How Three Companies Created a Complex Automation System
Taking an idea from concept to reality is never a solo effort. Behind every successful launch is a mix of vision, technical expertise, and collaboration—the kind of teamwork that turns a design on paper into a machine that runs in the real world. That’s the stage AlphaOne Robotics has reached today. Though a new company, they aren’t new to the technology or industry, which is why they were founded on the mission to fill the gap in warehouse automation. In this episode of Evolution in Controls, we meet with AlphaOne’s CEO Tim Criswell and engineer Alex Criswell, Bosch Rexroth’s VP of Automation and Electrification Arnie Mueller, Evolution’s Drives and Controls product manager Neal Linhart, and Dan Osbourn, Motioneer at Evolution, to understand just how they’ve filled this gap in the market.
AlphaOne’s mission was to create an intelligent robotic solution for dynamically unloading trailers and containers, and by collaborating with Evolution Motion Solutions and Bosch Rexroth, that’s just what they did. The founding members had been working to solve this gap in the market for a decade before coming across Bosch Rexroth’s ctrlX AUTOMATION architecture, which kick-started the collaboration between AlphaOne and Evolution. Experts from each company were crucial in developing this project as it required highly dynamic movement and control in a limited space.
This solution includes a mobile base that drives it in and out of the trailer, an industrial robot arm with a vacuum head, and a wide articulating conveyor. The base is what holds the controls and power supply for the machine, but as mobile equipment, real estate is tight. Evolution’s Motioneer team worked with Rexroth’s AE team to consolidate all ten axes into a single power supply in just one cabinet. The ctrlX drives were the perfect fit, both physically and in terms of control. The Motioneers also lent their expertise for sizing the conveyor, which required unique kinematics as the machine is designed for varying load sizes and weights.
Thanks to the collaboration among these three companies, AlphaOne Robotics automated one of the most challenging, labor-intensive, and physically demanding jobs in the warehouse: unloading of floor-loaded trailers and shipping containers.
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