Attabotics
“Botics” in the name of the company? They surely must be somehow connected with building robots. Yup, they are. But, what does “atta” mean? It is a Latin name for a leaf-cutter ant. Hmm, they are making… robotic ants? No, but the founder and the CEO of the company, Scott Gravelle, was inspired by them and how they manage to create such an effective living habitat. He has transferred ant’s ability to be effective builders to retail. How? By creating a system of automated storage, sortation, and fulfillment warehouse, which uses much less space to store all the items.
The Attabotics system is a vertical facility for storing items, looking like a huge box with robots swooshing up and down the “box” on the empty columns and bringing items to workers. The advantage of this system is that the items are stored in boxes vertically and in such a way that humans wouldn’t be able to collect them. That is why they are using robots. By storing all items in a vertical way, it uses less space than storing them horizontally. Less space used means more items can be stored in the warehouse. Also, it is much easier for workers to just stand there and the robots bringing them the items than walking countless miles per day just to ship all the orders.
Why is this even important? Well, if you are in the retail business, the main concern for you is how to lower any of your costs and speed up the time you need to get the products to your customer. If you are big enough as a company to have your own warehouse, you are facing some formidable opponents.
We all know about the Amazon Prime service, which can deliver your items in a day. Amazon has purchased Kiva systems to bring all the talent and the technology under their roof. They have lowered their cost and being more efficient by using robots. This is a great competitive advantage from other companies that don’t have their own robotic department. Speaking of Kiva, I find it very fascinating how life works in its mysterious way. What do I mean by that? Well, Scott Gravelle had begun his research in using robotics in retail, when he was rejected from partnering with Kiva because Amazon just purchased them. Unbelievable how life works, isn’t it?
Just looking at these robots how they operate is so cool. The company is expanding really fast, their team is growing and so are their ambitions. If you want to join them, go and check them out on this link. At the time of writing this, they have a lot of vacancies. Tat the time of writing this, they are looking for people from different backgrounds: from different types of mechatronics, hardware, and software engineers to different types of business developers who will work with clients or lead the team. If you find the company interesting, give it a shot. They might choose you!
What I really like and found interesting about this company, is the origin of the founder’s idea. He got it from watching a nature documentary, where he saw that leaf-cutter ants build their colonies vertically. As I guy who believes that nature is the best architect, engineer, creator, or whatever you want to call it and where we get our wildest inspiration from, I am just amazed and wonder what other interesting projects will people create by being inspired by nature.
