Fareham firm reveals world-first robotics retrieval system for shipment-ready hard drives

Lumico Digital, which is at Fareham Innovation Centre, has produced a system which retrieves newly manufactured hard drives from storage stacks for automated shipment – and it did so from scratch in just 11 months.

Nine 3.8-metre-high robots are being exported this month to a production facility in South-East Asia, where the company’s install team will oversee integration with existing automation.

Co-founder Steve Kennington said: ‘It’s the only system of its kind in the world existing for this purpose.

‘We’ve had the equivalent of up to five full-time people on the project since March, involved in hardware, software, electrical and build.’

A computer science graduate from the University of Portsmouth, Steve’s background is in automated hard drive testers – robots that move hard drives around before being cleared for end use.

He said: ‘The robotic process product we have created is a tester but without the tester capabilities – essentially it is a large storage system.

‘The hard drives will come along a conveyor belt to be stacked in storage until that batch is ready to be released – the factory then issues a ‘mass unload’ request and our tailored system pulls out the hard drives from a grid stack and ships them on their merry way.’

Lumico Digital develops automated systems for a diverse range of industries, including manufacturing, wholesale, logistics, insurance, utilities, fintech and leisure, sport and social.

On their latest project, the company partnered with Dave Bowyer, an automation systems consultant.

‘It is Dave’s brainchild and we have been bringing it to life – it is very much a collaborative effort,’ said Steve.

Dave added: ‘There are three key facets to the system – the mechanical solution, the physical control hardware to operate it and the control software which is the system’s ‘soul’ essentially, giving it its life.’

With eight staff, Lumico Digital was co-founded six years ago by Steve and fellow director Stephen Briney.

Steve said: ‘We joined Fareham Innovation Centre half a year after starting out, expanding into the workshop and one of the largest offices here, and we cannot praise the centre highly enough for its support of innovative businesses like ours.’