<![CDATA[Mobile Robotics Insider: Shorts]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/s/amr-shortshttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WweV!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdc6629e9-8c8c-41f8-a53d-323c96b83cf6_512x512.pngMobile Robotics Insider: Shortshttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/s/amr-shortsSubstackWed, 08 Apr 2026 09:53:49 GMT<![CDATA[Venkatesh Prasad at Ati Motors on designing the Sherpa AMRs]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/venkatesh-prasad-at-ati-motors-onhttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/venkatesh-prasad-at-ati-motors-onSat, 14 Feb 2026 06:53:55 GMT

In this video, Venkatesh Prasad, Head of Mechanical Engineering at Ati Motors, explains why their Sherpa Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are “friends in the warehouse.” These robots are built to handle all the gruelling hard work without ever getting tired, providing a reliable solution for demanding industrial environments.

Prasad details how Sherpas are uniquely engineered to operate across both indoor and outdoor settings, successfully navigating challenges like uneven floors, debris, and water. To manage these hazards, the mechanical design must be exceptionally adaptable.

This involves the development of specialised drive systems, advanced subsystems, and robust protective enclosures to ensure the robot’s longevity and performance in the field. Discover how Ati Motors is redefining the capabilities of AMRs by prioritising mechanical adaptability and resilience for any terrain.

Catch the full interview here

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]]><![CDATA['Do it right the first time' - Venkatesh Prasad at Ati Motors on mechanical design and engineering]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/do-it-right-the-first-time-venkateshhttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/do-it-right-the-first-time-venkateshWed, 03 Dec 2025 04:00:30 GMTVenkatesh Prasad, head of mechanical engineering at Ati Motors, recently spoke with Mobile Robotics Insider on how mechanical design and engineering is advancing the field of autonomous mobile robots. Here’s a quick insight from the conversation.

Catch the full interview here:
]]><![CDATA[The Future Ubiquity and Impact of AMRs Beyond Factories]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-future-ubiquity-and-impact-ofhttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-future-ubiquity-and-impact-ofTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:42:23 GMTAnd what else, the other thing that AMRs are going to do is like, it's still a bit of a novelty. You don't see as many AMRs as you should be seeing because there is material movement that is happening in so many different form factors in all the factories that you can see, but it is still being done by humans. It's still being done by mechanized equipment. It's not done automated. And there are many reasons for it. There is a lot of cognitive overload that the human operator is doing along with the material movement itself. So that is a place where I think AMRs can really break through in the coming years. end point and the starting point where it's not just taking a particular material from one point to another anymore.

What do you do at point A and what do you do at point B? That becomes very important. So that integration and that coming together is when AMRs are really going to explode. And I can also see AMRs being used as factory adoption increases. I can also see AMRs being used in other public spaces more and you'll start to see them in shipping yards and airports and train stations and then they will come down to the office campuses and you will come down to residential societies and so on. So that is something that you will get to see. Maybe it's not a space for Athi to play in but I think that will come down as you see more and more adoption in the industry side is also going to come down.

]]><![CDATA[Breakthroughs in Learning and Multi-Robot Coordination]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/breakthroughs-in-learning-and-multihttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/breakthroughs-in-learning-and-multiTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:39:16 GMTThere are lots of interesting stuff that's going on within us obviously and also in the world of robotics in general. One thing that I'm very excited about is end-to-end learning. where just the way you and I would drive, how would a robot just translate sensor information directly into an actionable insight. So that is something that is catching up in the research community. And I think at some point it's going to come down to commercial robots as well. This is something that I'm very, very excited about. The other things that I am excited about in robotics is like all the inter-fleet coordination. Now we understand that one particular vendor or one particular robot supplier is not going to win the entire automation game.

There are going to be multiple parties who are good at their own specific tasks. So that could be ARM manufacturers, that could be AMR manufacturers like us, that could be people who are really good at conveyors, there are people who are really good at accessories. So all of them have to come together to do zero-touch automation in a particular factory. But who's going to do this coordination among different robots? Like you can think of there are going to be islands of fixed automation spread across the factories, whereas the AMRs themselves can be the connective tissue between these islands. Where on top of it is going to be the fleet manager, which is going to be a key piece of the puzzle. And there is going to be more and more of IoT vendors. There's going to be more and more of this kind of coordination that is required across multiple robots, and they need to come together. And that intelligence at the fleet is going to be key. And that's something that I'm excited to see.

]]><![CDATA[Robots Handling Harsh and Hazardous Factory Conditions]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/robots-handling-harsh-and-hazardoushttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/robots-handling-harsh-and-hazardousTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:36:18 GMTWhen you go to a place like where the operating conditions are much milder, but the conditions are much more congested. So you need to have a fleet manager which is flexible enough to do that kind of traffic management. at a three-way junction or a four-way junction where you have multiple rewards that could be coming at the same time and the yield behavior can be unpredictable if you don't have that kind of a traffic management system. So, that is something that the full-stack approach lets you do. The other thing that is very interesting for us because we do a full-stack approach is again got to do with the bots capability going from indoors to outdoors and vice versa. So we were able to operate in rainy conditions, we were able to operate in snowy conditions.

There is a recent demo that we did in Michigan where our bot, they loved our bot because we were able to operate in snow. One of the reasons we got selected recently in a factory was there were concerns with the factory workers taking material out in a rain and they would not do that. It would be difficult for them to do it. And they really wanted an autonomous solution where you can still operate in rain. and ramps. So these are cases where it is becoming more and more clear that harsher conditions, why would you want to send humans out to work in those conditions? Can the robots just handle it? And that seems like the way forward. So, there are lots of new applications that we can be looking at.

]]><![CDATA[Solving Real-World Factory Challenges with Custom AI]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/solving-real-world-factory-challengeshttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/solving-real-world-factory-challengesTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:30:44 GMTThe other robots will just follow suit and we can do like really complex deployments very quickly. I can give you an example of where our robots are carrying their PCB magazines. And these magazines are like finished PCB boards. And they are worth lots of money, tens of thousands of dollars in each of the load. And they have to be very carefully transported from the soldering station to the finished goods. And one of the reasons they use the robot is it's clean room-like, so they don't want too many humans to be touching these magazines and risking the exposure of EMI. But what happened was because it's such a clean place, they keep vacuuming it. and the person who vacuums the floor, they could leave the vacuum cleaner on the floor and the cable is actually lying on the floor. The robot needs to go around the cable or at least stop and give an alert. It cannot go over the cord because just that jerk can render the whole payload useless. So we had to quickly come up with a custom AI model to see what black wires, black cables are like. and then you need to detect that and that had to get into our perception stack in short time because they were trying to commission it and they were trying to go live. So this is something that our team were able to do it very quickly.

]]><![CDATA[The power of owning the full robotics stack]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-power-of-owning-the-full-roboticshttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-power-of-owning-the-full-roboticsTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:28:32 GMTSo one of the early thought processes while making the Sharpa has held us in good stead. That is to own the full stack. So ground up design and it's purpose driven. So we own the mechanical design, the electronics hardware as well as the autonomy software that goes into it. And even beyond the robot, the fleet management software is also something that we develop in-house. So this kind of gives us complete control over the entire stack and we are able to tightly control the the final quality that is being delivered to the customers, as well as we can do some really nifty optimization across the layers, because we control the whole stack.

]]><![CDATA[The make or partner dilemma in robotics]]>https://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-make-or-partner-dilemma-in-roboticshttps://www.mobileroboticsinsider.com/p/the-make-or-partner-dilemma-in-roboticsTue, 15 Jul 2025 15:25:35 GMTDo you want to make the drive-by-wire vehicle yourself or would you like to work with a partner? So that's the key question. And a lot of our competitors do the latter, where they just buy a vehicle from a competitor and they're able to do that. But the approach that we took was, all these kind of... marriage of software and existing vehicle has its own quirks, has its own suboptimal decision-making because it's two different entities doing it. Kind of like what you would see with an Android phone, where the Android software is from Google and the underlying hardware is from Samsung or Vivo or Oppo or so on.

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