Mini robot printer makes waves on crowdfunding site

A mini-robot printer made by ZuTa Labs, an Israeli start-up, is one of the fastest-moving in Kickstarter’s fund-raising history, raising 80 percent of its $400,000 goal, “a high amount to begin with,” within 3.5 days of going live on the crowdfunding site, said Tuvia Elbaum, the company’s CEO.

Almost everything, from computers to phones, has gone mobile, but the miniaturization revolution has bypassed the printer. Printers are still important, Elbaum said, noting that our ostensibly paperless society still requires plenty of paper for contracts, legal documents, resumes and more. Unfortunately, printers are still bulky, heavy affairs ill-suited for portability.

But there’s no need for the bulk, said Elbaum. “Printers today are essentially a printhead running on a moving piece of paper. Why not just put the printhead on a set of small wheels and let it run across a piece of paper?”

Thus was created ZuTA Labs’ Mini Mobile Robotic Printer, a small device that runs across a page and prints out text, just as a printhead would do in a standard inkjet printer. Instead of loading paper into a printer’s feeder, a user “loads” the ZuTA Labs printer onto a page and the printer takes care of the rest. The printer has a rechargeable battery with an on/off switch, connects via USB to smartphones and PCs and allows the user to print on any size piece of paper.

The printer uses an omni-wheel system to accurately turn and drive in any direction. When it finishes printing a line, it can move down the required space and start printing the next line. The robot prints only to the width of the paper size specified in a program’s Page Setup dialogue box.

The device weighs about 300 grams and is 10 centimeters high and 11.5 centimeters in diameter. It takes about 40 seconds to print an A4/8.5×11 standard page, comparable to an inkjet printer’s speed. No price has been announced yet, but for $200, donors to the Kickstarter campaign will get a printer when they come out next January. The printer can work for about an hour from a full battery charge and uses HP ink cartridges, so they are easy to replace, said Elbaum.

“We started this project at our college, the Jerusalem College of Technology, in the Friedberg Entrepreneurship Program,” Elbaum wrote on the project’s Kickstarter page. “Students of the program were instructed to come up with an idea and a sustainable business plan. After going through the rigorous acceptance process, we got accepted and were given capital, usage of the college’s facilities, and guidance from the professors in order to start turning our dream into reality. We first built a proof of concept, then a minimal-functional prototype and are now working on designing the actual complete prototype.”

The project made its public debut last week at the Microsoft Israel ThinkNext event in Tel Aviv and was immediately embraced as a “next big thing,” Elbaum wrote. “The response we received at the conference was more than amazing. We are super-motivated thanks to the great response and vibe we’ve gotten from everyone who’s seen the project.

“We have received offers from different companies to assist us with the design and manufacturing of our product. Once the campaign is over we will choose the best partners in order to certify that this printer will do the best possible job and look good while doing it,” Elbaum added. “This is making waves around the world.”

Click below to watch a video from ZuTa Labs about their printer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybrhomrv4Hk