ROBOTICS
internal cable routing, a functional safety
unit and safe force / torque sensors for all
six axes.
Clearly the future of cobots lies in
increasing their presence in the SME
sector. Naturally, this pushes factors of
cost and ease-of-use to the forefront. This
was the key principle for the founders of
Automata in their development of the Eva
robot.
Launched last year and claimed to be
the fi rst-ever desktop robot for industrial
use. Eva is designed to be lightweight,
user-friendly and accessible, while
maintaining industrial quality
performance and costs just £4,990.
Weighing 9.5kg, with a footprint of
160mm2 and a reach of 600mm, it
includes an on-board controller in its base
and comes with a free subscription to
Automata’s Choreograph software. It has
no external control devices as
Choreograph can be accessed through any
web browser and is programmed via two
buttons integrated on the robot arm.
Suryansh Chandra and Mostafa
ElSayed, co-founded Automata in 2015
after discovering the limitations of
conventional robots.
So, the pair set out to develop their
own robot that was aff ordable to
companies that don’t have the budgets of
vehicle manufacturers, for example. The
second requirement was that it
had to be quick to set up and
not need the bulky mountings.
Four years – and many
iterations – later, Eva is fi nally
ready. The reason for this
long gestation period? Taking
on the “gatekeepers of
robotics” and creating their
own gearbox, the ‘Automata
Drive’.
ElSayed explains: “We knew
that if we had to make a dent
in the robotics market we were
going to have to tackle a
gearbox. There’s only two
companies in the world that
make them harmonic gear
drives, one based in Germany
the other in Japan, they
control the price.”
More than that, he
continues, once a designer
commits to a specifi c gear
drive they are tied into
suppliers of other
components like motors,
brakes and electronics.
“The Automata
Drive is central to
16 » JULY 2020 » WWW.MADEIN.IE
protected technology
is very similar to a
harmonic drive and
gives about 80% of
the performance for
our robot.” Says ElSayed. “Its
patent protected technology is
very similar to a harmonic drive
and gives about 80% of the
The Automata
Drive is patent
performance for around 20% of the cost.
But, it’s purpose built, it doesn’t need to
perform all kinds of use cases. It’s all
about manufacturing tolerances, that’s
what helps bring the price down, not the
price of the components.”
Programming Eva’s movements is
simply done by pressing one of
the two buttons which
releases the brakes and
allows operators to lead it to
a ‘waypoint’ where a
command is to be carried out.
Clicking the second button sets the
waypoint, a process called ‘back
driving’. This movement is transmitted
to the operator’s device, running
Choreograph on a browser, and saves
those points.
Editing the movements on
Choreograph is also simple. Waypoints
can be edited graphically on the screen of
the device and those waypoints can be
dragged and dropped into a timeline,
similar to video editing software, in the
order the robot needs to move.
MADE
around 20% of
the cost
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