History (1990): Odetics Unveiled 3480 Tape Library

ATL Products Group (Anaheim, CA) introduced a new 3480 robotic automated tape library (ATL) subsystem technology at Comdex/Fall.

This announcement was made concurrently with Odetic’s disclosure of $40 million in OEM agreements to develop and manufacture 19mm, robotic ATL subsystems for E-Systems (Dallas, TX).

Among the mass storage libraries being developed for E-Systems is one designed to accommodate more than 10,000TB of data.

At Comdex, the Odetics booth featured a showcase of robotic technologies including Odex I, the company’s walking robotic technology demonstrator; a 19 mm, 0-2 TCS2000 Broadcast Cart Machine which is presently being adapted for mass storage applications; a robotic 19mm cassette accessor/gripper prototype and a 3480 tape cartridge handling demonstrator.

Regardless of the subsystem configuration, the heart of an Odetics ATL is the company’s self propelled robot that moves tapes between storage bins and tape drives. These robots include barcode scanners for cassette identification and placement. Mounted on each robot is multiple cassette handling mechanism referred to as robotic grippers. For example, an aisle-based robot currently being developed with a speed of 9 linear feet per second, can access a tape in an 80-foot aisle in 23s.

ATLs may have one or more robots depending upon the application.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠35, published on December 1990.