Why RaaS Companies Need a UI Strategy

There is a convergence of factors that is leading to a rapid rise in Robotics as a Service (RaaS) offerings. These factors include advances in artificial intelligence, a boom in manufacturing investment, and geopolitical factors affecting supply chains, among others.

RaaS companies offer their robotics solutions to customers on a subscription basis, as opposed to a more traditional practice of selling robots to a client who is then responsible for their maintenance, training, and deployment. In other words, whereas the client is responsible for creating value and lowering the costs of a deployed robotics solution until now, under a RaaS regime, the vendor is. A RaaS company sells the robot’s work to the end client and is responsible for maintaining, upgrading, and deploying its robotics platform. Often, it also trains end users to operate what can be a complex and expensive system. Since under a RaaS model, the robotics provider pockets all the efficiency gains from streamlining its operating model and reducing training costs, it stands to benefit from deliberately crafting a user experience that reduces training costs and increases operating efficiency.

A UI strategy is a broad plan that includes:

• Defining and understanding your end users and researching how, when, and why they use your robot
• Developing a design system that makes it intuitive, enjoyable, and even addictive to interact with your robot
• Building a seamless mechanism for feedback to you, the robotics vendor, to understand how your product is being used and whether it’s achieving its goals

Just like SaaS companies over the past 20 years, we at Kinematic Labs predict that RaaS companies will quickly discover that building good user interfaces is critical to their business success. Here are at least 5 reasons why RaaS companies should invest in a UI strategy:

1. Reduce training time
   Robotics platforms can be complicated, expensive machinery that need to be operated correctly to achieve their goals without hurting the robot or the user. Additionally, robots are increasingly deployed in high-turnover contexts, such as grocery stores, warehouses, factories, or delivery. A well-researched, intuitive UI helps reduce training time and deliver value for the client sooner.
2. Compete in head-to-head deals
   Imagine that you’re a procurement manager evaluating two warehouse automation solutions. They are both expensive, multi-million-dollar platforms. One company has a sleek, beautiful UI that looks like it was made in 2023, and the other features a Qt interface that reminds you of Windows Vista. Assuming both vendors meet all requirements, it’s obvious that the vendor with the better UI has a competitive advantage over the other. A product with a nice UI is simply in a much better position to win deals.
3. Deliver new features and products faster using CI/CD and automated deployment
   A UI strategy is not only about good design and beautiful presentation; it’s also about building a process that allows you to use existing hardware capabilities, such as sensor data, system data, and effectors, to quickly deploy new features on request. Take, as an example client, a grocery store that uses an AMR system to manage inventory. They may ask you to add a new ML model to predict spoilage in the produce section. With video feed already in place and a well-managed UI codebase, you can rapidly deploy an ML model and build a table showing the spoilage statistics for each item in the produce aisle. The same process allows you to deploy, say, store anti-theft offerings on the same hardware. A smart UI strategy, powered by continuous delivery, integration, and deployment allows you to rapidly increase your value proposition without going back to the drawing board.
4. Accelerate product iteration and improvement
   A fundamental part of any UI strategy is capturing and storing valuable human-robot interaction (HRI) data. This data, describing when and how end users use your robot, allow you to understand gaps in your user experience and capabilities and address them far better than any other source of information. It’s true, bias-free information about how your product is used. Companies that capture this data have an edge over competitors who don’t, as they can design the next generation of products more precisely to solve their users’ problems and create more value.
5. Obtain better valuations when fundraising
   The rise of RaaS as an operating model means that it’s not enough to have a more dexterous robotic gripper to have a competitive advantage with VCs. To show that you can win your category, you need to demonstrate that you have a complete solution, including an answer for how long training users will take, how competitive you are at winning deals, and what your plan is for storing HRI data. A beautiful, modern UI that impresses your investors and demonstrates that you’re serious about your entire business model also helps.

If your robotics company needs help building functional, elegant user interfaces, Kinematic Labs can help by:

• Developing, hosting, and maintaining user interface applications that integrate with your robots using whatever communications protocol you use, including ROS1 and ROS2
• Helping you research your end users and how they work
• Designing a user interface for desktop, mobile, or on-device applications
• Helping you integrate LLMs and other generative AI tools into your product to power workflows such as voice and text commands

Get in touch by emailing nim@kinematiclabs.dev.