I attended CES with members of the Aipoly team.  Aipoly were fortunate to be awarded a CES Best of Innovation Award for the second year in a row!  Last year was for our Aipoly Vision app.  And this year it was for Aipoly’s autonomous store product.

As a result, Aipoly got this great booth location right near the Eureka Park entrance.  Look at the horde of people waiting to enter before the show officially opened at 10am on Tuesday 9 January 2018, the first day of CES.  I took a video just after they were allowed to enter - it's a 2-minute avalanche of people, before I stopped filming.

Over the 4 days, 40,000 people visited our booth.  We know because we tracked and counted each person who walked by and the counter surpassed 10,000 each day!

I was invited to participate in a book, "200 Women: Who Will Change The Way You See The World" earlier this year.  The result is this beautiful tome that contains the stories of 200 amazing women from around the world.  These 200 women include Gillian Anderson, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Goodall, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Roxane Gay.  I encourage you to get a copy and read all about the stories of these amazing women from around the world.  10% of revenues will go towards charities nominated by the 200 women.  Here is my entry on their website.

(Kieran E. Scott)

I made the back sleeve.  Woop!

It’s so exciting seeing our robots make a difference in the lives of others.  Six-year-old Freyja has a suppressed immune system, so coming into contact with other kids puts her life at risk.  Our robot, Teleport, appeared on ABC News and the Project recently, showcasing Freyja going to school remotely, to give her the social experience, without making her sick.

(ABC News: Jon Healy)

If you know a child with cancer, longterm illness or disability missing school, get in touch and we may be able to supply them with a robot to go to school remotely, free of charge, with the robots generously provided by Missing School.

Here are the media mentions for you to see the robots in action:

The ABC’s Facebook post is here (over 130k views):  
https://www.facebook.com/abcnews.au/videos/10157645132279988/

The ABC online article (with embedded social media piece) is here:  
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-21/robo-classroom-helping-educate-seriously-ill-canberra-girl/9176204

Channel 10’s The Project (Thursday night).  It starts at 1’45:  
https://www.facebook.com/TheProjectTV/videos/10155114988643441/

Well done, Missing School, on your amazing mission, work, and for making this happen!

(ABC News: Jon Healy)

My company, aubot, was recently invited to go to Queensland for 6 months, as part of Advance Queensland's Hot Desq program, to inspire local entrepreneurs, and to grow our business.

Here I am via Teleport in Melbourne, talking about how excited we are to be going to Queensland and working with QUT's Bluebox at the Foundry.

Welcome to #Qld @maritacheng @aubotRobotics! We hope you enjoy your #HotDesQ experience at @qutbluebox pic.twitter.com/k9wjRPcXyZ

— Advance Queensland (@AdvanceQld) October 5, 2017

Here's a Medium article on an interview I did with Advance Queensland talking about the company's move for 6 months.

And here I am, arriving in Brisbane with some Teleport components for the team to work with.

Arriving at @QUTfoundry with Teleport components #HotDesQ #startupstate @QUTmedia pic.twitter.com/GwE3t6kr3G

— Aubot (@aubotRobotics) October 27, 2017

I did an interview at the beginning of the year about 24 hours in the life of me.  I've copied and pasted the text here below.  Enjoy!

For robotics pioneer Marita Cheng, being named 2012 Young Australian of the Year was just the springboard to her new and now globally-recognised business: making life-changing robots for people with a disability.

Marita Cheng grew up in housing commission in Cairns, with a single mother who worked as a hotel cleaner to support her two children. Since being runner-up dux at her high school in 2006, Marita’s intellect, drive and capacity for hard work have led to a dizzying array of laurels.

She was named Young Australian of the Year in 2012, courtesy of her work as the founder of Robogals Global, a movement that encourages more girls into high tech and engineering careers. The organisation has delivered robotics workshops to more than 60,000 schoolgirls in 10 countries.

Graduating from the University of Melbourne in 2013 with a double degree in computer science and mechatronics engineering, Cheng had no shortage of job offers, at home and abroad, but instead opted to sail her own ship as the founder of 2Mar Robotics, now aubot. The start-up designs and builds low-cost robotic devices for people with disabilities. Late last year it announced the release of Teleport, the world’s first commercially available brain-controlled telepresence robot. Foundation customers include CanTeen, a charity which supports young people battling cancer.

5am: I’m up somewhere between 5 and 6. It’s my reading time, usually business-related books. At the moment I’m in the middle of something my friend lent me, a book by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner. The full title is: Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. It’s all about how he lives his life and makes his investment decisions and the mental frameworks he created to make good choices in his life. What am I taking out of it? That it’s good to keep learning, all your life. Charlie always had a book in his hand; that’s what everyone around him remembers when they think of his hands!

7.30am: I have some breakfast, usually just some canned fruit, muesli and yoghurt, then head to the office at 8.45. We’re in a warehouse close to where I live in Richmond so it’s really convenient.

9am: By 9am all my team are in. There are seven of us, all in our twenties – three women and four men. They’re all engineers and high achievers, and everyone is into robotics and space and wanting to help people in their everyday lives. An interesting group of people!

We start working and I talk to everyone; we touch base and figure out the best thing for each of them to be focusing on that day. Right now, our software guy is developing a proof of concept for one of our large national customers, my mechanical engineering team is working on robotic arm designs for the next version of one of our products and we have people putting robots together downstairs in the warehouse.

The way I’ve structured it, everyone gets to do their own work and be productive and I get to do a mixture of working hands-on if I’m needed and doing other business-related things to move the company forward the rest of the time.

10am: After we’ve all done a bit, we’ll have phone calls with our mentors. One of mine is a robotics professor at QUT. We might talk for an hour about some of the challenges we’re having, work through them and get some ideas. Or some of the team could email some mentors in the States, at Google Robotics for example, and get some technical feedback about the designs and calculations they’re working on. Or they’ll ask for information about components or suppliers.

11am: We often have a visitor before lunch. The chief scientist for Victoria might come by and some of the team will stop what they’re doing and give a presentation on the things we’re working on. We’ll discuss our business model and talk about potential customers they may be able to introduce us to. Sometimes prospective customers come by the workshop as well, to check out what we do and see a demonstration of the Teleport in action.

I’ll also call a couple of our customers around this time to see how they’re going with their robots. We’ve only been shipping since November so it’s really important to us to get feedback and make sure our products are working and that we’re on the right track.

1.30pm: Lunchtime! The team usually goes down to a park nearby to eat. By 2pm they’re back at work and I’m heading out to make a speech; this week to a principals’ planning conference. I’ve done a lot of this sort of thing since 2012. I made 140 speeches that year but now I’m down to about one a week. I’m also an ambassador for the Tech Schools Program in Victoria and next week I’ll be judging a competition for them.

Right before a speech I usually set aside some time to look at what the client wants and map out my thoughts. On my way to the venue, I’ll have my notes and I’ll keep rehearsing so I know the format and I’m clear about what I want to say – after quite a lot of practice, I’ve got a bit of a rhythm to how I do all that!

4pm: I come back, see my team, review their work for the day and give them feedback. We might do some brainstorming or problem solving about issues that have cropped up during the day.

This has also become my time for business development activities. I prepare sales proposals about our robots and the benefits they can provide for all the people I’ve spoken to – retailers, elder care organisations, corporates, anyone who may be a future buyer – and send them out.

5.30pm: We’ve had a huge amount of media interest in what we’re doing, especially since we started shipping the Teleport last year. I often have a journalist come by around this time to do a photo shoot or a video shoot with me. By 7pm they’re gone and I’ll go for a walk to the local supermarket and buy some groceries.

8pm: Back home I’ll prepare some food. I cook from scratch – usually it’s something like lentils and salmon, or meatballs with broccoli, or white fish with soy sauce and vegies. I’ll eat the food, watch a TV show like Humans or Suits and then after that I’ll read more of my book and go to sleep.

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Here's an example of a photo shoot or interview I would do.  This one was for the QANTAS magazine.