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Brady Watkins, SoftBank Robotics America’s new President. | Source: SoftBank Robotics America

SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA) announced it appointed Brady Watkins as president of the company. Watkins previously served as the company’s senior vice president and general manager. 

“We’re grateful for Brady’s demonstrated leadership in our organization, as well as his ability to unite stakeholders in the robotics industry,” Kent Yoshida, Chief Business Officer at SoftBank Robotics Group (SBRG), said. “As ongoing labor shortages throughout the globe have created increased demand for autonomous solutions, we see great potential for growth in the U.S. market and look forward to working with Brady and the SBRA team to achieve these goals.”

During his time as senior vice president and general manager, Watkins helped to scale and commercialize Whiz, a collaborative robot vacuum. His work in North America helped drive the company towards putting 20,000 units in market globally. 

Watkins also aided in entering SBRA into a strategic development and equity partnership with Autonomous Solutions Inc, bringing SBRA into the outdoor automation market. The partnership aims to accelerate the development and deployment of landscaping care and logistics solutions. 

As President of SBRA, Watkins will focus on products and services for commercial management in the real estate, transportations and retail sectors, among others. Watkins will continue to push the company into new product lines, while also working in development, engineering, marketing and customer success. 

Before his time at SBRA, Watkins was the vice president of digital client solutions at InnerWorkings. Watkins also spent over 10 years working at Ubisoft, where he held a number of positions including brand manager and director of sales planning and integration. 

SBRA is the North American arm of SoftBank Robotics. SoftBank Robotics has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, Boston, London, Paris, Hamberg, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and aims to become a worldwide leader in robotics solutions.