A Powell High School graduate, University of Wyoming student and Uplink Robotics co-founder hopes that his robotics company will make life easier on home inspectors and create opportunities in Wyoming. 

Christian Bitzas is finishing his master’s degree in computer engineering at the University of Wyoming and also serves as CEO and an engineer at Uplink Robotics. When he began looking for jobs in his field in Wyoming his junior year — there were none. 

“So I was like, you know what there’s no jobs here, I’ll make a job,” Bitzas said. “So we made jobs for ourselves at least, and we made it our mission to bring opportunities to the state of Wyoming.”

In 2022 Uplink Robotics was chosen to receive $31,000 thanks to the John P. Ellbogen $50,000 Entrepreneurship Competition. Bitzas said they originally spent six months designing a smart product that utilized a tablet and machine learning. 

“We found out we were overconfident in what we can make in our amount of time and the amount of money we had,” Bitzas said. “So we made a simplified product that was perfect for home inspectors and was based off their feedback.”

Uplink Robotics used input from inspectors from all over the country to make an inexpensive robot and within a month they were able to send out their first product called the Mink for beta testing. 

Bitzas and his fellow founders, who are also UW students, had the idea to create a robot that would make it easier for home inspectors to see underneath homes, in crawl spaces and other hard to reach areas of properties that may be infested with pests, dangerous or hard for the human body to reach. 

“You can tell your customer hey, I can actually inspect that [hard to reach area] other home inspectors who don’t have the product, they can’t inspect it,” Bitzas said.

Uplink’s first model, the Mink, needs to have a GoPro camera attached to it. Their second model, the Marten, which was released Monday, has its own built-in camera. All models are beta tested by home inspectors who provide input on the design of Uplink’s product. While the robot is marketed at home inspectors, Bitzas said that one contractor in Georgia has placed an order on the Marten. He has yet to speak to the contractor but said that the Marten could help contractors with their due diligence and quality control. 

“When you are buying a house, you need to fix it up or something, you have to inspect the crawl space, that’s perfect for that,” Bitzas said. “Or if you’re building a house and you want to go inspect something you built that you can’t reach, like something under a foundation. It would be perfect for that.”

The Mink retails for $1,995, while the Marten sells for $2,995. For those who need a full kit but don’t want to pay the large premiums, Uplink Robotics is currently developing a budget model they hope to sell for $1,750. 

“All of our competition, they are in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, so we’re trying to stay below them as much as we can… a lot of them are small business owners or are by themselves, they can’t afford too much so we want to offer quality products at a discounted rate,” Bitzas said.

Uplink Robotics is trying to bring opportunities to Wyoming, specifically for high schoolers interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“We’re trying to bring opportunities to Wyoming for people, just trying to make jobs, create opportunities,” Bitzas said. “We want to work with high school students, get them involved with STEM, engineering, that sort of thing. Reach out if anyone has advice, questions or inquiries, if they  think we can help them in some way. We would be happy to.”