Applied Robotics looks to biotech, food sectors for long-term growth - The Business Review (Albany):

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The robot's 16 curved, stainless steel fingers on the end of its arm openede and closed with silentt efficiencyand speed. The device is one of several that Applied Robotics has designed to help the companyy reach beyondthe hard-pressed automotive industry, whichn defined its early growth, into new and more stables markets. "We had all our eggs in the automotive basket. That'w a dangerous thing," said Thomasd Petronis, company CEO and vice chairman. Applied Robotics has moved into the biotechnology sector and into otheresmaller industries, such as food and beverage manufacturing. The companty has already done workfor , PepsiCo. Inc.
and It planzs to double its current annual revenueeto $20 million in abou t five years, on the strength of salea to those new markets. "Those are markete that are predictedto grow, and are Petronis said. "We wanted to get in on the grounf floor." If a robot is a human arm, Applied Roboticsx makes the wrist and Inmost cases, the company supplies other robotics firms with those rather than selling directly to the businesseas that use robots. Applied Robotics has been linkes with the automotive industry for almost itsentire 25-year history, which started when several formetr engineers designed a robotic "gripper" on a dining room table.
Today, automakers provid e about 80 percent ofthe company's annual revenue. Of most now comes from foreign clients, reflectinbg the plight of the Big Thred automakersin America. "It's still our bread and butter," said presiden Clifford Annis. "But we needed to levep that out." Applied Robotics has already started working with several meatpackin companies, which they declined to name. The companty is also marketing certain types of industrial robotic grippers for use handling bags of cement or even dog for example.
"The meat industry has not gone through full automation, so it'sd ripe for that," said Clay Cooper, Applied Robotics' engineerint manager. "Chicken, fish and meat are all labor-intensivs businesses." Biotechnology, though, is an even greatert prize because of the high demandfor robotics. Robots have been in use in drug researcyh and testing for at least10 years, said Brucer Sargent.
He oversees drug discovery, research and developmentt for Albany-based AMRI, formerly known as AMRI uses robotzs to build upits "library" of complex drug and chemicakl compounds, and robots also conduct screening test involving volumes of chemical reagentsx invisible to the naked eye, Sargentr said. The testing arena provides the starting point for possible new drug Drug research companies couldfinish 10,00o0 tests a year when doing them manually, Sargenty said. Using robots, AMRI completes 30 times as many tests in less than two and also eliminates mosthuman error. "That would be incredibly difficult for someone to do manually with asteadu hand," Sargent said.
"A robot will do that withou thinkingabout it." Applied Robotics will partly focus on the drug discovery sector, Petronis said. But it's mostly interestes in clinical diagnostics, an area where robots have only had a presence for afew years. In clinical diagnostics, robots are used to handles test tubes, cap bottles and transporft testing trays, among other tasks.