KEY POINTS:
An Auckland start-up company says it is on track to produce the world's first driverless forklift for warehousing work.
Inro has produced a prototype and believes it will have a commercial model ready within a year.
Inro founder Grant Sargent believes Inro has the potential to generate sales, mainly in export markets, of more than $25 million in five years.
He said the company was in talks with "a couple of parties" and hoped to reveal more details in the next two months.
Mr Sargent said the global robotics industry was estimated to be on the same rapid growth path as the IT industry was 15 years ago.
Robots could certainly make producers and major exporters more competitive internationally and lower their production costs , he said.
An automated forklift could cut hourly work costs by half and deliver substantial fuel and production savings.
The company currently has 10 staff and is looking to bring another four engineers on board.
Mr Sargent paid tribute to government grants from Forst, the Foundation of Research, Science and Technology, without which he said the company would not have survived.
Forst has also supported several Auckland University students to work on the robotics project.
Although the company was focused on generating a revenue from its forklift, Mr Sargent said it was always on the lookout for other mundane tasks that could be automated.
"We always keep our eyes open and there are an awful lot of applications which are dull, dirty and dangerous for what we want to do."
Inro started out under the name of Grand Challenge in 2004 when Grant Sargent read about the DARPA Grand Challenge in the US, inviting teams to develop autonomous vehicles to compete over a 200km distance.
The most successful team that year spent US$5 ($6.99) million for a vehicle that travelled about 8km.
Mr Sargent 's team the following year made it through the qualifying process but it ran out of money before the event.
The company has since separated out the challenge and commercial objectives, creating Inro to focus on the commercial development of robotics.
- NZPA
