Over 4 million industrial robots operate in modern factories, however, outside these controlled environments and movements, human labour still dominates tasks such as packaging, sorting, and unloading goods.
Moritz Geilinger, CTO Simon Huber, and CSO Prof. Dr Stelian Coros, from the Computational Robotics Lab and affiliated with the ETH AI Center at ETH Zurich founded Flink Robotics to transform industrial automation by transforming robots into adaptable, plug-and-play workers suitable for a variety of dynamic material handling tasks.
The key to this transformation is FlinkAutonomy, a software with built-in physical intelligence that enables robots to perceive and react to changes in their environment, and collaboratively solve material handling tasks. By combining advanced machine perception with a differentiable physics engine, FlinkAutonomy empowers a new generation of plug-and-play robots that can be installed within minutes without altering existing environments and are incredibly easy to use.
Making robots capable of understanding their environment and making decisions autonomously represents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. Flink Robotics’ initial customers are in the parcel delivery and end-of-line packaging industries, where labour shortages are most acute. Flink Robotics will use the CHF 150,000 from Venture Kick to accelerate its go-to-market strategy and undertake additional pilot projects.
“The support from Venture Kick is a recognition of our work and our potential to transform the robot automation industry,” highlighted CEO Moritz Geilinger. “The funding has been instrumental in launching our company, providing the necessary resources to secure our first customers and develop the initial version of our product.”