InMoTx Inc. designs and manufactures innovative robotics with the ability to handle nonrigid, nonuniform objects. The young company is focused on providing robotics and automation solutions to the food industry, but is also positioned to serve other growing markets. Recent financing, the opening of a new North American headquarters in North Sioux City, S.D., along with a decade-long relationship with industrial robotics supplier Adept Technology Inc., has the company well positioned for success as a supplier of automated food production and packaging systems.

Background
InMoTx was founded in Frederikshaven, Denmark, in 2006. The company’s decision to open a headquarters in South Dakota was largely based on the heavy concentration of food processing companies in the area and a favorable business climate. Large food processors in the region include Tyson Foods, BPI, Knox, Wells’ Dairy, Interbake, Jolly Time, Sue Bee Honey, and Palmer Candy. In addition, there is a skilled workforce for manufacturing sophisticated electrical products.

Robert Spears, who spent 10 years as a senior executive at Gateway Computer, became InMoTx’s CEO following the company’s move. Spears has a proven track record of successfully growing small, emerging technology companies, expanding market share and profitability. The prior CEO was company founder Preben Hjornet. Hjornet, currently InMoTx’s chief technology officer, previously held a series of positions within European technology companies.

InMoTx raised $4.3 million in Series A Preferred Stock in 2009 and is expected to close on the balance of a $5.5 million offering this month (May). The existing operations in Denmark will continue to serve as the company’s product development center, as well as the European manufacturing and sales location.

InMoTx is seeing considerable interest from potential customers, and expects revenues to ramp fairly rapidly into tens of millions of dollars per year within the next year or two. The North Sioux City facility now serves as a base from which to demonstrate the company’s robotics platforms. Once planned revenues are achieved, the company will expand by moving robotics assembly from Denmark to North America.

Core Technology
InMoTx’s high-performance octoMation robotics technology is enabled with three proprietary platforms:

• octoVision robotic “eyes.” With their advanced vision processing, InMoTx robots can distinguish among various types of objects and determine exactly where each is on the production line, to pick and place. The size, weight, and locations of objects are all estimated within milliseconds. In addition, robotic vision can perform inline quality assurance tasks, including label verification, quality inspection, in-stream product inspections, and barcode reading.
• octoSoft robotic “brain.” This software integrates the robot with its gripping actuators, processes the location, and determines what actions to take. The robot operations and vision systems are simple to configure, with minimal setup time and complexity. With standard symbol-based Microsoft Windows, the software provides clear and simple interaction, and the system is not prone to damage by unfamiliar operators. A reporting tool enhances the ability to optimize the robotics with existing assembly-line operations. The robotic cell can be connected to the customer’s corporate network, as well as the InMoTx service center via the Internet, so that support and monitoring can be provided at any time.
• octoGripper robotic “hands.” This patented robotics technology mimics the suction cups of an octopus and the movements of a jellyfish, for suction without bruising. The grippers are made with FDA-certified, food-grade silicones that are malleable enough to grip and orient almost any fresh or frozen food products, and are capable of handling fragile items while moving and placing them at rapid speeds. What makes this solution unique is that it is especially suited for handling items that are not rigid or uniform in size. Until now, this required human interaction to ensure proper handling and packaging. The gripper design is flexible enough to be employed for a broad range of natural products and can be used for handling raw chicken, beef, and pork; packaged vegetables; and fruit. Any item that can be handled by the human hand can be gripped using direct or indirect suction. A dual gripper increases productivity by 40 to 70 percent.

Initial Market Focus
InMoTx’s initial market focus is on automating the loading of food products into packages, or putting final-form packages into shipping boxes. A current U.S. customer is a very large chicken processing company that uses InMoTx’s robotics technology for loading chicken fillets into a Multivac packaging system. The expectation is that this will become the customer’s standard for robotic automation, with large follow-on orders anticipated. Based on this initial success, InMoTx is approaching other customers in raw beef and pork processing, and also candy, fruit, vegetables, and bakery products.

Business Considerations
InMoTx robotics systems typically offer a 12- to 18-month financial payback, even when the cost of annual service agreements, software license fees, and gripper replacements are added to overall system costs. The systems can also reduce the chance for lawsuits due to contaminated food or worker injury. Reduced human handling results in improved cleanliness. Further, food processing robots allow meatpacking workers to avoid performing jobs that require repetitive, often dangerous motions, sometimes in extreme cold.

There is little concern that InMotx’s robotics technology could cost local communities more jobs than it would create. Indeed, given their inability to find workers, food processors sometimes idle their plants or run production lines at lower-than-desired speeds. Beyond eliminating jobs, as revenues increase, InMoTx is expected to generate many additional high-tech engineering, development, and manufacturing positions.

IP and Strategic Business Relationship
InMoTx filed a provisional patent application in April 2007 (Patent Application Number: 60/926,329) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The company subsequently filed additional information in April 2008 relative to the original patent application. Following the funding of the Series A Preferred Stock, the PCT filing was followed with a number of national filings in the specific countries where InMoTx will seek IP protection.

The InMoTx founder has a decade-long relationship with Adept Technology Inc., a provider of intelligent vision-guided robotics systems and services. Founded in 1983, Adept is the largest U.S.-based manufacturer of industrial robots, and recognizes InMoTx as a leading-edge business partner.