Daniel Theobold, CEO of Vecna Robotics discusses how the industrial world has been increasing in automation for years– and how COVID-19 has accelerated that.
Danny:
Welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. Today, I have the founder and CEO of Vecna Robotics, Daniel Theobald here. He's also the president and co-founder of MassRobotics. Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Daniel:
My pleasure.

Danny:
All right, did I get everything right? We'll just start with that, all good, perfect pronunciations.

Daniel:
Perfect.

Danny:
All right, cool.

Daniel:
Yeah, you nailed it.

Danny:
So for those who aren't familiar with Vecna, Vecna Robotics and MassRobotics, could you just give me sort of high level, like, who you guys are, what you do?

Daniel:
Yeah, so Vecna Robotics is the global leader for automated bulk handling. Think, moving pallets around, or large, what are called, non-conveyable items: kayaks, tires, carpets, those kinds of things that we ship more and more today than we have in the past because of E-commerce. And MassRobotics is an industry association focused on trying to bring innovators, customers, and investors together in effective ways to move the industry forward. Also focusing a lot on practical interoperability standards, it's got a great coworking space to the Boston area. The whole goal is to help move the robotics industry as a whole forward.

Danny:
Oh, that's awesome, what's obviously– it's a huge space right now and obviously because of all the COVID situation, I think is propelling it a little bit more than… it already was high, and it was already moving. But I think even now it's, you know, it's being launched even forward that much faster. But before we get into all that, I want to get to know you a little bit, you know, and for our audience to get to know you a little bit more. So, take me back, like how, like, you know, how did you get into robotics? So was that like, did you go to, you know, did you get an undergrad in technology, hey, this is what I want to do. Like, tell me that story, how did you get into this?

Daniel:
Yeah, well that's a, it's a, been a long journey. I was very fortunate to grow up in Silicon Valley, in San Jose. And attended probably one of the first elementary schools in the world that had a computer lab. We had Commodore PET computers and Apple, believe it or not. And so I was just, yeah, it was very fortunate to have access to computers, in formative years. And you know, my father was very hands on, so I helped him with construction. I fixed cars, motorcycles, you know, built my own computers, built a number of robotics projects. And was very fortunate to get chosen as the top computer science student in all of California, and got to go to Lawrence Livermore National Lab and work on the Cray Computer, which was the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time, so that was a really exciting opportunity. Yeah, then when I went on to MIT and essentially built my own degree program around robotics because they didn't have a robotics specific degree program. And you know, have just really focused on this idea of using automation, using robotics to empower humanity.

Danny:
That's awesome, all right. So you know, obviously from a very young age, you were introduced to computers and technology. That's pretty cool to be able to, you have gone to that elementary school and have access to that at that point. So how, you know, what was your, you know, coming out of college and stuff like, what was your first job?