Orangewood Labs are building robots that they claim even a child would find easy to operate. They are making collaborative robots safe, affordable, and capable of coping with modern-day manufacturing challenges. TimesTech in an exclusive interview interacted with Sankarshan Bangaloree, Marketing Manager, Orangewood to know about how the company got started, what it is targeting and the future ahead.
Read the edited excerpts from the interview here:
TimesTech: Tell us what Orangewood does and how it started.
Sankarshan: Orangewood was started three years ago. It initially started as a Furniture Company because of the name Orangewood. Founders went to the US to manufacture the furniture. They face the problem of hiring spray painters because of safety reasons. Spray paints are very carcinogenic and very toxic. People working in it need to wear all the hazard instruments and they charge quite a lot. They found someone who was renting robots for spray painting applications. The robot did the work for pretty cheap and no one was hurt. From there they found out Orangewood might have a scope in Robotics and from a furniture company it got shifted to a robotic company.
We are one of first India’s Made in India robot manufacturers. We are also focusing more on metal and wood industries because of the wood background. So that’s how this started.
TimesTech: What are the features and applications of your robots?
Sankarshan: For this particular exhibition of 5G and Communications, we are using 5G technology to control the robot remotely from anywhere. We call this teleoperation. Let’s say we have 5G everywhere and I’m sitting in Delhi and I want to control a robot that might be in, say, San Francisco, USA. Because 5G is very fast, I can change the program right here, and the reaction of the robot would be instantaneous. I want a video stream of what the robot is doing, I can get that instantaneously. Let’s say the robot is might be misbehaving due to a bad program then we have a safety lock feature. I can press a button here and the robot will stop instantly.
5G is very useful for IIoT because a lot of equipment in the factory’s manufacturing units is built for industrial IoTs, we can integrate this seamlessly with that. Currently, because we are focusing on metal and wood Industries, we are working on Powder Coating applications, welding applications, spray-painting applications, and even pick-and-place applications.
TimesTech: Why your robot has a camera in it?
Sankarshan: We are exploring more options. We are exploring the idea of Photography because 5G is also helping us stream videos continuously everywhere. That’s why we are using a camera to see applications of a robot being used for photography or videography and streaming videos live. We might also venture out for more applications later down the line.
TimesTech: What are the challenges you are facing considering the shortage of semiconductors?
Sankarshan: we have to face quite a lot of problems because most of our R&D and manufacture happens in India, the Noida office. A lot of R&D requires new technologies to be present, and new semiconductors to be present and tested so that we can implement them on our robot. Because of this shortage, we have to wait for quite a long time to receive it. Sometimes you cannot find a replacement for a particular component. We are struggling a bit but we are still trying to find better opportunities because we want everything to be fast-paced. We don’t work on just one thing and one thing alone we work on multiple things so that we find solutions for things much faster.
TimesTech: What are your hopes for indigenous manufacturing of Semiconductors?
Sankarshan: If indigenous manufacturers can manufacture the quality that we require and they can provide us the safety and the specifications that are needed by any Industry then it would be brilliant work that they can do. They will help us sort out a lot of things and the manufacturing would be much faster and much easier. Because it’s indigenous, we might even get a good rate and we can save costs in logistics that happening. So, here it would be pretty much easier and more affordable.
TimesTech: What is Orangewood’s focus area moving forward?
Sankarshan: The focus area does not stop just in the metal or furniture industries. We are trying to expand, we are trying to explore. The goal of the company and vision of the company is democratizing robots which means robots for everyone and everywhere. We want this robot just like a personal computer in your home. It could be doing the cooking. It could be washing the dishes. It could even be helping some elderly patients. There’s an endless limit to what a robot can do. We want this robot to be everywhere. That’s the goal of Orangewood Labs.
