The team
Aggeliki Pilalitou – Engineering Project Manager
Aggeliki has received her MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, graduating among the top five of her class. Aggeliki has gathered considerable experience as a research and robotics engineer at the laboratory of Manufacturing Systems and Automation, a renowned research institute at her university, which specializes in human-machine interaction, robotic motion control, and augmented reality.
Aggeliki is currently focused on managing all the company’s projects including Minotaur-R. She is responsible for setting milestones and deliverables, communicating to partners and clients, and making sure that the project’s budget stays on target. Due to her experience in robotics, she has effectively managed to run Minotaur-R, motivate the team during the course of the project and successfully achieve the project objectives according to the timelines and KPIs.
Euthymios (Makis) Pachos – Technical Manager
Makis received his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He also holds a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt – LEAN/DFSS from Aveta Business Institute. He has over 20 years of experience in robotics and automation field. His role is to provide technical support to the company’s projects due to his extensive experience and hard skills.
His current role in the project is to select and prepare the secondary detection method, develop the robotic path planning of the robot, and assemble the mechanical, electrical and electronic parts into a single integrated prototype. He is also responsible for the testing and demonstration activities, for measuring and validating the system KPIs, for preparing a product manual and providing training sessions to potential customers.
Orfeas Kypris – Lead Research Engineer
Orfeas received a BEng and MSc in Electrical Engineering from Cardiff University and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University, where he invented a novel non-destructive method and sensor for diagnosing residual stress in helicopter main rotor gears. He then joined the Computer Science department at the University of Oxford, where he invented structalyse.org, a novel condition monitoring platform employing state-of-the-art 3D displacement sensors. Before joining iKnowHow he developed machine learning algorithms for an Oxford startup specialising in indoor navigation and positioning. He has authored more than 15 journal publications and 2 patents in sensor design, non-destructive testing, navigation and positioning, condition monitoring and machine learning.
Orfeas is the lead research engineer at iKnowHow. His current challenge is to develop a novel machine vision algorithm that detects fully visible and partially occluded springs scattered among other debris. The detection method is based on spring’s shape, not colour.
Nikos Valmantonis – Lead Mechanical Engineer
Nikos received his MSc in control and automation from the School of Mechanical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. With over 8 years of experience in Mechanical Design, he has successfully designed and delivered more than 6 NDT automation projects. Nikos has extensive experience in custom casing design, especially for systems that require IP protection for use in harsh environments, like Minotaur-R.
In Minotaur-R, Nikos concepted and designed the gripper fingers, which finally played catalytic role in achieving our KPIs and surpassing similar competitive solutions. On top of the gripper, he designed all the peripherals – mountings, trays, tools etc., taking into-account that all the components should be purposed for wash-down activities.
Nikos Arapkoules – Business Developer
Nick is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of working in the product development industry. Skilled in Business Planning, Negotiations, and Operations Management. A self-driven professional with a Master of Engineering (MEng) in Mechanical Engineering from National Technical University of Athens, focused in Industrial Management and Operations Research. He was named in Forbes 30 under 30 – Impact Driven Innovator and has experience in forming and managing commercial start-ups. As evidenced through Heliix – whereby the team developed a series of Waste Heat Recovery products, based on the in-house developed and patented Motionless Compression technology.
In Minotaur-R, he is responsible for developing a viable business plan to lead the product to successful market take-up once it is ready for launch. The preparation of a well described Business Model, Business case, Go-to-Market strategy and Additional Financial Aid reports and IPR protection are amongst his primary activities.
This project has received funding from the ESMERA programme, a European funded project under grant agreement No. 780265.
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