Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on advanced robotics solutions. As there are a lot of such startups working on various different applications, we want to share our insights with you. Here, we take a look at 5 promising human-robot interaction startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Human-Robot Interaction Startups
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 496 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
Click to enlarge
Burro by Augean Robotics – Farm Robots
Nowadays, the agriculture industry in developed countries faces human labor shortages that limit farmers from maximizing their yield. Robots that perform routine tasks like moving loads or chemical spraying ease the burden posed on farmers. These involve either fully autonomous solutions or human-robot interactions. The advantage of cobots is that they are easier to repurpose to meet the seasonally changing needs in the fields.
The US-based startup Augean Robotics manufactures multipurpose robotic platforms for agricultural tasks. Their farm robot, Burro, moves smoothly on the rugged surfaces of working farms and possesses a load capacity of 500 pounds (227 kgs). It also collects actionable ground-level data on yields, pests, and weeds, as well as facilitates autonomous spraying.
Karakuri – Robot Chefs
Organizations with hundreds or thousands of people usually arrange a mass production of meals for their employees. However, individual tastes and dietary requirements are quite variable. It takes human workers hours to serve meals for everyone. Solutions based on human-robot interactions accelerate the process, improve staff well-being, and minimize food waste.
The UK-based startup Karakuri manufactures a robotic food preparation system. They use artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and machine sensing to deliver healthy convenience food. Their robot, DK-One, dispenses measured amounts of different types of food to match the nutritional requirements of each customer. The robot chef has a compact 2m by 2m design and serves up to 360 meals per hour.
Flow Robotics – Liquid Handling Robots
Industries that rely heavily on scientific research, such as biotechnology and healthcare, usually handle small amounts of liquids in their research and development phase. The use of pipettes by humans introduces slight variations that often cause irreproducibility issues in the generated data. Pipetting robots eliminate human errors and also speed up the process.
The Danish startup Flow Robotics builds a pipetting robot with a high degree of flexibility. Flowbot ONE is easy to set up and has a gentle learning curve. It supports a variety of liquid handling tasks, such as serial dilutions, sample normalization, sample dispensing, screening, and sample preparation for analytical tasks. It easily adapts to new lab procedures and brings automation to labs.
Heaxel – Robot-Mediated Rehabilitation
Patients recovering from injuries or surgeries often need to engage in repetitive functional movements for effective rehabilitation. The correct form is crucial to avoid aggravating the injury. However, it seems nearly impossible for therapists to stay available all the time. Robot-mediated rehabilitation addresses this issue and makes therapy more accessible.
Heaxel is a startup based out of Italy that offers robots for patients undergoing neurorehabilitation. Their collaborative robot (or cobot), Icone, continuously monitors patient performance to optimize and personalize the assistance. It generates informative quantitative data for clinicians and provides immediate feedback to the patients. The cobot brings the benefits of neurorehabilitation to when and where it is needed, including the patient’s home.
Doosan Robotics – Collaborative Robots
The field of human-robot interaction aims at making robots human-friendly. In industry, this manifests as cobots. These robots work alongside humans, particularly assisting in tasks where either safety or speed is an issue. They optimize production efficiency, ensure safe working conditions for human workers, and save costs and time.
Doosan Robotics is a South Korean startup that develops collaborative robots for various production processes. Their robots work together with human workers in different tasks of varying complexity. These include assembly, machine tending, quality inspection, polishing, packaging, and pick & place. The cobots find applications in various industries, including electronics, logistics, metal, and automotive.
What About The Other 491 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 5 human-robot interaction startups showcased above are promising examples out of 496 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
