Meet Us In The Middle: Part 3: Crystal Parrot

So one of the great things about working at Plus One is the culture. We’re very creative and dynamic and really empower individuals to make a real impact, not only in your area of expertise but in any area of the company operations because the doors are always open to anyone to express your thoughts and opinions.

I’m Crystal Parrott. I’m the Vice President of Engineering here at Plus One Robotics. I’m responsible for managing the development and the commercialization of all of our products here at Plus One. 

So at Plus One, we have the mantra, “Robots work, People Rule”. And what that really means is that we’re taking the things that robots are good at, which is the repetitive nature of mundane tasks. And combining that with the creativity and problem solving of a human. There is no AI or control scheme that can be as good as a human. And what we want to do is make sure that we apply them together to really solve some of the most complex problems. 

With a human in the loop, we’re able to make those transitions faster. And it’s really important with the expansion of the logistics industry and the shortage of labor and the willingness of individuals to do some of these mundane tasks, to be able to supplement that, to allow that growth. 

The goal here is to implement robotics, to ease the burden on humans. There are many companies that are talking about doing it. Plus One is really implementing solutions that actually implement the change rapidly in this space. We’re making it a better work environment for both people and robots.

So one of the things that are very important to having people join our team is understanding the opportunity for career growth and just personal growth in a diverse set of skills.

We really make an opportunity to not only express your desires of where you want to go but to develop that plan on how to get you to that next stage in your career. it’s a constant mantra throughout all of our operations teams to see where do you want to be? Are you happiest in this role? How can you make a bigger difference? What skills do you want to add to your toolkit? It’s really a great place to be if you want to learn a lot of different things because you’re never pigeonholed into a specific task set. 

Some of the characteristics that we would look for in new employees are really a drive and determination and enthusiasm for understanding and learning and growing in a dynamic environment.

Our challenge is never the same. So a person who is really interested in being able to be creative, but being able to pivot to a new area with an open mind of how we move through that. That is really important to success here because it’s not just about the knowledge. It’s how you transfer the knowledge and turn that into meaningful work. That is really the key.