robotics funding – Robohub https://robohub.org Connecting the robotics community to the world Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:23:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 July fundings, acquisitions and failures https://robohub.org/july-fundings-acquisitions-and-failures/ Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:33:00 +0000 http://robohub.org/july-fundings-acquisitions-and-failures/

Despite all the high-profile billion-dollar acquisitions, eg: ARM by SoftBank, KUKA by Midea and Uber China by Didi Chuxing, M&A are down 19% this year according to both Forbes and CB Insights. 

Buyers are buying, but they are seeking cash-positive market-realistic targets. Values (both monetary and vanity) are taking a hit. What’s a startup to do? According to CB Insights, startups can (1) get bought at a lower valuation and take the hit; (2) lower their cash burn rate and play the long game;  or, (3), if they already have strong fundamentals and good growth, continue on.

Nevertheless, July's fundings and acquisitions were substantial, and this month we've added a new ancillary category (Related fundings) to give an indication of the level of funding in AI and deep learning startups.

Acquisitions

  • Update: When General Motors announced in March that it was buying Cruise Automation, Forbes reported that the undisclosed purchase price was just over $1 billion. GM chief financial officer Chuck Stevens said in a recent earnings call that it only paid out approximately $600 million (split between cash and stock). Payouts above the $600 million ― including earn-outs related to commercial or technological milestones which are estimated by Forbes to be around $400 million ― are being considered by the company to be employment costs instead of acquisition costs. 
  • 5D Robotics acquired Time Domain, a provider in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) product development and services, for an undisclosed amount. 5D has partnered with Time Domain since 2012, adapting the latter's PulsON® ranging radios into precision autonomous navigation and positioning solutions for a wide variety of air and ground vehicles. The transaction strengthens the combined entity's position in vehicle autonomy through a combination of products, intellectual property (over 100 patents), and a staff of over 50 people.
  • In a move similar to the 2015 deal where Uber hired almost the complete staff of CMU's NREC, Toyota hired the entire 16-member software engineering staff of Jaybridge Robotics, the company providing software automation of industrial vehicles across a range of industrial applications including agriculture, mining, marine, and rail.  Jaybridge-engineered autonomous systems have logged thousands of hours in the hands of end-users. Jaybridge Robotics, Inc. remains an independent company and will continue to provide support for existing clients.
  • Permira, a European private equity firm and the owner of Intelligrated, a Mason, Ohio-based provider of fulfillment solutions, sold its shares to Honeywell for $1.5 billion in cash. Toyota Industries was also bidding on the deal. Permira acquired the company in 2012 for approximately $500 million. 
  • Voith agreed to sell its 25.1% stake in German robot maker Kuka to China's Midea thereby cinching the takeover even before the close of the initial tender offer. KUKA and Midea negotiated an agreement whereby KUKA got assurances that jobs and plants in Germany will be protected until the end of 2023 and Midea agreed not to pursue a domination agreement or de-listing of KUKA’s shares. As a result, KUKA's management endorsed the arrangement and their two biggest shareholders (Voith being one) tendered their shares to Midea. The public tender, plus the two big shareholders, gave Midea 72.18% of the shares. Combined with what they already owned, Midea has 85.69% ownership. From July 21, through August 3, Midea announced another tender offer - with the same valuation and share price - to acquire as many more of the shares as possible. Read more.
  • Google bought French Moodstocks, a visual recognition machine learning technology company for an undisclosed amount. Moodstocks' engineers and researchers have been developing new algorithms for visual recognition of objects, particularly those viewed by cameras in mobile devices.

Fundings

  • Wonder Workshop, a Sunnyvale, CA-based maker of robots that teach kids computer science and coding fundamentals, raised $20 million in Series B funding. WI Harper Group and Idea Bulb Ventures co-led the round, and were joined by Learn Capital, Charles River Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and TCL. 
  • UBTech (Union Brother Technology), a Shenzhen startup developing small consumer humanoid robots, got $100 million in a Series B funding round led by CDH Investments with CITIC Securities. UBTech's new $1,300 Alpha2 robot is getting lots of media attention and is going on sale in time for Christmas.
  • Cambridge Medical Robotics, a UK developer of a robotic system for keyhole surgery, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. Backers include LGT Global Invest, ABB Technology Ventures and Cambridge Innovation Capital.
  • Civil Maps, an Albany, CA developer of high definition 3D maps and centimeter-level localization, got $6.6 million in a seed round from Ford, Motus Ventures and three others.
  • Autonomous Marine Systems got $1.6 million in a seed round (in February) that enabled a $1.9 match-grant funding with all the funds going towards fulfilling DoD contracts to provide long duration ocean observation.
  • Flyability, got $4.3 million from a Series A funding from MKS Alternative Investments, Go Beyond Investing, and Environmental Technologies Fund. Flyability, a Swiss startup, develops Gimball, a collision-proof drone. Flyability hopes to enable new applications in inspection, rescue and security.

Related fundings

According to TechSci Research, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 75% during 2016-2021. Continuous research and development in healthcare, autonomous vehicles, security and access control, robotics-as-a-service, agriculture, cyber security, and other verticals are expected to fuel the growth as are smart wearables, and the head-up display screen market. Frost & Sullivan’s report about deep learning enabling the unraveling of layers of patterns in data is also propelling the AI boom. This is where it becomes really interesting both users and makers of robotics. Frank Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital and private equity firm, said of deep learning: 

It is absolutely non-controversial that deep learning is the most fundamental advance in A.I. research since the start [of A.I.] in 1956. We [Andreessen Horowitz] think A.I. and deep learning can be a fundamental and technology platform shift as mobile and cloud have been in the last 5-10 years... All the serious applications from here on out need to have deep learning and AI inside in exactly the same way that all serious computing systems needed to have Intel chips inside of them. I think now about the startups that we see, that deep learning needs to be inside these new systems as a fundamental technique that we expect to see in all serious applications moving forward.

Read and view more about deep learning. With Frank Chen's words in mind, the following companies which got funded recently are blurring the line between robots, robotics and bots powered by AI, cloud computing, and deep learning analytics:

  • Prospera is an Israeli startup collecting and providing tools to help growers understand newly available data using computer vision, data science, and machine learning to monitor and analyze crops. Prospera raised $6.75 million in Series A funding in a round led by Israeli VC Bessemer Venture Partners.
  • Kimera Systems, a Oregon-based developer of an embedded learning AI, got an undisclosed amount of seed funding. Kimera’s Nigel fuses together a broad range of soft and hard sensor data, achieving moment-to-moment contextual awareness, allowing it to learn and apply what it understands to real-world situations, much like a human does.
  • FiveAI, a UK start-up using artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the arrival of fully autonomous vehicles, got $2.7 million of equity funding in a round led by Amadeus Capital Partners.
  • Vision Labs, a Russian vision systems startup, raised  $5.5 million in a Series A round from Sistema Venture Capital. VisionLabs will use the funds to improve its face recognition technology, ramp up sales and expand into new markets including the US, Europe and Asia. The company’s core product is a recognition platform - VisionLabs LUNA - which allows near real-time recognition of millions of faces from video and photo streams in order to identify people.
  • FogHorn Systems, a developer of IoT software for industrial and commercial vertical markets, got $14.5 million in Seed and Series A fundings from March Capital, GE Ventures, The Hive and the VC arms of Bosch, Darling and Yokogawa Electric. FogHorn is developing edge intelligence AKA "fog computing”. The company's fog computing platform is a critical enabler for a new class of powerful real-time analytics, machine learning models and edge computing applications in a wide variety of industrial and enterprise use cases.

Failures

  • NavCPU, a Russian mobile robotics startup

Read more

]]> stock_market_exchange_money

Despite all the high-profile billion-dollar acquisitions, eg: ARM by SoftBank, KUKA by Midea and Uber China by Didi Chuxing, M&A are down 19% this year, according to both Forbes and CB Insights. Buyers are buying, but they are seeking cash-positive market-realistic targets. Values (both monetary and vanity) are taking a hit. What’s a startup to do?

According to CB Insights, startups can (1) get bought at a lower valuation and take the hit; (2) lower their cash burn rate and play the long game; or, (3), if they already have strong fundamentals and good growth, continue on.

Source: CBinsights.com

Source: cbinsights.com

Nevertheless, July’s fundings and acquisitions were substantial, and this month we’ve added a new ancillary category (Related fundings) to give an indication of the level of funding in AI and deep learning startups.

Acquisitions

  • Update: When General Motors announced in March that it was buying Cruise Automation, Forbes reported that the undisclosed purchase price was just over $1 billion. GM chief financial officer Chuck Stevens said in a recent earnings call that it only paid out approximately $600 million (split between cash and stock). Payouts above the $600 million ― including earn-outs related to commercial or technological milestones which are estimated by Forbes to be around $400 million ― are being considered by the company to be employment costs instead of acquisition costs.
  • 5D Robotics acquired Time Domain, a provider in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) product development and services, for an undisclosed amount. 5D has partnered with Time Domain since 2012, adapting the latter’s PulsON® ranging radios into precision autonomous navigation and positioning solutions for a wide variety of air and ground vehicles. The transaction strengthens the combined entity’s position in vehicle autonomy through a combination of products, intellectual property (over 100 patents), and a staff of over 50 people.
  • In a move similar to the 2015 deal where Uber hired almost the complete staff of CMU’s NREC, Toyota hired the entire 16-member software engineering staff of Jaybridge Robotics, the company providing software automation of industrial vehicles across a range of industrial applications including agriculture, mining, marine, and rail. Jaybridge-engineered autonomous systems have logged thousands of hours in the hands of end-users. Jaybridge Robotics, Inc. remains an independent company and will continue to provide support for existing clients.
  • Permira, a European private equity firm and the owner of Intelligrated, a Mason, Ohio-based provider of fulfillment solutions, sold its shares to Honeywell for $1.5 billion in cash. Toyota Industries was also bidding on the deal. Permira acquired the company in 2012 for approximately $500 million.
  • Voith agreed to sell its 25.1% stake in German robot maker Kuka to China’s Midea thereby cinching the takeover even before the close of the initial tender offer. KUKA and Midea negotiated an agreement whereby KUKA got assurances that jobs and plants in Germany will be protected until the end of 2023 and Midea agreed not to pursue a domination agreement or de-listing of KUKA’s shares. As a result, KUKA’s management endorsed the arrangement and their two biggest shareholders (Voith being one) tendered their shares to Midea. The public tender, plus the two big shareholders, gave Midea 72.18% of the shares. Combined with what they already owned, Midea has 85.69% ownership. From July 21, through August 3, Midea announced another tender offer – with the same valuation and share price – to acquire as many more of the shares as possible. Read more.
  • Google bought French Moodstocks, a visual recognition machine learning technology company for an undisclosed amount. Moodstocks’ engineers and researchers have been developing new algorithms for visual recognition of objects, particularly those viewed by cameras in mobile devices.

Fundings

  • Wonder Workshop, a Sunnyvale, CA-based maker of robots that teach kids computer science and coding fundamentals, raised $20 million in Series B funding. WI Harper Group and Idea Bulb Ventures co-led the round, and were joined by Learn Capital, Charles River Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and TCL.
  • UBTech (Union Brother Technology), a Shenzhen startup developing small consumer humanoid robots, got $100 million in a Series B funding round led by CDH Investments with CITIC Securities. UBTech’s new $1,300 Alpha2 robot is getting lots of media attention and is going on sale in time for Christmas.
  • Cambridge Medical Robotics, a UK developer of a robotic system for keyhole surgery, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. Backers include LGT Global Invest, ABB Technology Ventures and Cambridge Innovation Capital.
  • Civil Maps, an Albany, CA developer of high-definition 3D maps and centimeter-level localization, got $6.6 million in a seed round from Ford, Motus Ventures and three others.
  • Autonomous Marine Systems got $1.6 million in a seed round (in February) that enabled a $1.9 match grant funding with all the funds going towards fulfilling DoD contracts to provide long duration ocean observation.
  • Flyability, got $4.3 million from a Series A funding from MKS Alternative Investments, Go Beyond Investing, and Environmental Technologies Fund. Flyability, a Swiss startup, develops Gimball, a collision-proof drone. Flyability hopes to enable new applications in inspection, rescue and security.

Related fundings

According to TechSci Research, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 75% during 2016-2021. Continuous research and development in healthcare, autonomous vehicles, security and access control, robotics-as-a-service, agriculture, cyber security, and other verticals are expected to fuel the growth as are smart wearables, and the head-up display screen market. Frost & Sullivan’s report about deep learning enabling the unravelling of layers of patterns in data is also propelling the AI boom. This is where it becomes really interesting both users and makers of robotics. Frank Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital and private equity firm, said this about deep learning:

It is absolutely non-controversial that deep learning is the most fundamental advance in A.I. research since the start [of A.I.] in 1956. We [Andreessen Horowitz] think A.I. and deep learning can be a fundamental and technology platform shift as mobile and cloud have been in the last 5-10 years… All the serious applications from here on out need to have deep learning and AI inside in exactly the same way that all serious computing systems needed to have Intel chips inside of them. I think now about the startups that we see, that deep learning needs to be inside these new systems as a fundamental technique that we expect to see in all serious applications moving forward.

Read and view more about deep learning here. With Frank Chen’s words in mind, the following companies which got funded recently are blurring the line between robots, robotics and bots powered by AI, cloud computing, and deep learning analytics:

  • Prospera is an Israeli startup collecting and providing tools to help growers understand newly available data using computer vision, data science, and machine learning to monitor and analyze crops. Prospera raised $6.75 million in Series A funding in a round led by Israeli VC Bessemer Venture Partners.
  • Kimera Systems, a Oregon-based developer of an embedded learning AI, got an undisclosed amount of seed funding. Kimera’s Nigel fuses together a broad range of soft and hard sensor data, achieving moment-to-moment contextual awareness, allowing it to learn and apply what it understands to real-world situations, much like a human does.
  • FiveAI, a UK start-up using artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the arrival of fully autonomous vehicles, got $2.7 million of equity funding in a round led by Amadeus Capital Partners.
  • Vision Labs, a Russian vision systems startup, raised  $5.5 million in a Series A round from Sistema Venture Capital. VisionLabs will use the funds to improve its face recognition technology, ramp up sales and expand into new markets including the US, Europe and Asia. The company’s core product is a recognition platform – VisionLabs LUNA – which allows near real-time recognition of millions of faces from video and photo streams in order to identify people.
  • FogHorn Systems, a developer of IoT software for industrial and commercial vertical markets, got $14.5 million in Seed and Series A fundings from March Capital, GE Ventures, The Hive and the VC arms of Bosch, Darling and Yokogawa Electric. FogHorn is developing edge intelligence AKA “fog computing”. The company’s fog computing platform is a critical enabler for a new class of powerful real-time analytics, machine learning models and edge computing applications in a wide variety of industrial and enterprise use cases.

Failures

  • NavCPU, a Russian mobile robotics startup
]]> $87 million in European robotic projects funded https://robohub.org/87-million-in-european-robotic-projects-funded/ https://robohub.org/87-million-in-european-robotic-projects-funded/#respond Tue, 20 Jan 2015 20:27:00 +0000 http://robohub.org/87-million-in-european-robotic-projects-funded/

The EU, under Horizon 2020, the mechanism the European Commission is using to stimulate robotics-related research, has co-funded 17 new robotics-related projects.

All of these projects focus on developing critical technologies for commercialized industrial and service robotics applications and all (except one) are managed by a consortium of corporate and academic/research partners. Emphasis is placed on quick technology transfers and rapid commercialization which is why each project has at least one corporate partner.

A downside, however, is that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently proposed shifting the overall Horizon 2020 program to reduce the research aspect and use the saved funds to pay for general economic stimulus. The results of his push are, at present, unknown.

Here are the 17 funded robotics-related projects which started in 2014 and are funded to 2018:

  • AEROARMS - developing an aerial robotic system with multiple arms and advanced manipulation capabilities for application in industrial inspection and maintenance. Corporate partners: Elektra UAS, Alstom Inspection, Sensima Inspection.
     
  • AEROWORKS - developing an aerial robotic team to autonomously conduct infrastructure inspection and maintenance tasks, while additionally providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces to human-operators. Corporate partners: Ascending Technologies, Skybotix, Alstom Inspection, Skelleftea Kraft.
     
  • COMANOID - investigates the deployment of robotic solutions in well-identified Airbus airliner assembly operations that are laborious or tedious for human workers and for which access is impossible for wheeled or rail-ported robotic platforms. Corporate partners: European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS).
     
  • CENTAURO - developing a human-robot symbiotic system, where a human operator is tele-present with its whole body in a Centaur-like robot, which is capable of robust locomotion and dexterous manipulation in the rough terrains of various disaster situations. Corporate partners: ProgenoX, Kermtechnische Hilfsdienst.
     
  • CogIMon - This Cognitive Interactive in Motion research aims at human-robot interaction with systemic integration of teams of humans and compliant robots. Corporate partners: none.
     
  • Medical Robotic Technologies EurEyeCase robotEurEyeCase - Large numbers of patients suffer from various types of vitreo-retinal eye diseases and the majority of these intra−ocular interventions lie on or even beyond the boundaries of human skills in terms of manipulation and positioning precision. Hence the need for robotic technology to augment surgeons' skills. Corporate partners: Medical Robotic Technologies, ACMIT, Optomedical Technologies, Medizinisches Laserzentrum Lubeck.
     
  • FLOBOT - developing a floor washing robot for professional users. The project integrates existing solutions to produce a professional floor washing robot for a wide area of industrial, civil and commercial premises. Corporate partners: FIMAP, Robosoft Services, 7 Manutencoop Facility Management, Groupe Services France.
     
  • Flourish - to bridge the gap between the current and desired capabilities of agricultural robots by developing an adaptable robotic solution for precision farming. The system will be able to survey a field from the air, perform targeted intervention on the ground, and provide detailed information for decision support. Corporate partners: Robert Bosch, Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare delle Marche.
     
  • RETRAINER - to tune and validate advanced robot-based technologies to facilitate recovery of arm and hand function in stroke survivors. Will allow the users to use their own arm and hand as much and as soon as possible after the trauma so to achieve the best outcomes in rehabilitation. Corporate partners: Robert Bosch, Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare delle Marche. 
     
  • RobDREAM - improve industrial mobile manipulators’ perception, navigation, manipulation and grasping capabilities by automatic optimization of parameters, strategies and selection of tools within a portfolio of key algorithms. Corporate partners: KUKA, Convergent Information Technologies.
     
  • RoMaNS - This (Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation) project will solve an urgent market and societal need cleaning up the past half century of nuclear waste. Corporate partners: National Nuclear Lab.
     
  • SARAFun - a project to enable a non-expert user to train/integrate a new bi-manual assembly task on an ABB YuMi robot in less than a day. The robot will be equipped with sensory and cognitive abilities as well as reasoning abilities required to plan and execute any assembly task in a human like manner. Corporate partners: ABB.
     
  • SecondHands - a robot assistant that is trained to understand maintenance tasks so that it can either pro-actively or as a result of prompting, offer assistance to maintenance technicians performing routine and preventative maintenance. Corporate partners: OCADO Group.
     
  • Smokebot - a project to develop and equip mobile robots with novel environmental sensors for inspection of disaster sites with low visibility. Corporate partners: Taurob GmbH.
     
  • SoMa - a plan to provide soft, uncertain interactions between robotic manipulation and the environment. Corporate partners: OCADO Group and The Walt Disney Company.
     
  • Sweeper - using modules from the FP7 CROPS project, this new project is to detect, grasp and harvest sweet peppers under various growing situations. Corporate partners: de Tuindershoek, Irmato Group.
     
  • WiMUST - a Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology project to expand and improve the functionalities of current cooperative marine robotic systems, effectively enabling distributed acoustic array technologies for geophysical surveying with a view to exploration and geotechnical surveying for civil and commercial applications. Corporate partners: Graal Tech, Evo Logics, CGG Veritas Services, Geo Marine Survey Systems, GeoSurveys.

Read more

]]> horizon_2020
The EU has co-funded 17 new robotics-related projects under Horizon 2020, the mechanism that the European Commission is using to stimulate the region’s global competitiveness in technical innovation. Each of these projects focus on developing critical technologies for commercialized industrial and service robotics applications and all (except one) are managed by a consortium of corporate and academic/research partners. Emphasis is placed on quick technology transfers and rapid commercialization, which is why each project has at least one corporate partner.

A downside, however, is that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently proposed shifting the overall Horizon 2020 program to reduce the research aspect and use the saved funds to pay for general economic stimulus. The results of his push are, at present, unknown.

Here are the 17 robotics-related projects, whose funding was started in 2014 and will continue to 2018:

  • AEROARMS – developing an aerial robotic system with multiple arms and advanced manipulation capabilities for application in industrial inspection and maintenance. Corporate partners: Elektra UAS, Alstom Inspection, Sensima Inspection.
  • AEROWORKS – developing an aerial robotic team to autonomously conduct infrastructure inspection and maintenance tasks, while additionally providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces to human-operators. Corporate partners: Ascending Technologies, Skybotix, Alstom Inspection, Skelleftea Kraft.
  • COMANOID – investigates the deployment of robotic solutions in well-identified Airbus airliner assembly operations that are laborious or tedious for human workers and for which access is impossible for wheeled or rail-ported robotic platforms. Corporate partners: European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS).
  • CENTAURO – developing a human-robot symbiotic system, where a human operator is tele-present with its whole body in a Centaur-like robot, which is capable of robust locomotion and dexterous manipulation in the rough terrains of various disaster situations. Corporate partners: ProgenoX, Kermtechnische Hilfsdienst.
  • CogIMon – This Cognitive Interactive in Motion research aims at human-robot interaction with systemic integration of teams of humans and compliant robots. Corporate partners: none.
  • Medical Robotic Technologies EurEyeCase robotEurEyeCase – Large numbers of patients suffer from various types of vitreo-retinal eye diseases and the majority of these intra−ocular interventions lie on or even beyond the boundaries of human skills in terms of manipulation and positioning precision. Hence the need for robotic technology to augment surgeons’ skills. Corporate partners: Medical Robotic Technologies, ACMIT, Optomedical Technologies, Medizinisches Laserzentrum Lubeck.
  • FLOBOT – developing a floor washing robot for professional users. The project integrates existing solutions to produce a professional floor washing robot for a wide area of industrial, civil and commercial premises. Corporate partners: FIMAP, Robosoft Services, 7 Manutencoop Facility Management, Groupe Services France.
  • Flourish – to bridge the gap between the current and desired capabilities of agricultural robots by developing an adaptable robotic solution for precision farming. The system will be able to survey a field from the air, perform targeted intervention on the ground, and provide detailed information for decision support. Corporate partners: Robert Bosch, Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare delle Marche.
  • RETRAINER – to tune and validate advanced robot-based technologies to facilitate recovery of arm and hand function in stroke survivors. Will allow the users to use their own arm and hand as much and as soon as possible after the trauma so to achieve the best outcomes in rehabilitation. Corporate partners: Robert Bosch, Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare delle Marche. 
  • RobDREAM – improve industrial mobile manipulators’ perception, navigation, manipulation and grasping capabilities by automatic optimization of parameters, strategies and selection of tools within a portfolio of key algorithms. Corporate partners: KUKA, Convergent Information Technologies.
  • RoMaNS – This (Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation) project will solve an urgent market and societal need cleaning up the past half century of nuclear waste. Corporate partners: National Nuclear Lab.
  • SARAFun – a project to enable a non-expert user to train/integrate a new bi-manual assembly task on an ABB YuMi robot in less than a day. The robot will be equipped with sensory and cognitive abilities as well as reasoning abilities required to plan and execute any assembly task in a human like manner. Corporate partners: ABB.
  • SecondHands – a robot assistant that is trained to understand maintenance tasks so that it can either pro-actively or as a result of prompting, offer assistance to maintenance technicians performing routine and preventative maintenance. Corporate partners: OCADO Group.
  • Smokebot – a project to develop and equip mobile robots with novel environmental sensors for inspection of disaster sites with low visibility. Corporate partners: Taurob GmbH.
  • SoMa – a plan to provide soft, uncertain interactions between robotic manipulation and the environment. Corporate partners: OCADO Group and The Walt Disney Company.
  • Sweeper – using modules from the FP7 CROPS project, this new project is to detect, grasp and harvest sweet peppers under various growing situations. Corporate partners: de Tuindershoek, Irmato Group.
  • WiMUST – a Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology project to expand and improve the functionalities of current cooperative marine robotic systems, effectively enabling distributed acoustic array technologies for geophysical surveying with a view to exploration and geotechnical surveying for civil and commercial applications. Corporate partners: Graal Tech, Evo Logics, CGG Veritas Services, Geo Marine Survey Systems, GeoSurveys.

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]]> https://robohub.org/87-million-in-european-robotic-projects-funded/feed/ 0 Governmental funding of strategic robotic projects https://robohub.org/governmental-funding-of-strategic-robotic-projects-2/ https://robohub.org/governmental-funding-of-strategic-robotic-projects-2/#respond Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:28:00 +0000 http://robohub.org/?guid=f427542ecd74486e9ee3bc6125dfd4e9

Many governments have determined that robotics will play a significant role in contributing to their economy and have set up projects to fund bottlenecks to speed up the process.

Japan, the EU, France, the UK, and to a lesser extent, the US are all doing this.

Sebastian Cagnon, a French behavior architect at Aldebaran Robotics who blogs at About Robots, recapped the following governmental programs. I am excerpting and editing with his permission.

These last few months have seen so many announcements from countries investing in robotics with head spinning numbers, it gave me the idea to sum it all up in this post.

The wave started with the EU announcing a huge €2.8 billion investment program for the next 7 years. The EU Commission itself is investing €700M, and the rest is coming from the industry. The goal is to invest in every robotics sector, from industrial robots to domestic, from the fields to space, etc…

Another two announcements came from Japan: the announcement of Pepper by Softbank and Aldebaran (although not really a governmental funding project), and the Japanese government’s announcement that the future of Japan would depend on robots.

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, announced on June 19th funding to make a “robot revolution.”  [You can see Sebastian at work with Pepper in the article’s news photo.] The funding sets up a task force to further develop Japan’s robot manufacturers and help them increase their revenues to $24 billion by 2020. In addition, Abe calls for a Robotics Olympics to be held at the same time as the 2020 Olympics being held in Japan.

Then came the British government on July 1st announcing RAS 2020. You can see here that they went big with the numbers, with $257M of investment planned for robotics! Their program’s focus is to create the conditions for a thriving robotics industry through a series of stimulating and support initiatives.

Next in line are the French. When we are not in strike, we make robots too! Our French Minister Arnaud Montebourg announced the creation of a private fund with €80M (~$108M) to invest in companies. The business minded robolutioner Bruno Bonnell is piloting the project. Robolution Capital plans to invest in companies and start-ups – even to front the early stages of development.

Before this rush of announcements, the US had announced in 2011 $500M invested in automation robots as part of a $2.2 billion Advanced Manufacturing Initiative, and Korea went for $316M in 2012!

But Korea just announced a new $2.7 billion plan in response to the American, Japanese and EU plans. Their new plan is to help existing robotics businesses increase their sales as well as investing in disaster recover and search and rescue robots and eldercare robots.

We are way past the MULTI-BILLION dollars in investments by now.

Thanks Sebastian.

 

]]> https://robohub.org/governmental-funding-of-strategic-robotic-projects-2/feed/ 0