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Veo Robotics announced that it has closed a $29 million funding round. The round includes the company’s latest funding from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Safar Partners and Yamaha Motor Ventures, which totaled $14 million, and a $15 million funding round from last year. 

Veo hopes that the funding will accelerate its strategy of working with select corporate partners to deploy a new class of efficient and collaborative, human-in-the-loop robotic systems enabled by Veo’s proprietary safety technology. 

“The newest generation of intelligent robotic systems work with people, not separately from them,” Clara Vu, co-founder and CTO of Veo, said. “Unlocking this potential requires a new generation of safety systems – this is Veo’s mission, and we’re very excited to be taking this next step.”

FreeMove, Veo’s flagship product, is a comprehensive 3D safeguarding solution that reduces the cost and complexity of human-robot collaboration. The product has received functional safety certification to Performance Level D, meaning FreeMove enables humans to work closely with the full range of industrial robots from FANUC, Yaskawa Motoman, ABB, Kawasaki and Kuka. 

FreeMove’s sensors are positioned on the periphery of an industrial robot work cell to capture rich image data of the entire space. The FreeMove Engine then uses 3D data to identify the work cell, including the robot, workpiece, human and occlusions in order to track and calculate all possible future states. 

If a person gets closer to a robot than the system’s Protective Separation Distance (PSD), then FreeMove signals the robot to stop. Once the person steps out of the PSD and the violation is cleared, the system allows the robot to safely restart. 

“With the increased need for efficiency improvement in industrial environments, we’ve seen increasing requirements for safe robot operation in the close presence of humans. These integrated workflows involving both robots and employees provide maximum flexibility and ROI for our customers in manufacturing and logistics,” Patrick Sobalvarro, co-founder and CEO of Veo Robotics, said. “We’re working closely with select customers who share our vision for the future of automation. This funding enables us to add a few more partners to our early-adopter program.”

“As investors, we were drawn to Veo Robotics’ focus on safety in the workplace,” Matt Peterson, Director at Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund, said. “Their technology is both collaborative and effective, prioritizing employee wellbeing. We are excited to support Veo Robotics and their vision to design innovative and human-centric robotics.”