Robotics CTO: 'We Look for People that Share Our Vision'

Robotics took center stage in a big way at the International CES which took place in Las Vegas earlier this month. From personal robots to programmable toys for kids, it’s clear we’ll be living with robots of some sort in the not-too-distant future. Companies are realizing robotics is an engaging way to introduce the so-called digital generation to concepts such as cause and effect, deductive reasoning and coding.

Ozobot from Evollve is a miniature programmable robot developed in 2012 with the idea of making a robot that’s both educational and fun to play with. It has picked up a lot of steam lately, raising about $2 million in November to launch the Ozobot.

I’ve seen it in action and it’s pretty smart.

It’s a tiny robot that can follow lines on an iPad or a piece of paper, recognize colors and has a simple programming language called OzoCodes; sequences of colors and dots which trigger pre-programmed behavior. The red line might mean twirl as you go forward, blue can mean move backwards and so on.

I chatted with Evollve CTO Armen Kroyan to find out what it takes to understand the world of robotics.

Ozobot was developed to help kids learn about coding, correct?

We feel like it’s done in a very fun way, it captures the attention of children that have difficulty these days concentrating on something. You can load a song, dance moves, control lights, there are elements of learning and sequential learning in a way that’s really fun.

How important is it for kids, especially older kids, to know how to do this?

Educational side is extremely important to us; it’s a big area of emphasis for us so we are focusing also on structured learning, lessons, curriculum and so on using the fundamental capabilities in the robot and the programming capabilities to help kids get into those fields. There’s a big focus on trying to get kids into science and programming, our mission is to contribute to that and attract some of the kids and pull them towards technology.

What do you look for when you hire at Ozobot?

We are still a small team, we’re looking obviously for people that share our vision, that are excited about the mission that we have.

Do candidates need a specific tech background or a range of skills?

Robotics is a very multi-disciplinary field because it involves everything from mechanical design to electronic design to software; we also make our own apps and develop games so even though we’re a small team we have a lot of disciplines. We look for people that are programmers that understand both application-level programming and hardware-level programming and design.

Languages and programs change so quickly, how should today’s students keep up with it?

These fields are very dynamic, things change a lot. Today, people who are in this field are exposed to a lot of the new stuff, new technologies, easily accessible with the internet, it’s so quick to find answers and so on. Ultimately it’s all out there, it’s about the individuals and their desire to stay current and push the envelope.

We may have certain specific needs and try to find the best candidates to fulfill those needs but in general, people that are driven, motivated kind of self-driven, those are the ones that succeed.

As a CTO how do you keep up?

We have a vision as a company so I’m looking at our technology vision, our product vision, I’m trying to find the path together with the rest of our team that gets us to where we need to be in a cost-effective manner, in an efficient manner. My job is to look at it from a higher point of view, assess everything and make sure we are moving in the right direction as a unit and then kind of dig in and help when help is needed.

So how do make sure you know everything?

You can’t know everything, you don’t need to know everything but it is all out there, it is a skill that I think we all acquire, these days everything is accessible. The Internet changed the way we do things, the way we learn, the way we find information so I don’t find it to be that challenging because you just go to a search engine and the answers are all there.