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Warehouse Robotics Firm BotsAndUs Lands $13M Seed Round
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Intelligence and robotics company BotsAndUs has landed $13 million in seed funding to expand the growth and use of its logistics solution around the world, according to a company press release Thursday (June 23).To get more news about Tompkins Robotics GRS, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.
Specifically, London-based BotsAndUs will use the fresh capital to grow into markets including Germany, France, the Nordics, the United States and Canada, and it will continue its product development, the release stated.
The company collects real-time insights using fully autonomous, mobile robots to process pallets at every stage in their journey throughout a warehouse, according to the release. The robots capture the volume and condition as they enter and leave the warehouse, scan goods on shelves and record their location and quantity.
BotsAndUs robots operate without human involvement and do not require additional investments in infrastructure, eliminating the need for stock checking and allowing managers to have ongoing visibility of their operations from wherever they are, the release stated.
“BotsAndUs is already paving the way for artificial intelligence and robotics to completely transform logistics,” said Co-Founder and CEO Andrei Danescu in the release. “Our integrated AI and robotics platform is helping companies boost their performance and unlock their full potential. We’re confident we can make our vision a reality: transforming logistics on a global scale with real-time data to eliminate errors and enhance performance across all steps.”
Lakestar led BotsAndUs’ seed funding effort, and there was participation from Maersk Growth, Kindred Capital and Capnamic, according to the release.
Earlier this week, Amazon announced it is ready to deploy its first fully autonomous mobile robot that was developed to perform its work and automatically move around employees. Proteus can operate in the same physical space as people without the need for confinement to separate areas, as was the case in the past with other robots.
Logistics robots are poised to exceed their growth expectations. The Boston Consulting Group study Robotics Outlook 2030: How Intelligence and Mobility Will Shape the Future goes above the McKinsey forecasts, setting logistics robot sales at $80 billion by 2030.
The situation of robots in logistics is very favorable, as the symbiosis between these machines and humans greatly raises productivity. In automated warehouses, industrial robots complement operators in performing the more cumbersome and repetitive operations; thus, these employees can concentrate on higher-value tasks. According to McKinsey in its analysis Industry 4.0: Reimagining manufacturing operations after COVID-19, “process automation and physical automation or robotics can supplement labor capacity.”
But robots are not only responsible for carrying out the more burdensome tasks such as the movement, storage, and retrieval of goods. They also play a part in more complex logistics phases, e.g., dispatch and the shipment of orders during the last mile. In the research article The adoption of self-driving delivery robots in last mile logistics, prepared jointly by Nanjing Forestry University (China) and Cardiff Business School (UK), the authors say: “The demand for contactless delivery has expanded dramatically in 2020. Several technology companies are testing their autonomous robots to do last mile operations. While a parcel delivery by drones still has a few challenges to overcome, the other alternative of contactless delivery technology is becoming popular.”
The aim of automation is to drive efficiency in logistics and industrial operations. In his study Automated and Robotic Warehouses: Developments and Research Opportunities, Prof. René De Koster of Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands) says: “The main advantages of automation are the saving of space (an automated warehouse can be built on a smaller area), savings in labor costs (a 24/7 operation can be achieved relatively easily and inexpensively), availability (it is not always easy to find unskilled personnel willing to do warehouse work), and savings on other operational costs such as heating and lighting.”