CPR Ecosystem
TRC’s CPR ecosystem includes Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), certified Special Partner Contract Manufacturers (SPCMs), robot hardware component suppliers, third-party API providers, online data providers, telecommunication service providers, resellers, systems integrators, independent software developers, Universities, and entrepreneurial teams.
Original Equipment Manufacturers
Manufacturers in China, the United States, and elsewhere can become mass market producers of differentiated CPRs. Contract Manufacturers CMs) who wish to provide manufacturing services to OEMs, whether small, low-run production lines or for the major manufacturing companies in the computer, telecommunications, home appliance, and other converging markets, can enter into a relationship with TRC to support their offering. Select high-quality CMs will enter into agreements to become Special Partner Contract Manufacturers (SPCMs). An SPCM will have a special setup to support the integration of TRC’s simulation and design package to support Systems Integrators to simulate their custom CPR through the selection of available modular components. The simulator will provide an animated 3D environment for testing their software. When satisfied with the hardware configuration and their CPR App, the configuration will be converted to manufacturing instructions for a close SPCM to produce the test run, whether it is a single unit or several units. This will allow the Systems Integrator to have a low cost on the development cycle of the hardware until they take their design through testing and can commit to a production run of a number of units they predict will fit their market.
The CPR’s modular hardware architecture allows the solution designer to select the appropriate components for motility, manipulation, and sensor data collection and analysis. TRC’s CPR Main Board includes a powerful CPU/GPU/AI acceleration chip to enable local AI, machine learning, semantic analysis, and more, which can be shared with cloud-based processes. Various versions of the AI acceleration chip will effect manufacturing price points while the CPR-OS will be able to regulate the performance of the CPR-App depending on the hardware configuration.
Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs with a powerful idea that uses robots for commercial or business purposes can apply their domain expertise to building the business plan with a breakdown of the technology needed. While they might find an existing robot vendor to build the business upon, the pass-thru cost of the hardware will be high. They may need to develop their own software app for their robot solution which could work on the handful of robot vendors with APIs, but they’ll need to choose which vendor to couple with as they are all unique. However, if they build on the CPR-Platform, then they will be able to bundle with any of multiple vendors, whichever makes the most sense for their business.
If they start out thinking that they needed to build the robot, then the high price of hardware development may dampen their plan and interfere with their abilities to raise investment for their business. This can often make the business a non-starter. Pricing models are substantially impacted by the cost of the equipment. Instead of building upon a $5K to $15K robot, the entrepreneur could be using a base price between $1,000 and $3,000 with CPRs. Eventually, there will be CPRs with MSRP under $1,000.
The TRC cloud services give each robot a unique authentication with enterprise strong security, and fleet administration. We are here to help make your Commercial Personal Robot and the CPR-App if you need to meet your unique needs. The CPR App Store and CPR 3rd Party Developer Program will be resources for add-on functionality from third-party apps and components.