Unveiling the robot company acquired by Carter: It turns out to be a "food delivery guy"

Recently, industry giant Caterpillar announced the acquisition of a Robot company named Marble Robot, which can be translated as "Marble Robot" if necessary. So why did Carter acquire this company? Because it involves elements such as autonomous driving. Some domestic media took it for granted that it was related to mergers and acquisitions in the mining industry and brought up previous mining acquisition cases for analysis. However, there was no such meaning in their press release, and it has no direct connection with the mining industry.

Let's first take a look at what this marble company can do. Let's take a look at their own introduction:

A visionary team of experts has created marble robots and autonomous technology solutions, reimagining the possibility of transporting goods and materials.
Several founders of Marble met at the Center for Field Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, which is the world's most prestigious institution for robotics and computer science. As students, they developed the lunar lander and the first self-driving cars. They founded Marble in 2015 and developed autonomous technologies that can be immediately applied to solve business and logistics problems.
Today, the Marble team includes former enterprise business leaders who fundamentally understand the dynamic and constantly changing market as well as the need for fast, low-cost and reliable delivery of goods and materials.
Let's take a look at how the robotics industry perceives them. Source: "Robotics Business Review"
Marble is a technology company whose mission is to redesign the last-mile logistics using autonomous robots. Founded in 2015, Marble robots have made the supply chain more flexible and provided more efficient and sustainable short-distance transportation methods.
Marble's AI provides robots with tremendous sensing capabilities, enabling them to navigate tricky environments with ease - from sidewalks, intersections and obstacles, to understanding the differences between people, vehicles, animals and all the tiny objects in the world.
The company has currently established a strong business in the San Francisco Bay Area and is expanding into new markets across the United States. As the company grows, it will continue to test and develop its unique technology, thus going beyond the food delivery sector and venturing into groceries, pharmaceuticals, retail and more.
Marble recently announced that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding to help it continue developing new technologies, expand to new geographical locations and grow its team. In addition to its robotics technology and AI work, the Marble team has also planned most of the sidewalks in San Francisco to promote the safety of pedestrians and robots.
It can be seen that this is the robot version of the food delivery person. Currently, the product is the robot food delivery vehicle. It looks like this.

After the customer places an order, the robot drives to the merchant's store entrance. The merchant then puts the takeout into the robot, and the robot travels through the streets and alleys to the customer's doorstep. The customer then picks up the takeout by themselves. This is the business that Marble has already launched in San Francisco.

It seems quite simple, right? However, it's different from the driverless cars we already know. In the United States, we still need to follow the rule of law. The problem of the last mile cannot be solved by relying on the reckless and rule-breaking delivery guys from China. It still needs to be handled by the basic laws. Therefore, the Marble Robot has to follow the same path as pedestrians, which is the sidewalk. Then, the set of autonomous driving based on the automotive roads used by major car manufacturers and internet giants will no longer be applicable. 
The marble robot uses wheeled movement to ensure efficiency. Although it is not very fast, it cannot go up and down stairs like humans. It can only enter and exit the sidewalk by following the blind path and crossing the road according to the rules that are exactly opposite to those of self-driving cars. In summary, complete walking on the sidewalk requires improved urban roads and sufficient perception and decision-making capabilities. Of course, this may not work in China. A few randomly parked shared bikes can even occupy the sidewalk.
Let's take a look at the team of this company. According to the press release, it states, "Kevin Peterson, the former CEO of Marble and now a technical expert at Caterpillar." On the company's website, Kevin is also the CEO and founder, and it is described as follows: 
Kevin is one of the world's leading experts in autonomous vehicle design systems and robotics technology. He has worked on multiple automated systems, including vehicles used for unexploded ordnance investigations, high-speed desert and urban driving, and naval operations. Under Kevin's leadership, the Marble team has built robots capable of seamlessly navigating complex environments and delivering materials to their destinations. 
Before founding Marble, Kevin was the CTO of Astrobotic Technology. He collaborated with NASA to design and manufacture spacecraft that could land on the moon and Mars. He developed innovative technologies for asteroid mining, precise landing on the moon, and camera-based navigation between planets. Kevin was a member of the Google Lunar XPRIZE team at Astrobotic, which demonstrated advanced functions for landing, roaming, and imaging on the lunar surface. Kevin was also a member of the winning team of the DARPA Urban Challenge, helping to manufacture the first self-driving car that could successfully navigate in traffic. His works have appeared in several books and documentaries. ……
Let's take a look at the other key members. Vikas Agrawal is in charge of products and projects and is from India with an Apple background. Lauren Miller leads the software team. She previously developed algorithms at Here Technologies and has worked at SpaceX and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Adam Kilgo is the hardware director. He was the product development engineering technical director for Google Nest cameras and also worked at Tesla. He was a member of the initial engineering team for the Model-S and Model-X cars. In summary, their backgrounds are all very impressive.

However, paradoxically, in 2017, marble received intensive publicity in multiple media outlets. In a report by CNBC, the person in charge of the product was Harrison Shih, whose name suggested a Chinese background from Taiwan, with surnames such as Shi, Shi, Shi or Shi. And the CEO was Matt Delaney, who was also a co-founder.

In another report from 2017, the core team of Marble's presentation included not only Harrison Shih, Matt Delaney, and Kevin, but also Jason Calaiaro. Shih was in charge of products and operations, while the other three were co-founders. Kevin was responsible for software, Matt was the CEO, and Jason was in charge of hardware.

By comparing the information, it can be seen that the marble company once had three co-founders, and there was also a Chinese-American responsible for the products. Before Carter's acquisition, Kevin became the CEO and founder, while the person in charge of the products was of Indian descent. The other three are missing. From the social media perspective, they have mostly left, either by stopping posting or moving to other places.

Meanwhile, since the extensive publicity and reporting in 2017, there haven't been any major news events. That is to say, the product was basically finalized in 2017, and over the past few years, it seems to have been competing with the sidewalks of major cities in the United States. And there haven't been any significant advancements in the business either.

So, the delivery robots that should have been acquired by enterprises like Meituan and Ele.me ended up being acquired by Caterpillar. Of course, Caterpillar had no interest in operating the delivery service business. The acquisition was merely for the team. Maybe someone will ask, "Didn't Caterpillar have very powerful autonomous driving technology? Why did they still acquire the team?" The details of their decision-making are unknown to us. However, the current technological level of humans is actually not sufficient to achieve autonomous driving for construction machinery at a reasonable cost. Even top companies like Caterpillar and Komatsu have only achieved autonomous driving on certain types of equipment, which are large dump trucks used in large open-pit mines. This is because the operating environment is relatively simple and there is no need to deal with the materials directly, so it is relatively easy to achieve. Other types of equipment are not so easy. The environment is complex, and how to handle the materials is an even more frustrating problem. In conclusion, the automation of construction machinery still has a long way to go. Adding some more research and development efforts would not be a bad thing at all.