Robotics firm expansion in the works

Plus One rolls out plans to more than double the size of its facility at Port San Antonio

A local robotics company is more than doubling the size of its facility at Port San Antonio.

Plus One Robotics, the startup that makes software and equipment that helps warehouse robots “see,” outlined an $800,000 project to expand its facility by 15,000 square feet in a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

The design phase is complete, construction is set to begin and the company hopes to move into the space that's adjacent to its current 10,000-square-foot facility in May, said Paul Hvass, Plus One's chief operating officer and cofounder.

“The excitement that we're seeing from customers and venture capital interest has propelled our expansion of the facility,” he said.

The 150 percent expansion will give the fast-growing company flexibility as their business continues to grow.

“It's going to give us so much additional resource to host people,” Hvass said. “We'll be able to take on a whole lot more business.”

The company is dedicating much of the new space to a “customer experience center” that will allow for sales presentations and activities in which customers can try Plus One's software and robots, Hvass said. It also will double its developer work spaces from 32 to 64.

Plus One has seen consistent growth since its founding in 2016. CEO Erik Nieves told the San Antonio Express-news in April, the company “had our strongest quarter ever,” and the momentum continued through the year.

“It's been an extremely strong growth year, accelerated by the pandemic,” Hvass said. “We're in the fortunate convergence of some technology we've been working on for many years with a market that is suddenly on fire.”

While the pandemic has battered other industries, Plus One and others in San Antonio's robotics scene — including Xenex, the germ-zapping robot manufacturer — has fared well in the turmoil.

Plus One's facility expansion is

the latest in a run of good news for the company.

In October, Fedex announced it was investing in Plus One, and last month, the Information tech blog listed the company in its “Top 50 Most Promising Startups.”

“We had hoped to do (the expansion) a little sooner, but COVID kind of slowed us down,” Hvass said. “COVID has been a bit of a whiplash where we thought it was going to slow us down and

then it made all of our customers hungrier for automation.”

Plus One's technology helps robots perceive their surroundings and enables better human and robot collaboration. And it's in demand as manufacturers, warehouse operators and logistics firms scramble to boost efficiencies while keeping up with increased shipping traffic resulting from the pandemic.

“We're definitely a machine vision software company, the secret sauce is in our motto — ‘robots work, people rule' —and so we take that quite literally,” he said.

Plus One uses artificial intelli

gence and allows a single human operator to oversee multiple robots doing multiple tasks at the same time.

The company calls this “supervised autonomy,” where a human “crew chief ” manages and operates up to 20 robots remotely. Hvass said the company hopes to eventually boost that number to 50.

“We're trying to automate highly variable work,” he said. “So we put the human in the loop, a supervisor for the autonomy … so when the task changes outside of what (the robot) has ever seen before, then it calls for help, and a

person literally responds in five seconds.”

Currently, Plus One is focused on earthbound applications, but there are possibilities to use “supervised automation” of robots on in the ocean, the moon or other planets.

“We're open to use the technology wherever the market will lead,” he said.

Plus One resides at Port San Antonio, a 1,900-acre industrial park on the Southwest Side that currently hosts 80 companies with about 14,000 employees.

“Were tremendously excited by the work that Plus One and com

panies like it have been doing in recent years and particularly is emblematic of the convergence that we're seeing on the port campus, where we have different technologies being adapted in new and creative ways,” said Paco Felici, Port San Antonio's chief of staff and chief communication officer.