Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for Industry 4.0. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 4 promising swarm robotics startups.
Heat Map: 4 Top Swarm Robotics Startups
For our 4 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 4 interesting examples out of 75 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
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Apium Robotics – Swarm Management
With advances in their development, the capabilities of robots constantly increase as they get deployed in various industries. Conventional central management systems are insufficient to optimize and manage swarms of robots. This gives rise to startups and solutions that are specific to swarm robotic management.
The US startup Apium develops fleet management solutions for autonomous robots by utilizing satellite communications. Their solutions are aimed at empowering land, air, and seaside autonomous vehicles to respond to their environment inside a network, or fleet, of self-driving vehicles.
SEMBLR – Construction Robots
The process of constructing a building is labor-intensive and takes a heavy toll on the workers on-site. To ease the burden on workers, systems such as conveyors and lifts are employed on construction sites for material handling and transfers but still require the workers to do much of the heavy lifting outside of the systems. By using robots to perform simple but repetitive tasks, workers can focus on more essential tasks and physically exert a lot less.
British startup SEMBLR builds on-site construction robots. Their robot swarms utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated scheduling to transfer materials and, subsequently, collect information about the materials, weather conditions, and more. The startup’s solution enables the creation of significantly more efficient and less hazardous working environments for construction workers.
Spaxels – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Many companies start to invest in unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drone delivery systems, which are considered the next step in the future of last-mile logistics. In its current state, there is a limited number of drone delivery systems that do not create or require complicated controls and planning facilities. Things are changing though as these systems become widely implemented across industries.
Spaxels, a research initiative by Austrian ArsElectronica, develops autonomous systems software. The SwarmOS software enables cross-communication between UAVs and provides real-time data to the operator. The platform integrates different types of UAVs into its systems for both indoor and outdoor applications – designed within the bounds of regulations.
Unbox Robotics – AI-Based Swarm Robotics
Today, we can observe autonomous robotic systems successfully operating in warehouses and performing various collection and sorting tasks efficiently. However, the non-plug-and-play nature of these systems requires a significant amount of time and energy to configure in a new environment or to introduce new robots into an existing system.
Indian startup Unbox Robotics develops complete swarm robotics and intelligence for warehousing and logistics. Their artificial intelligence-based solution enables robots to be deployed faster and results in more efficient robots that reduce the overall resources required in those logistical processes.
What About The Other 71 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 4 startups showcased above are promising examples out of 75 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
