Realtime Robotics Funded Addt'l. $9.5M to Meet Increased Demand for Technology that Transforms Manufacturing

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Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, announced that it has secured an additional $9.5 million in funding from Shinhan GIB and Kyobo Life Insurance.

Driven by the strong response to its RapidPlan industrial robotics motion control and collision avoidance software, Realtime will use this additional investment to drive further product enhancements, incorporate feedback from customers and partners, and scale to support additional go-to-market efforts.

RapidPlan reduces the annual costs of robotic automation by two-thirds and makes the robot programming process up to 5x faster, all while eliminating collisions and removing the majority of manual, time-consuming adjustments. This delivers a strong ROI across both existing applications and a very broad range of new ones. The additional funding will also help pave the way for streamlining additional time-to-value for customers.

“Manufacturers need to accelerate their adoption of robotics - and quickly realize a return on that investment - in order to improve their ability to adapt and compete in today’s industry,” said Peter Howard, CEO of Realtime Robotics. “RapidPlan perfectly complements these efforts, enabling the programming, deployment and robot control to be optimized. Our intelligent tools dramatically reduce complexity and the potential for human error, both of which can rapidly increase the cost of deploying and operating industrial robots. We’re thrilled to apply this funding to our scaling and development efforts as we grow to meet the increased market demand.”

To capture a larger share of the market, manufacturers are putting a renewed emphasis on optimization, flexibility, retooling, and connecting processes from simulation to production. In fact, McKinsey & Company research recently found that software innovation has the potential to expand automotive industry revenue by $1.5 trillion in 2030. The need for a highly-skilled workforce, however, goes hand-in-hand with these transformative efforts. Because programming and integration can account for up to 50-70% of the cost of a robot application, innovative approaches to automation and robotics are needed for there to be a real impact on the bottom line.

“There is currently a perfect storm of economic and employment pressures within the manufacturing space. This is driving an industry-wide need to embrace new technologies and approaches to longstanding problems, to become more efficient and improve cost structures, while still delivering the products that consumers demand,” said Damian S. Kang, Executive Director & Team Lead, Global Equity Team, at Shinhan GIB. “Realtime’s technology is a perfect fit, allowing organizations to digitally plan robot usage while making the programming process faster and less complex.”

Realtime Robotics provides a powerful suite of software tools for programming robotic arms and the systems they are used in. Built on patented technology that fully automates the programming and execution of robot motions, Realtime’s tools cut out the most difficult and costly aspect of operating industrial robots. These tools span the whole system lifecycle, including digital twins, virtual commissioning, transfer to factory floor, run-time control, fail-safe maintenance, and rapid error recovery.

Recent Company Momentum 

Realtime Robotics was named an official supplier for BMW Group, who uses its technology to speed robot programming time, autonomously generating collision-free robot movements.

Global automotive product and solution supplier The Schaeffler Group highlighted its use of RapidPlan to improve throughput and robot cell automation in a multi-robot bin-picking application.

Siemens and Realtime released a plug-in for Siemens Process Simulate, further building upon the companies’ long-standing partnership. The plug-in enables customers to incorporate RapidPlan into their regular workflow for added efficiency, and is available in addition to the standalone RapidPlan software.

“It takes years of deep engagement with a real industrial manufacturer to understand all their requirements and build against them,” added George Konidaris, co-founder and CTO of Realtime Robotics. “That very long tail of highly-specific, detail-oriented requirements is the thing that actually makes robotics products both hard and valuable, and is what most robotics startups just miss, either because they're not familiar with real applications or because they are trying to build something very general first. We're far along that journey and are seeing our sustained efforts result in customer success. It's an exciting time.”