From having 100 horses lug just a few kilograms of load to a single autonomous bot carrying a tonne of payload, people have absolutely come a good distance. Thankfully, this isn’t the tip because the street forward is even longer. Ati Motors’ Founder and CEO, Saurabh Chandra, shares his knowledge with Yashasvini Razdan from Electronics For You on the way forward for bots within the materials motion automation trade
Founder and CEO,
Ati Motors
Q. May you inform us about Ati Motors’ journey?
A. We began our journey six years in the past with the dream of creating autonomous robots for materials motion, impressed by self-driving automobiles, and never by conventional robotics.
Since 2021, we’ve been in a position to deliver out a product available in the market, which matches the trade necessities, and has the best specs, value level, and performance, permitting us now to achieve traction with many good prospects.
Q. What options do you at present present?
A. We have now two merchandise proper now—the Sherpa Tug and Sherpa RollerTop. One strikes trolleys autonomously inside factories, whereas the opposite strikes plastic bins in factories.
Q. May you clarify your expertise to our engineering audiences?
A. To place that merely, an autonomous automobile must ask three questions in a loop—the place is it, what’s round it, after which what is going to its subsequent step be that can take it in direction of its objective? So long as you may reply these questions efficiently in a decent loop, you’re going to get to your location. That at a really excessive stage is what we do. We have to ask these questions each 100 milliseconds and we try this. Our product is ISO 3691-4 licensed. That’s the finest security customary for such autos accessible. Security is essential, particularly in automotive corporations
Q. Why do we want this expertise?
A. Typically, some materials motion in factories is a repetitive, boring, hazardous, and backbreaking exercise. The elemental factor is that human beings aren’t supposed to do that repetitive exercise which entails excessive fatigue. We can’t do it on the proper accuracy stage as individuals will get bored. Additionally, the variety of individuals required to do these items with time shouldn’t be rising. This turns into the genesis of the demand for such issues. The opposite purpose is the quantity of manufacturing. It isn’t doable to get the best quantity and high quality of manufacturing, with out the right automation. One can’t obtain this by simply placing extra individuals on the method. After a while, you need to automate a lot of these items to get the required throughput and quantity. We’re part of the general journey of automation, which is a pure journey for any trade because it matures, scales up and positive aspects quantity. This turns into the core want for the sort of product that we’re making.
Q. We see bots performing as supply brokers within the US in universities. Will we ever see that in India and the way quickly can that be?
Frankly, bots doing supply could be very possible. The problem shouldn’t be the expertise however good footpaths. In India, sadly, we don’t have good footpaths. When India will get good footpaths, this expertise gained’t be too sophisticated to be prepared for deployment. I’d say the limiting half shouldn’t be the bot expertise however the footpath expertise!
Q. What’s the want for such techniques in growing nations reminiscent of India, the place labour is definitely accessible?
A. That could be a good query. It’s a false impression that labour could be very simply accessible in India. You speak to any enterprise and there’s at all times a scarcity of expert manpower. Additionally, the Indian common ages look excellent on paper. Folks will typically inform you that the common age in India is simply 26 years or 27 years, however the common age in Tamil Nadu is 35 years. The common age in Karnataka can also be very comparable now. These are the extra industrialised areas of our nation. That’s one half. The opposite half is that children who’re popping out of faculty, and for a superb purpose, aspire for higher jobs. At the moment’s children don’t wish to do a mind-numbing job of simply transferring materials from one half to a different the place there is no such thing as a software of the mind. This isn’t actually very dignified work for human beings and over time individuals shouldn’t be doing this sort of work. So it’s not a query of ‘whether or not’ individuals are accessible or to not do work. It’s a query of ‘ought to’ individuals be doing this sort of work or not.
Q. You’re speaking about expert labour. What about unskilled labour? We do have loads of that in India.
A. Yeah, that’s true, however in a manufacturing unit, you need to be expert. You possibly can’t function in a contemporary manufacturing unit until you’ve got some abilities. It’s a must to perceive self-discipline. After we say expert and unskilled, it’s not simply figuring out how you can function complicated equipment and instruments. It’s accompanied by the self-discipline of working in a manufacturing unit. If you need to do one thing each quarter-hour it can’t be 16 or 14. These sorts of labor habits and self-discipline come as a means of changing into expert. Unskilled individuals don’t have these sorts of labor supply habits, that are necessary issues at present for contemporary manufacturing. What we have to do is enhance our ITI coaching output from 2.5 million each year to 10 million each year on a mission mode. The extra expert individuals we’ve within the nation throughout areas, the wealthier we’re as a nation.
Q. Amazon and Walmart have began drone deliveries in sure elements of the US, that are supervised by expert staff. Earlier deliveries had been carried out by unskilled labour. In India, these transportation jobs are executed by individuals whose livelihood will depend on it. Don’t you assume that is consuming into their job market?
A. For the US, the reply is even clearer. They simply don’t have sufficient individuals. For India, we had individuals doing the transportation job earlier. That’s the evolution of the human journey. Folks would preserve transferring in direction of higher-value addition jobs, and we’d must preserve automating our lower-value addition jobs. The economic system yields higher positive aspects by including extra productiveness per particular person. The one magic humankind is aware of is expertise. It has occurred earlier than as properly—any individual invented the wheel; no matter we may do manually in a discipline, we may do higher with a bullock cart, and even higher with the tractor. Horses had been the expertise for transportation, and there was a lot expertise which went into the horse—any individual needed to invent the saddle, the spur, and the horseshoe—all of which had been linked with the horse to actually make it right into a transportation machine. There was the automotive revolution and we are going to in some unspecified time in the future see the autonomy revolution as properly.
Automation shouldn’t be at all times about labour-saving. Take into consideration welding robots. At the moment, nearly all welding for making the automobile is finished by robotic arms. Initially, some individuals did it, however you may’t manufacture many automobiles should you weld manually. It’s past human functionality to weld with that accuracy repeatedly, at that velocity. So, the one choice is to have a robotic arm which does it. One may argue why there’s a conveyor belt when any individual may carry the packet and run. The particular person won’t ever have the ability to meet the velocity of the conveyor transferring one thing. Equally, generally a robotic is required as a result of conveyors aren’t sensible or you’ve got massive materials that people can’t carry. You’ll not get the repeatability, accuracy, and reliability with people that you just get with robots, particularly within the manufacturing unit.
While you come to public areas, or deliveries, the problem is of availability now. There aren’t sufficient younger individuals who wish to do that work, particularly within the West. So it’s simply not viable anymore. Even in India, there aren’t sufficient individuals accessible within the nation to work in factories. The full manufacturing workforce is 50 million individuals usually, in India proper now. We produce solely 2.5 million individuals yearly from ITIs. That’s hardly 5%. So we’d simply be replenishing the attrition whereas this 50 million ought to change into 100 million over time. To extend this determine we have to enhance our manufacturing output, which isn’t going to occur until we add sufficient expert individuals to that pool. The dimensions of operations can also be rising. We are able to’t attain that scale in any respect with out automation. There’s simply no method. On the meeting line, you’ve got a automobile popping out each 30 seconds or one minute. A full automobile! How do you try this if in case you have not automated a variety of stuff!
Q. So what are the challenges that you just confronted in constructing this product?
A. For any startup, life is simply filled with challenges. It’s tough to call only a few issues. Since we’re doing multidisciplinary engineering we do the whole lot. We make the mechanical automobile, deal with the electronics, and canopy the software program stack as properly. So any multidisciplinary engineering system, by definition, turns into a bit difficult. Other than that, supply-chain challenges have been exhausting for us, like for many individuals within the trade. These challenges exist in any startup’s journey, particularly on the subject of {hardware} startups. Operating a product within the lab within reason straightforward, however taking it to a buyer’s manufacturing website could be very difficult. Crossing the chasm from lab to manufacturing is tough. One other problem lies in rising the manufacturing capability, whereas guaranteeing the identical high quality repeatedly. At completely different levels, one has to maintain crossing these challenges, and so they by no means cease. Clients will preserve coming in. We have now to assist our previous merchandise whereas growing new merchandise. Product administration can also be very complicated and difficult, particularly with {hardware}. You possibly can simply replace the software program in so many locations, however supporting previous {hardware} shouldn’t be that straightforward. We have now to do it as a result of as soon as a buyer buys a product, it’s with the expectation that we’ll assist them for the subsequent 5-10 years, and we’ve to dwell by that dedication.
Q. What are the longer term traits and applied sciences that you just count on to see on this house?
A. Firstly, we’re nonetheless within the very early days of this house. You’ll see all of the line-following robots in most of the factories. However the penetration of those trendy, without-line, versatile, cellular robots remains to be very low. It’s minuscule. I’d share one other attention-grabbing statistic. There’s a quantity which individuals monitor which is named robotic density, which calculates the variety of robots per 10,000 staff. The world common of that quantity is round 126. The US is at 250. South Korea is within the 950 vary, which is a benchmark even for the US which has an extended technique to go. China has gone from 50 to 250 in simply 5 years. India remains to be at 4. There may be a lot that we have to do to catch up not simply with the world, however simply with our neighbours. So, I’d say neglect future traits, let’s meet up with the current first. We have now to try this at double the velocity. We have now to compete globally as we are attempting to draw world manufacturing into India. We can’t try this if we aren’t on the stage of our world opponents. Such automation is necessary to supply issues on the identical high quality scale and value.
Q. How do you see the worldwide competitors on this house?
A. We’re fairly distinctive globally additionally in our house. The strategy of self-driving automobile like expertise inside factories remains to be novel. There are demos however vital manufacturing deployment as we’ve executed throughout greater than 25 areas is uncommon. Folks have tried it in different use circumstances. Outrider will transfer full vans to the yard of the warehouse or the manufacturing unit. Einride is doing teleoperated automation the place any individual is remotely driving; they’re not making an attempt to do full autonomy. Completely different individuals have completely different approaches and all people has some market as a result of there are such a lot of various things that prospects need. Nobody firm will do the whole lot for them. I wish to see extra corporations in India doing this.
