We were doing this before there was an industry to do it in.

In 2011, Corey Clothier co-created ARIBO with the late Jim Overholt, the US Army’s chief roboticist. It ran as a Department of Defense program and a national living laboratory for ground robotics, aligning military, public sector and commercial research around a single question: what does it take to actually operate these systems, not just demonstrate them.

The focus areas look familiar now. Campus logistics. Inspection. Security patrol. Low-speed service applications on installations. These were the first real deployments, years before the commercial market caught up, and the program produced one of the earliest driverless pilots in the United States.

ARIBO was endorsed by the White House and presented to White House and legislative leadership. When the program wound down, we adopted the name and the mission rather than let it disappear.

That history is the reason our judgment is worth something. Almost every firm advising on autonomy today formed after the technology was already commercially viable. We were there when the answers did not exist, which is why we recognize the failure patterns early.