What's the Company Culture Like at Apptronik?

Describe Apptronik’s company culture in one word. What made you pick that word? 

The first word that comes to mind when I think of Apptronik is “passion.” We’re passionate about everything — from building world-class robots to our coffee preferences and friendly office competitions.

From a technical standpoint, I see the most passion in our internal ‘accomplishments’ chat. Here, anyone can share their team’s recent breakthroughs, like a new actuator design completing a force test or an Apollo system performing a complex task autonomously. Each post is met with encouragement and insightful questions, driving the team to keep innovating and improving.

Beyond robots, our passion shows through in the many events we host, lunch-and-learns where we share presentations about our hometowns, office scavenger hunts and food bank volunteering nights. We also have groups for personal passions, like pick-up soccer, a channel for those who build things outside of work and even a ‘Green Thumb’ channel for plant lovers to swap tips and plants.

What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally? 

Recently, my team and I traveled to Chicago with Apollo, our humanoid robot, to showcase it at the International Manufacturing Technology Show, a six-day event attended by over 89,000 people from 110 countries. It was a great opportunity for Apptronik to introduce Apollo to a global audience, many of whom had never seen a humanoid robot in person.

To prepare, we programmed Apollo to perform emotive behaviors and a part-inspection demo, where it picked up a machined part, checked for defects and sorted it into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bins. Having done many demos and roadshows, I’ve learned the value of setting aside time for creativity — pushing the boundaries of what’s possible sparks innovation and fosters collaboration.

And collaborate we did. As part of the Emerging Tech Center within IMTS, we were booth neighbors with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who were running an injection-molding machine as part of a new, innovative manufacturing process. After the conference one day, we teamed up to see if Apollo could run the machine through teleoperation. With great collaboration, Apollo became the first humanoid robot to run an injection molding machine.