a different kind of film. Or something like that. And I think there’s a lot of that going on in the world, but especially with food.

I’ve got a kid who could have done anything he wanted. And I kind of always felt like, you know, he’s always loved great food, and he’s working at a sandwich shop that’s run by two Michelin star chefs where they’re trying to make the perfect sandwich.

Interesting.

I love that he’s taking that career choice, and I really get inspired by people that are going very deep into quality and making that quality available to everyday people and getting them excited about it.

Okay, so that’s an amazing response. Usually I stop with three, but I’ve got to ask a follow up. So what’s your favorite restaurant in Boston?

Oh, my gosh. How can I do that?

Yeah. I mean, we can talk offline about that. Yeah. I don’t want you to throw anybody under the bus.

No. The food scene in Boston, when you get into people that care about mediterranean spices and baking and all that stuff, it’s crazy good. Crazy, crazy good. But, yeah, no, I’m, like, really into food.

Yeah. I mean, if you’re watching The Bear, I can tell that that’s something that is of interest to you. So offline we’ve got to talk about your top five.

Okay.

For the rest of you guys, it was so nice joining you or having you join us this time around for our podcast. Thank you so much for all of your support. Please, as always, like and subscribe.

And if you don’t mind, following Greg and, you know, making sure that his consumer robotics technology has lots of new users, we have lots of new data so that we can promote the robotic movement in the world. I think that he would appreciate it. I would appreciate it.

And as always, I will see you guys in the future. Have a great day, everyone.

Important Links

• Greg Lynn – LinkedIn
• Piaggio Fast Forward
• Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist
• Moxie robot
• The Jetsons
• Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
• The Bear

About Greg Lynn

Greg Lynn is the Co-founder and CEO of Piaggio Fast Forward and Founder of Greg Lynn FORM. He attended Princeton University and Miami University. For the last 30 years, Greg Lynn has been at the intersection of the digital and physical in architecture.

As Chief Design Officer at PFF he helped establish their values that innovation begins with a vision for a better future. He also serves as both President and Secretary of the Board of Directors for Piaggio Fast Forward.

Greg has designed award winning buildings as well as industrial objects in production with companies like Swarovski, Alessi, Nike, and Vitra. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Canadia Center for Architecture and has served on numerous advisory boards. Time Magazine recognized him as one of 100 of the most innovative people in the world for the 21st century while Forbes Magazine named him one of the world’s ten most influential architects.