He spent some time building wall-climbing robots before deciding that the real opportunity was in manufacturing and logistics. Harsha Prahlad, who founded the company and now serves as its chief technology and products officer, holds about three-dozen patents related to electroadhesion. The concept for Grabit was hatched at SRI, a prominent nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, California. “The things we’re getting pulled into, we’re getting pulled into because they can’t be done another way,” he said. This makes Grabit able to do things robot-hand companies are unlikely ever to conquer, says Greg Miller, Grabit’s chief executive officer. Instead, the company implements flat pads of electrodes that, when charged correctly, create an electric field that adheres to nearly any surface. For Grabit, the partnership with Nike shows its work is catching the eye of the world’s more prominent apparel companies.ĭespite its name, Grabit’s innovation isn’t based on having robots mimic the human-style grabbing motion. Robotic arms have been doing much of the labor in car factories for years, and Amazon sponsors an annual contest to get academics to make robots smart enough to pick up objects they’ve never seen before. Pretty much every company that makes physical objects is interested in automation. This could be a step forward in Nike’s attempt to change the economics of shoemaking so it can relocate manufacturing closer to the big consumer markets in the U.S. By the end of the year, about a dozen of these machines will be operating in China and Mexico. In the past month, Grabit has begun providing facilities that make Nikes with a handful of upper-assembling machines that can work at 20 times the pace of human workers. More recently, Nike has quietly become one of the startup’s first customers. made an investment in a startup based in Sunnyvale, California called Grabit that uses electroadhesion - the type of static electricity that makes your hair stand up when you rub it against a balloon - to help machines manipulate objects in novel ways. Advancing the Machine™.Now the robots are coming. We provide the highest quality products, customer service, and continuously seek new ways to help our customers meet the demands of change. Grabit™ is a robotic and machine learning company leveraging proprietary electro-adhesion technology to revolutionize consumer and industrial products manufacturing and warehouse logistics.Īround the world, team members of the Burke Porter Group are committed to serving industrial transformation. Once the reorganization is completed there will be additional information regarding future expansion and operational plans for Grabit and BPG. The Grabit restructuring will have no short or long-term effect on BPG or its subsidiary companies and provides a better avenue for BPG to support Grabit's short-term and long-term initiatives.īPG CFO, Daniel Webber states, "Grabit will emerge restructuring as a strong company able to continue delivering its innovative products and services." Grabit CEO, Greg Miller noted, "After the reorganization, Grabit will enjoy expanded scale benefits as part of the much larger Burke Porter Group global platform." Grabit, BPG, along with a majority of Grabit preferred shareholders and convertible noteholders, have entered into a consensual arrangement allowing BPG to continue supporting Grabit, its customers and its advanced product development plans. As a result, Grabit and BPG have negotiated a Restructuring Support Agreement ("RSA") that provides for a restructuring through a voluntary pre-negotiated plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. While Grabit continues to advance its electroadhesion activities, delays in certain projects have caused an inability to perform under the terms of the BPG loan. The purpose of the loan was to help advance electro-adhesion technologies for customers of both Grabit and BPG. LLC, provided a senior secured loan to Grabit in June 2018. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Grabit™ Inc., an intelligent automation systems provider to the soft goods manufacturing and warehouse logistics industries, today announced that it has reached an agreement with its manufacturing partner and primary senior secured lender, Burke Porter Group ("BPG"), on the terms of a comprehensive reorganization and recapitalization.īPG, through its financing subsidiary, BPG International Finance Co.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |