Running a robotics startup is no easy task. Yet, we are always amazed by the number of robotics startups working on innovative technologies.
Here, in alphabetical order, are 10 robotics startups The Robot Report will be watching in 2020. The companies are working on a variety of products, including autonomous vehicles, mobile robots for construction, toy robots, and software to give robots common sense and make them easier to use.
It’s hard to narrow this list down to just 10 robotics startups, so please share in the comments some robotics startups you will be watching in 2020. Make sure to also check out our must-watch robotics startups from 2019.
10 robotics startups to watch in 2020
Covariant
Headquarters: Berkeley, Calif.
Technology: artificial intelligence for robots
Founded: 2017
Funding: $27 million
Reason to watch: Covariant is building AI that it calls the “Covariant Brain” to make robots smarter. Covariant was founded in 2017, but it came out of stealth mode in January 2020, announcing that its first application is piece-picking for logistics companies. Covariant is competing directly with other robotics startups such as Kindred and RightHand Robotics. Covariant said its approach uses a variety of AI methods to train its robots, including reinforcement learning. It combines that with an off-the-shelf robot arm, a suction gripper, and a simple 2D camera system. The video above shows Covariant’s system operating in a warehouse that handles logistics for a company called Obeta.
Digital Dream Labs
Anki Cozmo
Headquarters: Pittsburgh
Technology: Toy robots
Founded: 2012
Reason to watch: The Robot Report broke the news of Digital Dream Labs acquiring Anki’s assets in December 2019. And the edtech startup has ambitious plans to revive all of Anki’s product lines by Christmas 2020 in the following order: Overdrive, Cozmo, Vector. Founder H. Jacob Hanchar also told us about a potential subscription-based model, an open-source Vector 2.0 and other initiatives he thinks will help build a sustainable portfolio of toy robots.
Anki abruptly shut down in April 2019 after making $325 million in revenue since it was founded in 2010. If Digital Dream Labs delivers on these promises and revives the product lines, it would be quite the comeback story and make Anki’s 6.5-plus million customers very happy.
Farmwise
Headquarters: San Francisco
Technology: Robots for agriculture
Founded: 2016
Funding: $20.2 million
Reason to watch: Farmwise is building adaptive robots for agriculture to give farmers greater yield, more profits, and a healthier environment. The company is starting with an autonomous weeding robot that can cleanly pick weeds from fields, reducing or eliminating the need for chemical pesticides. The robots have efficiently removed weeds from around more than 10 million plants, according to FarmWise.
Freedom Robotics
Headquarters: San Francisco
Technology: Robotics management software
Founded: 2018
Funding: $6.6 million
Reason to watch: Freedom Robotics combines development and management tools in its cloud-based robotics management software (RMS) to help prototype, build, operate and scale robot fleets. Cloud-based tools such as this will become crucial as more robotics startups launch and prepare to scale. Companies will be able to get to market quicker and easier by using these types of tools rather than devoting employees to developing a full software stack.
Freedom CEO Joshua Wilson said, “many of us are stuck building tools and infrastructure, and spend 90% of our time ‘making something (just barely) work’ and only 10% iterating with users and customers toward making a product people want.”
Outrider
Headquarters: Golden, Colo.
Technology: Autonomous yard operations
Founded: 2017
Funding: $53 million
Reason to watch: Currently, there are 50,000 yard trucks operating in the U.S., which handle the transfer of freight containers and trailers from trucks at a warehouse or distribution center. Colo.-based Outrider came out of stealth mode today, looking to automate these yard trucks through a new electric vehicle with Level 4 autonomy.
Formerly known as Azevtec, Outrider’s goal is to help distribution yards keep semi-trailers full of freight moving quickly in the space between warehouse doors and public roads. The company said many of the processes that make up yard operations are manual, inefficient, and hazardous.
Refraction AI
Headquarters: Ann Arbor, Mich.
Technology: Delivery robots for last-mile delivery
Founded: 2017
Funding: Undisclosed
Reason to watch: Refraction AI unveiled its Rev-1 delivery robot in mid-2019. The Rev-1 looks like a cross between Starship’s smaller delivery robots and Nuro’s larger autonomous delivery vehicles. It can operate on either sidewalks or streets, weighs 100 pounds, has a top speed of 15 MPH, and is currently priced at $5,000. The REV-1 is outfitted with GPS, 12 cameras and sensors that let it navigate its environment.
According to Refraction Co-founder Matthew Johnson-Roberson, services like DoorDash and Grubhub cost restaurants about 30% of an order total. For consumers, the cost of those delivery services is usually $3 to $5 plus tip, he said. Refraction is charging restaurants 10% to 15% and charging consumers $3. Refraction launched in Ann Arbor a pilot food delivery program in January with four restaurants and a few hundred participants. It plans to expand to a couple of other cities within six months.
For what it’s worth, Nuro raised $940 million from Softbank in February 2019.
Robust AI
Robust AI founders (left to right) Rodney Brooks, Mohamed Amer, Anthony Jules, Henrik Christensen and Gary Marcus at the Robust AI office in Palo Alto, Calif. | Credit: Peter Barret, Playground Global
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Technology: Cognitive platform for robots
Founded: 2019
Funding: Undisclosed Seed round
Reason to watch: Robust AI was first introduced at the Robotics Summit & Expo 2019 during co-founder Henrik Christensen’s keynote. The company is trying to build an industrial-grade cognitive platform that brings common sense reasoning to robots. This is no easy task. Few of the robots working in the real world are intelligent, and they’re often brittle and difficult to program.
Co-founder Gary Marcus told The Robot Report, “there are no general-purpose tools to help robots make decisions in open-ended environments.” To build its cognitive platform, Marcus said Robust AI will take a hybrid approach by combining multiple techniques, including deep learning and symbolic AI.
Alongside Christensen and Marcus, Robust AI features an all-star lineup of founders, including Mohamed Amer, Rodney Brooks, and Anthony Jules. Robust AI has a number of job openings in Palo Alto.
Scaled Robotics
Headquarters: Barcelona
Technology: Mobile robots for construction
Founded: 2016
Funding: $3.2 million
Reason to watch: The majority of large construction projects go over budget and take longer to complete. Despite being a global $10 trillion-a-year industry, commercial construction is one of the least automated markets. But that is starting to change. Barcelona-based Scaled Robotics builds mobile robots that navigate construction sites to collect 3D maps. These maps are uploaded to the cloud and compared to construction models to track the progress of a job and the quality of the construction to find potential mistakes.
Scaled Robotics has said its robots can minimize mistakes and improve overall efficiency of a project. It uses a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model, providing the robot and software on a monthly basis.
Southie Autonomy
Headquarters: Boston
Technology: Robot software
Founded: 2017
Funding: Undisclosed
Reason to watch: Ease of use is vital to the growth of the robotics industry. Southie Autonomy is developing intelligent robot software called “The Wand” that lets users tell robots what to do by using gesture and voice commands. The Wand uses a hand-held pointer and a patent-pending platform that combines AI and augmented reality AR to remove the complex programming required to set up robotic workflows. Southie claims no computer skills are required to be able to use The Wand.
The MassRobotics resident recently started picked up its first paying customers. Southie won the RoboBusiness Pitchfire startup competition in 2018, as well as the ABB Innovation Challenge. It was recently selected for the 2020 Techstars Air Force Accelerator.
XACT Robotics
Headquarters: Hingham, Mass.; Caesarea, Israel
Technology: robotic platform for needle steering for surgical procedures
Founded: 2013
Funding: $51 million
Reason to watch: XACT Robotics recently closed a $36 million Series D round of financing to commercialize its FDA- and CE-approved XACT Robotic System. The hands-free system combines image-based planning and navigation with instrument insertion and steering capabilities, to democratize percutaneous interventional procedures. The company claims this is the first technology of its kind. The XACT Robotic System is based on research originally conducted at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology by Prof. Moshe Shoham, who is the founder of Mazor Robotics, which was acquired by Medtronic in 2018 for $1.7 billion.
Interesting stuff and great list What’s clear is the diversity of robots will only grow, and I suspect that just as with PC’s, this industry could create more jobs than it eliminates. (Sorry Andrew Yang).
The emphasis on AI is fascinating and will certainly bear fruit increasingly over time. But there is a huge swath of applications that are more complex than traditional machine vision can economically handle, and yet are not the ultimate 3D AI challenge either. The bulk of the work that needs to be done in industrial automation is not quite that glamorous.
Admittedly, my perspective is biased- shameless plug – I work for Visual Robotics and I believe we’re a startup that should be on your radar too. We’re close to releasing our QuickPick 201 Vision Guidance System (for pick and place_that out-of-the-box, knows how to natively do a variety of 2D and 3D visual picking tasks including unknown objects and moving objects, without programming, conveyor instrumentation, etc. We’re probably not as flashy or trendy as the AI folks, but we think we’re doing for vision systems what UR did for robots, making the complex become simple.
What a great market opportunity we all have! Wishing you all great success!
Robots that imitate what human does, are short-lived and soon replaced.
First must change the process to make it easier to automate. Then automate with continuous motion not intermittent … faster more dependable and less expensive.
It’s like teaching a robot to paint the wall, first teaching them how to open the can, dip and clean the brush.
Buck_Crowley@msn.com
Great! I’d like to see more about robots in the recycling industry, taking the health risks out of the electronics and other toxic products that are now done by people.
While I am mostly interested in and amazed by the modern robotics departments and companies, everytime I see a video like those funny bits from Boston Dynamics, I can’t help myself but think of the robotic uprising as in the fantasy movies like Terminator and I, Robot!
No, but in all seriousness, the positive influences robotics companies can have on our everyday lives are immeasureable. Can’t wait to see what developments we will see in the near future!
Hello I have found this very interesting. What least know stock has the most potential to rise in percentages? Thanks for your time.
Regards
Sean O’Flaherty