The varied world of robotics appears to be in favor with venture capitalists.  CyPhy Works just got $22 million to scale up building UAVs for the consumer market, and Righthand Robotics got $3.3M to enable development of their smart robotic order-picking system.

CyPhy Works, with this $22M “B” round of funding, added three new strategic partners: UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and VC Bessemer Venture Partners. CyPhy Works got its start as a drone maker by building technology to inspect bridges, dams and other infrastructure facilities. Its tether technology enabled it to stay aloft indefinitely, stream what it sees in high definition, and have its communications be secure and unjammable. These capabilities make their drones valuable to defense, security, police, fire fighers and search operators as well.

Recently, in a Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $900,000, CyPhy added a new trick to its arsenal of unique technologies: level and smooth flight without the use of gimbaling devices (it has to do with using six rotors instead of four). It is this latter product that is being readied for the consumer market with some of the funding in this “B” round.

CyPhy has raised $35.35M since launching in 2010.

RightHand Robotics received $3.3M in funding from unknown sources to continue development of its low-cost automatic grasping technology for use with material handling and bin picking. RightHand’s technology doesn’t require per-object programming or setup; rather, with flexible grasping and fingertip barometric and tactile sensors, items can be grasped by “feel”.

RightHand’s rubber-jointed fingers bend to match the shape of objects, gripping them without software controls. The hand can also move into different configurations, depending on the size and shape of the object being grasped. Robotic arms fitted with RightHand’s compliant hand can grasp a wide variety of items from shelves, bins, or cases, and the company is pursuing studies in e-commerce order fulfillment, flexible manufacturing and other material handling marketplaces.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Helen Greiner, CEO and founder of CyPhy Works and co-founder of iRobot, about CyPhy Work’s LVL 1 photography drone. The LVL 1 drone has six propellers that are angled up and rotated slightly, which allows the drone to fly without tilting; flying without tilting is significant because, Helen says, it makes the drone more intuitive to control, as well as removing the need for a costly and high-maintenance camera stabilizing gimbal system. 

CyPhy Works has an KickStarter campaign for the LVL 1 drone that ends June 18th, 2015. The Kickstarter video and a link to the campaign are below.

Helen Griener

Helen Greiner co-founded iRobot in 1990 and served as President until 2004 and Chairman until 2008. During her tenure, Ms. Greiner guided iRobot into its position as a global leader with the release of the Roomba, the PackBotand SUGV military robots. She built a culture of practical innovation and delivery that led to the deployment of 6,000 PackBots. In addition, Ms. Greiner headed up iRobot’s financing projects, raising $35M in venture capital for a $75M initial public offering. Greiner holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in computer science, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Transcript

Audrow Nash: Hi, welcome to Robots Podcast. Can you introduce yourself?

Helen Greiner: My name is Helen Greiner and I’m the CEO and founder of CyPhy Works, the drone company.

Audrow Nash: Can you tell me about your career?

Helen Greiner: I saw a competition on the Discovery Channel of students building robots out of a kit of parts at MIT, and I decided I want to go there because those students looked like they were having a heck of a lot of fun building robots. I went to MIT, I interned at the jet propulsion laboratory, and then I did my masters also at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I was accepted to the PhD program and dropped out of it and started iRobot Corporation.

Audrow Nash: Now you are at CyPhy Works. Can you tell me a bit about the industrial drones that you make there?

Helen Greiner: We started at CyPhy Works with a very unique technology: a microfilament tether, which supplies power and communications, and [carries] video from the drones. With that, the drones have long, almost infinite times of flight because power is being supplied from the ground. And we’ve solved some of the communications challenges like being hacked or spoofed. We’ve built a drone that just goes up and stays up at 500 feet, 24/7.

Audrow Nash: You are releasing a drone you’re calling LVL 1. What are the primary applications that you expect the LVL 1 drone is going to be used for?

Helen Greiner: We’ve designed the LVL 1 as a consumer drone, so you can take it out and very practically look in your gutters for leaves, or, if a storm came through, look to see if a shingle blew off your house, or you can look at what’s going on in your neighborhood. And it’s also for fun. You can take it to that beach barbeque and get stunning photographs from a unique perspective. You can take videos of your kids out kayaking; you can take videos of your child’s soccer game.

There are just so many wonderful applications for drone photography, and I think it’s really taken the place of video cameras. Phones have taken a lot of the functionality, but there’s still a need to get great shots, and drones go beyond video cameras because you can get shots from up high. So you have unique perspectives, but you can also do rolling shots. Like if your child is on a bicycle or in a kayak, the drone can follow along with them. It’s better than a video camera in many respects because it can follow the action.

Audrow Nash: And it’s a consumer drone. Can you tell me about why you’ve made that transition from industrial and military to consumer?

Helen Greiner: We haven’t really transitioned to the consumer. We have a lot of very inventive engineers and drone scientists at the company and one of them, Kenneth Sebesta, came up with what we call “Level-Up Technology”. Most multi-rotors tilt into the direction of motion, and that means every sensor on them, including the camera, has to tilt with them. Companies have spent a lot of time building these fancy gimbal systems to compensate for that tilt.

What we’ve done is we’ve built a multi-rotor (a hex rotor) that just flies level. The way we’ve done that is by putting what we call a dihedral, which is the angle between the body of the drone and the rotors, we put an angle on that and we also give the strut a twist. A dihedral and a twist is how we get the level behavior. And of course it has to have a lot of fancy math and control code running on it.

Audrow Nash: How did you decide initially to make this drone?

Helen Greiner: Our drone scientist was working to make the Parc system, our larger drone, fly better in wind, and he was experimenting with twists on the struts. He was looking at the math behind it and noticed that if you put a dihedral as well as a twist you can get level flight or tilted flight if you want.

We quickly prototyped it, and our dronies started to fly it … and they loved it because it was such a better flight experience. We thought, “We’ve got to do something with this because this would be the right thing for a consumer drone.”

I really do believe this design is going to be the right design for consumers because it makes flying so much simpler. It’s very intuitive because it’s level flight. We pull the camera into the body, which means you’re just controlling the camera (rather than controlling a drone and then controlling a camera, which is kind of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach).

There are a lot of tech folks who like to do that, but it’s so much simpler if you just fly the camera. With the Level-Up Technology we actually have a very rapid yaw, which we don’t have on a regular quadrotor.

Audrow Nash: So it can rotate very quickly …

Helen Greiner: Yes, very quickly … and so now we can actually use that as your motion for the camera. It’s all come together as a very solid compact design, very rugged. We’ve talked to hobby shops, and they said that it’s never the drone that breaks; it’s always the camera gimbal. That’s because the gimbal is exposed and it takes the brunt of any hard landing; it’s also got wires flexing many times, and hobby shops spend a lot of time fixing people’s gimble system, and charging them for it. I think the LVL 1 drone will be a much more reliable drone.

Audrow Nash: This drone is significantly cheaper than most of comparable drones. Has that been accomplished largely by removing the gimbal system for holding the camera?

Helen Greiner: Yes, largely by removing the gimbal system, but we’re also making use of the smart phone as a controller. A smart phone makes a great controller because you’ve got a wonderful display touch screen, you have a Wi-Fi link already onboard, and it’s got a GPS in it. With the smart phone, many people already have all the elements you need for a drone controller.

Audrow Nash: Why six propellers?

Helen Greiner: The level of behavior does require six, and that’s because of the math that’s running inside it. Six also gives you a lot of other great features. For example, with the level of behavior we have, if one or some combination of two rotors breaks, the drone can still fly, which is very exciting.

Audrow Nash: If two of these propellers break it can still continue to fly, or is it just one?

Helen Greiner: Definitely one, and some combinations of two. [Greiner points to two propellers on the same side] If these two go out, you’re dead.

Audrow Nash: How is it controlled?

Helen Greiner: The primary mode of control will be the touch screen interface. It’s very easy to set an altitude and be able to drag the drone. You’re controlling the drone just like you would look at a picture in a map. People have already learned the workflow of that. You have a picture or a video coming back from the drone and you’re just controlling it, in a first person view within that screen. When you fly this, when you control the yaw, you’re just dragging across the screen, and it really feels like you’re tightly coupled to the robot. It’s very cool to feel it.

Audrow Nash: What about the follow-me behavior? How does that work?

Helen Greiner: We’re building on top of an open source project called Tau Labs, and Tau Labs already incorporates a follow-me behavior in the control code. We will have that when we release this, but user feedback so far on all the drones that have follow-me behavior is that it’s not that useful yet, and it probably won’t be that useful until you can have sense-and-avoid to make sure that it’s safe. Right now it’s really useful if you’re in the desert, on the ocean, or where there’s a wide open space. But we’d never want to use follow-me behavior today in your city park.

Audrow Nash: Speaking of sense-and-avoid behavior, does this have the ability to do any of that?

Helen Greiner: It doesn’t have sense-and-avoid yet.

Audrow Nash: Are there ultrasonic sensors, or anything for it to determine what’s around it?

Helen Greiner: No, not at the moment.

Audrow Nash: You have a new thing called “geo fencing” – can you tell me about that?

Helen Greiner: People who haven’t flown a drone before are a little intimidated for the first flight, and they read on the internet about how during someone’s first flight they run it into a tree or it goes off into the neighbor’s yard. We’ve created a very simple interface that let’s you walk a boundary and the robot will stay in that boundary and not go out of it so it can’t get in any trouble as you’re taking those first flights. But it can be also useful for the sophisticated user that wants to practice aerodynamic flight, so the drone doesn’t get away from you. It’s based on the Tau Labs code.

There are all kinds of features to make any polytope … any kind of a shape that you would like … and keep the robot in that. But that’s not what our users want. We’ve developed an intuitive interface, where you walk the boundary and it stays in that boundary. You don’t have to do any correspondence between a map on your cell phone and what’s happening in the physical world. You’re constructing the boundary in the physical world.

Audrow Nash: No punching in GPS coordinates?

Helen Greiner: No punching in GPS coordinates.

Audrow Nash: But this does rely on GPS to create the geo fence, correct?

Helen Greiner: It does, yes.

Audrow Nash: Is that challenging given that GPS can be fairly inaccurate unless you buy an expensive one?

Helen Greiner: You wouldn’t want to make your geo fence in an extremely confined area. We’re only as good as the GPS accuracy, but the GPS accuracy locally at a certain point in time is usually pretty good. It can vary over days and when satellites move from place to place, but the local time of GPS is usually reasonably accurate.

Audrow Nash: Can you use an RC transmitter to control this?

Helen Greiner: You can. We’ve put payload ports on the bottom of the robot, so you can take off the stumpy little feet and there are connectors and power that allow you to connect a radio receiver.

When you want to do acrobatics, you do need to turn off Level-Up mode because it’s going to keep you flying level and that’s not going to allow for fun loops and flips. But one of the great things about the Level-Up Technology is that you can have it on to get that great video, and then you can turn it off if you want to have large accelerations.

Audrow Nash: Can you talk a bit about using open source technology in a consumer product?

Helen Greiner: There’s a lot of work that’s already being done by several communities in making autopilots that work well. The cofounder of Tau Labs is also the inventor of the Level-Up technology, so it was a no-brainer for us to use the Tau Labs open source code.

Audrow Nash: Will you be doing software updates to the LVL 1 drone?

Helen Greiner: Yes, we plan to make additional features along the way.

Audrow Nash: Congratulations on the successful Kickstarter campaign. You’re now more than double what you wanted …

Helen Greiner: It’s been wonderful. We’ve established a great community that we think of as our community of support and a lot of the basic design is done. But there’s a myriad of design decisions along the way and we’re getting a lot of feedback on what’s important to our customers and what’s not. It was a great thing to do a crowd funding campaign.

Audrow Nash: You’re pushing into some stretch goals. What are you thinking to implement now that you’ve received a good bit more than you originally asked?

Helen Greiner: Our first stretch goal is a camera control pack. The camera control pack will allow things like time-lapse photography and burst mode photography.

Audrow Nash: For a drone with limited battery life, I’m curious how time lapse would work …

Helen Greiner: It just gives you more high-resolution images at certain time intervals. Like if the sun is setting you get really high resolution, we like to say a beautiful sunset happens one minute at a time. Also on the camera control pack there’s RAW photography mode and features to let you control exposure and aperture and other things that really appeal to enthusiastic photography buffs, and they’ve never had a drone where you can get access to the data coming from the camera before.

Audrow Nash: What have been some of the major obstacles with the LVL 1 drone?

Helen Greiner: I think the major obstacle, because we are a small company, has been resource allocation. We didn’t stop what we were doing; we haven’t “pivoted” as they say. We are continuing to go strong in the industrial realm but we also wanted to get this consumer product, so we made the decision to prototype it quickly. We had a very enthusiastic team put in their sweat equity and really push it through from the grassroots. And we got it up on Kickstarter where it’s just going so well, and we’ve had such an enthusiastic response from the community.

Audrow Nash: Wrapping up, what advice do you have for those who want to do a startup?

Helen Greiner: If you want to do a startup, just go for it. You do want to have a solid idea first, and you can develop that idea when you’re in school or when you’re working at another job. But once you have that idea and it’s something that you’re passionate about, I’d say go for it, because the worst case scenario is that it doesn’t work out.  And in this country … in the United States … it’s a badge of honor if you’ve tried it, even if it doesn’t work out. You can always go on to the next thing, which might be another startup or it might be going back to school. It could be anything … but at least you know you have tried it. And if it works out you will be living your dream.

Audrow Nash: Thank you.

Helen Greiner: Thank you.

All audio interviews are transcribed and edited for clarity with great care, however, we cannot assume responsibility for their accuracy.

CyPhy Works raises 230K in first two days of the crowdfunding campaign for their new autopilot drone, LVL 1.

Competition is fierce in the world of consumer drones these days, especially among companies marketing products than can produce pro quality video and photography without having to hire a drone operator or a camera person.

April saw the launch of new Phantom UAVs with suped up cameras from DJI as well as the Solo drone by 3D Robotics, whose products will be available on the shelves at 400 locations of retailer Best Buy starting in May.

Also just launched is a new Kickstarter campaign by CyPhy works for their new LVL 1 drone, which they hope will have you filming “right out of the box”. Launched only two days ago, the campaign has already reached more than 90% of its ambitious $250K goal. All 200 early bird packages are sold already, and are slated to ship in February 2016 (unfortunately just a bit too late for holiday shopping). The crack team at CyPhy is lead by Helen Greiner, who co-founded iRobot with Rodney Brooks and Colin Angle, and co-designed the first version of the Roomba.

Aerial photography simplified

The idea behind LVL1 is clever and simple. The norm on multicopters is to have the propeller discs on the same plane. This simplifies construction and dynamics, but in order to move sideways a multicopter must apply differential thrust and tilt its thrust vector (and body), and so most have a lateral thrust component. Keep in mind that a small UAV must make micro corrections continuously just to stay in the same place. This is very troublesome for aerial photography, and especially videography: the image will be jittery unless an expensive gimbal is used to counteract this motion. Otherwise the brushless motors and very high disc loading of most multicopters make up for a very stable platform.

CyPhy bypasses this problem by placing each rotor of its hexacopter in a different plane. Each rotor creates a thrust vector with a lateral component; by applying the same thrust across all the rotors, each lateral vector counteracts the others. Altering the thrust distribution between two sets produces the same vertical component (thus retaining the same altitude), but disrupts the balance of the lateral vectors. The result is lateral thrust without tilting the aircraft. The difference is obvious in the following animated GIF:

The trade-offs to this system are a slightly lower efficiency and the need for more advanced control algorithms.

Other systems have used a different approach to solve the problem, with the DJI Inspire being the most obvious. With the Inspire, rotors are on intersecting planes, but this introduces only a slight instability that counteracts the very low center of gravity when the rotors are raised (similar to the anhedral angle on high mounted wings of airplanes).

DJI Inspire

In their newest report on drones, Texas research firm Markets and Markets, projects that the global commercial drones market will grow to $1.27 billion by 2020. Andra Keay, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, expects that the gradual lifting of regulatory roadblocks to commercialization in the US will see the market for drones expand significantly.

“The ability to film from the air is incredibly useful in a wide range of industries, from utilities and agriculture to forestry and mining. But I’m very excited about the potential new technology users out there,” says Keay. “In the near future, we’ll think nothing of every realtor, maintenance or yard crew lifting a drone out of their trunk to get photos of your roof, your gutters or trees. We’ll know that robots are mainstream when a drone is just an accessory for your smartphone.”

Some start-ups have proven concepts, achieved adequate funding and have begun to provide unique solutions to long-term problems needing robotic assistance, e.g.:

• In healthcare, Ekso Bionics (a spin-off from UC Berkeley and 6-year old Berkeley Bionics) and their exoskeleton are beginning to penetrate rehabilitation therapy centers while a 2008 start-up, Xenex Healthcare Services’ room disinfection robot is helping to disinfect ICU’s and hospital surgeries everywhere.
• In remote-presence healthcare, 6-year old VGo Communications and their VGo mobile robots have begun to focus on outpatient and remote-presence communications especially for pediatric care, while 2009 American transplant to Sweden Giraff Technologies is shipping their mobile robots as nursing home assistants.

• In underwater exploration, Liquid Robotics, a 2005 start-up focused on recording whale songs has transitioned into their very popular and successful multi-purpose wave gliders used in oil platform monitoring, for naval security, and tracking hazardous materials, while CMU 2012 spin-off Platypus LLC autonomous airboats are being evaluated by public and private agencies for river and reservoir water analysis.
• In materials handling, as companies begin again to invest in upgrading their material handling hardware and systems after the economic crisis, Aethon (a 2005 VC funded project) and their hospital tugs, 2010-Swedish start-up RobCab AB and their multi-purpose tugs, and 2003-founded Seegrid and their warehouse trucks and tugs are all benefiting.

• In consumer products, toys and gadgets, 4moms (an 8-year old start-up) and their line of baby devices is a huge success story, particularly their robotic baby rocker named Mamaroo, while Sphero, the robot ball, by 2011 Canadian start-up Que Innovations, is just beginning, and 2009 start-up Romotive‘s $149 Romo is selling thousands of their cute little iPhone-carrying devices.
• In artificial intelligence, 2010 start-up Universal Robotics and their Neocortex spatial vision software are now selling sensor-based machine learning devices for automated pick and place, high-end 3D inspection and de-palleting operations while 2012 Willow Garage spin-off Industrial Perception‘s similar 3D vision-guided technology is in trials for truck loading and unloading applications. Both have made serious AI inroads into random 3D spatial loading and unloading methodology.
• In agriculture, 2012 Stanford VC start-up Blue River Technologies and their lettuce thinning system, 2009 Spanish start-up Agrobot and their strawberry picking robot, 2012 start-up Autonomous Tractor and their cab-less farm tractor, and 2009 French start-up Wall-Ye and their vineyard robot are all VC funded, in testing mode and look quite promising while 2009 start-up Harvest Automation recently finished their beta testing and have begun to sell their speedy little plant-moving robots.
• In unmanned aerial systems, to mention just a few of the many start-ups, CyPhy Works and their unique tethered infrastructure inspection UAS, Canadian Precision Hawk (previously Winehawk Labs) and their survey UAVs and Swiss SenseFly (recently acquired by Parrot) and theirs surveying and 3D mapping are all showing future apps likely to penetrate the commercial marketplace for UAS.
• For small niche robotic markets, CandyCam and their event camera systems, and QBotix and their solar panel positioning robots are both doing well.
• Stealth companies like Redwood Robotics may be building a competing product to Rethink Robotics’ Baxter robot. TerrAvion may be working on an aerial system for agriculture and Vishwa Robotics is working on a wide range of classified projects.

• And in the way-out-there category, Momentum Machines and their hamburger maker, Foldimate and their laundry folding system, Zen Robotics and their trash sorting system, Puzzlebox Productions‘ mind-controlled quadcopter, TechJect‘s miniature flapping Dragonfly UAS and Anki, the new Apple app/toy combo.

Robotic projects often get funded for strange reasons. Many are at the whim (in scientific circles they call it “inspiration”) of researchers attempting to conquer an interesting scientific challenge.  This often translates into commercial projects just to get the funding to continue to do research. Many crowd-funded projects fit into this latter category. Others are funded to solve specific as-yet-undiscovered methods of doing something that needs to be done. The space and defense programs (NASA and DARPA) are perfect examples of the latter and are referred to as “strategic funding” and there’s a whole industry of technology transfer to make their inventions into commercial ventures.

In the last few years, the influence of crowd-funding is shaking things up and can be seen in some of the start-ups cited above. Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Angel List have all had their robotic hits – some even raising millions. TechJect‘s Dragonfly is an example. The spin-off from GA Tech raised over $1 million on Indiegogo! 3D printer start-ups also did quite well and FormLabs‘ Kickstarter campaign was a record-breaking $2,945,000 from 2,068 backers (FormLabs was only seeking $100,000)!

Crowd funding may be a passing fad, but for the last couple of years these types of sites have provided start-ups with a quick sense of whether their idea will sell to the public or not — and they don’t require giving away equity. Crowd funded projects also pop up on the radar of venture capitalists searching for interesting new ventures. There is no doubt that slick marketing and performance videos do well in that environment. Also, equity crowd funding is coming; the Securities and Exchange Commission is working on the rules.

Crowd funding supporters believe the process helps entrepreneurs become profitable while rewarding investors; others are concerned about online fraud and bad investments stimulated by lively videos focused toward inexperienced investors.

Nevertheless, crowd funding is here to stay and will soon include equity as a perk of investing. Further, it is spreading globally. Although robot start-ups and other long-lead projects don’t get as much attention as some of the other projects, the number of robotics-related crowd funded projects is up and the sophistication of the presentations is also up – both a boon to getting the attention of serious equity investors (VC’s and hedge funds).

Finally, a review of the makeup and geography of 235 start-up companies can be seen in the chart below. Robotic start-up companies are privately held robotic companies established to develop a concept or product or robotic-related service for sale but don’t yet have it all together. From the chart below one can see that few are attempting to become industrial robotic manufacturers; instead, most are offering service robotic solutions for industry, home use, health care and academia.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• New ETF (NASDAQ:ROBO) focuses on robotics industry
• Robo-Stox: A dream come true
• Are investments in robotics capital intensive?
• Forget the octocopter, let’s talk about Kiva

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Source: Travis Deyle, Hizook.com

This chart may not reflect all of the equity investment activity in the robotics market but it is a far cry from the $6.9 billion that went into 997 venture funded deals in web and Internet startup companies over the course of 2011. This chart also doesn’t mention the many acquisitions, strategic partnerships and mergers that occurred. The most recent is the acquisition of French Cybernetix by Technip, an oil resources and ROV service provider to the industry.

Deyle describes why he thinks VC funding for robotics is a tough nut to crack:

Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no “Google-scale” breakout success stories (i.e., IPOs). One of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm.

Although these 14 companies represent just a sliver of the 100+ robotic startups that are getting funded in one way or another, they do offer insight into those that are of interest to the venture capital community. Of the companies listed in the chart, it is interesting to note that two are foreign and the biggest investment is for a robotic hair implant device for balding men.

VGo telepresence robot, Harvest Automation’s nursery robot, Liquid Robotics’ wave glider.

1. Restoration Robotics and their new ARTAS System provide image-guided technology for hair follicle harvesting. It’s a massive market, hence the large investment. They received US FDA clearance mid-2011 and treated their first patient in August, 2011.
2. Redzone Robotics was featured by Pres. Obama last year and, in addition to the 2011 funding, received an additional $8.5 million just a few days ago. Their wastewater systems – pipe inspection and cleaning robots – provide critical environmental assistance to municipalities, contractors and engineering firms. Again, a big investment for a big marketplace.
3. Liquid Robotics and their wave gliders have been much in the news. They presently have four wave gliders traveling different paths across the Pacific and making their data available to scientists and lay people worldwide. Their gliders are valuable additions to the arsenals of scientific and environmental agencies, fisheries, aquaculture, pollution detection and resource discovery companies as well as defense/security and law enforcement agencies. Hence the large investment.
4. Aldebaran Robotics, a French company, makes the Nao and newer Romeo robots which they sell to schools and for robotic soccer and other competitions to promote STEM education, a limited but growing marketplace, hence the midrange venture investment.
5. Medrobotics is a Carnegie Mellon spin-off focused on surgical applications using flexible snake-like robotic devices for minimally-invasive procedures. Like other medical start-ups, there is a long lead time for product refinement and FDA clearances. Medrobotics has received funding in almost every year since it’s inception in 2005.
6. Tibion Corporation, is a Sunnyvale, CA start-up, providing bionic legs for stroke rehabilitation. This form of robotic-assisted rehab therapy, therapy with the use of an exoskeleton, is a big step forward from the $300,000+ fixed-position machines previously used.
7. MakerBot Industries, the 3-D printer maker for the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crowd, and featured at Maker Faires held all over the country to mammoth and enthusiastic crowds, services the DIY, prototyping, small run, and hobby communities while more expensive 3-D printers support the additive manufacturing sector. The Maker Faire Bay Area DIY innovation festival will be held in May in San Mateo, CA.
8. Harvest Automation has a lot of good things going for it: (1) many of it’s investors are the very same ag businesses that will be buyers of the robots, (2) although focused on nursery automation to begin their business, they are poised to broaden their scope into many other facets of the ag industry, and (3) the key players are experienced in the business of robotics.
9. Orbotix is the developer of the sphero smartphone-controlled robotic ball. The ball has no buttons, no battery box, no socket or cord for a charger (although it does have a cup-like charging dock). Shake it and it glows; put it on the floor and direct it anywhere with your iPhone. It’s a Bluetooth-based, wirelessly-charged device first shown at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas.
10. ThinkLabs is an Indian education company focused on science and technology. It uses simple robots, sensor enhanced devices, and robot competitions to provide hands-on inspiration for students taking their courses.
11. Precise Path Robotics began as an entity to participate in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and has migrated it’s navigation system into robotic lawn mowing and other robotic devices to provide maintenance and conditioning robots for the golf course market.
12. VGo Communications has thus far produced 2,000 telepresence robots and plans to lower the cost to near $2,000 in their next production run. You may have seen the ABC News stories about the high school student who couldn’t leave home but nevertheless, through the use of the VGo, attended the local high school, piloting his VGo from class to class and up and down the school elevator.
13. Aethon is a Pittsburgh, PA based mobile robot company that makes robotic carts and tugs for the hospital industry… tugs to pickup and deliver food, medicine, waste materials and general supplies. The company began in 2001 and has had many rounds of financing. This round of $1.74 million was less than the $2.5 million targeted.

1. CyPhy Works, a maker of small unmanned flying robots used to inspect bridges and other public infrastructure, has also received federal grants and research awards to develop its technology for both commercial, governmental and defense clients.

Travis Deyle, is a postdoc researcher at Duke and a recent PhD from GA Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he was a member of the Healthcare Robotics Lab and a frequent blogger at Hizook.com. Fortunate for us, he kept a file of 2011 venture funded robotic projects and turned it into an interesting chart:

Source: Travis Deyle, Hizook.com

This chart may not reflect all of the equity investment activity in the robotics market but it is a far cry from the $6.9 billion that went into 997 venture funded deals in web and Internet startup companies over the course of 2011. This chart also doesn’t mention the many acquisitions, strategic partnerships and mergers that occurred. The most recent is the acquisition of French Cybernetix by Technip, an oil resources and ROV service provider to the industry.

Deyle describes why he thinks VC funding for robotics is a tough nut to crack:

Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no “Google-scale” breakout success stories (i.e., IPOs). One of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 million. This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm.

Although these 14 companies represent just a sliver of the 100+ robotic startups that are getting funded in one way or another, they do offer insight into those that are of interest to the venture capital community. Of the companies listed in the chart, it is interesting to note that two are foreign and the biggest investment is for a robotic hair implant device for balding men.

VGo telepresence robot, Harvest Automation’s nursery robot, Liquid Robotics’ wave glider.

1. Restoration Robotics and their new ARTAS System provide image-guided technology for hair follicle harvesting. It’s a massive market, hence the large investment. They received US FDA clearance mid-2011 and treated their first patient in August, 2011.
2. Redzone Robotics was featured by Pres. Obama last year and, in addition to the 2011 funding, received an additional $8.5 million just a few days ago. Their wastewater systems – pipe inspection and cleaning robots – provide critical environmental assistance to municipalities, contractors and engineering firms. Again, a big investment for a big marketplace.
3. Liquid Robotics and their wave gliders have been much in the news. They presently have four wave gliders traveling different paths across the Pacific and making their data available to scientists and lay people worldwide. Their gliders are valuable additions to the arsenals of scientific and environmental agencies, fisheries, aquaculture, pollution detection and resource discovery companies as well as defense/security and law enforcement agencies. Hence the large investment.
4. Aldebaran Robotics, a French company, makes the Nao and newer Romeo robots which they sell to schools and for robotic soccer and other competitions to promote STEM education, a limited but growing marketplace, hence the midrange venture investment.
5. Medrobotics is a Carnegie Mellon spin-off focused on surgical applications using flexible snake-like robotic devices for minimally-invasive procedures. Like other medical start-ups, there is a long lead time for product refinement and FDA clearances. Medrobotics has received funding in almost every year since it’s inception in 2005.
6. Tibion Corporation, is a Sunnyvale, CA start-up, providing bionic legs for stroke rehabilitation. This form of robotic-assisted rehab therapy, therapy with the use of an exoskeleton, is a big step forward from the $300,000+ fixed-position machines previously used.
7. MakerBot Industries, the 3-D printer maker for the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crowd, and featured at Maker Faires held all over the country to mammoth and enthusiastic crowds, services the DIY, prototyping, small run, and hobby communities while more expensive 3-D printers support the additive manufacturing sector. The Maker Faire Bay Area DIY innovation festival will be held in May in San Mateo, CA.
8. Harvest Automation has a lot of good things going for it: (1) many of it’s investors are the very same ag businesses that will be buyers of the robots, (2) although focused on nursery automation to begin their business, they are poised to broaden their scope into many other facets of the ag industry, and (3) the key players are experienced in the business of robotics.
9. Orbotix is the developer of the sphero smartphone-controlled robotic ball. The ball has no buttons, no battery box, no socket or cord for a charger (although it does have a cup-like charging dock). Shake it and it glows; put it on the floor and direct it anywhere with your iPhone. It’s a Bluetooth-based, wirelessly-charged device first shown at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas. 
10. ThinkLabs is an Indian education company focused on science and technology. It uses simple robots, sensor enhanced devices, and robot competitions to provide hands-on inspiration for students taking their courses.
11. Precise Path Robotics began as an entity to participate in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and has migrated it’s navigation system into robotic lawn mowing and other robotic devices to provide maintenance and conditioning robots for the golf course market.
12. VGo Communications has thus far produced 2,000 telepresence robots and plans to lower the cost to near $2,000 in their next production run. You may have seen the ABC News stories about the high school student who couldn’t leave home but nevertheless, through the use of the VGo, attended the local high school, piloting his VGo from class to class and up and down the school elevator.
13. Aethon is a Pittsburgh, PA based mobile robot company that makes robotic carts and tugs for the hospital industry… tugs to pickup and deliver food, medicine, waste materials and general supplies. The company began in 2001 and has had many rounds of financing. This round of $1.74 million was less than the $2.5 million targeted.
14. CyPhy Works, a maker of small unmanned flying robots used to inspect bridges and other public infrastructure, has also received federal grants and research awards to develop its technology for both commercial, governmental and defense clients.