This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Fatronik vende la licencia de explotación de su robot Quickplacer a una empresa de Silicon Valley

You can pick up and position 240 pieces per minute

Fatronik sells the operating licence of its Quickplacer robot to a company in Silicon Valley

Drafting MU22/06/2007

The Fatronik Research Centre announced the last 9 of March 2007 which has signed an agreement with the American company Adept which has given him the licence for Quickplacer, now known as Quattro, the fastest handling robot in the world that the Basque Centre officially presented in the last edition of the Biennale of machine-tool.

Adept, located at the world headquarters of technological innovation, Silicon Valley, is specialized in the development of technology for robotics, control of movement and vision technology systems. Thanks to this assignment, may exploit the rights of this revolutionary robot in the markets in which works (European Union, United States, Canada and Southeast Asia), as well as in others in which also distributes products through third parties (Japan)(It Korea the South, Russia and Taiwan). Also, Fatronik will create a "spin-off" in Gipuzkoa which will market and integrate the product in systems more complex automation thanks to this agreement.

Fatronik will also receive an economic level, in addition to the payment of a "royalty" by each of the products the company sells, which will be in ten years revenues of between five and thirteen million euros for Fatronik.

Emerging industry

Aware of the foreseeable needs of the market, Fatronik started five years ago itself research on robots for handling that bore fruit last year with the presentation of the innovative Quickplacer.

The demand for this type of robot is registering significant growth. Bill Gates himself recently stated in an article published in the magazine Scientific American entitled "A robot in every home" (A robot in every home) that the current robotic situation is comparable to the time of the mid-1970sin which the release of the PC was conceived. To this end, it was based on a study which he commissioned in 2004 to analyze the State of technology and robotics market. He found that the robotics industry is about to explode, in a way similar to what happened with the business of information technology for 30 years.

At the State level, the situation is very favourable for robotic handling. While other sectors, such as the automobile, already possess a high degree of integration of robotics, in others, such as for example the food, it is much less developed. According to the latest figures from the Spanish Robotics Association (AER) the number of installations of robots for the agri-food industry has been increasing in recent years around 30 per cent.

"Spin Off"

Once Fatronik ended his new robot, the first attempt for sale was in the Basque country. Thus, were various contacts with Basque companies with potential capacity for the manufacture and distribution of the robot. However, it was not possible to reach any agreement, by the own limitations of the market for robots. In this sense, the world of the sale of robots is in the hands of multinationals who have sufficient capacity to sell them at the global level. Mass production is necessary to achieve profitability so there is no Basque companies and Spanish manufacturers, that do not reach size and required volumes. In total there are about five major manufacturers in the world, among them Adept. During the first negotiations almost all them showed interest in acquiring the rights from this license.

Even so, Fatronik wants that this development will serve to help generate business activity in our environment. For this reason, you will create a spin-off based in Gipuzkoa and one subsidiary in France, which will market the aforementioned robot. The new company will be an engineering dedicated to the development of complete solutions for automation. According to forecasts, it billed some 20 million euros in its first five years. Initially you will have ten employees, five in the Gipuzkoan headquarters and five others in the French subsidiary.

Quattro

Quattro is the handling robot fastest in the world. Its high capacity of acceleration and braking, five times higher than a formula 1, makes the world leader in terms of production capacity.

Its development has been possible thanks to the collaboration with Fatronik France and the laboratory of Montpellier from computer science, robotics and microelectronics (Lirmm).

It has a structure of four degrees of freedom, three translations and a turn on its vertical axis, which can pick up and position 240 pieces per minute. In addition, complemented with a vision system capable of guiding the movements of the robot, which is responsible for locating the shape and orientation of objects, and based on the programming received command orders the robot movements. It is also possible to co-ordinate the whole tape, so that the robot is able to pick up moving objects and also leave it on a moving belt. Its particular structure and characteristics of its elements, make its speed and Acceleration maximum, increasing productivity by 20 percent with respect to currently existing solutions.

Therefore, the scope of this type of robot is very broad. It covers different sectors with great need for automation, such as the agri-food, the hygiene, beauty, health or electronic components. There is a great demand for automation in these sectors, now very manual, which is covered with this type of robot. Today more and everything is more packed, which contrasts with the low automation businesses. This robot achieves automate work of low quality of work with very high efficiency. The Quattro robot will enable a large increase in the productivity of these companies.

Fatronik