Space cluster resident RoboCV has secured $3 million in new investments, allowing the autopilot vehicle developer to launch new international projects.
The firm announced in a press release on Wednesday that the A round investments came from from I2BF Global Ventures, VTB Capital Investment Management, LETA Capital, Columbus Nova, Almaz Capital.
“I think that in two or three years we will see explosive growth in the distribution of vehicle autopilot products around the world,” said Dmitry Smirnov, cofounder and commercial director of RoboCV.
The firm also announced the completion of projects at Samsung’s and Volkswagen’s Russian factories, which adopted pilot projects for robotized electric warehouse vehicles.
The vehicles were outfitted with the X-Motion intellectual autopilot system, developed by RoboCV. Thanks to this system, the warehouse vehicles are now able to function and move around the warehouse and the factory fully autonomously in driverless mode, and they are fully integrated into the logistics processes of the factory.
X-Motion is an “artificial intelligence” system for warehouse vehicles. The system is targeted at replacing the human driver, and acts much like a driver. The system “sees” the environment with its vision sensors, and mathematically builds a model of it, and makes decisions on the preferred route and obstacle avoidance maneuvers based on this model. X-Motion is plugged directly into the guidance system of the vehicle (the steering, acceleration and braking systems), and lets the vehicle move around fully autonomously.
"In 2013 LETA Capital has announced its $500,000 investment in RoboCV. RoboCV shows excellent dynamic product and business development. RoboCV works with the world's largest plants, so we support the company new investments," states Alexander Chachava, managing partner of LETA Capital and a member of the RoboCV’s board of directors.
The funds will be directed to development of existing “autopilot systems” for warehouses and to develop a pre-series autopilot RoboCV X-MOTION. Also, RoboCV has plans to implement a full-scale complex robotics project in warehouses and production facilities for Samsung’s and Volkswagen’s Russian factories and other clients, and to equip several tens of warehouse machinery systems X-MOTION by the end of 2015.
In addition, funds will be used to develop vehicle autopilot solutions with STILL GmbH, the leading supplier for intelligent control of intralogistics. RoboCV and STILL have plans to get a line of preinstalled autopilot X-MOTION electric trucks. This product will be sold on the Russia and CIS countries markets at the end of 2015 and on the international market in 2016.
“Robots are becoming more affordable and popular in almost all areas of our lives. We see great potential in the development of RoboCV all over the world," says Alexander Korchevskiy, Managing Partner of I2BF Global Ventures.
RoboCV was was founded in 2011 and is a resident of the Skolkovo Foundation. RoboCV included in the top 50 most influential companies in the world industry of robotics according to the publication Robotics Business Review.