The company filed more than 40 patents; registered an average annual sales growth rate of over 200%; with more than 300 customers, it is already leading in China's parallel robot industry.
AtomRobot Utilized in Chinese Factory. PHOTO: Credit to AtomRobot
AtomRobot (阿童木) is the leading parallel robot manufacturer in China. The founding team members are all from Tian Jin University (天津大学), famous for parallel robot R&D. Since its establishment in 2013, it has served more than 300 customers, covering food, pharmaceutical, electronics, and household chemical product industries. The company has already occupied a fairly large portion of market share in China's industrial robot industry.
The company cooperated with Tianjin University to develop high-speed parallel robot. The parallel robot is a mechanical system that uses computer-controlled chains to support a single platform or end-effector. Parallel robots are very suitable for high speed, high-accuracy handling and assorting in manufacturing processes. The company filed a large number of patents home and abroad, broke the monopoly of foreign technology, won the "Second Prize" in 2015 National Technology and Innovation Competition. Boasted about its patents of more than 40, and two software copyrights, it was listed in China's high and new technology enterprise. One of Atom's cooperating partners, HUANG Tian (黄田), professor of Tianjin University, has been dedicated to the R&D in parallel robot for 15 years. The company's goal is clear: To be a front runner in China's parallel robot industry.
LIU Songtao (刘松涛), AtomRobot CTO, participated in national major projects in Science and Technology field; one of the projects backed by National Natural Science Foundation of China; Specializes at the R&D of 2-4 degrees of freedom high-speed handling robots, robots he developed was selected to be presented at the National Science and Technology Achievements Exhibition during the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period. Even when he was still in university, he formed BEI Yang FSAE (北洋动力车队), and the first formula car in Tian Jin University was designed and made into reality by him. In November 2018, LIU Songtao won the golden award in the 4th China "Internet+" University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.
The golden award won by LIU's team is Tianjin's first in four years since the competition was held. It was beyond everyone's expectation that in the first half of 2018, the highest number of parallel robots shipment came from AtomRobot, a robot brand not even more than 5 years old. Data suggested AtomRobot's cumulative shipments exceeded 1,000 units, with annual sales reaching USD 7.4 million and an average annual growth rate of over 200%. 1,000 units may not seem too much in terms of numbers, however, the number of parallel robots sold in the entire Chinese parallel robot market in 2014 was only about 600, and in 2015 it was around 900 units.
Within 5 years, AtomRobot flew over 178 cities, visited more than 700 customers, and brought back thousands of samples, worked on thousands of solutions and shot videos of hundreds of customers testing Atom's robots in various application scenarios. Through this down to earth, tireless efforts, AtomRobot surpasses quite a few of its industrial robot competitors.
AtomRobot believes its core competitive advantage lies in the close attention on their customers. Furthermore, the company believes in continuous efforts in improvement and advancement in technology. It updated and upgraded 9 parallel robots in only three years in the past.
"We hope that AtomRobot parallel robot could have its name in the history of the development of industrial robotics" SONG Tao (宋涛), the CEO of AtomRobot said in an interview.
AtomRobot ushered in a total of USD 4.8 million Series A financing in August 2017, which accelerated the application of AtomRobot products. Also, thanks to some of the benchmarking companies, AtomRobot entered the fast lane of development. Technologies are being rapidly upgraded and optimized as well. AtomRobot is building a system enabled with fast reaction and on-site support.
SONG stated, "In the next two years, the main task for AtomRobot is to increase production capacity, reduce costs, and optimize product so as to meet ABB robots' level in terms of quality, but with better service and, at this stage, more catered to Chinese factories' needs.”
It's worthwhile to be noted that AtomRobot, as a Chinese industrial robot brand, created a precedent for its peers in China to export to the UK and Russia. This signifies Atom's ambition is beyond Chinese market, it is aiming to become the top tier parallel robot company in the international market.
Though the company invested high in R&D, and technology update and upgrade, products already selling abroad, acquiring a significant amount of customers and a fairly large portion of market share. It lacks efforts in marketing and PR, comparing to its competitor QKM Technology, Atom pays insufficient attention on promoting and reporting events and activities held to bond with other possible cooperation partners and building its brand image, as well as introducing their products through participating in exhibitions.