R & D

Applied Robotics has a background in innovative technologies and R&D.

Our design engineers have background in both robotics R&D (robotic sheep shearing, robotic parts assembly, robotic hand design, etc.) and advanced factory automation machinery design experience (e.g. NEC Japan, French nuclear industry automation, electronics industry USA), as well as our 350 installed systems in Australia spread over the food, textile, plastics, pharmaceuticals, biochemistry, electronics and metal manufacturing sectors.

The strategy at Applied Robotics has always been to combine new technologies and novel techniques with proven automation technologies and experience, to tackle our clients’ automation tasks in a better way. Consequently, many of our solutions have made available a Quantum Jump in machine capability or performance, offering our clients a world first or a world fastest automation solution. These systems have underpinned our export success to markets in the US, Japan and Europe.

Our largest installation overseas has been the design and supply of multiple machine systems for all discrete products handling for Milliken & Co’s new carpet tile plant, in Georgia, USA in 1995/96. Milliken sourced these systems out of Australia because Applied Robotics had unique technologies and the experience to handle, stack and de-stack porous and flimsy carpet tiles at a rate of 4 per second.

Aerospace giant Raytheon Corporation is a licensee of one of our unique technologies for wind speed and direction sensing for over 12 years now. This underpins one of their current product lines in the nautical electronics market.

Over the years Applied Robotics have had extensive collaboration with Universities and CSIRO, in addition to our own in-house efforts, to develop new automation technologies and their implementation into novel machines. Some of our more notable projects include the following.

  • 1985, with the University of Wollongong, developed the world’s first automatic Passenger Meal-tray Setting system as installed at Qantas Flight Catering Centre and for Singapore Airlines.
  • 1888, developed fabric label tagging technologies, licensed world-wide production to Dennison, USA.
  • 1990, with the University of Wollongong, a major R&D project to develop PAM - Programmable Array Manipulator - technology, which is a new technology genre that can manipulate multiple objects independently and simultaneously.
  • 1993, with the University of NSW, a high end Vision System to inspect and grade whole tanned leather hides for imperfections, cuts, pin-holes and colour.
  • 2000, with CSIRO, for biotech company Enterix Australia, developed a robot and vision based biological assay cell for bowel cancer detection.
  • 2002, with Australian National University, for ORIGIN Energy, South Australia. Research into novel techniques to automatically separate and assemble brittle silicon slivers, at multiple slivers per second, and with micron level repeatibility, and implement the R&D result as a production machine. Applied Robotics won this project against international and national contenders.
  • 2003, for Australian Wool Testing Authority, researched a novel method to automatically divide bulk wool into accurate weight 20gm level samples, and implementation of an automatic machine system for production.
  • 2005, industry project to develop robotics technologies for flexible high speed brick packing.
  • 2005, industry project to develop vision techniques to allow a robot to “bin pick” aluminium extrusion sticks from random bundles.
  • 2006, vision-system based bricks & kiln brick QC and sorting technologies. Able to detect hair-line cracks & XX chips, XX, colour and XX.
  • 2007, Nowegian Government R & D project to develope technologies to XX robotic and automation sewing of hides & fabrics.
  • 2009, partnered with CSIRO to develope Opal Assay technologies.