Stratom RAPID uses an industrial robot arm to autonomously refuel a military vehicle. | Credit: Stratom

Stratom is a Colorado-based, veteran-owned robotics company that is helping automate various logistics processes for the United States military. Today, the company launched RAPID, its autonomous refueling, recharging and liquid transfer system for rugged environments and a variety of applications.

The solution leverages an industrial robot arm to autonomously locate a refueling port on a vehicle and then deliver the fuel. The system is ruggedized and designed to be deployed in the field, in adverse and difficult conditions.

Stratom’s core autonomy software drives the entire system, and the solution is versatile enough so that it can be configured for any number of mounting use cases and fuel types.

RAPID is adaptable to different vehicle types and can be deployed for a variety of applications, from mining, warehouse operations, trucking, aviation and cargo movement to high-volume container refilling and the transport of other materials, including water, other liquids and hazardous wastes.

The system can be used in both autonomous and human-operated applications. It can be operated remotely, so that the refueling operator can remain in another vehicle, bunker or a safe distance away. Vehicle operators do not need to exit their vehicles during the refueling process.

“Autonomy is transforming how we live, work, learn and entertain ourselves. Trends are increasingly showing that applications of this technology center around autonomous vehicles and the deployment of autonomous fleets,” said Mark Gordon, president and CEO of Stratom. “As the world moves toward an autonomous future, why bring humans back in the loop? At Stratom, we automate monotonous, difficult or dangerous tasks to help keep organizations — and their most valuable asset, their people — operating safely and at peak efficiency.”

Stratom has already deployed the RAPID solution to refuel helicopters. | Credit: Stratom

Stratom has deployed a number of autonomous refueling solutions, including helicopter refueling stations. The portability of the solution is key to the design as it allows the entire system to be transported and deployed to support mobile operations in the field.

Stratom claims the operational benefits of RAPID include:

• Reduced human exposure to hazardous environments
• Improved productivity and efficiency of fuel delivery system
• Streamlined configurability as a self-sufficient containerized system
• Ruggedized design for deployment in the most austere environments
• Increased resilience of operations

“Delivering a completely customized, groundbreaking solution aligned with the evolution of autonomous vehicles empowers Stratom to partner with innovative companies across industries to continue to solve the most pressing real-world operational challenges,” said Ryan DelGizzi, Stratom’s director of engineering. “With RAPID, crewed and uncrewed transportation and logistics operations decision-makers can significantly increase project flexibility and cost-efficiency while simultaneously solving productivity and safety challenges related to conveying significant amounts of liquid or fueling or recharging autonomous systems, vehicles, aircraft and other platforms.”

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Impossible Mining, a company developing an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that uses a pick and place manipulator to harvest battery materials from the deep seabed, announced that it brought in $10.1 million in seed funding. 

The company began working on the engineering architecture for its AUV in 2020, and filed its first patents in 2021. Impossible Mining also raised its first funding round in 2021, allowing it to begin work on Proof of Concept for its nodule harvesting and bio-extraction technologies, which it hopes to finish in late 2022.

When finished, Impossible Mining’s AUV will travel up to four-miles deep into the ocean to harvest polymetallic nodules individually. The robot will be equipped with image sensing technology so that it can identify megafauna present on the nodules and leave the ones with megafauna present untouched. 

“The US needs independent, secure access to critical battery metals. We are excited to accelerate the production of our deep water robots with this injection of capital, and to prove to both regulators and stakeholders that we can achieve what dredge-based technology can’t – the preservation of the seafloor environment,” Oliver Gunasekara, CEO & co-founder of Impossible Mining, said.

The company’s solution has a low environmental impact as it avoids disturbing nodule fauna, has no significant plume, no return water and leaves no impact on sediment structure or sediment fauna. The solution is also easily scalable by simply adding more robots. 

Justin Hamilton led the funding round, which also included participation from a select group of YC investors. Impossible Mining plans to use the funds from the round to develop and test its robotic collections system and continue developing its bio-extraction technology. 

“Lithium-ion battery markets will increase tenfold in the next decade, fueled by growth in EVs,” Hamilton said. “The deep seabed contains the largest global resource of battery metals. The Impossible Mining team has demonstrated its robotics technology showing the capabilities for selective pickup, rising to the challenge of accessing these metals in an environmentally responsible way.”

Along with the funding, Impossible Mining announced its key advisors: Bob Galyen, former CTO of CATL, Dan Lankford, former CEO of AT&T Microelectronics, Europe, Justin Manley, an AUV design expert, Simon Segars, former CEO of ARM and former board member of SoftBank and Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron. 

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ADP deployed ten of its robots to aid in surveying the collapsed mine. | Source: ADP

39.7% of mining companies included in an analysis conducted by Mining Technology were recruiting for robotics related positions in May 2022. This marks a year high for hiring robotics jobs in this sector. 

In April 2022, just 33.3% of mining companies surveyed had robotics openings, and a year ago, that number was at just 17.9%. The number of mining companies that are looking to fill robotics positions has been steadily rising since February 2022, when 21.1% were looking. 

Mining companies are currently hiring for robotics jobs at a higher rate than the average for all companies. In total, 1.2% of newly posted job advertisements in May 2022 were linked to robotics, the highest monthly figure recorded in the past year, according to Mining Technology. 

Robotics provide many opportunities in the mining industry, where many jobs are very dangerous for people to perform. 

For example, a limestone mine over 100 years old near Crab Orchard Tennessee collapsed suddenly in August 2021. The collapse left an 800 ft across and 100 ft deep surface subsidence area that the US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) determined was too dangerous for a person to explore.

The mining team used robots from Australian Droid and Robot (ADR) to inspect what was left of the mine, which allows mine workers to determine what was safe and to restore power and communications in the mine. 

The robotics industry as a whole is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% to $568 billion by 2030, according to analysis from Mining Technology.   

Editor’s Note: The Field Robotics Engineering Forum will take place on October 19-20, 2022 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The forum is an international conference and exposition specifically designed to provide engineers, engineering management, business professionals and others, with the information, guidance and peer networking opportunities they need to successfully develop and safely deploy the next generation of robotics systems for operation in wide-ranging, outdoor, dynamic environments.

WTWH Media is currently accepting session abstracts to be considered for presentation at the event. The Field Robotics Engineering Forum is seeking thought-provoking sessions delivered by compelling speakers in each of the four tracks, technologies, tools and platforms, development, testing and deployment, and markets and applications. 

The post Hiring levels for robotics jobs in mining hit year high in May appeared first on The Robot Report.

WTWH Media invites you to submit a session abstract to be considered for presentation at the Field Robotics Engineering Forum, to be held October 19-20, 2022 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA.

The Field Robotics Engineering Forum is an international conference and exposition specifically designed to provide engineers, engineering management, business professionals and others, with the information, guidance and peer networking opportunities they need to successfully develop and safely deploy the next generation of robotics systems for operation in wide-ranging, outdoor, dynamic environments.

The Field Robotics Engineering Forum is seeking thought-provoking sessions delivered by compelling speakers in each of the four tracks listed below:

• Technologies, Tools and Platforms Track – Sessions in the Technologies, Tools and Platforms will cover the latest advances in the ‘core’ technologies common to all classes of field robotics systems that allow them to “Sense, Think and Act”.
• Development, Testing and Deployment Track – Topics covered in the Development, Testing and Deployment Track focus on robotics design, development, and testing tools, as well as standards and methodologies, that speed and ease the development and deployment of field robotics systems.
• Markets and Applications Track – Sessions in the Markets and Applications Track focus on those industry and application specific attributes unique to specific field robotics systems, with sessions providing insights and recommendations into the optimal design, development and deployment choice for specific system classes.

Submission form

Deadline
The entry deadline for submitting speaker proposals is June 30, 2022.

All speakers receive

• Complimentary full registration
• Admission to all keynotes, general sessions, panels, special events, breakfasts, lunches and receptions
• Complimentary guest registrations up to two attendees

Co-located events
The Field Robotics Engineering Forum will be co-located with the RoboBusiness, an international conference and exposition designed to provide engineers, engineering management, business professionals and others, with the information, guidance and peer networking opportunities they require to successfully develop and safely deploy the next generation of field robotics systems for operation in wide-ranging, outdoor, dynamic environments.

Also co-located with RoboBusiness is DeviceTalks West, the premier industry event for medical technology professionals, currently in its ninth year. Both events attract engineering and business professionals from a broad range of healthcare and medical technology backgrounds.

Sponsorship opportunities
For information about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, download the prospectus. Question regarding sponsorship opportunities should be directed to Courtney Nagle at cnagle[AT]wtwhmedia.com.

Conference programming
For questions regarding RoboBusiness Conference & Expo conference programming, contact Dan Kara at dkara[AT]wtwhmedia.com.

About WTWH Media
WTWH Media is an integrated media company serving engineering, business and investment professionals through 50+ websites, 5 print publications, along with many other technical and business events. WTWH’s Robotics Group produces The Robot Report, Robotics Business Review, Collaborative Robotics Trends and Mobile Robot Guide, online technical, business and investment news and information portals focused on robotics and intelligent systems. WTWH Media also produces leading in-person robotics conferences including the Robotics Summit & Expo, RoboBusiness the Field Robotics Engineering Forum and the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum. See www.wtwhmedia.com for more information.

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Teleo creates retrofit kits for heavy equipment that allows the equipment to operate semi-autonomously. | Source: Teleo

Teleo, a company that creates semi-autonomous retrofit kits for heavy construction and mining equipment, announced it raised $12 million in Series A funding. The company plans to use the funds from the round to scale the deployment of, and invest in research and development for, its Teleo Supervised Autonomy technology.

The company’s autonomy kits can be fitted onto heavy equipment to allow it to run without an operator in the cabin. Teleo’s Supervised Autonomy allows an operator to control multiple pieces of equipment form a remote control station. 

“With this Series A funding, we plan to double down on hardening and deploying technology that lets our customers operate their existing fleets of heavy equipment semi-autonomously,” Vinay Shet, co-founder and CEO of Teleo, said.

UP.Partners, a firm that invests in technology that helps transport people and goods faster, safer and cleaner, led the funding round. New investors, F-Prime Capital and K9 Ventures, also participated in the round, as well as Trucks Venture Capital, which led Teleo’s seed funding round.

“Teleo was founded by two exceptional individuals, with extensive backgrounds in deep technology and autonomy. We believe their approach to bringing human supervised autonomy to the heavy equipment market is incredibly insightful and important. Teleo’s technology positively impacts the ROI of operation, while both upskilling the operator community, and increasing safety levels,” Adam Grosser, chairman and managing partner of UP.Partners, said.

Along with the funding, Teleo announced a partnership with RDO Equipment Co., a construction equipment technology supplier and one of John Deere’s largest dealerships. According to the company, partnering with heavy equipment distributors like RDO will allow it to reach customers across multiple distribution channels. 

Teleo was founded in 2019 by Shet and Rom Clement, the company’s current CTO. Shet and Clement both worked at Lyft prior to founding Teleo, Shet as the company’s Director of Product Management and Clement as the Head of Hardware Engineering. 

The post Teleo announces $12M in Series A funding appeared first on The Robot Report.

ADR deployed ten of its robots to aid in surveying the collapsed mine. | Source: ADR

Early in the morning on August 13, 2021, Justin Disney, the mine supervisor at the Lhoist North American limestone mine near Crab Orchard Tennessee, heard a sound he had never heard in his 16 years working in a mine.

“Like rain coming off the pillars,” Disney said. “At that moment something just dawned on me, and I started an evacuation. At 6:40 everyone was accounted for, and at about 6:59 and 48 seconds, the mine collapsed.”

The mine, which is more than 100 years old, let out a gust of air, dirt and debris moving at an estimated 120 MPH from all portals and ventilation shafts when it collapsed. Because of Disney’s evacuation, nobody was injured during the incident.

The US Mine Safety and Health administration (MSHA) quickly determined that the 800 ft across and 100 ft deep surface subsidence area left by the collapse was too dangerous for a person to explore. A robotic solution, however, wouldn’t be easy either.

Before the collapse, mine workers used a 2-way radio system that ran over a leaky feeder from PBE Group. The leaky feeder didn’t have the bandwidth to support unmanned drones or robots. Even if it could, it wasn’t operational after the collapse.

“It’s a unique challenge to try to provide a communication system underground to allow the data throughput to handle the video and LiDAR applications that were needed without infrastructure on the ground,” Wes Leffel, senior sales engineer at PBE Group, said.

With no network or power post-collapse, Rob Koch, director of technology at PBE, decided the best solution would be a wireless IP network with low latency and high throughput. Koch eventually settled on using an IP mesh network from Rajant and robots from Australian Droid and Robot (ADR). PBE, Rajant and ADR had worked together on previous solutions.

The team used 10 ADR Explora XL unmanned robots, a Rajant wireless Kinetic Mesh below-ground communication network and PBE hardware and technology. The robots placed three network infrastructure points within the mine, the deepest being 1.7 km, and set up eight robot hubs.

“We were able to form a really good visualization of where the collapse occurred and the safe areas where we can send manned explorations in,” Callum MacDermid, senior robotics engineer at ADR, said.

ADR’s robots inspected all required areas of the mine while live feeding video data at up to 80 Mbps. The robots were able to complete the inspection and allow mine workers back into the mine to restore power and communications.

The post How robots helped a collapsed mine get back in operation appeared first on The Robot Report.

Spot Release 3.0 adds functionality to make Spot the data collection solution you need for safer and more efficient inspection rounds. | Image credit: Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics enhances its popular Spot robot with the new Spot Release 3.0. This new release delivers flexible autonomy and repeatable data capture, and makes Spot more efficient to operate.

• Autowalk adds powerful new capabilities, enabling operators to record autonomous missions that implement dynamic sensing sitewide.
• Improvements to data capture making it reliable and easier to process.
• Plus a range of new features designed to enable new sensor payloads, along with other enterprise integrations to extract/exchange data.

Spot can be a great choice for an autonomous, mobile data gathering platform, especially in adverse environments. Boston Dynamics has invested thousands of engineering hours into optimizing the legged locomotion of Spot. As a result, Spot is capable of reliable operation in environments where wheeled AMRs struggle to navigate.

Since its release, Boston Dynamics continues to enhance the capabilities of Spot. Feedback from customers, and the experience gained from operating in difficult, industrial situations, is enabling the Spot development team to improve Spot’s capabilities. Spot 3.0 is purely a software upgrade and all existing Spot customers can benefit from the new features.

Improved autonomy for Autowalk

Spot’s Autowalk system has logged thousands of miles in industrial facilities and on construction sites around the world. Release 3.0 adds powerful new capabilities to Autowalk, enabling operators to record autonomous missions that implement dynamic sensing site-wide.

• Mission editing: Map an entire site by extending paths and adding new inspection Actions to existing missions over multiple recording sessions.
• Mission planning: Save time by selecting which inspection Actions you want Spot to perform, and it will take the shortest path to collect data.
• Dynamic replanning: Don’t miss inspections due to changes on site. Spot will replan around blocked paths to make sure it gets the data it was assigned to gather.
• Scheduled missions: Inspect a site after hours with simple scheduling tools and tablet-free, unsupervised autonomy.

More reliable data collection

Spot often operates in remote, un-supervised environment such as mines, construction sites and oil/gas production facilities. During a normal day, a Spot robot might patrol areas of a facility where there are not reliable network connections.

Release 3.0 makes data capture more reliable and easier to process. Users can connect computer vision models to Spot, adding valuable context to teleoperation and turning raw mission data into actionable signals at the edge.

• Repeatable image capture: Capture the same image from the same angle every time with scene-based camera alignment for the Spot CAM+ pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera.
• Live review of computer vision models: Use models from TensorFlow or choose a model from our API library to carry out inspection tasks such as gauge reading, thermal analysis, or acoustic anomaly detection. Preview computer vision models on the tablet and create smart Actions that process images within Autowalk.

Enterprise integrations

Spot closes the loop with enterprise systems to understand and manage operations. This helps teams to manage assets, detect anomalies sooner, track work, build digital twins, and more.

• Upload data: Automatically push data into enterprise systems at the end of a mission with custom code.
• Cloud-compatible: Connect Spot to AWS, Azure, IBM Maximo, and other systems with existing or easy-to-build integrations.
• Scout: Use Boston Dynamics’ web-based remote operation application to manage an entire dynamic sensing fleet, schedule missions, and review data collected on site.

Additional new features

Release 3.0 contains dozens of other features designed to help Spot become easier to program, troubleshoot and operate, while enabling dynamic sensing onsite.

• Payloads: Remotely restart payloads, easily configure payload parameters, and more.
• Manipulation: Remotely operate the Spot Arm with ease through rear Spot CAM integration and split-screen view. Arm improvements also include added functionality for push-bar doors, revamped grasping UX, and updated SDK.
• Sounds: Keep trained bystanders aware of Spot with configurable warning sounds.

For further details, check out the Spot 3.0 Release Notes on the Boston Dynamics website.

The post Boston Dynamics Spot learns new skills with 3.0 release appeared first on The Robot Report.

Oxbotica’s autonomous vehicle software doesn’t rely on infrastructure such as GPS and pre-existing maps. | Credit: Oxbotica

Oxbotica, an Oxford, England-based startup that develops autonomous vehicle software, closed a $47 million Series B investment today. Oxbotica, which spun out of Oxford University in 2014, has now raised about $80 million to date.

The Series B was led by bp ventures, the investing arm of oil and gas giant bp. BGF, Halma, HostPlus, IP Group, Tencent, Venture Science and others also participated in the round.

The new funding will help scale Oxbotica’s autonomous vehicle software, called Selenium, across multiple industries. Oxbotica will start with vehicles used in industrial applications such as mining and port logistics. Perhaps its lead investor, bp, is a sign of the size of its potential customers and projects in the industrial space. Oxbotica said on-road applications such as the transportation of goods and people are further out.

Selenium can handle an autonomous vehicle’s navigation, mapping, perception, and machine learning. Oxbotica said Selenium doesn’t need to rely on external infrastructure such as GPS, lane markings or pre-existing HD maps, although those can be used if available. Oxbotica said this makes the technology well suited to work both outdoors and indoors, as well as for on-road and off-road applications. Watch the video below to learn more about how Selenium applies to mining equipment.

Oxbotica said Selenium is hardware and sensor agnostic and can use radar, laser or vision sensing. It can be deployed as a standalone system or integrated into third-party stacks.

Oxbotica also offers a cloud-based fleet and data management system called Caesium. This system can integrate with Selenium to coordinate a fleet of vehicles, manage data collection, query log files, and remotely trigger specific data collection.

“This round of investment marks a key chapter in Oxbotica’s continued growth and pushes us forward in commercialising our autonomous software today, through key strategic go-to-market partnerships,” said Ozgur Tohumcu, CEO, Oxbotica. “The high-quality and global footprint of our investors cements our position as a leader in autonomy. We will use funds raised to accelerate the global deployment of our transformative technology.”

“bp ventures is delighted to invest in Oxbotica – we believe its software could accelerate the market for autonomous vehicles,” said Erin Hallock, managing partner, bp ventures.

“Oxbotica provides autonomy where it makes sense today: delivering safety, cost and environmental benefits,” said Jamie Vollbracht, Partner, Cleantech at IP Group plc. “Two years after IP Group’s first investment, we are delighted to be able to welcome multiple value-adding investors to the share register. This substantial funding round will enable Oxbotica to move to the next stage, delivering those benefits in multiple applications across the globe.”

Investments and mergers and acquisitions in the robotics industry are off to a fast start in 2021. Teledyne is acquiring FLIR for $8 billion, while Stryker acquired OrthoSensor, for an undisclosed amount, to enhance its Mako surgical robots. And AMP Robotics, a developer of pick-and-place robots that sort recyclable materials from waste flows, raised a $55 million Series B.

The post Oxbotica raises $47M to scale autonomous vehicle software appeared first on The Robot Report.

Welcome to Episode 28 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community.

You can subscribe to The Robot Report Podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify and more. Please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review!

This week, fellow editor Steve Crowe and I chat with returning guest Michael Patrick Perry, vice president for business development at Boston Dynamics, about the commercialization of the Spot quadruped robot. We also discuss the company’s other robots and its recent acquisition by Hyundai Motor Group.

Boston Dynamics’ Spot at a construction site. Credit: Pomerleau

In addition, Steve and I examine the prospects for Boston Dynamics, which has had three owners in seven years — Google, SoftBank, and now Hyundai. The Waltham, Mass.-based company plans to release a gripper for its legged robot next year.

Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) joins us to discuss the recently completed Virtual Cave Circuit of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. We talk about lessons learned in the various circuits so far, the creation of a simulated environment, and how the competitors used robots and drones. Chung also looks ahead to 2021’s final DARPA SubT circuit and applications for these new technologies.

Coordinated Robotics in World 8 of the Cave Circuit. Source: DARPA

Finally, Steve and I continue our look back at 2020 and peek ahead to 2021. We’re grateful to our speakers, sponsors, and, most of all, our listeners for a great first year of this podcast!

If you would like to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, or if you have recommendations for future guests or segment ideas, contact Steve or Eugene. For sponsorship opportunities of The Robot Report Podcast, contact Courtney Nagle for more information.

Podcast timestamps

• 0-6:49: Show intro
• 6:50-46:55: Conversation with Michael Patrick Perry, VP of business development, Boston Dynamics
• 46:56-1:21:23: Conversation with Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager for the DARPA Subterranean Challenge
• 1:21:24-1:28:18: Show outro and end-of-year thoughts

Show notes

• It’s official: Boston Dynamics is joining Hyundai
• Coordinated Robotics wins Cave Circuit Virtual Competition in DARPA SubT Challenge
• Best week ever for robotaxis?
• Coverage of mobile manipulation

The post Boston Dynamics talks about its big year and acquisition by Hyundai appeared first on The Robot Report.

To encourage the development of autonomous systems to explore dangerous environments for first responders and the U.S. military, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been conducting the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Last week, the agency announced Coordinated Robotics as the first-place winner in the Cave Circuit Virtual Competition. It was the third of four stages in the challenge, which runs from September 2018 through late 2021.

The DARPA SubT Challenge is intended to test and demonstrate the ability of autonomous robots to perceive, navigate, network, and move in a variety of GPS-denied environments. “We want to inspire and deliver robotics technologies that enable situational awareness across diverse underground environments,” said Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager for the SubT Challenge in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.

Coordinated Robotics, a self-funded team led by Kevin Knoedler in Newbury Park, Calif., won a $250,000 prize. Knoedler said he learned to use ground vehicles for the Tunnel Circuit and aerial vehicles for the Urban Circuit. Coordinated Robotics then combined their capabilities for the Cave Circuit. The ground robots shared information and deployed communication nodes, and the drones shared data among themselves and flew through vertical spaces. Endurance, coordination, and using the same software for both virtual and real vehicles were the keys to success, Knoedler said.

Knoedler previously won NASA’s Space Robotics Challenge single-handedly in 2017, and Coordinated Robotics won the Tunnel Circuit and was second in the virtual Urban Circuit.

Cave Circuit purely virtual

Unlike the first two elements of the DARPA SubT Challenge, which had a hardware Systems Track, the 16 teams ran their mapping and autonomy algorithms entirely in a virtual environment. This was in response to travel restrictions and the need for social distancing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but it worked so well that organizers said they plan to incorporate some simulation in the final, combined circuit.

The SubT organizers built eight “worlds” ranging from 1.5 to 5.2 km (0.9 to 3.2 mi.) in length in the cloud-based SubT Simulator from 73 “tiles” of cave elements, similar to video game design. The SubT technology repository is open-source, noted Chung.

“This virtual competition is opening the doors on who and where such competitions can occur,” Chung said. “It’s like a fantasy football league — virtual competitors could mix and match robots from across teams. New enhancements for the Cave Circuit included new robot models, dynamic environments, and communications ‘breadcrumbs.'”

“Our small team was very iterative in designing worlds,” said Angela Maio, mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and virtual competition lead. “[Factors included] percentage of areas lit, percentages traversable by UGVs [unmanned ground vehicles], size and verticality, and how devious we were in placing artifacts.”

“The robots must communicate with each other to figure out where to explore autonomously,” she said. “Different passages are constrained, plus there are some large caverns to search.”

Competitors configured simulated thermal, visual, and lidar sensors and wheeled or tracked robots or quadcopters, for a total of 17 different platforms and 58 configurations. Each team sent its robots and/or drones to navigate the eight cave courses three times, with the best score counting.

The fully autonomous systems needed to locate 20 “artifacts” hidden in the courses to within five-meter accuracy. These virtual artifacts included backpacks, cellphones, helmets, rope, and a “survivor” mannequin to simulate traces of survivors in a mining accident.

“The challenges involved in navigating unpredictable caves include tight spaces, rockfalls, and lack of visibility — all of which, and more, were incorporated into the virtual caves,” stated Chung. “Beyond pride and prize money, competitors in this and other DARPA Grand Challenges are forging new paths that we are confident will lead to important innovations to help both warfighters and first responders.”

Coordinated Robotics deployed nine virtual robots for the Cave Circuit. The team’s systems participants include the California State University Channel Islands, Oke Onwuka, and Sequoia Middle School.

SubT Cave Circuit leaderboard. Source: DARPA

Coordinated Robotics joins other winners

DARPA-funded BARCS (for Bayesian Adaptive Robot Control System), which includes researchers from Michigan Technological University and the Michigan Tech Research Institute, placed second. Only self-funded teams were eligible for monetary prices in the first three circuits, but all teams are eligible in the final event, said DARPA.

Dynamo, another one-man team led by Hilaraio Tomé in Spain, won third place and $150,000. Robotika, which includes Czech company Robotika International, the Czech University of Life Science, and the Centre for Field Robotics, plus Switzerland-based Cogito Team, placed fourth and received $100,000.

Map Quickly located a cellphone within 5 cm and won “Most Accurate Artifact.” NUS SEDS won the “Reality to Virtual Award” because its software could be most easily used on two Huskies and the 1 QAV500 robot it simulated.

In addition to first place in the Cave Circuit, Coordinated Robotics won “Dynamic Dodger,” successfully avoiding 17 simulated rockfalls.

“The DARPA Subterranean Challenge is creating a community of multidisciplinary teams with a wide variety of expertise,” Chung said. “The best solutions to challenges of navigating the underground will likely be found through combining the ideas of our many talented competitors. We’re already seeing SubT software in other contexts, such as brightening imagery in low-light settings. It’s a utility now that some folks are making use of independently.”

Countdown to the final event begins

DARPA said the final event of its SubT Challenge next autumn will include elements from all three subdomains — tunnel, urban, and cave. It said it expects to run the systems and virtual competitions at the same time.

“Hopefully, we’ll have more marsupials,” said Chung, referring to drone/UGV combinations, which combine a drone’s agility in vertical spaces with a ground robot’s endurance. “Many competitors had considered them up until submission day.”

“It’s admittedly a harder system to think about in terms of autonomy, state management, and knowing when to deploy,” he told The Robot Report.

Both DARPA-funded and self-funded teams will compete for up to $2 million in the Systems Competition and $1.5 million in the Virtual Competition. New teams are still welcome to join, said Chung.

The post Coordinated Robotics wins Cave Circuit Virtual Competition in DARPA SubT Challenge appeared first on The Robot Report.

While many industry observers see regulatory approval as hurdle for commercial drone delivery, technological and business challenges also need to be solved at scale. Volansi Inc. today announced the opening of a new facility in the Bend, Ore., area to support its delivery drone development, testing, and production.

The Concord, Calif.-based company has developed vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), middle-mile drone-delivery services. Volansi also said it provides on-demand aerial delivery services for time-critical shipments over long ranges. The company, which also has a location in Arizona, serves oil and gas, mining, defense, and medical applications, and it has ongoing operations in Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S.

In September, Volansi raised $50 million in Series B funding, which it plans to use to expand its team and facilities, launch new projects, and scale current initiatives in emerging markets and the U.S. Last month, Volansi piloted the delivery of Merck medications in rural North Carolina.

Volansi develops delivery drone capabilities

Volansi develops, manufactures, and operates its own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including the VOLY C10 and VOLY M20 autonomous drones. The VOLY C10, the workhorse of Volansi’s UAV fleet, carries up to 10 lb. of cargo over 50 mi. The company’s ongoing delivery drone project in North Carolina demonstrates the VOLY C10’s hybrid eVTOL fixed-wing flight system, making it one of the only drone delivery services capable of transporting fragile, temperature-controlled vaccines.

The VOLY M20 is a dual-role aircraft with the ability to simultaneously carry up to 20 lb. of cargo, in addition to 10 lb. of sensor payloads. It has a 350-mi. range, a cruising speed of 75 mph, and more than eight hours of endurance for sensor operations, said Volansi.

VOLY M20 drone. Source: Volansi

Bend offers access to talent

The local talent pool was a major reason for Volansi to expand its delivery drone operations in Bend, Ore., according to executives.

“We have always applied a rapid, iterative approach more commonly used in robotics design or software development when innovating with our technology,” stated Hannan Parvizian, co-founder and CEO of Volansi. “With deep industrial roots, a rich talent pool, and mostly year-round good weather, the fast-growing Bend metro area was the obvious choice for co-locating the development, production, and testing of our aviation technology. We look forward to joining the community and making the Bend area our second home.”

“Central Oregon and the Pacific Northwest provide amazing access to great talent, a plethora of supply chain options, and an excellent operating environment,” said Mike Jackson, vice president of global operations at Volansi. “We feel the area is very well positioned to support both our growth potential and our pending production requirements.”

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Increasing levels of autonomy are helping to make drones more useful for commercial use. Exyn Technologies, which has developed autonomous aerial robots for complex, GPS-denied industrial environments, today announced the ExynAero and ExynPak. The company said its new drone and sensor system expand its technology offerings for collecting data from challenging and previously unmappable environments.

Philadelphia-based Exyn spun out of the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. The company said its full stack of autonomous systems serves mining, construction, logistics, and military applications.

ExynAero includes autonomy, agility, and accuracy

Exyn Technologies said the ExynAero is an upgrade from its previous A3R system. The drone is fully autonomous and can map environments including GPS-denied, human-inaccessible, industrial sites without a pilot. The enables users to keep their employees safe while maximizing beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) data collection and communications, said the company.

The new technology builds on the company’s ExynAI software, which can mesh multiple data streams in real time. The ExynAero’s software can also automatically merge data from various sensors and platforms to build a robust map of an environment, even with multiple units running simultaneously, Exyn said.

The ExynAero includes a 270-degree view, providing detailed in-depth visuals of stopes in full HD color, bright lighting, and lidar to provide top acuity, shooting over 300,000 beams per second for highly accurate visualizations, said Exyn. The company added that ExynAero’s flight stack and agile navigation provide stability and robustness in tight spaces, and the system can easily transfer data to team members who can analyze it.

The ExynAero. Source: Exyn Technologies

“The ExynAero represents the future of data collection across a number of applications and industrial environments,” stated Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies. “The product is the first of its kind to offer true aerial autonomy. The ExynAero can fly itself in the most challenging and unknown environments, collect the data, and merge the streams with ExynAI on board. This allows for maximum data collection and a radical improvement in safety for workers around the world who are placed in difficult and sometimes potentially dangerous conditions.”

“We’re hoping with the launch of this product and the additional modalities offered by the ExynPak that our customers will be able to collect the data they need easily, regardless of limitations,” he added. “The benefits of this will lead to not only significantly greater worker safety, but also considerably improved productivity and efficiency.”

ExynPak offers portability

The ExynPak provides a new portable format that enables users to unstrap the autonomy features of the ExynAero and simply capture data with the built-in tools via other modalities — such as hand carry or vehicle mount — for situations where complete autonomy is not needed or practical.

ExynPak with handles. Source: Exyn Technologies

Exyn Technologies said ExynPak will allow it to apply its core technology to more use cases and environments involving existing infrastructure or transportation modes that don’t require an aerial or autonomous component. Exyn said it plans to continue to develop new products to help support mapping and data collection, regardless of format, with more products coming out in 2021.

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Aerial drones and robots can collect massive amounts of data, but that information is only useful if it can be analyzed and passed along to humans for effective decision making. Kespry Inc. today announced the availability of Kespry Perception Analytics. The company said its system is designed for industrial use cases requiring comprehensive analysis of complex visual data, including asset condition tracking and identifying anomalies.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kespry was founded in 2013. It offers automation and machine learning capabilities to help businesses organize photos, videos, and infrared footage to identify and manage issues with physical assets. The company said its capabilities are based on its experience in drone-based aerial intelligence serving more than 270 mining and aggregates companies across North America, Europe, and Australia, as well as some of the world’s largest insurers.

Kespry customers include Colas, Fluor, Grinnell Mutual, Lehigh Hanson/Heidelberg, Oldcastle, Shell, Titan America, XAP 360, and Zellstoff Celgar.

Kespry Perception Analytics designed to streamline inspections

Instead of manually reviewing multiple sources of visual and sensor-based data, Kespry Perception Analytics is designed to streamline the inspection process by creating a geotagged, historical repository for visual data. This enables teams to easily analyze multiple sources of data across assets, track trends over time, and perform proactive maintenance.

At the heart of Kespry Perception Analytics is a knowledge graph, said the company. It maps a company’s entire library of visual data, including media files and photogrammetric output, by types of physical assets, their specific geographic location, and the types and times of issues identified.

“Kespry Perception Analytics delivers unprecedented business insight and solves major problems for industrial companies that have struggled to get meaningful value from visual data in a timely manner,” stated George Mathew, CEO of Kespry. “It provides companies with a more complete view of the state of assets than just depending on telemetry data alone. It’s designed with a simple interface to help users intuitively navigate through complex analysis with ease.”

The platform provides a comprehensive toolset to ingest and index the data, according to Kespry, and it uses Microsoft’s Azure machine learning to generate insights on the data. Kespry Perception Analytics’ intuitive search and analytics capabilities enable reliability and maintenance teams to query data without any coding knowledge, claimed the company. The system offers interactive dashboards and data visualization tools to analyze the health of assets across an organization.

“Until recently, industrial companies have solely relied on telemetry and sensor-based data, in addition to manual visual inspections, when monitoring their assets,” Mathew told The Robot Report. “Kespry Perception Analytics [KPA] redefines how companies perform predictive maintenance by creating a holistic repository for visual data, such as digital photos, videos, thermal imaging, and ultrasound, allowing operations teams to better organize and analyze important components of their inspections.”

“KPA captures data from virtually any camera-based sensor, including cameras based on drones, as well as robot vision cameras. It captures the data in near-time and processes it on ingest, making it quickly available within the KPA application for analytics and insight,” he said. “Our platform seamlessly processes, tags, geospatially locates, and indexes visual sensor data via the most sophisticated AI and machine learning available in the enterprise cloud ecosystem.”

Cloud-based software can aid insurers assess things such as hail damage to a roof. Source: Kespry

Kespry collaborates with Microsoft

Kespry said it collaborated with Microsoft Corp. to ensure that Kespry Perception Analytics meets the rigorous needs of complex industrial operations. The system vertically integrates as an ISV solution for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Kespry Perception Analytics runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, which provides customers with the ability to integrate, manage, and deploy Kespry Perception Analytics at scale across their global networks using established tools and frameworks, said the companies.

“Kespry Perception Analytics is an excellent example of a business solution that combines next-generation image and video analysis via the power of Microsoft Azure cloud and Azure AI.” said James Phillips, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “Kespry’s solution requires incredible speed and network availability to ensure it can deliver on its compute demands and have the resilience and availability necessary as a business-critical application.”

Source: Kespry

Uses for KPA

Chemical, energy, pulp and paper, food and beverage, and port facilities capture petabytes of inspection data from handheld and fixed cameras, drones and other robots, and thermal guns. This data can provide critical insights into asset conditions and efficiency. But reliability and maintenance teams waste valuable time organizing and searching inaccessible, unaggregated, and difficult-to-parse data across multiple users and systems, said Kespry. This makes it difficult to proactively detect problems that can lead to asset failures such as leaks and corrosion.

Mathew provided an example of how Kespry Perception Analytics can benefit inspection applications.

“Energy companies require constant inspections of key assets such as pipelines, tanks, and stacks to maximize health and performance for 24×7 operations,” he said. “Kespry Perception Analytics solves one of the most significant, yet demanding problems energy companies face today: proactively and efficiently analyzing key insights from terabytes of visual data captured daily, and correlating the requisite operational data to identify and resolve issues.

“Similar to large industrial companies, ports have a host of assets that they need to regularly maintain, including dock components; cranes; tank farms; and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and ladders. In order to inspect these assets, members of their engineering, maintenance and tenant services teams collect visual data on a daily basis. However, once that data is collected, there is no good way to store and organize it,” Mathew added. “Kespry Perception Analytics help ports become much more advanced in this process, enabling operations teams to better organize the visual data they collect, track trends over time, and tie visual data to specific assets in specific locations.”

Early users have provided support and feedback, he said.

“We are currently in the midst of major deployments with a pulp and paper giant, as well as one of the biggest port facilities in the country,” said Mathew. “Both organizations have been incredibly enthusiastic at the potential for Kespry Perception Analytics and see the long-term value for mitigating issues that could later become incredibly costly and difficult to address. The value of KPA is resonating with asset health and reliability teams, as well as data analysts within these companies.”

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Precision agriculture and deliveries are not the only applications of unmanned aerial vehicles that are waiting for regulatory approvals and increasing levels of autonomy. Indoor flights in environments such as mines are another area of interest for drone developers. This summer, Emesent Pty. Ltd. announced the launch of Autonomy Level 2 for its Hovermap payload for industrial drones.

Brisbane, Australia-based Emesent was founded in 2018 and said that Hovermap combines collision avoidance and autonomous flight technologies for mapping hazardous or GPS-denied environments. It can be handheld or mounted on a vehicle or drone.

Autonomy Level 2 (AL2) builds on a decade of 3D lidar research conducted by the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It also builds on Emesent’s simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system to enable drones to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) into unmapped areas.

“The underlying technology has been in the works for a long time,” said Stefan Hrabar, co-founder and CEO of Emesent. “I’ve been working on drone autonomy for 20 years — back then, it was single-rotor, gas-powered, mini-helicopters. Custom automation consisted of big, bulky autopilots and compute with radar on board.”

Hovermap helps drones perceive in 360 degrees

“I did my Ph.D. in robotics at USC in 2006 and moved to Australia to join CSIRO,” Hrabar told The Robot Report. “We worked on drone autonomy, while co-founder Farid [Kendoul, now Emesent chief technology officer] and his group were working in parallel in France on SLAM.”

“With a Velodyne 3D lidar sensor and real-time SLAM to get a state estimate, we can get a full spherical view,” he explained. “Emesent has combined perception and path planning in a single unit. It’s a two-in-one system — with a mission payload capturing lidar data, plus the autonomy payload. It’s pretty unique.”

“Using one sensor for both navigation and the mission saves weight, and for applications where rich lidar data is critical, it totally makes sense,” added Hrabar. “There are some cases where it might not make sense, such as with taking gas samples, but many customers use our system for visual inspection, using the lidar point cloud output for context.”

For the past two years, customers have been using Hovermap’s Autonomy Level 1 capability with more than 100 units to safely map GPS-denied environments within visual line of sight, said Emesent.

With Autonomy Level 2, a drone can self-navigate and avoid BVLOS obstacles, the company added. Its system processes data onboard in real time to stream a 3D map back to the operator’s tablet, providing insights on the environment and potential hazards. An operator can manage an entire mission, from takeoff to landing, by interacting with the live map, said Emesent.

In January, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) named Emesent as a qualifier in the Urban Circuit of its Subterranean Challenge.

“It has been incredible to be involved,” said Hrabar. “DARPA’s requirements are tough for drone autonomy. We deployed multiple drones and successfully explored mine shafts. Whatever we develop for these rounds is well aligned with our commercial objectives as we use Hovermap in mines.”

Drone system designed to provide safety assurance

Autonomy Level 2 can improve operator safety, optimize costs, and reduce downtime, claimed Emesent. The system’s “Tap-to-Fly” and “Guided Exploration” functions are designed for ease of use, and its real-time point clouds can enhance visibility and enable pilots to direct UAVs in real time, it added.

AL2 is compatible with DJI Enterprise drones including the new DJI Matrice 300 RTK, and Emesent is working on compatibility with more drone models. The company is also working on compatibility with U.S. defense systems.

“In most of the developed world, BVLOS operations are obviously an issue,” said Hrabar. “Autonomy Level 2 provides path planning and collision avoidance, demonstrating another level of safety to regulators.”

“AL2 includes failsafes so that drones will return home if their batteries get low and land if power falls below a certain level,” he said. “The challenging part is edge cases. Heavy dust can prevent SLAM from behaving, so the system must make an emergency escape to backtrack. The last 5% is the hardest.”

The AL2 technology for Hovermap, using Velodyne lidar sensors, is designed to rapidly map, navigate and collect data in challenging inaccessible environments such as mines. Source: Emesent

Autonomy Level 2 applications in mining and beyond

Autonomy Level 2 can help companies rapidly map, navigate, and collect data in environments such as mines, construction sites, telecommunications infrastructure, and disaster-response situations, said Emesent.

“As soon as we started demonstrating plug-and-play capability at CSIRO, we got interest from mining companies,” Hrabar said. “The speed of data capture is much quicker and safer than the current method of cavity measurement, which is sending surveyors into challenging environments with a sensor on a pole.”

“The quality of the data for calculating volume blew them away, and it can lead to new insights that were not possible before,” he said. “It can assess if there are any areas that are dangerous, like rocks coming down. The air blast from a rockfall can kill people. Our system is the most tested and commercially used underground drone in the world. We expect to see more and more autonomous systems underground, where the regulations are different than in airspace.”

“For us, Autonomy Level 3 would be full exploration — mission-specific, single-click autonomy without needing a guide, like Level 5 in the self-driving space,” he said. “We have a proof of concept of a drone taking off, finding a telecommunications tower, executing a spiral trajectory to take inspection images, and landing. Next year, we hope to release Level 3 capability for mining.”

In addition, Emesent has received requests for its UAV technology in other industrial uses. “One company is using Hovermap for demonstrating stadium disinfection,” said Hrabar. “It’s a dual-drone setup — a hose goes from the first drone to a second one, and Hovermap is providing stabilization and obstacle avoidance.”

“Warehouses are a fairly common inquiry, but there are others in that space,” he noted. “Our most exotic request was a documentary company in the U.S. looking for a drone to fly into a cave looking for a yeti.”

Emesent, which has about 40 staffers and is hiring, expects to eventually raise funding as it commercializes its Autonomy Level 2 technology. “One half of our vision is to automate data collection, then to automate analysis,” Hrabar said. “A drone would autonomously apply analytics to data, then adapt its flight plan in real time to collect the best data — we’d like to close that loop.”

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Despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis and simmering trade tensions, robotics companies received more than $1.9 billion in funding in July 2020. As usual lately, autonomous vehicles led the way, followed by drones, robots for manufacturing, and healthcare systems.

Second-quarter venture funding reportedly declined in North America, and some regions, such as Southeast Asia, may have a lag before they feel the full effects of macroeconomic slowdowns. However, The Robot Report tracked a total of 47 transactions in July 2020, close to the 49 transactions worth about $1.9 billion last month and the 49 transactions worth $1.1 billion in July 2019. Shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic have eased in some parts of the world, and investor interest in automation remained steady.

Here are the robotics companies that received funding last month, in millions of U.S. dollars, where amounts were publicly available.

Robotics investments, July 2020

PitchBook reported that Q2 merger activity remained strong in Europe. The table below lists the six mergers and acquisitions from July 2020, in comparison with seven in June 2020 and eight a year ago. Amounts were not specified.

Robotics acquisitions, July 2020

Self-driving cars, trucks keep rolling

Autonomous vehicle technologies raised more than $533 million in July 2020. The largest single robotics transaction of the past month was the $500 million Series C round of Guangzhou, China-based Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co., also known as Xpeng Motors. The maker of electric and self-driving cars had raised $400 million in November 2019 and also announced a $100 million U.S. initial public offering (IPO) in August 2020.

The G3 electric SUV and the P7 car with driver-assist capabilities. Source: Xpeng Motors

Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork, led Series B investment of $19 million in GoTo Global. Formerly known as Car2Go, Tel Aviv, Israel-based GoTo Global offers ride-sharing services and is supporting autonomous vehicle research. Suzhou, China-based iMotion Automotive Technology Ltd. raised $14 million toward ramping up to mass production of automated driving systems.

Vehicle manufacturer Navistar International Corp. has partnered with TuSimple LLC, which has been developing self-driving trucks. It also invested an unspecified amount in San Diego-based TuSimple, but TechCrunch had noted that the company was looking for $250 million to scale up production.

Industrial automation makes money in July 2020

Companies supplying robots for manufacturing and supply chain applications raised more than $325 million last month, as automotive demand began to rebound from pandemic shutdowns. Nanjing, China-based Estun Automation Co., which supplies industrial controls and welding robots, last month said it is raising $143 million.

Wuhu, China-based Efort Intelligent Equipment Co. filed for an initial public offering (IPO) of $118 million with the Shanghai stock exchange for the STAR Market. Also in China, Standard Robots in Shenzhen raised Series B funding of $14.3 million for mobile robotic systems for logistics and inspection.

Also in July 2020, Dexterity Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., obtained $56.2 million in Series A funding as it emerged from stealth with its “full stack” for robotic picking and packing. Somerville, Mass.-based gripper maker RightHand Robotics Inc. secured $6 million in financing.

Guldford, U.K.-based collaborative robot maker Inovo Robotics received $1.89 million, while Shenzhen-based machine vision firm Seizet obtained unspecified Series A funding.

Field robotics find funding

Suppliers of robots and drones for agriculture, energy, and military uses raised close to $1 billion in July 2020. FLIR Systems Inc. announced a notes offering of $494 million. The Arlington, Va.-based company makes a variety of airborne, ground-based, and marine systems for the public safety, defense, and utility industries.

Andreessen Horowitz led $200 million in Series C funding for Irvine, Calif.-based Anduril Industries Inc., which provides surveillance technologies, including aerial drones. Redwood City, Calif.-based Skydio Inc., which makes consumer, enterprise, and public-sector drones, raised $100 million in Series C funding to accelerate product development and market growth.

Also in the national security space, UAS Drone Corp. acquired Duke Robotics Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for an undisclosed amount.

Ecoppia in Herzeliya, Israel, got investment of $40 million for its solar panel-cleaning robots. CMG has acquired shares in AMBPR, a startup in Saint-Gaudens, France, developing autonomous robots for infrastructure inspection and cleaning of ship hulls.

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Taranis-Visual Ltd., which analyzes drone data for agriculture,  raised $30 million in Series C funding  in July 2020. Petronas Ventures led an unspecified investment in agbotics developer Braintree Technologies Sdn. Bhd., its first in Malaysia. Denver-based Propellor Aero received $18 million in Series B funding for mine-mapping drones.

Beijing-based marine robotics maker Tianjin Deepinfar Ocean Technology closed a $17 million Series B+ round. Also in nautical systems, Huntington Ingalls Industries led the $14.9 million in Series B funding for Sea Machines Robotics Inc. in Boston. Ifremer acquired Paris-based Forssea Robotics for an unspecified sum.

Surgical robots sew up more cash in July 2020

Despite a decline in medical device deals, healthcare robotics companies reported more than $61 million in funding last month. Boston-based Activ Surgical Inc. raised $15 million in venture funding as it commercializes its ActivEdge surgical platform. TransEnterix Inc. in Research Triangle Park, N.C., offered $13 million in stock as it continues work on its vision-guided surgical system.

Yokneam, Israel-based exoskeleton maker ReWalk Robotics Ltd. raised $9 million in July 2020. Back to surgical robots, NDR Medical Technology Pte. Ltd. in Singapore received $5.76 million in Series A funding, and MastOR SAS in Paris raised $3.37 million for its laparoscopy assistance system.

Beijing-based orthopedic surgical robot firm Rosenbot Technology Co. raised unspecified Series A funding, while Medtronic PLC invested in Huake Precision Medical Technology Co., also known as Sinovation Medical. Medtronic also acquired Lyon, France-based spinal surgery company Medicrea and Menlo Park, Calif.-based medical device maker Intersect ENT.

Avateramedical GmbH acquired Hannover, Germany-based surgical robotics firm FORWARDttc GmbH for an unspecified amount.

AI processors, sensors, and software get investment

Robotics components providers raised nearly $90 million in July 2020. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) sold $46.29 million in shares, and Zhaogun Electronics received $43.05 million in funding. Both companies make processors for artificial intelligence and are based in Shanghai.

LeddarTech acquired fellow automotive perception provider VayaVision in Tel Aviv for an unspecified amount. Similarly, Graf Industrial Corp. acquired lidar sensor maker Velodyne Lidar Inc. of Morgan Hill, Calif.

South Korean sensor company Adin Robotics obtained seed funding, and New York-based “emotion chip” company Emoshape Inc. received unspecified funding.

Baidu Ventures led Series A+ funding for Lightelligence, which is working on optical chips and has offices in Shanghai and Boston. Beijing-based radar firm Qinglei Technology reportedly closed “multimillion-yuan” angel funding in July 2020.

On the software side, InOrbit Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., said it raised seed funding of $2.6 million. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company provides a cloud-based robot fleet-management platform.

In addition, Guangzhou, China-based Chenjing Technology raised angel funding for its “spatial intelligence” software. Santa Monica, Calif.-based mvmtAI raised pre-seed funding as it develops machine vision technology.

Service robots clean up for July 2020

Service robots, from automated wait staff to cleaning robots, raised about $22 million in July 2020. Shenzhen-based indoor delivery robot maker Pudu Technology Inc. closed a Series B round of $15 million. London-based greeter robot firm BotsAndUs raised $5.96 million in Series A funding and partnered with Heathrow Airport and British Airways.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has increased interest in cleaning and disinfection robots. New York-based Somatic obtained $125,000 in seed funding for its bathroom-cleaning robots, and Swiss floor-scrubbing robot maker Kemaro AG raised unspecified Series A funding for European expansion.

Editors’ note: What defines robotics investments? The answer to this simple question is central in any attempt to quantify them with some degree of rigor. To make investment analyses consistent, repeatable, and valuable, it is critical to wring out as much subjectivity as possible during the evaluation process. This begins with a definition of terms and a description of assumptions.

Investors and investing
Investment should come from venture capital firms, corporate investment groups, angel investors, and other sources. Friends-and-family investments, government/non-governmental agency grants, and crowd-sourced funding are excluded.

Robotics and intelligent systems companies
Robotics companies must generate or expect to generate revenue from the production of robotics products (that sense, analyze, and act in the physical world), hardware or software subsystems and enabling technologies for robots, or services supporting robotics devices. For this analysis, autonomous vehicles (including technologies that support autonomous driving) and drones are considered robots, while 3D printers, CNC systems, and various types of “hard” automation are not.

Companies that are “robotic” in name only, or use the term “robot” to describe products and services that that do not enable or support devices acting in the physical world, are excluded. For example, this includes “software robots” and robotic process automation. Many firms have multiple locations in different countries. Company locations given in the analysis are based on the publicly listed headquarters in legal documents, press releases, etc.

Verification
Funding information is collected from a number of public and private sources. These include press releases from corporations and investment groups, corporate briefings, industry analysts, and association and industry publications, including PitchBook and Tracxn. In addition, information comes from sessions at conferences and seminars, as well as during private interviews with industry representatives, investors, and others. Unverifiable investments are excluded.

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