In support of our new partnership, DragonEx Exchange invited Kambria Team members to participate in an exclusive online roadshow with both the DragonEx English and Chinese-speaking communities.
The event featured Kambria community managers Annie Wang (CH) and William Ryan (EN). Both sessions were focused and very active. Here is a recap of the conversation with William in the English channel; for clarity, the original text has been lightly edited for grammar and spelling.
Do you have any idea about Kambria? Today’s roadshow is mainly about Kambria’s project progress. and its future planning.
I understand the bulk of the conversation is going on in the DragonEx Chinese channel, but in case there are any English speakers here who are interested, we were recently listed on DragonEx. I met the team in May in New York City, and was very impressed with their professionalism. They are awesome people to know, and I am even more excited to now be working with DragonEx. They are a great exchange!
I wanna know, how is Kambria different from other AI projects?
Kambria is an open innovation platform designed to cut down and drastically reduce the time and cost it takes to innovate robotics, AI, and other frontier technologies. Kambria allows for innovators to collaborate on every aspect of the innovation process. So a company can host a bounty to utilize developers to help them build their ideas. This also allows for innovators to modularize their ideas and allow other innovators to utilize their work, and earn KAT in the process.
Can the Kambria project run without blockchain?
Kambria’s Open Innovation Platform is designed around the KAT token. It technically could work without a blockchain, but it likely would not because we all know that incentives are the basis for the work that most people do. So we use KAT to power the network, pay bounties, pay developers, companies, and innovators who contribute to the network.
The best way to achieve this is to use a decentralized blockchain with smart contracts. No one would contribute without incentives. That is the backbone to any healthy economy. That is why we believe we do need a token.
But how advanced is the project in terms of progress?
Currently, the features that we are focusing on are building out Github support to allow developers to import the githubs to build out the Kambria codebase, which will be utilized in the Kambria codebase, the backbone of the platform. Additionally, we are creating innovation hubs across the world that will allow roboticists and AI developers to come in and innovate new products.
What if a big company copies Kambria? Are there any barriers to competition?
There are currently no other companies who are doing what we are doing. Our platform encompasses every single aspect of the innovation process from concept, to design, to manufacturing, to sourcing materials, to production, to delivery. We will also not open source all of our intellectual property. Because of our experience with OhmniLabs, Kambria’s sister company, we have discovered ways to build robots using 3-D printing far cheaper than most have heard of.
Could you please introduce your team members to us?
Yes. My name is William, and I am the American Community Manager, and I have with me Annie Wang, who is our Chinese Community Manager.
Let me get you some info on the rest of the team. Let’s start with the top :)
Dr. Thuc Vu — Co-Founder & CEO — AI & Game Theory — Dr. Thuc is a serial entrepreneur, with multiple company acquisitions, the last one by Google. He has deep expertise in game theory, tournament design and multi-agent systems. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford and BS from Carnegie Mellon, both in computer science. Dr. Thuc is a social entrepreneur in Vietnam, involved in several community projects.
Dr. Thuc Vu, first of all, is just incredible to work with. He is the nicest man, but he’s also very talented. He is also a very generous person who sows back into the communities around him. He has created several foundations in the world to “give back” to people, including his very own VietSeeds Foundation in Vietnam that helps poor Vietnamese children get a great college education. He sold one of his companies to Google, and then created OhmniLabs, which is Kambria’s sister company. You can visit the OhmniLabs.com website for more information.
Here’s a pic of our founders with the OhmniLabs robot.
Our CTO, Jared Go, met Dr. Thuc Vu in college. They both attended Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon together.
Jared Go — Co-Founder & CTO — Robotics — Jared is an avid maker and roboticist, previously CTO and founding member at a networks startup. He has extensive experience in blockchain, AI, real-time graphics, VR, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. Jared is a Stanford Graduate Fellow, and has a BS in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Tingxi Tan — Co-Founder & CPO — Blockchain & Cloud Computing — Tingxi has a background in cloud computing, network infrastructure and distributed system design. He has been active in Crypto Investment since 2010. He was responsible for building the global scale cloud infrastructure at a networks startup. He graduated from MSc Computer Science U of Calgary and BSc Applied Math Western University.
Dr. Tra Vu — COO — Operations & Infrastructure — Tra has a background in Financial and Civil Engineering. She earned her Master’s in Financial Engineering and her PhD in Transportation Planning & Engineering from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Tra currently teaches at her alma mater and was responsible for leading her previous company in designing the first city-wide Transit Signal Priority system in New York City.
Tingxi, Dr. Tra Vu, and Jared are also just fantastic people to work with. The team is not only wildly talented, but also very pleasantly nice. It’s refreshing to see.
Is artificial intelligence a moral issue? How can I overcome this problem?
I believe it could be; however, it is up to us how we build such technologies. In our open collaboration system, everyone has the ability to solve this problem. If you want to solve it, you simply can participate in building it ethically.
Is the Kambria Innovation Platform open now in public?
Yes. The Open Innovation Platform was soft-launched in September 2018, and we are preparing for a full release this year. You can check out the platform here: https://app.kambria.io
I think artificial intelligence is a big trend: very good. Is there a potential market now? What are the plans for the Kambria project in the future?
AI is one of the fastest growing technologies in the frontier space. We already have hundreds of developers ready to begin working on the Kambria Open Innovation Platform, which is why we are so eager to finish our full launch of the platform, as well as our codebase. We are not far away. The full launch will be this year.
In addition, we are opening five innovation hubs across the globe, the first in Silicon Valley, California. We also working with major universities, including Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, to host hackathons in collaboration with the International Data Engineering and Science Association (IDEAS). Additionally, Thuc created the VietAI Alliance, which is dedicated solely to AI development. There will be several more of these that work with governments and universities in many different countries
I’m just a robotics engineer, but with no knowledge in Blockchain. How can I manage your platform? In our case, we have a team of robotics engineers and AI programmers, but they have no knowledge about Blockchain.
Follow up question: Do you have an infrastructure already in place?
The great news is that many roboticists such as yourself are not familiar with blockchain, and that’s OK! You don’t need to know how the engine of a car works in order to be able to drive it. It’s the same idea. Much of the blockchain underpinnings will be taken care of for you so that you can focus on innovation. Blockchain will primarily serve as the payment vehicle for bounties, services, and other functions on the network, such as staking coins, but the actual building of the product will be very familiar to you.
We do have an infrastructure ready and proven to be HIGHLY effective. Because of our experience with OhmniLabs, we have a “tried and true” method that we will allow other projects, such as yours, to utilize, and not just ours, but everyone else’s that uses our platform. It truly is open innovation for everyone.
I hope that the Kambria project will be carried forward in the future. I want to ask if the Kambria project is an artificial intelligence platform. Can Kambria help people with disabilities? They really need this project.
Yes!!! We love this. One of the verticals that we are focusing on is healthcare. Also, we build consumer robots, and robotic arms, which are very important for helping disabled people. It’s one of the use cases we are most passionate about. That is what robotics is for after all — making human life more comfortable and easier.
One of our robots (potentially) helped save an elderly woman’s life who had fallen. Her family was able to find her quickly and easily, preventing any further damage.
Is the Kambria Platform open now in public?
The platform is open to the public. Currently, you can vote for bounties, hackathons, buy robotic development kits, and explore the codebase, but there is much, much more coming in the short term this year. You may find it at https://app.kambria.io
Is Kambria currently based on ETH, and has Kambria considered the subsequent rise of the public chain.
Yes, we are based on ETH, but we are blockchain agnostic. If ETH, for any reason, cannot scale, we will look for a more functional chain.
Yes, ETH has been criticized for its slow processing speed. Has the Kambria project considered EOS?
We have considered EOS, and that would certainly be on our radar as one of the potential chains to move to, if necessary.
Could you tell us the history of Kambria, I am very interested in it!
Surely! Our founders started a robotics company in 2015. It was built upon the premise that to really accelerate adoption of robotics in the homes, a new type of company was needed. Being far away from home ourselves, they could relate to the need for affordable robots that bring families closer. So they set out to design robots with modular components, and utilize lean, toolless manufacture. To close the cost gap, they were ultra-focused on iteration speed. Reusability and integration were the cornerstones of their fabrication process, allowing for orders of magnitude, less capital spent, and a fraction of the development time.
Being able to foster an open collaborative ecosystem, where every contribution can easily be shared, manufactured, and implemented, will be revolutionary. Companies can benefit from the collective contribution from the community to build custom applications without having to employ teams of PhDs. End users can enjoy the higher quality of life potentially afforded by more available robot products and services. A combination of reduced costs, cutting-edge technologies, and swift delivery will spur rapid adoption of the Kambria platform by companies, developers, and manufacturers. This cycle of innovation will pave the way for the next wave of robots to provide immense value for people across the world.
Ohmni has achieved good results in the market, and the architecture behind it is indispensable. However, OhmniLabs development was not easy. Built from scratch, the establishment of laboratories, and the search for supply chain production, robotic startups was very difficult. In the difficult process of exploring Ohmni, an idea gradually formed: since there are so many barriers in the field of robot development, why not create an open platform where development, purchase, research, investment, and other needs coexist? It not only brings together talents from all sides but also promotes the development of robotics. In that thought proces, Kambria was born!
We named the platform Kambria, after the Cambrian Explosion, 500 million years ago, when an accelerated evolutionary rate gave rise to biodiversity and abundance. We believe this platform will be the catalyst for a similar explosion in intelligent robotics.
How many people are there in the Kambria project? Is there a blockchain related person?
Yes, our CPO is Tingxi Tan, has extensive knowledge in blockchain development. Additionally, we have a wide array of blockchain and full-stack developers. In total, our full-time staff is 20 people and growing. There are also many part-time employees as well! You can find most of them on our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kambria/
While we are technically a global company, our two main “home bases” are in Silicon Valley and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where much of the team is from. OhmniLabs is also in Silicon Valley.
Our advisor list is also quite extensive. I will list them here:
Prof. Manuela Veloso — AI & Robotics — Manuela Veloso is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Veloso will be the Robotics and AI judge on the Kambria platform.
Simon Seojoon Kim — HASHED — Simon Seojoon Kim is CEO and founding partner of Hashed, a leading crypto fund based in South Korea. He is a Blockchain evangelist and organizer of Hashed Lounge, a premier Blockchain Seoul meetup community.
Loi Luu — Kyber Network — Loi Luu is a researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security and distributed consensus algorithms. He is also a regular invited speaker at Bitcoin and Ethereum workshops such as DevCon2, EDCON. Loi believes in the force of the Ethereum and Blockchain technology.
Roger Lim — NEO Global Capital — Roger Lim is an experienced angel and blockchain investor. He is the Founding Partner of NEO Global Capital and an advisor for projects like Bluzelle, Qlink, CoinFi, Thekey, Tomocoin, 0Chain, Switcheo, Open Platform, and nOS.
Long Vuong — Tomochain — Long Vuong is CEO and founder of Tomochain, a public blockchain infrastructure providing an innovative solution to the scalability problem with the Ethereum blockchain. He is often invited as guest speaker of many reputable blockchain events around the globe. Long and Tomochain will also be partnering with Kambria to develop an educational certification program in blockchain and AI.
George Li — WeTrust — George is an ex-Googler who previously co-founded CottonBrew, a Stanford StartX computer vision company. George has helped connect us with influencers and market movers in the crypto space.
May I know some recent news about this project?
In addition to our new Innovation Hubs, we launched our KAT token in December. It is currently listed on DragonEx, KuCoin, and Bitmart Exchanges. We also recently hosted an incredible event this last November where the Winklevoss Twins, and Joe Lonsdale, and several other high-level venture capitalists were in attendance. I will get you the video! :D
The Vietnamese government also attended our November event called Innovation, Community & Impact. It was a very big deal. We wrote several articles recapping the event if you’d like to read about it. I will drop the links from our latest post that contains all of our best top ten articles for last year.
https://medium.com/kambria-network/kambria-2018-beyond-9820242c86c1
Within that article, you can find a ton of information about our project.
Great, I hope that the Kambria project will be carried forward in the future.
Thank you! We want to change the world, and we are unique enough to do it. There is nothing in the world like Kambria. We aim to make frontier technologies WAY cheaper and easier to build. An estimated 85% percent of the work being done is considered to be “wasted effort.” Because much of the work is done in silos, that means almost everyone is doing “double work.”
We can modularize everything and allow the different pieces to be applied, thus saving a huge amount of time in the development process. Why create something from scratch when someone else has already perfected it?
Do you build great motors? AI logic? Robotic arms? You can allow others to use your innovations to build theirs, and earn KAT, promote innovation, get paid, and collaborate on a number of different ideas.
“We aim to make frontier technologies WAY cheaper and easier to build.” Yes, this sentence is very similar to what Xiaomi, the technology giant of our country said so that everyone can enjoy the fun of technology.
That’s what it's all about. Improving the quality of life so that we can focus on the more important things that life brings. Great questions by the way. You’ve been a pleasure to speak with this entire time.
We expect that you can change the world through artificial intelligence + blockchain. Thanks, William and Kambria.
You are very welcome. Please feel free to join our Telegram Channels. We do have a Chinese Channel as well. We’d love to see you there. I am going to post our channels. If you have any more questions, feel free to ping me or DM me directly. My inbox is always open.
We’d like to thank not only DragonEx Exchange for having us, but also to all of the community members who asked us such great questions!
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About William
William Ryan is a part of the Global Kambria Community Manager Team, and a resident of Texas. He has been in blockchain since 2015, and has a strong passion for frontier technologies, including blockchain, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
The Kambria Team
Email: info@kambria.io
KAT is a token to be used on the Kambria platform.