After four years of developing its artificial perception technology, a Cambridge robotics startup has emerged from stealth mode.
RGo Robotics is the latest entrant into Greater Boston’s booming robotics community, launching today with $20 million in funding.
“We saw that robotics is pretty widely deployed in static and structured environments, like warehouses and industrial manufacturing. It’s really hard to deploy robotics in the real world,” said co-founder and CEO Amir Bousani. “When you get to dynamic environments … with people that move around, with obstacles, with other machines, it’s really hard to deploy robotics.”
The company set out in 2018 to build AI-powered technology that allows mobile robots to have 3D, human-level perception. Bousani said the company combines hardware, like cameras and sensors, with AI to help robots make real-time decisions. For example, a robot using this technology would notice and navigate around a new obstacle in its path. Bousani said the technology can also help robots tell what type of obstacles are in its path, such as a human or a forklift, and how to navigate them differently.
The goal is to make the robots using RGo’s technology fully autonomous, meaning they can perceive their world and make decisions as they navigate changing environments.
“It’s very similar to how humans do it. So, when we walk in the main street of town and we see a restaurant that we’ve seen before, we see the sign of the restaurant and the minute we recognize that place we remember that we’ve been there before,” Bousani said. “That’s enough for us to be able to re-localize knowing that position tells us where we are and where that restaurant is with respect to our position. We’re doing something very similar.”
Bousani said the company remained in stealth mode to develop the technology to the point where it was ready for mass deployment. The company said it has closed over $10 million in customer deals and its first product, called Perception Engine, is fully commercialized.
RGo partners with machine manufacturers who build the camera, sensors and computing platform into the robots, Bousani said. Then RGo licenses its software to customers.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green.
This launch also marks a new period of growth for RGo, Bousani said. The company has around 45 employees split between its offices in Cambridge and Caesarea, Israel. Bousani said he expects the team to nearly double by the end of the year and for the company to establish a presence in Europe and Asia.
The growth will be supported by the company’s $20 million in funding, which includes a seed round and a Series A round in January led by MoreTech Ventures.
Bousani said the company’s differentiator from established giants like Bedford-based iRobot and Waltham-based Boston Dynamics is that it doesn’t actually build robots. They’ve taken a different approach by building a technology that could solve a common need across all mobile robots.
“In a way, that will enable us to drive the other companies and we believe that this is going to be a factor that will enable us to democratize robotics,” Bousani said. “We’ll see shorter time to market and more new types of machines that weren’t possible before visual perception got to the quality level as we provide today.”
