Robot Revolution - Northern Magazine

By Rebecca Tavernini '11 MA

Rob Carpenter ’08 BS is both a modern-day pioneer and a Renaissance man. He ventured into artificial intelligence as early as 2017; worked in commercial real estate; heads a global software company that has developed more than 300 multi-platform applications; owns a capital firm that acquires and elevates residential service-based businesses; and leads an AI-powered robotics startup with revolutionary uses in housing and aviation inspection and military reconnaissance. Not bad for a kid who was born and raised in a remote Alaskan village reachable only by plane, who found his way to NMU, and eventually to Denver, where he owns Frost River Capital, under which many of his businesses reside and new ideas constantly incubate.

Today, Synteric Robotics is Carpenter’s top focus. These are autonomous microrobots designed to inspect places that are difficult, dangerous or impractical for humans to access. In homes or buildings, they can navigate crawlspaces, attics, wall cavities and ducts to check for leaks, blockages, wildlife or deterioration, for instance.

In aviation, robots can detect corrosion, contamination, and wear in fuel tanks, wing cavities, and tail cones – areas that are difficult, costly, and time-consuming for human inspectors to access. 

For military applications, these little guys can travel through dangerous areas for situational awareness or disaster assessment. They can also inspect military bases, tanks, and ship infrastructures. Through built-in cameras and computers, they can relay real-time inspections to human eyes via a mobile app and provide assessment reports that inspectors can share with managers or clients or the military personnel can use to make crucial decisions. Through repeated inspections they are also able to compare data over time. Internet connectivity is not necessary for them to function.

This all adds up to cost and time savings by reaching spaces with little to no destruction, providing clear evidence for decision-making and action, and keeping people safe. Synteric is currently piloting with multiple restoration and remediation operators, including a national franchise restoration brand with thousands of locations across the United States.

Carpenter did not invent the technology but saw an opportunity to acquire it through the Embark program offered by the University of Colorado Boulder. “Really brilliant people there are constantly inventing cool and unique intellectual property, technology, novel drugs, and things like that. But a lot of these researchers want to stay in academia.

Maybe the university seeks a patent, and then a lot of times, that’s kind of where it stops,” said Carpenter. “I was looking for an adventure to go on with entrepreneurship, and this really intrigued me, so I applied.“ The university selected 9 people from 180 applicants and was able to choose from around 40 pre-vetted pieces of technology.

Carpenter was especially intrigued by the robotic inspectors because he had previously built similar communications systems through his companies, Appit Ventures, which, among other things, created an app for the first-in-the-nation digital driver’s license, and Valyant AI, which developed a conversational AI platform to automate fast-food drive-thru orders. That technology started with a holographic employee but was simplified to more invisible technology.

The company closed deals with Burger King, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A.

“In order to deliver the drive-thru AI  technology, we had to build hardware to go into the fast food restaurant so that it could communicate up to our AI cloud, communicate to the on-site infrastructure and enable the ability to talk to the end customer. So through that process, I became co-inventor on five different patents around AI technology.”

While this ended up being wall-mounted technology in the restaurants, it was the basis for eventually building out the inspection robots and their data capture and communications systems.

“This robotic technology that I selected has had a tremendous amount of time and energy and research over the last five years, as well as capital from Rolls Royce and the US Air Force,” Carpenter explained. He now has physical robots in hand, that were prototyped in Colorado and manufactured in Shanghai, and three customers signed up to pilot their use in field tests this fall.

What’s the advantage of making the robots so cute? “Because ultimately, the researcher who built them is using animal- and insect-inspired locomotion and trying to port that to robotics as a form factor that might work in the real world better. So we’re trying to make cute robots that people aren’t scared of, that they feel comfortable with.”

Carpenter adds that the most exciting aspect of this technology is that there are no competitors on the market. “It’s a totally blue sky opportunity. We are seeing huge progress in humanoid robotics with companies like Figure and Tesla. And simultaneously, it seems like every week the AI is getting smarter, and so the more intelligence that we can embed inside the robot, the more intelligent the robot can be.

"Instead of a remote-controlled machine, it’s now almost like a co-worker.” He said that there’s a massive market opportunity for this type of technology in a variety of different industries, “but we’re super focused on our first-use case and proving that out. In the entrepreneurial world that’s called a beachhead. 

"You want your first customer, source of revenue, source of profit and proof that the technology works. Then you can look to expand out into other types of environments. The sky or the ocean is the limit after that—and space… Maybe we can get close enough to drop them on the moon next time, right?!”

But of course Carpenter does have other projects on the horizon as well: Summit AI Consulting and a specialized use of AI to speed up video game development. “There’s a lot of understandable fear and nervousness around AI, but there’s also a lot of opportunity and cool use cases and applications ahead.”

Game development is what brought Carpenter from Alaska—where his dad was raised as part of a military family and his mom moved there from Michigan for student loan forgiveness—to NMU.

At the time, Northern was ranked as a top university for video game design programs. Hinting at the serial entrepreneur he would become, Carpenter bounced between majors, finally finding his home in entrepreneurship. In a finance coursehe was introduced to the books Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Millionaire Next Door. “They really flipped my thinking to an entrepreneurial ethos and the mindset ofowning assets and not just selling your time  for money.”

He also had life-changing experiences studying abroad in New Zealand and Austria. When he returned to NMU he formed the Northern Entrepreneurship Organization and launched a business selling ad space in a student publication. A group of his Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity brothers are still close to this day and regularly gather for adventures.

“Professor Ray Amtmann was an adviser to the entrepreneurship organization and taught me a lot about entrepreneurship.  I  competed in a national business plan competition, and he was my sponsor andcame with me. I have always appreciated him and everything that he did in helping me on this trajectory.”

“At NMU I found lots of opportunity for flexibility. Everybody was super nice and supportive. Ideas weren’t suppressed, they were supported and lifted up—even the crazy ideas and initiatives I had. Not every idea is good, not every idea is going to work, but sometimes that’s the most valuable thing in and of itself. Failures can be the most valuable teachers. Having that freedom to explore is so valuable, and doing it in a community that’s warm, that’s engaging, that’s open, really helps build each other up.”

Stay tuned for the next build that Rob Carpenter launches…