Page 16: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2022)

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Blue Robotics Founder Rusty Jehangir https://bluerobotics.com

Rusty Jehangir founded Blue Robotics in turer or building them ef- 2014 in his garage, using Costco foldable ? ciently, in mass, himself.

tables as a work bench to build his ? rst 600 “I thought I had started thrusters, starting with just north of $100K a marine robotics com- in Kickstarter funding. Following eight pany, and didn’t realize I years of rapid growth and expansion, Je- had started a manufactur- hangir’s facilities and support has changed ing company at the same

MARINE mightily, but his mission remains the same: time,” he said. “I think it

TECHNOLOGY design, manufacture and deliver low-cost was probably three or four

TV subsea robotics for multiple markets. years in before we real-

The numbers tell part if not all of the story, ized that that’s really what as in just over eight years the company has we are. We’re a manufac- sold more than 70,000 thrusters, more than turing company and we 3,200 BlueROV2 vehicles supported by an need to be really good at internal team of 58 employees and 50 dis- it. So we’ve gone through tributors globally. a lot of growth internally “From day one, our mission was to make to become good at manu- low-cost enabling parts for marine robotics, facturing.” Part of the Blue starting with the thruster and that’s still our mission today,” Robotics plan is to make products that are low cost, high said Jehangir in a recent interview with Marine Technol- quality and ? exible. “You don’t have to buy a whole ROV ogy TV. “We have a lot more products now; around 280 to get a thruster. You can just buy a thruster or a watertight total products in our online store, but they’re all geared to- enclosure or a WetLink Penetrator and those components wards enabling marine robotics with low-cost, accessible, are not designed for one speci? c application. They’re not well-documented, easy-to-use products.” designed for our BlueROV2. They’re designed to be used

While the growth has been fast, Blue Robotics has en- in lots of different applications,” said Jehangir. dured its fair share of hurdles. “On the technical front, This, in turn, opens up the market to include everything and this seems embarrassing to say for a marine robotics from middle school students building ROVs for the MATE company, but I think the most dif? cult technical thing is to competitions to artists making robotic swans to make light keep things dry and to keep them low-cost,” said Jehangir. shows to the most discriminating and demanding clients, “There are a lot of ways to do that with expensive products, such as WHOI.

but doing it at a very low-cost price point is dif? cult.” While Jehangir is focused on building his business, he’s

Blue Robotics used “potted penetrators”, basically epoxy also intent on helping to build collaboration within the around a cable through a bolt to seal a cable from the wa- ocean exploration community, sharing details on interest- ter, for a number of years, and Jehangir said they worked ing products and the projects for which they’re used. And great until customers started pushing the products harder, as the industry is built successfully on new generations resulting in reliability and consistency issues. of innovators, he offers this advice for anyone seeking to “One of our biggest technical achievements in the last take the marine robotics plunge: “I think the way to en- year is coming up with the WetLink penetrator, a compres- sure that you’re successful is to ? nd a hole in the market. sion gland sealed cable penetrator. We think that problem Not to look where other people are competing and try to is solved now for us, but it was an ordeal to get there,” said compete against them, but to look where nobody’s compet-

Jehangir. ing, where it’s just wide open. For us, that was our initial

Another problem common in start-ups across industries thruster. There’s the $30 bilge pump motor or there’s the is the business side, particularly determining exactly what military-grade thruster, and there’s this wide open gap in type of company you want, or need, to build. For example, the middle. I think a large part of our success is just choos-

Jehangir designed and sold 600 thrusters off of his proto- ing the right market to be in and pursuing something that type to start, but had no experience with contract manufac- ? lled a market need.” 16 September/October 2022

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