Adam Torres and Atif Syed discuss FII PRIORITY.
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Show Notes:
Listen to FII PRIORITY coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Atif Syed, Founder and CEO at Wootzano, explore robotics in Saudi Arabia and FII PRIORITY.
About Atif Syed
Atif obtained a PhD in Engineering and Electronics/Bionanotechnology from the University of Edinburgh and has a background in Electronics, Nanotechnology, Robotics and AI. Atif is also an Enterprise Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering. With the breadth of expertise in microfabrication, material science and robotics,
Atif has built the principles for Wootzano to grow into a leading robotics company.
About Wootzano
Wootzano is a robotics company based in the North-East of England, specializing in dexterous robotic systems designed to handle delicate objects with precision. By integrating proprietary electronic skin, advanced machine learning, and cutting-edge electronics, Wootzano pushes the boundaries of robotic innovation. The team is driven by a passion for robotics, embracing bold ideas and unique approaches to transform automation across industries.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have a Atif Syed on the line, and he is the CEO and founder over at Wootzano.
Atif, Welcome to the show. Thank you so much Adam. Thanks for having me around. Alright, so we got a lot to talk about today. So I wanna get into ano and really how what it’s doing to help the fresh produce industry. We’re gonna get into the electronic skin and what that means. But first, I know we were introduced originally through FII Institute and, some of their events that they hold.
So first thing, first I’d like to give a big shout out to FII for all the great work they’re doing, bringing people together. And I’m just curious, how did you originally learn about the organization? So FYI a few years ago contacted me to attend the flagship event in Riyadh. This was 2022.
So I went to the event in Riyadh. I actually grew up in Riyadh until I was 16. Ah. Although I don’t think there was any connection between the two Sure. To be the two sites, but but you know, I, went back to Saudi Arabia after. A good sort of 12, 13 years, and I’ve seen a massive transformation in the country.
Mm-hmm. what I’ve left 13 years ago as a, basically a child. Mm-hmm. And I’ve come up and, and I’ve seen a different side of the country, which is, which is very good to see. Mm-hmm. About, I think it was 10,000 plus people in the event. Wow. And yeah, quite a few important people who I ended up meeting.
And then subsequently, I, I’ve been to the event almost every year. One, the speaker and so on. So, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been following it through. So, and normally the flag went and we had I also went through the priority events, so Miami is one of them. They held one in Rio last year.
Mm-hmm. And I know Hong Kong and they, they’re planning on doing a European one in a couple of months time. So, I think the work they’re doing is pretty good. Trying to get people from different industries towards a specific theme. But how can we use investment and technology as a tool for the greater good?
So yeah, that’s how I got involved. Hmm. Can you talk a little bit about and I, this has been a great theme as, we’ve been building out this interview series. Can you talk a little bit about that transformation from Riyadh that you’ve seen, like in that, course of those years that you mentioned?
what are some of the changes you noticed? I think the, the, the biggest one was openness. I think me I felt the country had a lot of potential, especially for the youth of the country. I had a lot, Saudi friends when I grew up. And the opportunities weren’t there for them to realize their full potential.
The country has become a lot more open, a lot more accepting Of different cultures and different ideas something which I wouldn’t have seen previously. Wow. The, transformation from even the thoughts in the industry of fashion, for example. Yeah. the side of you know, new ideas, which weren’t, I don’t think people had platforms previously to really.
Express that out. Mm-hmm. And that has really come, come forward too. When I landed in Riyad again after 13 plus years at the airport, I had a big poster of David Ter concert, and 13 years ago, I would’ve never, never imagined that I’ll see a, a big poster of David Ter on, on the app. Wow.
So, wow. So for me that was a, I mean, even though I grew up in the country, it was a cultural shock. and I felt as you go around and you see the youth of the country there seems, there’s so much optimism. There’s so much like they want to do and, transform. And I think and, and I’m also happy that they’ve kept a lot of their.
A lot of the culture behind, you know, when you come to Saudi Arabia mm-hmm. You go to UE and other parts, but I think Saudi Arabia still kept the Saudi culture whilst adopting and embracing the international community. And I think that’s how it should be. Yeah. Should really get your culture out first and show to the Yeah.
Whilst, you know, being open and accepting to everyone else. I think, I think that was, huge transformation for me having lived, you know, grew up there. Yeah. Wow. What an amazing story. let’s change it up a little bit here. I do wanna talk a little bit about your company with the time we have here Sano.
So maybe tell us a little bit more about Sano and also how it’s helping the robotics and how it’s helping the fresh produce industry. Sure. So Wsan is a robotics business. we make. Very dexterous robots. These robots are designed to work like human beings from production lines.
So the kind of tasks that robots currently do with the Aara robotic system mm-hmm. Is they go onto production line and do all the work, what people would’ve done on by handling fruits and vegetables. So, for example. As soon as a table grapes, let’s say it’s harvested in the field, it comes into A packing house.
Yeah. And that’s when these robots process it, they look for quality. They look at how good or bad the product is and do everything, what is required, and then they differentiate between, okay, is this a target product? Or Walmart Pro product or Whole Foods product. Mm-hmm. And eventually gets backed or packed or floor wrapped or whatever their end packaging is, and then goes out to retail shelf.
Mm. So we reduce and remove a lot of manual repetitive tasks by people. So that so that the robots can take over these repetitive tasks. The reason why robots couldn’t have done this before is because a lot of robots are not dexterous enough. They don’t have the same dexterity as human beings.
Mm-hmm. To handle. Very delicate or very random product products. Yeah. Fruits look so different. You know, they want the same produce, same variety, grown in the same area looks different. So for for a computer vision to understand the differences mm-hmm. Too, it’s a complex task. So Yeah. What have done that?
And currently we are in about seven countries around the world. We are British company based in the. Northeast of England, mm-hmm. But we operate and, and ship our robots to the us all the way to Japan, Australia, and so on. Can you give an example of maybe of what this would look like for, a factory or a produce company that was to implement maybe a, a robot?
what does that look like? So the robot in terms of look and feel physically mm-hmm. The robot has, takes up less space than a human being. Mm. Has got an average height of a human being about 1 65 to one centimeter centimeters. Mm-hmm. so in terms of space, that requires, it’s a fairly nimble product Yeah.
From a production line. If you are employing people to, again, process. Manual task. Manually handling. Hmm. Manually handling vegetables. And we actually gone now recently away from fruits and veg. We have projects now where we are helping one of the largest chicken manufacturers to see the chicken nuggets are good or bad, for example.
Right. And we are helping another company handle did you bring up that example? Because you’re talking to someone in the US right now, had to throw in a chicken nugget? I don’t know. No, I’m just flying. No, no, no, no. I mean, to be honest with, come on man. No, you, I mean, I mean it’s, it’s about the culture.
Yeah. So now, okay, we’ll throw in the American some culture over there. We’re throwing in a chicken muck. No, I had to, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, well, to be honest, yeah. I mean, to be honest, it’s true. It’s true. I can laugh. It’s fine. Chicken nuggets and processed food. Yeah. Our number one expert on okay stuff.
I mean, I have, I have to tell you, every time I come to the every world, every week trip, every one we trip. I come to the US I gain half a pound probably. I agree. A pound, like every meal I could never finish. It’s so big and so huge that you feel guilty trying to throw it away. But at the same time, if you eat a lot of it, you’re killing yourself.
I guess the, sorry to derail the interview. Okay. Sorry. Coming back to the chicken nuggets and yeah. I’m feeling hungry, to be honest. Now. I know. Chicken nuggets. Yeah, so, was saying that if you’re a production manager, if you’re, if you’ve got a production line. Random products. Right. We started off with fruits and veg.
We do that very well. Mm-hmm. But random products, like chicken nuggets is one of them. Yeah. But also we call things like industrial towels, believe it or not. Mm-hmm. So laundries where they take towels from hospitals and hotels. Mm. And bring them up and you need to wash them up and, you know, deliver every day on an industrial level, you still need dexterous handling of these towels.
Yeah. You know, they’re very, they can randomly throw in the pin mm-hmm. And you need to take it out and stuff. So, so robots do these kind of very complicated tasks on a drug line. And the interesting thing is the cost of the robot is pegged to the cost of human beings. In the country where it’s installed in.
So a robot price defers, it’s like, it’s like going and working in the, US versus going to work in Thailand. You know, you’ll get a tie wage versus a US wage, you know what I mean? So yeah, we try to make it accessible. These robots are very accessible to people across. That makes, that makes a lot of sense.
, what is the electronic skin like? How does that work? So the, electronic skin has been my personal contribution to the company. Mm-hmm. You know, but I’ve invented this this unique piece of material almost a decade ago now. Mm-hmm. So the eat skin is a stretchable twistable material.
Which enables, like robots, for example, or any other product to really feel like human beings. So the skin is able to tell that the, force or pressure, temperature, it knows slippage, for example. So similar to when you hold a pen in hand mm-hmm. the weight of it, you know the temperature, you you need the, feeling of the pen and if it’s slipping all of this time, you feel that, right?
So we, the skin gives that level of. Sensitivity to not just robots, but other applications as well. we’ve done a lot of things in the past. One of the things we have also been working on the site is helping prosthetic limbs really pro people who are using prosthetic lips, amputees to not just hold the product, but also feel back themselves.
And that’s amazing because imagine you were born without a limb, you never felt that feeling before. Mm-hmm. So if you can replicate that feeling back to you and give your brain that level of sensation, wow. So there are lots of those applications around. So the electronic skin currently there are a few other people who are trying to do electronic skin, but this was the first ever in the world.
Mm-hmm. Um, In the uk it got the highest price in engineering equivalent to Nobel Price. Wow. It’s also considered as one of the most important invention. Of the 20 British invention of 21st century. So, so there’s been a lot of positive accolades behind it, but obviously the robots ra robot use it mm-hmm.
To peel fruits and vets right now, and maybe chicken nuggets, you know, or, or other, other products along the line. But the applications for the electronic skin itself are immense, hugely wide. Mm-hmm. Man, this is amazing. Well, ITIF, I’ll tell you it’s, first off, thank you for making some time to come on the show.
This has been a lot of fun to learn more about your company and also learn more about and your connection with FII institute the great work happening there and for your unique insight into, some of the transformation that’s taken place in, in Saudi. So appreciate that. That being said, if somebody wants to continue to follow your work or the company how do they do that?
you can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on our website, uh wootzano.com. , there’s a contact us page, which , I, believe me, we monitor those contact page if you send the information across. Yeah. It doesn’t go into ether. You know, there’s someone who will look into it. Mm-hmm. However, if you are a foreign currency trading company wanting, wanting to sell FX to us, then won’t bother.
I think that’s one one type of or get help with your SEO. I got it. All, all all the SEO. Yeah. How can you make up? They get me all the time. I’m like, come on, another one day. Every other person. Every other person. But please, you know, please send it across. we are, we actively monitor our website and, and inquiries coming down there.
Amazing and everybody watching this, just so you know. We’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and a tiff man look. Looking forward to catching you at the next priority event. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Absolutely. Thank you, Adam.
Let’s chat.