A London robotics company whose Eva robot arm was designed to bring low-cost automation to small and medium-sized businesses.
Automata is a London company that makes Eva, a small, lightweight robot arm designed for desks, workshops and small factories. Industrial robots have traditionally cost a great deal and needed experts to program, which put them out of reach for small firms. Eva aims to change that. MIT Technology Review described it as light enough to carry in a backpack, with drag-and-drop software that, in the company's words, "anyone can learn to program in just 15 minutes". Customers are mainly small and mid-sized manufacturers, and Eva handles repetitive jobs such as product testing, sorting, dispensing and inspection.
The company was founded by Mostafa ElSayed and Suryansh Chandra, who are former architects who had worked in the computational design research group at Zaha Hadid. According to Eureka magazine, neither was a traditional roboticist, but both write code. They spent about four years designing the robot, and they designed the gearbox from scratch using cheaper parts. The stated mission is to make robotics affordable and easy for small businesses that need lower-cost automation, and the founders have said they do not aim to compete with the high-end precision machines of the largest makers. Eureka's early report said customers paid a subscription which covered hardware, software, insurance and repairs.
Automata is based in London, and Eureka magazine reported that its offices were in the capital's financial district and that it designed and built all its hardware there. In that early report, more than 35 UK businesses had signed up, and a pilot with a supplier that made chipsets for Boeing aimed to reduce errors when dispensing epoxy glue. Beauhurst and Seedtable both list Automata among UK robotics companies. These articles are from 2018 and 2019, so addresses and products may have changed.
The culture described in the same early report was fast and hands-on. The team reportedly made 13 hardware revisions in 16 weeks and could go from design to assembly in a day. They also gave Eva a personality, which Eureka described as slightly unusual. That is the journalist's description of a young company, and we have not checked how the culture looks today.
The roles at such a company include mechanical and electronics engineers, software and web developers who build the programming tools, designers, people who set up robots in customers' workplaces, and sales and operations staff. The founders' own backgrounds in architecture show that robotics is open to people who come from other fields, so a mix of design, engineering and computing can be a strength. Look at the company's own website for what it makes today, as its focus has moved over time.
Website: automata.tech
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