Robotics heats up in New Zealand
By admin. Filed in Robot News |
| A fairly new robotics industry is heating up in New Zealand. A company called Inro is headed up by Grant Sargent. He states that , “If a human can drive it, we hope to automate it.” Grant, spurred on by the DARPA challenge, created a team to enter. Pictured here is Grant (second from left) and some of his students working on the Grand Challenge team. This team made it to the quarter finals of the Darpa Challenge, but bowed out due to funding issues. Grant has gone on to create the company Inro, which has created a robotic forklift. Grant hopes to have sales of $25 million within 5 years and will release more details of this within a couple of months.Grant has ties to the University of Auckland where they have a fine robotics program. Students have created many robots, including the B21R. This robot may be the only robot to contain a subwoofer and doubles as the labs sound system. Also noted are several job openings in New Zealand, along with one for a robotics engineer at the Devonport Naval Base. |