What are the main reasons that robotics companies and startups fail? Is it the technology or is it the business? Fresh Consulting analyzed significant industry case studies from Rethink Robotics to iRobot for their whitepaper "Why Robotics Companies Fail," and launched it on June 11 at a panel discussion moderated by James Dietrich, from Fresh Consulting, with guest speakers Aaron Prather, Senior Advisor for the Technology Research and Planning Team at FedEx Express; Andra Keay, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics and startup accelerator advisor, and Eric Klein, Partner and Founder at Lemnos Labs. In a lively discussion, the speakers weighed in on what key factors for success or failure were most likely in their experience. Andra Keay believes that lack of business fundamentals is the most critical error a young company faces.

Dr Sue Keay may love robotics, but there's nothing mechanical about her trailblazing vision for Australia's technology future. Not only did she set up the world's first robotic vision research centre, she is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and judges the James Dyson Awards and the Australian Museum Prizes. At present, she leads the Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Research Organization's (CSIRO) Data61 Cyber-Physical Systems program. We recently spoke with Dr Keay about CSIRO, blending science and business, and where the future may lead. "CSIRO, Australia's national science research agency has been in existence for over 100 years," she told VENTURE.

Indeed, many of us love them and can't imagine our lives without them. The closer that robots get to a human or animal form, the more we begin to feel the mixture of fear and empathy that has defined our relationship with our fellow beings since we first began dragging our knuckles around millions of years ago. If we skew the design of these machines toward empathy, we get Pepper, which can identify the principle human emotions – joy, sadness, anger, and surprise – and adapt its behavior to accentuate the positive and comfort the negative. If we let fear guide the construction process, we get autonomous tanks, drones, and early prototypes of human-like warriors – not to mention fictional machine menaces like The Terminator that have haunted our imaginations since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It's fair to say that over the course of history, we imagine robots being more like the Terminator than Pepper.