Odetics to Make Robots for Data System
Odetics Inc. said Tuesday that it has won a $34-million contract to build a robot-controlled tape “library” for a huge supercomputer data storage system being developed by E-Systems Inc., a Dallas electronics company.
Under a six-year contract, Odetics will make a robot system that will store and retrieve data within a giant storage system capable of holding the equivalent of a copy of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” for every person in the world.
The contract is a continuation of earlier work that Odetics did for E-Systems under a $6-million award.
The most sophisticated version of E-Systems’ storage system will store more than 10,000 terabytes of information. One terabyte equals 1 trillion bytes of data.
E-Systems plans to market the system to government agencies and companies that operate large information databases.
The Dallas firm expects to market a small version of the system in 1991 and a more sophisticated one by 1993.
The system would have 1,000 times more storage capacity than current systems made by Storage Technology Corp., of Louisville, Colo., said Richard Petit, general manager of Odetics’ commercial products division.
Odetics Chairman Joel Slutzky said the company estimates the market for supercomputer storage systems will reach $3 billion by 1995.
Odetics’ share of that overall market could be $100 million a year beginning in 1991, Petit said. Odetics now employs 27 people on the project and expects to hire 10 more during the next year, he said.
The E-Systems project is based on technology used in the automated videotape storage systems that Odetics supplies to television stations.
But while the machines that Odetics makes for the broadcast industry can store and retrieve 280 videotapes, the new system would access thousands of computer cassettes in a storage area the length of an 80-foot hallway.
The heart of the Odetics supercomputer system is a network of self-propelled or robotic arms that transfer cassettes from place to place at speeds up to 9 feet per second.
Mike Klatman, spokesman for Storage Technology, said his company is looking into the technology.
But the Dallas firm’s system, he said, would appeal more to a small “fringe of scientific users who require massive amounts of data” rather than the average corporate customer.
But Odetics’ Petit said E-Systems already has lined up some government and commercial customers, including one large oil company.
Other potential customers might include banks, insurance companies and major scientific and research institutions.
Robots Serve Up Data For Supercomputers A team of self-propelled robots made by Odetics Inc. of Anaheim keep order in a library of up to135,000 computer-storage tape cassettes. Bar code scanners identify cassettes, which are then pl19694498291. Odetics’ mobile robot retrieves tape cartridge from library rack and delivers it to cassette module. 2. Cassette module loads the tape into tape drive. Source: Odetics Inc.
