Interview with Adept CEO John Dulchinos - Quattro robot widens appeal

Adept Technology, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer of industrial robots, is on a quest to move its robots outside of the factory floors into packaging lines, food handling processes and beyond. The company’s key product, the Quattro robot, is currently the fastest packaging robot on the market and is being designed to fit into various applications around the world.

GetRobo sat down with Adept CEO John Dulchinos to learn about the newer and fascinating ways that his clients are utilizing Quattro. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

(This week is National Robotics Week and Adept is having an open house on April 16to celebrate. It will open up its laboratory and GetRobo highly recommends a visit to see the Quattro and other robots in action. You can even control a Quattro yourself with a Wii remote!=video after the break)

  

 

(Photo: Adept CEO John Dulchinos with a model of Quattro) 

Q. What is special about the Quattro?

A. Quattro is the only parallel robot in the world that features a unique four-arm rotational platform. All the parallel robots from other industrial robot companies have a three-arm design. The advantage of having four arms is that it offers faster cycles and can carry heavier payloads. Moreover, the four-arm design is mechanically more efficient so it uses 25% less energy than the three-arm design.

 Since we brought the Quattro to the market in 2007, we’ve targeted at applications that are very high speed and have a large work envelope. These applications include food handling, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and even as far reaching as solar (cell manufacturing).

 And now, the Quattro has become one of the very few robots accepted by the USDA. As a matter of fact it’s the only high-speed parallel robot accepted by the USDA and it enables us to sell the robot to the meat and poultry market.

Q. How significant is it to be USDA accepted?

 

This market requires robots to be specially designed. The big difference is that in meat and poultry plants there is a high risk of bacteria growing. Every night, those plants have a wash-down process using chemicals and high-pressure hoses, so it is an impossible environment for a normal robot. The coating on the casting and the materials on the platform are different and they need ot be accepted by the USDA. The electronics have to be tightly sealed. These are tough requirements especially for a sophisticated piece of equipment like a robot. But Adept was able to meet that and we introduced the product last Oct. And we shipped our first set of robots this March quarter to customers in meat and poultry handling in the U.S. and France.

 It’s important to note that automating meat and poultry applications is very important because there is a lot of labor involved and the working conditions are not conducive to people. There are contamination risks when people are involved in packaging. So robots bring delicate product handling, the dexterity of touch labor with the efficiency and consistency of machines.

Q. How large is the market?