The Robot Launch competition

It’s an exciting time for us at DoBots. We are very proud to be part of the six finalists of the Robot Launch competition, selected out of 60 startups in robotics in total! Movies from the finalists can be found at Robot Launch. We can’t do justice to the products and services of the finalists, but let us describe them briefly:

• RoboSoft Systems, a duct inspection robot
• Tandemech Engineering, a wall-climbing robot
• Leka, a robotic interactive sphere as a toy, made for children with autism
• DoBots, yes, us, an autopilot for an industrial scrubber/dryer robot
• Odd I/O, an interactive robot reacting on music and sounds
• Robotics Technologies of Tennessee, mobile platforms for welding and inspection in the shipbuilding industry

We are happy we were in such good company, but of course, it makes the competition fierce!

Competition

A rich panel of judges assembled by Andra Keay from RoboHub formed a balanced view on the pros and cons of the different robotic technologies presented. There is Glenn Luinenburg, partner at WilmerHale law firm, Rich Mahoney, director of robotics at SRI International, Roger Chen from OATV, Cyril Ebersweiler from Haxlr8r, Kate Drane, the hardware lead at Indiegogo, and Shahin Farshchi from Lux Capital.

You can see the entire Google Hangout, including technical glitches ;-) on YouTube:

However, our presentation can not be seen in this Hangout, so to save one hour and a half of your life, this is a short presentation (of 4 minutes) with a voice over:

If you are impatient, forward to 3:15. Here two clips start with moving robots (and Bart).

Award

We are the proud receiver of the prize of the “Best European Startup”! This prize is really relevant to us! We won namely a meeting with Robolution Capital in Paris! To describe Robolution Capital in their own words:

"Robolution Capital is the first private equity fund dedicated to service robotics in the world. Robolution Capital's mission is to invest in innovative companies of the fast growing service robotics market, mainly within Europe. Robolution Capital is managed by Orkos Capital SAS, an experienced and well known private equity management company."

An investment party that is dedicated to service robotics in Europe, is a perfect partner for us!

You all want to know of course who became the overall winner! The overall “Grand Champion” is Leka, the interactive robot for children with autism. Congratulations, Leka!

Future

Future editions of this competitions might lead to questions to us. Feel free to ask us. We also suggested a Google+ community around it, which can be found. Ask to be a member if you want to come in contact with other startups, like us, in robotics.

Very important, in case you are considering investing in robotics, please, contact us! We are down to earth, and make products and services that really are of added value to consumers or businesses. The industrial cleaning robot will be there in the near future. This is no science fiction anymore.