“My first thought was, Who is this student?” laughs Laura Armstrong, Robotics Application Engineer at Archytas, “I’d never seen a high school student pick up programming so quickly!”
Familiar with Laura’s past work as a high school teacher, her engineering background, and her new position with start-up Archytas, Tim Breen, Head of School, invited Laura to come to Watershed in the fall of 2021. Tim notes, “We have kids interested in robotics. Archytas is doing innovative work in the field and Laura wants to make robotics interesting, meaningful, and applicable to students- a perfect fit for Watershed students.” Elijah was one of the students who attended Laura’s afternoon workshop on Archytas’s robotic arm.
“It was simultaneously humbling and inspiring,” Elijah remembers thinking. “It felt like I could sit down and start exploring the possibilities right there and then. It made me want to help others feel that same way.”
Later that fall, Elijah connected with Laura to ask if Archytas ever explored internships with students like him. “I had a meeting with Laura and Ryan, Archytas’s CEO,” said Elijah. We talked about Archytas and about my experience with programming. Soon thereafter, they defined the prototyping exercise as, “How can we make programming the robot easier?”
Archytas is a design, manufacturing, installation, training company that provides affordable automation solutions for small businesses. They employ a microfactory model and offer automation products that are engineered specifically for their small business customers’ needs. Their robot is light, agile and costs less than 50% of those offered by most competitors. The Archytas robotic arm is comprised of approximately 80% 3D printed parts through additive manufacturing. The company recently won a global competition in Spain for their contribution within the additive manufacturing community. In addition, the Archytas robotic arm has lower operating and maintenance costs. Archytas’ goal is to partner with their clients in a way that not only helps them profitably scale their business, but also helps their employees expand their knowledge and capabilities. This is where Elijah’s work comes in.
To help fulfill their goal of making automation accessible to and profitable for small businesses, Archytas turned toward the post-sale and post-installation aspects of their clients’ experience. In large companies, robots are set-up and programmed by engineers and if that company wants to modify what the robot does, engineers are called in to reprogram. “Generally, any programming modifications needed in manufacturing are done using a proprietary programming language,” said Elijah, “not something that your average small business employee would know!” So, Elijah is now working on making it easier for a layperson to program and modify their Archytas robot. Elijah explains, “Fairly soon after starting with Archytas, we decided to build a node-based visual editor for the robot. Node-based programming is end-user friendly and a lot more intuitive than programming with code. The idea to create this type of visual editor was inspired by my own experiences with Blender, a node-based, open-source 3D computer graphics software tool used to make 3D-printed models as well as many other applications. I’ve been working on building the backend code for the visual editor since March, 2022. Hopefully, the Archytas robot’s visual editor will be out of the functioning prototype phase soon, and ready to give Archytas customers a relatively straightforward way to modify their robot to fit their current and future production needs.”
A related Archytas project involves the educational outreach part of their business model. Laura notes, “The visual editor for the Archytas robot is also proving to be very interesting to our community college partners. Instructors want their students to have experience with robots and programming, but don’t want everyone to have to learn JavaScript first. So, we have a parallel project that is creating a simulator that will work in tandem with the visual editor to streamline the iterative process. A simulator will allow an educational institution or mid-size company to purchase one or two robots, but still train dozens of students to work on production process modifications. Once the students have programmed with the web-based simulator, they can then take turns testing their program on the actual robot. This is a financially efficient way to let students and employees learn the skills needed to modify the robot. We were thrilled to be able to bring Elijah to work with the team in Irvine, CA and to teach people how to use the visual editor so they could think about adapting it for future applications.”
Elijah started his work with Archytas as an independent study at Watershed last year. He continued with his internship throughout the summer and is working with them again this fall, in part as an independent study. Elijah says of his experience thus far, “I first became interested in programming in second grade and my interest just grew and grew. I love problem-solving and I love thinking about ways to make a process work better- especially when the solution ends up helping with a whole series of problems. I took some computer courses at school, but most of my programming was self-taught. Archytas has been my first opportunity to contribute significantly to a team working toward a common business goal. I’m learning so much. It’s been exhilarating and I’m so appreciative to Laura, Ryan, and all of Archytas for giving me this opportunity. I’m also grateful to be at Watershed where we’re encouraged and given the time in our schedules to pursue passions and opportunities like this.”
Laura notes, “The mission of Archytas is to help people thrive through automation. One way we are doing this is through education. Meeting administrators like Tim and students like Elijah make this work even more meaningful. We are grateful for Elijah's contributions and know that he will continue to thrive within his education and into his career. Archytas has been one step on his journey, and we couldn't be more pleased that he has chosen to work with us.”
The Archytas robot.
