LARAMIE — After completing top-level summer internships at prestigious companies like NASA and Qualcomm, one thing University of Wyoming graduate Christian Bitsas and his friend Oreoluwa Babatunde quickly realized was that the traditional 9 He said he didn't like the idea of working a 5-to-5 job. A private room for someone.
And do they realize that they have to move somewhere other than Wyoming to get the robotics jobs they want?
What breaks the agreement.
Around the same time the two Gen Z graduates were working on this problem, Bitsas' father called him with a small problem of his own. He runs a home inspection company and needed something to help him look inside spaces that were too small to physically enter.
He couldn't find a good solution on the market, so he called his son, an electrician, and asked if he could make something for him.
There was something like this right in the alley of Bitsas. Not only is he an electrical engineer, he has done many side projects with GIS drones, his mapping and his 3D printing.
It's easy, he told his father without thinking.
I've got it
But when Bitsas was working on a small smart robot crawler that his father had 3D printed, he realized what he was doing could be a solution to his own problems.
If he and Babtunde, a computer science engineer, started their own company making smart robotic home inspection equipment, they wouldn't be working 9-5 for someone else. They will be working for themselves.
And even better, they'll be creating jobs for other engineers like themselves who are interested in robotics. They will have diverse job opportunities in the field of robotics and will be able to help themselves and other students stay in the state they love.
There, a one-off project for his father suddenly became a prototype.
And while his father was testing out the new robot, Bitsas began recruiting his friend Babatunde and electrical engineer Brady Wagstaffe to help form a company they called Uplink Robotics.
Wagstaff was a difficult sell at first, but eventually he too gained recognition.
“Well, if you're not interested in working for a big company, especially if you're not interested in working as an engineer, you might make some money, but you'll never make a lot of money as an engineer.'' “I started to understand, 'If I didn't work 80 hours a week for 10 years,'” he said.
But Wagstaff also wanted time to hunt, fish, and enjoy life. So, as he further considered his friend's idea of starting his own company, he decided to join in as well.
He didn't want to live to work. He wanted to work for a living.
international customers
Laramie-based Uplink Robotics has only been in the manufacturing business for a year now, but the Gen Z company is already designed to boldly enter small spaces that humans can't fit into. It attracts customers all over the world with its smart crawlers. .
The company's first units rolled off the 3D printing press in April 2022, and it crossed the 100-unit mark in November.
The company has created a significant advantage for itself through rigorous testing with potential customers. This revealed that the most important characteristic of our smart robot His Crawler is versatility.
Unlike other home inspection robots already on the market, UplinkRobotics' smart crawler continues to work even when turned upside down. The design also means the robot resembles a small four-wheel drive vehicle, but has zero-turn maneuverability and the ability to rotate 360 degrees on the fly. The machine is precise, agile and extremely versatile.
The company has two smart robot crawler models. While Mink allows inspectors to install their own GoPro cameras, the flagship model, called Marten, comes equipped with a complete camera system and monitor for real-time video streaming. Marten has a complete home inspector kit with everything you need to see inside small spaces without actually being on site.
UplinkRobotics has hired 5-6 people so far and can easily manufacture 25-30 of these 3D printed gadgets every month. They're already working on additional gadgets customized for firefighters and police officers, and even hope to hire more people soon.
3D printed plastic beats metal
All of UplinkRobotics' gadgets are manufactured using 3D printed plastic, making the smart robots mechanically strong enough to withstand the toughest tasks.
“With 3D printing, you can create very complex shapes and make parts very strong,” Wagstaff explained. “Compared to injection molded parts, it's very durable and very unlikely to break. I think this only happened if someone dropped it off a roof. So unless you dropped it off a two-story roof. ,it's okay.”
The 3D printing process for plastic is more versatile than a piece of metal, Wagstaff added.
“Many of our competitors make their products out of steel and aluminum,” he says. “At that point, they're just glorified boxes, because it's very expensive to make something this small and really precise and complex.”
Design changes are also more expensive with metal parts. Replacing a mold on a metal tool can cost thousands of dollars, but with 3D printing, all it takes is a small reprogramming.
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UplinkRobotics was born when four University of Wyoming students used their imagination and technology to create a company that revolutionized the inspection industry with some seriously cool robots. (Courtesy of Uplink Robotics) -
UplinkRobotics was born when four University of Wyoming students used their imagination and technology to create a company that revolutionized the inspection industry with some seriously cool robots. (Courtesy of Uplink Robotics) -
UplinkRobotics was born when four University of Wyoming students used their imagination and technology to create a company that revolutionized the inspection industry with some seriously cool robots. (Courtesy of Uplink Robotics) -
UplinkRobotics was born when four University of Wyoming students used their imagination and technology to create a company that revolutionized the inspection industry with some seriously cool robots. (Courtesy of Uplink Robotics)
Overcoming university collapse syndrome
When Bitsas, Babatunde and Wagstaff founded the company, they had no start-up capital to realize their idea.
But fortunately for them, Wyoming is full of programs aimed at helping entrepreneurs overcome things like bankrupt college student syndrome.
These three engineers discovered Elbogen's competition and were able to beat out other candidates and win $30,000 in startup funding for 2022.
That way, not only could they take an entrepreneurship class with a great business idea in hand, but they could also get startup funding after completing the class.
Their first task was to create a business plan. At first, the trio thought this too would be quick. After all, they were already building amazing gadgets. That was the difficult part.
Then they went to school.
“I had a mentor in my class, and although he wasn't a professor, he was someone who had a wealth of knowledge and experience in creating businesses,” Wagstaff said. “And before I met Zoe Worthen, Christian and I brought him a 'business plan.' When I say that, I'm using air quotes. Because that's what we thought of as a business plan. ”
However, their leaders thought differently.
“We met with him for probably two-and-a-half hours, and he spoke frankly about how bad it was,” Wagstaff said. “And he helped us learn a lot by forcing us to reframe the way we think about things.”
That's when UplinkRobotics brought on its fourth and final co-founder, Zoë Worthen. She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and knew she wanted to start her own business when she took her class. But she didn't know what it was until she met Uplink staff.
Her strength was in the people and communication side, which was a skill set that the fledgling company really needed.
“It was really interesting because I had never worked with an engineer before,” Worthen said. “So we needed to do that. One of the big things we really worked on together was the communication side. Understanding that in some ways it's not about a premium product. It's about the customer and the people we present to. That's kind of a mindset shift and that's the biggest thing we worked on as a team and I worked on with them. I think it was.”
Through that process, the three engineers realized that instead of following their engineering instincts and adding bells and whistles, they needed to actually simplify the gadget.
“We've found that people don't want flashy toys,” Wagstaff said. “They want tools they can trust. That's why we've made our product so reliable, so simple, yet able to do exactly what everyone needs. ”
Keep It Wyoming
Since opening in 2022, the most common advice Gen Z companies are getting from business experts is to outsource manufacturing to China.
“That's the decision,” Wagstaff told Cowboy State Daily. “Because you could probably make it for half the price of making it in China. But then you're just sending money back to China instead of putting money back into the local economy.”
So that advice is something the four Gen Z founders of UplinkRobotics are determined to ignore.
“It goes against our mission,” Bitsas said. “Our overall mission is to stay in Wyoming and create opportunities in Wyoming. We created the opportunity (to stay in Wyoming) ourselves, so we want to hire more people in Wyoming. thinking about.”
Along the way, one fact about the company's success surprised the founders and underscored their determination to keep the company in Wyoming for as long as possible.
That's good old-fashioned customer service.
“There were some people doing this before us,” Wagstaff said. “But they were making things that were unreliable and expensive, and they would disappear for months on end. So you could buy a $3,000, $4,000 product and it wouldn't work. If you don't, the people who buy it will just disappear from the face of the earth.”
However, by responding quickly to customers and having a helpful local staff, the company gained excellent word-of-mouth advertising.
“It's kind of interesting to realize that you can stand out by just being nice to your customers and standing behind your product,” Wagstaff said. “All we have to do is fix any problems we have. And if you have any questions, we're just a phone call away. And really quickly, we've become the go-to company in this industry. I have become a person.”
The company hopes to scale to $1 million in sales this year, and plans to do so throughout Wyoming. That way, they can keep the Cowboy State as their forever home and create robotics opportunities for others who want to do the same.
“We all love Wyoming, and that's a big reason why we started this company, especially as engineers,” Wagstaff said. “And we're creating those things because the options for doing the things we were interested in were very limited.
“We want to be able to help the state diversify and bring money to the state that is not dependent on two or three (industries).”
René Jean It can be accessed at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
