Computer Vision News - January 2022

33 Mahdieh (Madi) Babaiasl Can you tell us how you got to this point? As long as I can remember, I was always interested in science. I liked math and physics in high school. When I wanted to go to university, I didn’t want something theoretical because I like practical. The marriage between science and practical is engineering. So, I chose electrical engineering as my first major. Then I thought that electrical engineering isn’t really for me. I wanted something that I could actually see, so I went and worked in robotics, something tangible. I was really interested in that. For my Master’s, I was really interested in medical robotics. At the time, my dad had tremors in his hands. He was doing very delicate electronics on computer motherboards. He needed his hands to be stable for this work. I thought maybe we could develop a device that stopped these tremors. We started this project as a team. We developed a tremor suppression device. At that time, I also worked on a rehabilitation robot. I was also a part of the team for a surgical robot. This was my robotics career. Then I came to the US, and I continued robotics. I worked on steerable needles for my PhD. I got my PhD here. I always had this vision to do something for the world, to make a change and have something for myself. I had this vision so I started this company.   Where will the funding come from? Mecharithm is at C funding right now. We are talking to some investors. There is an investor who really liked the idea. He said that it’s the future and he’s willing to put money in it. Once it’s finalized, I will make a statement about it. We’re still talking.  How will the company earn money? When the product is ready, there will be several money revenues for the company. One is like news companies who mostly gain money from advertisers. We also want to create kits. Suppose that a university professor wants to teach automation: there will be a smaller version of an automated line in a factory (a model) that the professor can use for better tangible teaching. For instance, robots assembling furniture or a small car model. We’re going to build a small factory for that professor to teach it, and the university would buy this from us.  Are you going to sell content? To some extent, yes. We also have a product… so content and product. My mission is to revolutionize learning, teaching, and research in robotics!