Acquiring a new direction
When Tsai noticed at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan that robots were an emerging trend, he began to explore this new opportunity.
Rather than venturing into industrial robotics, Sha Yang Ye focused on the development of service robots, utilizing its own servomotors and planetary gear motors in their production. It went on to open Sha Yang Ye Robot Wonderland in 2014 to exhibit the more than 30 robots it had developed.
The company uses its own products extensively in its robots. For example, the museum’s singing and dancing “extraterrestrial” robots use 36 geared motors and have servomotors in their joints. Its “black bear” robot, which won a Taiwan Excellence Award, uses 17 geared motors within its 3D-printed shell. The “black bear” and the cute Techno Prince Nezha robot have gone on to become distinctively Taiwanese products. Sha Yang Ye’s extension of its capabilities from motors to robots has also benefited the company by broadening and deepening its core technologies.
Sha Yang Ye established an educational and cultural foundation in 2018, using its Robot Wonderland to create a platform through which it could communicate with businesses, offer “maker training,” and further the development and production of its modular robot kits.
These kits arose out of Tsai’s acquisition of a startup called Cagebot, and have reinvigorated Sha Yang Ye. “The acquisition came about by chance,” says Tsai. “There’s a bit of a story there.”
Back in 2015, the German company Siemens sent two engineers to Taiwan to build automated facilities for a Taiwanese electronics company. The two engineers both ended up falling in love with Taiwanese women, and chose to remain here, founding their own business. Although they raised several million NT dollars to fund their development of modular robot kits, they burned through it all in less than three years.
Because the first three generations of Cagebot’s kits used Sha Yang Ye’s geared motors, Tsai well understood the obstacles that Cagebot was facing. After talking things over with his team, Tsai decided to buy the company. He says that by mating parts from Cagebot’s various kits, you can assemble things like robotic arms and remote-controlled vehicles. If you add in geared motors and microcontrollers, you can build intelligent driverless cars and carts, and even small production lines. The process is great training for makers.
Micro-geared motors may be tiny, but they are vitally important.