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Originally featured on The Robot Industry Podcast
Featuring: Rob Goldiez, Co-Founder and CEO of Hirebotics

Rob Goldiez discusses “The Appification of Automation” — how Hirebotics is transforming welding automation by putting cobot control into a smartphone app that any welder can use, no programming experience required.

Listen at The Robot Industry Podcast.

Rob Goldiez is my guest on April 28th edition of #therobotindustry podcast. Rob is cofounder and CEO of Hirebotics. Founded in 2015, Hirebotics is a Universal Robots OEM whose cloud software has made automation accessible to businesses of all sizes with its easy-to-use application solutions, continuous monitoring, and instantly available 24/7 support. Hirebotics’ cloud platform and mobile app unlock unique capabilities, deliver application-specific skills to UR cobots, and enable revolutionary experiences for everyday end users.

Hirebotics got started in 2014, but really got going in 2015 with Universal Robotics. The business model was to pay for automation by the hour. Robotics as a Service or RAAS, takes from software as a service model where you pay as you use the software.

With Hirebotics, you get service and support as well as the robot to build the widgets that you build. There are tons of projects that compete with the CAPEX spend in a factory.

In the podcast we talk about:

  • Robots as a Service
  • De-risking automation and capital projects
  • The return on capital equation
  • Hirebotics taking on the capital risk
  • Cloud connection for monitoring and for billing
  • The common theme and challenge of finding people in manufacturing
  • Skilled labor in manufacturing, such as welders
  • Announcing a new product in the robotic welding space
  • The Appification of Automation and the future of apps
  • Security in the age of cloud-connected robotics

Universal Robots has worked with Hirebotics to release their app, Beacon to the collaborative UR community. Beacon is on the Hirebotics web site as well as the UR+ Site. There is no controller needed, it runs on the robot controller. It’s free and cloud-based. Operators, and partners use Beacon to help monitor uptime, and get alerts, integration to #slack.

Hirebotics is looking for partners to join them on Beacon, so it is kind of an app within an app. They don’t have an open API, but they are looking for partners to write programs on Beacon, like integration to Oracle ERP, Slack, etc.

If you would like to get in touch with Rob or the staff at Hirebotics, you can find Hirebotics at https://www.hirebotics.com/ and Rob is on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robgoldiez/

Thanks to our Rob Goldiez, and our partners, A3 The Association for Advancing Automation and PaintedRobot.com